initial commit of ebook 21677HEADmain

285 files changed, 24387 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/21677-8.txt b/21677-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6a50a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7197 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Milton, by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Milton
+
+
+Author: Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 4, 2007  [eBook #21677]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+MILTON
+
+by
+
+SIR WALTER RALEIGH
+
+Author of
+'Style,' 'Wordsworth,' &c.
+
+Tenth Impression
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Edward Arnold
+41 & 43 Maddox Street, Bond Street, W.
+1915
+
+
+
+
+TO
+R. A. M. STEVENSON
+WHOSE RADIANT AND SOARING INTELLIGENCE
+ENLIGHTENED AND GUIDED ME
+DURING THE YEARS OF OUR LOST COMPANIONSHIP
+THIS UNAVAILING TRIBUTE OF
+MEMORY AND LOVE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+
+"Sciences of conceit"; the difficulties and imperfections of literary
+    criticism; illustrated in the case of Shakespeare; and of Milton;
+    the character and temper of Milton; intensity, simplicity,
+    egotism; his estimate of himself                                  1
+
+CHAPTER I
+John Milton
+
+His birth, and death; his education; early life in London; ships and
+    shipping; adventurers and players; Milton and the Elizabethan
+    drama; the poetic masters of his youth; state of the Church of
+    England; Baxter's testimony; growing unrest; Milton's early
+    poems; the intrusion of politics; the farewell to mirth; the
+    Restoration, and Milton's attitude; the lost paradise of the
+    early poems; Milton's Puritanism; his melancholy; the political
+    and public preoccupations of the later poems; the drama of
+    Milton's life; his egotism explained; an illustration from
+    _Lycidas_; the lost cause; the ultimate triumph                   12
+
+CHAPTER II
+The Prose Works
+
+Poets and politics; practical aim of Milton's prose writings; the
+    reforms advocated by him, with one exception, unachieved;
+    critical mourners over Milton's political writings; the mourners
+    comforted; Milton's classification of his prose tracts; the
+    occasional nature of these tracts; allusions in the early prose
+    works to the story of Samson, and to the theme of _Paradise
+    Lost_; Milton's personal and public motives; his persuasive vein;
+    his political idealism; Johnson's account of his political
+    opinions; the citizen of an antique city; Milton's attitude
+    towards mediæval romance, and towards the mediæval Church; his
+    worship of liberty; and of greatness; his belief in human
+    capacity and virtue; Milton and Cromwell; Milton's clear logic;
+    his tenacity; his scurrility, and its excuse; his fierce and
+    fantastic wit; reappearance of these qualities in _Paradise
+    Lost_; the style of his prose works analysed and illustrated; his
+    rich vocabulary; his use of Saxon; the making of an epic poet     39
+
+CHAPTER III
+Paradise Lost: The Scheme
+
+Vastness of the theme; scenical opportunities; the poetry independent
+    of the creed; Milton's choice of subject; King Arthur; _Paradise
+    Lost_; attractions of the theme: primitive religion, natural
+    beauty, dramatic interest; difficulties of the theme, and
+    forbidden topics; how Milton overcomes these difficulties by his
+    episodes, his similes, and the tradition that he adopts
+    concerning the fallen angels; the cosmography of _Paradise Lost_;
+    its chronology; some difficulties and inconsistencies; Milton's
+    spiritual beings, their physical embodiment; the poem no treasury
+    of wisdom, but a world-drama; its inhumanity, and artificial
+    elevation; the effect of Milton's simpler figures drawn from
+    rural life; De Quincey's explanation of this effect; another
+    explanation; the homelessness of Eden; the enchanted palace and
+    its engineer; the tyranny of Milton's imagination; its effect on
+    his diction                                                       81
+
+CHAPTER IV
+Paradise Lost: The Actors. The Later Poems
+
+Milton's argumentative end; its bearing on the scenes in Heaven; his
+    political bias, and materialism; Milton's Deity; his Satan; the
+    minor devils; Adam; Eve; personal memories; Adam's eulogy of Eve,
+    criticised by Raphael; Milton's philosophy of love and beauty;
+    the opinions of Raphael, of Satan, and of Mrs. Millamant; the
+    comparative merits of Adam and Eve; Milton's great epic effects;
+    his unity and large decorum; morning and evening; architectural
+    effects; the close of _Paradise Lost_; Addison and Bentley;
+    _Paradise Regained;_ the choice of subject; Milton's favourite
+    theme--temptation; other possible subjects; the Harrying of Hell;
+    _Samson Agonistes;_ the riddle of life.                           126
+
+CHAPTER V
+The Style of Milton: Metre and Diction
+
+Difficulties of literary genealogy; the ledger school of criticism;
+    Milton's strength and originality; his choice of a sacred
+    subject; earlier attempts in England and France; Boileau's
+    opinion; Milton's choice of metre an innovation; the little
+    influence on Milton of Spenser, and of Donne; Milton a pupil of
+    the dramatists; the history of dramatic blank verse; Milton's
+    handling of the measure; the "elements of musical delight";
+    Tennyson's blank verse; Milton's metrical licenses; the Choruses
+    of _Samson Agonistes_; Milton's diction a close-wrought mosaic;
+    compared with the diffuser diction of Spenser; conciseness of
+    Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Milton; Homer's repetitions; repetitions
+    and "turns of words and thoughts" rare in Milton; double meanings
+    of words; Milton's puns; extenuating circumstances; his mixed
+    metaphors and violent syntax, due to compression; Milton's
+    poetical style a dangerous model; the spontaneity and license of
+    his prose                                                         170
+
+CHAPTER VI
+The Style of Milton; and its Influence on English Poetry
+
+The relation of Milton's work to the 17th-century "reforms" of verse
+    and prose; the Classicism of Milton, and of the Augustans;
+    Classic and Romantic schools contrasted in their descriptions;
+    Milton's Chaos, Shakespeare's Dover Cliff; Johnson's comments;
+    the besetting sins of the two schools; Milton's physical
+    machinery justified; his use of abstract terms; the splendid use
+    of mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidance of
+    mean associations, and of realism; nature of his similes and
+    figures; his use of proper names; his epic catalogues; his
+    personifications; loftiness of his perfected style; the
+    popularity of _Paradise Last_; imitations, adaptations, and
+    echoes of Milton's style during the 18th century; his enormous
+    influence; the origin of "poetic diction"; Milton's phraseology
+    stolen by Pope, Thomson, and Gray; the degradation of Milton's
+    style by his pupils and parodists                                 218
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+Milton's contemporaries; the poetry of Religion, and of Love; Henry
+    Vaughan; the Court lyrists; Milton's contempt for them; how they
+    surpass him; Sedley; Rochester; the prophet of the Lord and the
+    sons of Belial; unique position of Milton in the history of our
+    literature                                                        256
+
+Index                                                                 265
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Francis Bacon, in one of his prose fragments, draws a memorable
+distinction between "arts mechanical" and "sciences of conceit." "In arts
+mechanical," he says, "the first device comes shortest, and time addeth
+and perfecteth. But in sciences of conceit the first author goeth
+farthest, and time leeseth and corrupteth.... In the former, many wits
+and industries contributed in one. In the latter, many men's wits spent
+to deprave the wit of one."
+
+I fear that literary criticism of the kind that I propose to myself in
+these chapters on Milton must be classified with the "sciences of
+conceit." Indeed, Bacon puts it out of question that he himself would so
+have regarded it, for he goes on to explain how, after the deliverances
+of a master, "then begin men to aspire to the second prizes, to be a
+profound interpreter and commentor, to be a sharp champion and defender,
+to be a methodical compounder and abridger. And this is the unfortunate
+succession of wits which the world hath yet had, whereby the patrimony of
+all knowledge goeth not on husbanded and improved, but wasted and
+decayed."
+
+The blow is aimed at the scholastic philosophers, but it falls heavy on
+the critics of literature, on all who "aspire to the second prizes," or
+who think "that a borrowed light can increase the original light from
+whom it is taken." It is a searching arraignment of all who set
+themselves to expound in words the meaning and purpose of a master of
+verbal expression. Yet the very breadth of the indictment brings comfort
+and a means of escape. For the chief difficulties of an attempt to
+understand and judge Milton are difficulties inherent in the nature, not
+only of all criticism in the large sense, but also of all reading. In
+this association with great spirits which we call reading we receive but
+what we give, and take away only what we are fit to carry. Milton himself
+has stated the doctrine in its most absolute form, and has sought an
+enhanced authority for it by attributing it to the Christ--
+
+                      Who reads
+  Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
+  A spirit and judgment equal or superior
+  (And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
+  Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
+  Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,
+  Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
+  And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge,
+  As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
+
+Literally taken, this is the negation of all the higher functions of
+criticism, and the paralysis of all learning. Only his peers, it is
+argued, can read Shakespeare intelligently; and, as if that did not give
+him few enough readers, they are further told that they will be wasting
+their time! But love, unlike this proud Stoicism, is humble, and
+contented with a little. I would put my apology in the language of love
+rather than of philosophy. I know that in Shakespeare, or in Milton, or
+in any rare nature, as in Faire Virtue, the mistress of Philarete--
+
+  There is some concealèd thing
+  So each gazer limiting,
+  He can see no more of merit
+  Than beseems his worth and spirit.
+
+The appreciation of a great author asks knowledge and industry before it
+may be attempted, but in the end it is the critic, not the author, who is
+judged by it, and, where his sympathies have been too narrow, or his
+sight too dim, condemned without reprieve, and buried without a
+tombstone.
+
+Imperfect sympathy, that eternal vice of criticism, is sometimes
+irremediable, sometimes caused by imperfect knowledge. It takes forms as
+various as the authors whom it misjudges. In the case of Shakespeare,
+when we attempt to estimate him, to gauge him, to see him from all sides,
+we become almost painfully conscious of his immensity. We can build no
+watch-tower high enough to give us a bird's-eye view of that "globe of
+miraculous continents." We are out of breath when we attempt to accompany
+him on his excursions, where he,
+
+          through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
+  With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
+  And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
+
+He moves so easily and so familiarly among human passions and human
+emotions, is so completely at home in all societies and all companies,
+that he makes us feel hide-bound, prejudiced and ill-bred, by the side of
+him. We have to widen our conception of human nature in order to think of
+him as a man. How hard a thing it is to conceive of Shakespeare as of a
+human spirit, embodied and conditioned, whose affections, though higher
+mounted than ours, yet, when they stooped, stooped with the like wing, is
+witnessed by all biographies of Shakespeare, and by many thousands of the
+volumes of criticism and commentary that have been written on his works.
+One writer is content to botanise with him--to study plant-lore, that is,
+with a theatrical manager, in his hard-earned leisure, for teacher.
+Another must needs read the Bible with him, although, when all is said,
+Shakespeare's study was but little on the Bible. Others elect to keep him
+to music, astronomy, law, hunting, hawking, fishing. He is a good
+companion out of doors, and some would fain keep him there, to make a
+country gentleman of him. His incorrigible preoccupation with humanity,
+the ruling passion and employment of his life, is beyond the range of
+their complete sympathy; they like to catch him out of hours, to draw him
+aside and bespeak his interest, for a few careless minutes, in the trades
+and pastimes that bulk so largely and so seriously in their own
+perspective of life. They hardly know what to make of his "unvalued
+book"; but they know that he was a great man, and to have bought a
+wool-fell or a quarter of mutton from him, that would have been
+something! Only the poet-critics attempt to see life, however brokenly,
+through Shakespeare's eyes, to let their enjoyment keep attendance upon
+his. And from their grasp, too, he escapes by sheer excess.
+
+In the case of Milton the imperfection of our sympathy is due to other
+causes. In the first place, we know him as we do not know Shakespeare.
+The history of his life can be, and has been, minutely written. The
+affairs of his time, political and religious, have been recorded with
+enormous wealth of detail; and this wealth, falling into fit hands, has
+given us those learned modern historians to whom the seventeenth century
+means a period of five thousand two hundred and eighteen weeks. Milton's
+own attitude towards these affairs is in no way obscure; he has explained
+it with great fulness and candour in numerous publications, so that it
+would be easy to draw up a declaration of his chief tenets in politics
+and religion. The slanders of his adversaries he met again and again with
+lofty passages of self-revelation. "With me it fares now," he remarks in
+one of these, "as with him whose outward garment hath been injured and
+ill-bedighted; for having no other shift, what help but to turn the
+inside outwards, especially if the lining be of the same, or, as it is
+sometimes, much better." In his poetry, too, he delights to reveal
+himself, to take the knowing reader into his confidence, to honour the
+fit audience with a confession.
+
+But the difficulty is there none the less. Few critics have found Milton
+too wide or too large for them; many have found him too narrow, which is
+another form of imperfect sympathy. His lack of humour has alienated the
+interest of thousands. His ardent advocacy of toleration in the noblest
+of his prose treatises has been belittled by a generation which prides
+itself on that flaccid form of benevolence, and finds the mere repeal of
+the Licensing Act the smallest part of it. His pamphlets on divorce and
+on government have earned him the reputation of a theorist and dreamer.
+The shrewd practical man finds it easy to despise him. The genial
+tolerant man, whose geniality of demeanour towards others is a kind of
+quit-rent paid for his own moral laxity, regards him as a Pharisee. The
+ready humourist devises a pleasant and cheap entertainment by dressing
+Adam and Eve in modern garments and discussing their relations in the
+jargon of modish frivolity. Even the personal history of the poet has
+been made to contribute to the gaiety of nations, and the flight of Mary
+Powell, the first Mrs. Milton, from the house in Aldersgate Street, has
+become something of a stock comic episode in the history of English
+literature. So heavy is the tax paid, even by a poet, for deficiency in
+breadth and humour. Almost all men are less humorous than Shakespeare;
+but most men are more humorous than Milton, and these, it is to be
+feared, having suffered themselves to be dragooned by the critics into
+professing a distant admiration for _Paradise Lost_, have paid their last
+and utmost tribute to the genius of its author.
+
+It may be admitted without hesitation that his lonely greatness rather
+forces admiration on us than attracts us. That unrelenting intensity;
+that lucidity, as clear as air and as hard as agate; that passion which
+burns with a consuming heat or with a blinding light in all his writings,
+have endeared him to none. It is impossible to take one's ease with
+Milton, to induce him to forget his principles for a moment in the name
+of social pleasure. The most genial of his personal sonnets is addressed
+to Henry Lawrence, the son of the President of Cromwell's Council, and is
+an invitation to dinner. The repast promised is "light and choice"; the
+guest is apostrophised, somewhat formidably, as "Lawrence, of virtuous
+father, virtuous son," and is reminded, before he has dined, that
+
+  He who of these delights can judge, and spare
+  To interpose them oft, is not unwise.
+
+But the qualities that make Milton a poor boon-companion are precisely
+those which combine to raise his style to an unexampled loftiness, a
+dignity that bears itself easily in society greater than human. To attain
+to this height it was needful that there should be no aimless expatiation
+of the intellect, no facile diffusion of the sympathies over the wide
+field of human activity and human character. All the strength of mind and
+heart and will that was in Milton went into the process of raising
+himself. He is like some giant palm-tree; the foliage that sprang from it
+as it grew has long since withered, the stem rises gaunt and bare; but
+high up above, outlined against the sky, is a crown of perennial verdure.
+
+It is essential for the understanding of Milton that we should take
+account of the rare simplicity of his character. No subtleties; no tricks
+of the dramatic intellect, which dresses itself in a hundred masquerading
+costumes and peeps out of a thousand spy-holes; no development, one might
+almost say, only training, and that self-imposed. There is but one
+Milton, and he is throughout one and the same, in his life, in his prose,
+and in his verse; from those early days, when we find him, an uncouth
+swain,
+
+  With eager thought warbling his Doric lay,
+
+to the last days when, amid a swarm of disasters, he approved himself
+like Samson, and earned for himself the loftiest epitaph in the language,
+his own--
+
+  Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
+  Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
+  Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,
+  And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
+
+The world has not wholly misunderstood or failed to appreciate this
+extraordinary character, as one curious piece of evidence will serve to
+show. Milton is one of the most egotistic of poets. He makes no secret of
+the high value he sets upon his gifts--"gifts of God's imparting," as he
+calls them, "which I boast not, but thankfully acknowledge, and fear also
+lest at my certain account they be reckoned to me many rather than few."
+Before he has so much as begun his great poem he covenants with his
+reader "that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the
+payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from
+the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; ... nor to be obtained by the
+invocation of dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer
+to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
+and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch
+and purify the lips of whom he pleases; to this must be added industrious
+and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and
+generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at
+mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as
+many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges
+that I can give them." And when he came to redeem his pledge, in the very
+opening lines of his epic, trusting to the same inspiration, he
+challenges the supremacy of the ancients by his
+
+                  adventrous song
+  That with no middle flight intends to soar
+  Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
+  Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
+
+"This man cuts us all out, and the Ancients too," Dryden is reported to
+have said. But this man intended to do no less, and formally announced
+his intention. It is impossible to outface Milton, or to abash him with
+praise. His most enthusiastic eulogists are compelled merely to echo the
+remarks of his earliest and greatest critic, himself. Yet with all this,
+none of the later critics, not the most cavalier nor the dullest, has
+dared to call him vain. His estimate of himself, offered as simple fact,
+has been accepted in the same spirit, and one abyss of ineptitude still
+yawns for the heroic folly, or the clownish courage, of the New
+Criticism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+JOHN MILTON
+
+
+John Milton, the son of a middle-aged scrivener, was born on Friday,
+December the 9th, 1608, at his father's house in Bread Street, Cheapside;
+and died on Sunday, November the 8th, 1674, in a small house, with but
+one room on a floor, in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, London. Of his
+father the records that remain show him to have been a convinced member
+of the Puritan party in the Church, a man of liberal culture and
+intelligence, a lover of music (which taste Milton inherited), a wise and
+generous friend to the son who became a poet. We owe it to his wisdom
+rather than to his prosperity that Milton was allowed to live at home
+without any ostensible profession until he was thirty years of age and
+more.
+
+For the first sixteen years of his life Milton was educated partly at
+home, by a Presbyterian tutor called Thomas Young, partly at St. Paul's
+School, which he attended for some years as a day-scholar. From his
+twelfth year onward he was an omnivorous reader, and before he left
+school had written some boyish verses, void of merit. The next fourteen
+years of his life, after leaving school, were spent at Cambridge, in
+Buckinghamshire, and in foreign travel, so that he was thirty years old
+before he lived continuously in London again.
+
+We know pretty well how he spent his time at Cambridge and at Horton,
+sedulously turning over the Greek and Latin classics, dreaming of
+immortality. We know less about his early years in London, where there
+were wider and better opportunities of gaining an insight into "all
+seemly and generous arts and affairs." London was a great centre of
+traffic, a motley crowd of adventurers and traders even in those days,
+and the boy Milton must often have wandered down to the river below
+London Bridge to see the ships come in. His poems are singularly full of
+figures drawn from ships and shipping, some of them bookish in their
+origin, others which may have been suggested by the sight of ships. Now
+it is Satan, who, after his fateful journey through chaos, nears the
+world,
+
+  And like a weather-beaten vessel holds
+  Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn.
+
+Now it is Dalila, whom the Chorus behold approaching.
+
+  Like a stately ship
+  Of Tarsus, bound for the isles
+  Of Javan or Gadire,
+  With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
+  Sails filled, and streamers waving,
+  Courted by all the winds that hold them play.
+
+Or, again, it is Samson reproaching himself,
+
+  Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked
+  My vessel trusted to me from above,
+  Gloriously rigged.
+
+The bulk of Satan is compared to the great sea-beast Leviathan, beheld
+off the coast of Norway by
+
+  The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff.
+
+In his approach to the happy garden the Adversary is likened to
+
+                      them who sail
+  Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
+  Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
+  Sabaean odours from the spicy shore
+  Of Araby the Blest, with such delay
+  Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
+  Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles;
+  So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend.
+
+And when he draws near to Eve in the rose-thicket,
+
+                  sidelong he works his way,
+  As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought,
+  Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind
+  Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail.
+
+There is nothing here that is not within the reach of any inland reader,
+but Milton's choice of nautical similitudes may serve to remind us how
+much of the interest of Old London centred round its port. Here were to
+be heard those tales of far-sought adventure and peril which gave even to
+the boisterous life of Elizabethan London an air of triviality and
+security. Hereby came in "the variety of fashions and foreign stuffs,"
+which Fynes Moryson, writing in Milton's childhood, compares to the stars
+of heaven and the sands of the sea for number. All sorts of characters,
+nationalities, and costumes were daily to be seen in Paul's Walk,
+adjoining Milton's school. One sort interests us pre-eminently. "In the
+general pride of England," says Fynes Moryson, "there is no fit
+difference made of degrees; for very Bankrupts, Players, and Cutpurses go
+apparelled like gentlemen." Shakespeare was alive during the first seven
+years of Milton's life, and was no doubt sometimes a visitor to the
+Mermaid, a stone's throw from the scrivener's house. Perhaps his cloak
+brushed the child Milton in the street. Milton was born in the golden age
+of the drama, and a score of masterpieces were put upon the London stage
+while he was in his cradle. But the golden age passed rapidly; the
+quality of the drama degenerated and the opposition to it grew strong
+before he was of years to attend a play. Perhaps he never saw a play by
+the masters during his boyhood, and his visits
+
+          to the well-trod stage anon,
+  If Jonson's learned sock be on,
+  Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
+  Warble his native woodnotes wild,
+
+were either excursions of the imagination or belong to his later
+occasional sojourns in London. In his _Eikonoklastes_ he quotes certain
+lines from _Richard III._, and here and there in his prose, as well as in
+his verse, there are possibly some faint reminiscences of Shakespearian
+phrases. So, for instance, in _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_,
+he seems to echo a famous speech of Macbeth, while he claims that his
+remedy of free divorce "hath the virtue to soften and dispel rooted and
+knotty sorrows, and without enchantment." But these are doubtless the
+memories of reading. In the _Apology for Smectymnuus_, when he has to
+reply to the charge that he "haunted playhouses" during his college days,
+he retorts the charge, it is true, rather than denies it. Yet the retort
+bespeaks a certain severity and preciseness in judging of plays and their
+actors, which can hardly have found gratification in the licenses and
+exuberances of the contemporary drama. It was not difficult, he remarks,
+to see plays, "when in the Colleges so many of the young divines, and
+those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the
+stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and
+dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds." "If it be
+unlawful," he continues, "to sit and behold a mercenary comedian
+personating that which is least unseemly for a hireling to do, how much
+more blameful is it to endure the sight of as vile things acted by
+persons either entered, or presently to enter into the ministry; and how
+much more foul and ignominious for them to be the actors!"
+
+It was, at least, a happy chance that the first of Milton's verses to
+appear in print should have been _An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick
+Poet, W. Shakespeare_, contributed to the Second Folio in 1632. The main
+interests of the household at the Spread Eagle in Bread Street must have
+been far enough remote from the doings of the companies of players. John
+Milton the elder would probably have agreed with Sir Thomas Bodley, who
+called plays "riffe-raffes," and declared that they should never come
+into his library. The Hampton Court Conference, the Synod of Dort, the
+ever-widening divisions in the Church, between Arminian and Calvinist,
+between Prelatist and Puritan, were probably subjects of a nearer
+interest, even to the poet in his youth, than the production of new or
+old plays upon the stage. Milton's childhood was spent in the very
+twilight of the Elizabethan age; it was greatly fortunate for him, and
+for us, that he caught the after-glow of the sunset upon his face. He
+read Spenser while Spenser was still the dominant influence in English
+poetry. "He hath confessed to me," said Dryden, "that Spenser was his
+original,"--an incredible statement unless we understand "original" in
+the sense of his earliest admiration, his poetic godfather who first won
+him to poetry. He read Shakespeare and Jonson in the first editions. He
+read Sylvester's translation of _Du Bartas, His Divine Weekes and
+Workes_; and perhaps thence conceived the first vague idea of a poem on a
+kindred subject. It is necessary to insist on his English masters,
+because, although the greater part of his time and study was devoted to
+the classics, the instrument that he was to use was learned in a native
+school. His metre, his magnificent vocabulary, his unerring phraseology,
+took learning and practice. He attached a high value to his study of
+English poetry. When he spoke of "our sage and serious Spenser (whom I
+dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas)," he was
+conscious that he was maintaining what seemed a bold paradox in an age
+when scholasticism still controlled education. It is pleasant to think of
+Milton during these early years, whether in London or at Christ's
+College, in his "calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and
+confident thoughts," before ever he had a hint that he must perforce
+"embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from
+beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of
+delightful studies." From the first, we may be sure, he read the poets as
+one poet reads another, and apprenticed himself to them for their craft.
+He was never drawn out of the highroad of art by the minuter and more
+entangling allurements of scholarship. In one of his Divorce pamphlets he
+tells, with the inevitable touch of pride, how he never could delight in
+long citations, much less in whole traductions, "whether it be natural
+disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of
+what God made mine own, and not a translator."
+
+Milton was intended by his family, and by his own early resolves, for the
+service of the Church. The growing unrest, therefore, in matters
+ecclesiastical during the early part of the seventeenth century could not
+but affect him. The various parties and tendencies in the Church of
+England had never, since the Reformation, attained to a condition of
+stable equilibrium. But the settlement under Elizabeth was strengthened,
+and the parties bound together for thirty years, by the ever-present fear
+of Rome. When that fear was allayed, and the menace that hung over the
+very existence of the nation removed by the defeat of the Armada, the
+differences within the Church broke out afresh, and waxed fiercer every
+year. Shakespeare grew to manhood during the halcyon years between the
+Marian persecutions and the Marprelate pamphlets--a kind of magic oasis,
+which gave us our English Renaissance. Milton's youth breathed a very
+different air. The Church, as it was, pleased hardly any party. Much of
+the old temple had been hastily pulled down; the new government offices
+that were to replace it had as yet been but partially built, and
+commanded no general approval. Considered as a social organisation,
+moreover, the Church throughout large parts of the country had fallen
+into a state not unlike decay. Richard Baxter, whose testimony there is
+no sufficient reason to reject, tells of its state in Shropshire during
+the years of his youth, from 1615 onwards:--"We lived in a country that
+had but little preaching at all: In the Village where I was born there
+was four Readers successively in Six years time, ignorant Men, and two of
+them immoral in their lives; who were all my School-masters. In the
+Village where my Father lived, there was a Reader of about Eighty years
+of Age that never preached, and had two Churches about Twenty miles
+distant: His Eyesight failing him, he said Common-Prayer without Book;
+but for the Reading of the Psalms and Chapters he got a Common Thresher
+and Day-Labourer one year, and a Taylor another year: (for the Clerk
+could not read well): And at last he had a Kinsman of his own (the
+excellentest Stage-player in all the Country, and a good Gamester and
+good Fellow) that got Orders and supplied one of his Places.... After him
+another Neighbour's Son took Orders, when he had been a while an
+Attorney's Clerk, and a common Drunkard, and tipled himself into so great
+Poverty that he had no other way to live.... These were the
+School-masters of my Youth ... who read Common Prayer on Sundays and Holy
+Days, and taught School and tipled on the Weekdays, and whipt the Boys
+when they were drunk, so that we changed them very oft. Within a few
+miles about us were near a dozen more Ministers that were near Eighty
+years old apiece, and never preached; poor ignorant Readers, and most of
+them of Scandalous Lives." Some few there were, Baxter admits, who
+preached in the neighbourhood, but any one who went to hear them "was
+made the Derision of the Vulgar Rabble under the odious Name of a
+_Puritane_."
+
+In one of his Latin letters written from Cambridge, Milton himself speaks
+of the ignorance of those designed for the profession of divinity, how
+they knew little or nothing of literature and philosophy. The high
+prelacy and ritualism of Laud on the one hand, the Puritan movement on
+the other, each in some measure a protest against this state of things,
+were at fierce variance with each other, and Milton's ear, from his youth
+upward, was "pealed with noises loud and ruinous." The age of Shakespeare
+was irrecoverably past, and it was impossible for any but a few
+imperturbable Cyrenaics, like Herrick, to "fleet the time carelessly, as
+they did in the golden world." The large indifference of Shakespeare to
+current politics was impossible for Milton. "I had as lief be a Brownist
+as a politician," said the folly of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the wisdom
+of Shakespeare. But now the Brownists and the politicians had it their
+own way; and Milton was something of both.
+
+His notable early poems, written at College and during his retreat in
+Buckinghamshire, have therefore a singular interest and pathos. He was
+not long for the world in which these poems move with so ineffable a
+native grace. They are the poems of his youth, instinct with the
+sensibility of youth, and of a delicate and richly nurtured imagination.
+But they are also the poems of an age that was closing, and they have a
+touch of the sadness of evening. "I know not," says Dr. Johnson, speaking
+of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, "whether the characters are kept
+sufficiently apart. No mirth can indeed be found in his melancholy, but I
+am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." It is true;
+for both characters are Milton himself, who embodies in separate poems
+the cheerful and pensive elements of his own nature--and already his
+choice is made. There is something disinterested and detached about his
+sketches of the merriment which he takes part in only as a silent
+onlooker, compared with the profound sincerity of the lines--
+
+  And may at last my weary age
+  Find out the peaceful hermitage,
+  The hairy gown and mossy cell,
+  Where I may sit and rightly spell
+  Of every star that heaven doth shew,
+  And every herb that sips the dew,
+  Till old experience do attain
+  To something like prophetic strain.
+
+The rising tide of political passion submerged the solemn Arcadia of his
+early fancies. Like Lycidas, he was carried far from the flowers and the
+shepherds to visit "the bottom of the monstrous world." Hence there may
+be made a whole index of themes, touched on by Milton in his early poems,
+as if in promise, of which no fulfilment is to be found in the greater
+poems of his maturity. His political career under the Commonwealth is
+often treated, both by those who applaud and by those who lament it, as
+if it were the merest interlude between two poetic periods. It was not
+so; political passion dominates and informs all his later poems,
+dictating even their subjects. How was it possible for him to choose King
+Arthur and his Round Table for the subject of his epic, as he had
+intended in his youthful days; when chivalry and the spirit of chivalry
+had fought its last fight on English soil, full in the sight of all men,
+round the forlorn banner of King Charles? The policy of Laud and
+Stratford kept Milton out of the Church, and sent him into retirement at
+Horton; the same policy, it may be plausibly conjectured, had something
+to do with the change in the subject of his long-meditated epic. From the
+very beginning of the civil troubles contemporary events leave their mark
+on all his writings. The topical bias (so to call it) is very noticeable
+in many of the subjects tentatively jotted down by him on the paper that
+is now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The corrupted
+clergy, who make so splendid and, as some think, so irrelevant an
+appearance in _Lycidas_, figure frequently, either directly or by
+implication, in the long list of themes.
+
+Without misgiving or regret, when the time came, Milton shut the gate on
+the sequestered paradise of his youth, and hastened downward to join the
+fighters in the plain. Before we follow him we may well "interpose a
+little ease" by looking at some of the beauties proper to the earlier
+poems, and listening to some of the simple pastoral melodies that were
+drowned when the organ began to blow. _L'Allegro_ is full of them--
+
+  Sometimes, with secure delight,
+  The upland hamlets will invite,
+  When the merry bells ring round,
+  And the jocund rebecks sound
+  To many a youth and many a maid
+  Dancing in the chequered shade,
+  And young and old come forth to play
+  On a sunshine holiday.
+
+That is Merry England of Shakespeare's time. But already the controversy
+concerning the _Book of Sports_ had begun to darken the air. Already the
+Maypole, that "great stinking idol," as an Elizabethan Puritan called it,
+had been doomed to destruction. Some years before _L'Allegro_ was
+written, a bard, who hailed from Leeds, had lamented its downfall in the
+country of his nativity--
+
+  Happy the age, and harmelesse were the dayes,
+    (For then true love and amity was found)
+  When every village did a May-pole raise,
+    And Whitson Ales and May games did abound;
+  And all the lusty Yonkers in a rout
+  With merry Lasses danced the rod about;
+  Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests,
+  And poor men far'd the better for their feasts.
+
+The next verse recalls that scene in _The Winter's Tale_ where
+Shakespeare draws a vivid picture of Elizabethan country merrymaking--
+
+  The Lords of Castles, Manners, Townes, and Towers
+    Rejoyc'd when they beheld the Farmers flourish,
+  And would come down unto the Summer-Bowers
+    To see the Country gallants dance the Morrice,
+  And sometimes with his tenant's handsome daughter
+  Would fall in liking, and espouse her after
+  Unto his Serving-man, and for her portion
+  Bestow on him some farme, without extortion.
+
+  Alas poore Maypoles, what should be the cause
+    That you were almost banish't from the earth?
+  You never were rebellious to the lawes,
+    Your greatest crime was harmelesse honest mirth;
+  What fell malignant spirit was there found
+    To cast your tall _Piramides_ to ground?
+  *      *      *      *      *
+
+  And you my native towne, which was of old,
+    (When as thy Bon-fires burn'd and May-poles stood,
+  And when thy Wassell-cups were uncontrol'd)
+    The Summer Bower of Peace and neighbourhood,
+  Although since these went down, thou ly'st forlorn,
+  By factious schismes and humours over-borne,
+  Some able hand I hope thy rod will raise,
+  That thou maist see once more thy happy daies.
+
+The hopes of the bard of Leeds were fulfilled at the Restoration.
+Merriment, of a sort, came back to England; but it found no congenial
+acceptance from Milton. The Court roysterers, the Hectors, Nickers,
+Scourers, and Mohocks, among whom were numbered Sedley and Rochester, and
+others of the best poets of the day, are celebrated by him incidentally
+in those lines, unsurpassable for sombre magnificence, which he appends
+to his account of Belial--
+
+  In courts and palaces he also reigns,
+  And in luxurious cities, where the noise
+  Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
+  And injury and outrage; and, when night
+  Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
+  Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
+
+The public festivals of these later days are glanced at in _Samson
+Agonistes_--
+
+      Lords are lordliest in their wine;
+  And the well-feasted priest then soonest fired
+  With zeal, if aught religion seem concerned;
+  No less the people on their holy-days
+  Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable.
+
+There is no relaxation, no trace of innocent lightheartedness, in any of
+the later poems. Even the garden of Paradise, where some gentle mirth
+might perhaps be permissible, is tenanted by grave livers, majestic, but
+not sprightly. In _L' Allegro_ the morning song of the milk-maid is
+"blithe," and the music of the village dance is "jocund." But Eve is
+described as "jocund" and "blithe" only when she is intoxicated by the
+mortal fruit of the tree; and the note of gaiety that is heard faintly,
+like a distant echo, in the earlier poems, is never sounded again by
+Milton.
+
+So it is also with other things. The flowers scattered on the laureate
+hearse of Lycidas make a brighter, more various, and withal a homelier
+display than ever meets the eye in the Hesperian wildernesses of Eden. Or
+take the world of fairy lore that Milton inherited from the
+Elizabethans--a world to which not only Shakespeare, but also laborious
+and arrogant poet-scholars like Jonson and Drayton had free right of
+entry. Milton, too, could write of the fairies--in his youth--
+
+  With stories told of many a feat,
+  How Faery Mab the junkets eat.
+
+But even in _Comus_ the most exquisite passage of fairy description is
+put into the mouth of Comus himself, chief of the band of ugly-headed
+monsters in glistering apparel--
+
+  The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
+  Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
+  And on the tawny sands and shelves
+  Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
+  By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
+  The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim,
+  Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
+  What hath night to do with sleep?
+
+The song and the dance are broken off, never to be resumed, when the
+staid footfall of the lady is heard approaching. Milton cannot draw
+ugliness; it turns into beauty or majesty on his hands. Satan has a large
+and enthusiastic party among readers of _Paradise Lost_. Comus, we are
+told, stands for a whole array of ugly vices--riot, intemperance,
+gluttony, and luxury. But what a delicate monster he is, and what a
+ravishing lyric strain he is master of! The pleasure that Milton forswore
+was a young god, the companion of Love and Youth, not an aged Silenus
+among the wine-skins. He viewed and described one whole realm of pagan
+loveliness, and then he turned his face the other way, and never looked
+back. Love is of the valley, and he lifted his eyes to the hills. His
+guiding star was not Christianity, which in its most characteristic and
+beautiful aspects had no fascination for him, but rather that severe and
+self-centred ideal of life and character which is called Puritanism. It
+is not a creed for weak natures; so that as the nominal religion of a
+whole populace it has inevitably fallen into some well-merited disrepute.
+Puritanism for him was not a body of law to be imposed outwardly on a
+gross and timid people, but an inspiration and a grace that falls from
+Heaven upon choice and rare natures--
+
+  Nor do I name of men the common rout,
+  That, wandering loose about,
+  Grow up and perish as the summer fly,
+  Heads without name, no more remember'd;
+
+so sings the Chorus in _Samson Agonistes_--
+
+  But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
+  With gifts and graces eminently adorned,
+  To some great work, thy glory,
+  And people's safety, which in part they effect.
+
+Under one form or another Puritanism is to be found in almost all
+religions, and in many systems of philosophy. Milton's Puritanism enabled
+him to combine his classical and Biblical studies, to reconcile his pagan
+and Christian admirations, Stoicism, and the Quakers. It was with no
+sense of incongruity that he gave to the Christ a speech in praise of--
+
+  Quintus, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,...
+  Who could do mighty things, and could contemn
+  Riches, though offered from the hand of Kings.
+
+To reject common ambitions, to refuse common enticements, to rule
+passions, desires, and fears, "neither to change, nor falter, nor
+repent,"--this was the wisdom and this the virtue that he set before
+himself. There is no beatific vision to keep his eyes from wandering
+among the shows of earth. Milton's heaven is colder than his earth, the
+home of Titans, whose employ is political and martial. When his
+imagination deals with earthly realities, the noble melancholy of the
+Greeks lies upon it. His last word on human life might be translated into
+Greek with no straining and no loss of meaning--
+
+  His servants He, with new acquist
+  Of true experience from this great event,
+  With peace and consolation hath dismissed,
+  And calm of mind, all passion spent.
+
+He is therefore one of the few English poets (alone in this respect among
+the greatest) who have not sung of Love. His only English love-poem, the
+sonnet _To the Nightingale_, is his earliest and poorest sonnet. He
+elected in his later poems to sing of Marriage, its foundation in reason,
+its utility, its respectability and antiquity as an institution, and,
+above all, its amazing dangers. He has thus lost the devotion of the
+young, who, while they read poetry by the ear and eye for its sonorous
+suggestions, and its processions of vague shapes, love Milton; but when
+they come to read it for its matter and sentiment, leave him--in most
+cases never to return. The atmosphere of his later poems is that of some
+great public institution. Heaven is an Oriental despotism. Hell is a
+Secession parliament. In the happy garden itself there is no privacy, no
+individualism; it is the focus of the action, the central point of the
+attack and the defence; and a great part of the conversation of its
+inhabitants turns on the regulations under which they live. They never
+forget that they are all mankind, and when their psalm goes up in
+grateful adoration to their Creator, it is like the unanimous voice of
+all nations and kindreds and people and tongues.
+
+"The plan of _Paradise Lost_" says Johnson, "has this inconvenience, that
+it comprises neither human actions nor human manners. The man and woman
+who act and suffer are in a state which no other man and woman can ever
+know. The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds
+no condition in which he can by any effort of imagination place himself;
+he has, therefore, little natural curiosity and sympathy." Milton, he
+goes on to explain, "knew human nature only in the gross, and had never
+studied the shades of character, nor the combinations of concurring or
+the perplexity of contending passions."
+
+He knew human nature only in the gross. He treated nothing less momentous
+than the fortunes of the race. It is precisely from this cause that the
+incomparable grandeur of Milton's characters and situations springs. The
+conversations that he records are like international parleyings. Eve is
+the official Mother of mankind. Adam walks forth to meet the angel, in
+ambassadorial dignity, the accredited representative of the human race--
+
+          Without more train
+  Accompanied than with his own complete
+  Perfections; in himself was all his state,
+  More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
+  On princes, when their rich retinue long
+  Of horses led and grooms besmeared with gold
+  Dazzles the crowd and sets them all agape.
+
+And if the other characters of _Paradise Lost_ have this generic stamp,
+it is because the chief character of all has it--the character of the
+poet himself. It lends a strange dignity to the story of Milton's life
+that in all his doings he felt himself to be a "cause," an agent of
+mighty purposes. This it is that more than excuses, it glorifies, his
+repeated magniloquent allusions to himself throughout the prose works.
+Holding himself on trust or on commission, he must needs report himself,
+not only to his great Taskmaster, but also from time to time to men, his
+expectant and impatient beneficiaries. Even in _Lycidas_ he is thinking
+of himself as much as of his dead companion--
+
+  So may some gentle Muse
+  With lucky words favour _my_ destined urn,
+  And as he passes turn,
+  And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
+
+What if he die young himself? Are his dreams and hopes for his own future
+an illusion? He agonises with the question in the famous digression on
+poetry and poetic fame. But he consoles himself by appeal to a Court
+where the success and the fame of this world are as straw in the furnace;
+and then, having duly performed the obsequies of his friend, with
+reinvigorated heart he turns once more to the future--"To-morrow to fresh
+woods and pastures new." A singular ending, no doubt, to an elegy! But it
+is blind and hasty to conclude that therefore the precedent laments are
+"not to be considered as the effusion of real passion." A soldier's
+burial is not the less honoured because his comrades must turn from his
+grave to give their thought and strength and courage to the cause which
+was also his. The maimed rites, interrupted by the trumpet calling to
+action, are a loftier commemoration than the desolating laments of those
+who "weep the more because they weep in vain." And in this way Milton's
+fierce tirade against the Church hirelings, and his preoccupation with
+his own ambitions support and explain each other, and find a fit place in
+the poem. He is looking to his equipment, if perchance he may live to do
+that in poetry and politics, which Edward King had died leaving
+unaccomplished. When his own time came he desired to be lamented in no
+other way--
+
+  Come, come; no time for lamentation now,
+  Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself
+  Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished
+  A life heroic, on his enemies
+  Fully revenged.
+
+This overmastering sense of the cause breathes through all his numerous
+references to himself. He stands in the Forum,
+
+      Disturbed, yet comely, and in act
+  Raised, as of some great matter to begin;
+
+and addresses himself, as he boasts in _The Second Defence of the People
+of England_, to "the whole collective body of people, cities, states, and
+councils of the wise and eminent, through the wide expanse of anxious and
+listening Europe." Having sacrificed the use of his eyes to the service
+of the commonweal, he bates not a jot of heart or hope--
+
+          What supports me, dost thou ask?
+  The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
+  In Liberty's defence, my noble task,
+  Of which all Europe talks from side to side.
+
+And while thus his fighting years are filled with the exaltation of
+battle, as he plumes and lifts himself upon the cause that is going
+forward, the story of his closing years has in it much of the pathos of a
+lost cause. It was remarked by Johnson that there is in the _Paradise
+Lost_ little opportunity for the pathetic; only one passage, indeed, is
+allowed by him to be truly deserving of that name. But the description of
+the remorse and reconcilement of Adam and Eve, which Johnson doubtless
+intended, will not compare, for moving quality, with the matchless
+invocation to the Seventh Book--
+
+  More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
+  To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
+  On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,
+  In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
+  And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
+  Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn
+  Purples the East. Still govern thou my song,
+  Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
+
+Then the noise that he had heard, in imagination only, thirty years
+earlier, assails his bodily ears; as evening sets in, the wonted roar is
+up, not in the wild woods of fancy inhabited by the sensual magician and
+his crew, but in the unlighted streets of Restoration London, as a chorus
+of cup-shotten brawlers goes roaring by. The king is enjoying his own
+again; and the poet, hunted and harassed in his last retreat, raises his
+petition again to the Muse whom he had invoked at the beginning of his
+task,--not Clio nor her sisters, but the spirit of heavenly power and
+heavenly wisdom; his mind reverts to that story of Orpheus which had
+always had so singular and personal a fascination for him; of Orpheus,
+who, holding himself aloof from the mad amorists of Thrace, was by them
+torn to pieces during the orgy of the Dionysia, and sent rolling down the
+torrent of the Hebrus; and he prays to his goddess and guardian--
+
+  But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
+  Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
+  Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
+  In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
+  To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned
+  Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
+  Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores;
+  For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream.
+
+Disappointed of all his political hopes, living on neglected and poor for
+fourteen years after the Restoration, and dying a private citizen,
+passably obscure, Milton yet found and took a magnanimous revenge upon
+his enemies. They had crippled only his left hand in silencing the
+politician, but his right hand, which had hung useless by his side for so
+many years while he served the State, was his own still, and wielded a
+more Olympian weapon. In prose and politics he was a baffled man, but in
+poetry and vision he found his triumph. His ideas, which had gone
+a-begging among the politicians of his time, were stripped by him of the
+rags of circumstance, and cleansed of its dust, to be enthroned where
+they might secure a hearing for all time. The surprise that he prepared
+for the courtiers of the Restoration world was like Samson's revenge, in
+that it fell on them from above; and, as elsewhere in the poem of _Samson
+Agonistes_, Milton was thinking not very remotely of his own case when he
+wrote that jubilant semi-chorus, with the marvellous fugal succession of
+figures, wherein Samson, and by inference Milton himself, is compared to
+a smouldering fire revived, to a serpent attacking a hen-roost, to an
+eagle swooping on his helpless prey, and last, his enemies now silent for
+ever, to the phoenix, self-begotten and self-perpetuating. The Philistian
+nobility (or the Restoration notables) are described, with huge scorn, as
+ranged along the tiers of their theatre, like barnyard fowl blinking on
+their perch, watching, not without a flutter of apprehension, the vain
+attempts made on their safety by the reptile grovelling in the dust
+below--
+
+      But he, though blind of sight,
+  Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
+  With inward eyes illuminated,
+  His fiery virtue roused
+  From under ashes into sudden flame,
+  And as an evening dragon came,
+  Assailant on the perchèd roosts
+  And nests in order ranged
+  Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle
+  His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.
+  So Virtue, given for lost,
+  Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
+  Like that self-begotten bird
+  In the Arabian woods embost,
+  That no second knows nor third,
+  And lay erewhile a holocaust,
+  From out her ashy womb now teemed,
+  Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
+  When most unactive deemed;
+  And, though her body die, her fame survives.
+  A secular bird, ages of lives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE PROSE WORKS
+
+
+It is customary for the friends of Milton to approach his prose works
+with a sigh of apology. There is a deep-rooted prejudice among the
+English people against a poet who concerns himself intimately with
+politics. Whether this feeling has its origin in solicitude for the poet
+or for the politics is hard to determine; indeed it is pretty generally
+maintained that each is detrimental to the other. But seeing that for one
+man in the modern world who cares for poets there are at least ten who
+care for politics, it is safe to assume that the poets, when they are
+deprived of the franchise, are deprived rather to maintain the purity and
+efficiency of politics than for the good of their own souls. They have
+been compared to birds of Paradise, which were long believed to have no
+feet; and the common sense of the English people, with a touch of the
+municipal logic of Dogberry, has enacted that whereas they have no feet,
+and have moreover been proved to have no feet, it shall be forbidden
+them, under the strictest pains and penalties, to alight and walk. Their
+function is to beautify the distant landscape with the flash of wings.
+
+For most men common-sense is the standard, and immediate utility the end,
+whereby they judge political questions, great and small. Now common-sense
+judges only the questions that are brought home to it by instant example;
+and utility is appealed to for a verdict only amid the dense crowd of
+actual conflicting interests. Neither the one nor the other is
+far-sighted or imaginative. So it comes about that the political system,
+in England, at least, is built up piecemeal; it is founded on appetites
+and compromises, and mortared by immemorial habit. To explain this
+process, and to transfigure it in the pure light of imagination, was the
+work of the great poet-politician, Edmund Burke. But the poet usually
+goes a hastier way to work. Looking at the whole domiciliary structure
+from outside, he finds it shapeless and ugly, like an ant-heap; and
+volunteers to play the architect. His design treats the details of
+individual habit and happiness in strict subordination to the desired
+whole. What he wants is consistency, symmetry, dignity; and to achieve
+these he is willing to make a holocaust of human selfishnesses. He may be
+a deep scholar and thinker, but he is apt to forget one point of ancient
+wisdom,--that it is the wearer of the shoe, and not the cobbler, who best
+knows where the shoe wrings him.
+
+The speculations of the poet awaken no hostile resentment so long as they
+are admittedly abstract. He is at liberty to build his Republic, his City
+of the Sun, his Utopia, or his New Atlantis, amid the indifferent
+applause of mankind. But when his aim becomes practical and immediate,
+when he seeks to stir the heap by introducing into it the ruthless
+discomfort of an idea, a million littlenesses assail him with deadly
+enmity, and he is found sorrowfully protesting his amazement:--
+
+  I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
+    By the known rules of ancient liberty,
+    When straight a barbarous noise environs me
+  Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs.
+
+So he is brought, with great reluctance, to the estimate of men which is
+expressed by Milton in _The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_; "being
+slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the
+public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule whereby they
+govern themselves. For indeed none can love freedom heartily but good
+men."
+
+Milton cannot claim the exemption from censure which is allowed to the
+theorists, the builders of ideal states somewhere in the clouds. On his
+own behalf he expressly disclaims any such intention. "To sequester out
+of the world," he says, "into Atlantic and Utopian politics, which never
+can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition; but to ordain wisely
+as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God has placed us
+unavoidably." Poetry might well have served him, if his object had been
+to add another to imaginary commonwealths. He took up with politics
+because he believed that in the disorder of the times his ideas might be
+made a "programme," and carried into effect.
+
+It was in 1641, when already "the vigour of the Parliament had begun to
+humble the pride of the bishops," that he first intervened. "I saw," he
+says, "that a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty; that
+the foundation was laying for the deliverance of mankind from the yoke of
+slavery and superstition.... I perceived that if I ever wished to be of
+use, I ought at least not to be wanting to my country, to the church, and
+to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of so much danger; I
+therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was
+engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to
+this one important object." So he wrote the treatise in two books, _Of
+Reformation in England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it._
+His later pamphlets are all similarly occasional in nature, written with
+a particular and definite object in view. In these he advocates as
+practicable and much-needed reforms, among other things, the
+establishment of a perpetual republic on the lines of an oligarchy; the
+abolition of bishops, religious ceremonials, liturgies, tithes, and,
+indeed, of all regular payment or salary given to ministers of religion;
+the supersession of universities and public schools by the erection of
+new academic institutions, combining the functions of both, "in every
+City throughout this Land"; the legalisation of free divorce; and the
+repeal of the ordinances compelling all books to be licensed. If he did
+not advocate, in any of the works put forth during his lifetime, the
+legal toleration of polygamy, it was probably only because he perceived
+that that, at least, did not fall within the scope of practical politics.
+He defends it in his posthumous treatise, _De Doctrinâ Christianâ_.
+
+It will readily be seen that on almost all these questions Milton was not
+only--to use the foolish modern phrase--"in advance of his time," but
+also considerably in advance of ours. Twenty years after his death the
+Licensing Acts were abolished; for the rest, his reforms are yet to
+accomplish. It is an odd remark of one of his learned biographers that
+the _Areopagitica_ is the only one of all Milton's prose writings "whose
+topic is not obsolete." It is the only one of his prose writings whose
+thesis commands the general assent of modern readers, and is, therefore,
+from his own practical point of view, obsolete.
+
+The mere enumeration of his opinions suffices to show that Milton's is a
+sad case of the poet in politics. The labours of the twenty prime years
+of his manhood have been copiously bewailed. To have Pegasus in harness
+is bad enough; but when the waggon that he draws is immovably stuck in
+the mud, and he himself bespattered by his efforts, the spectacle is yet
+more pitiable. Many of his critics have expressed regret that he did not
+make for himself an artificial seclusion, and continue his purely
+poetical labours, with the classics for companions. The questions that
+drew him into politics were burning questions, it is true; but were there
+not others to deal with them, good, earnest, sensible, homely people?
+Samuel Butler has enumerated some of those who were dedicating their time
+and thought to politics at this important crisis:--
+
+  The oyster-women locked their fish up,
+  And trudged away to cry "No Bishop":
+  The mouse-trap men laid save-alls by,
+  And 'gainst ev'l counsellors did cry;
+  Botchers left old cloaths in the lurch,
+  And fell to turn and patch the Church;
+  Some cried the Covenant, instead
+  Of pudding-pies and ginger-bread,
+  And some for brooms, old boots and shoes,
+  Bawled out to purge the Common-house:
+  Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry
+  A gospel-preaching ministry;
+  And some for old shirts, coats or cloak,
+  No surplices nor service-book;
+  A strange harmonious inclination
+  Of all degrees to reformation.
+
+But what was Milton doing in this malodorous and noisy assembly? Might he
+not with all confidence have left the Church to the oyster-women, and the
+State to the mouse-trap men? The company that he kept with them ruined
+his manners; he had to speak loud in order to be heard, to speak broad in
+order to be respected; and so (bitterest thought of all!) he lost
+something of that sweet reasonableness which is a poet's proper grace.
+
+The answer to this strain of criticism is to be found in the study of
+Milton's works, poetry and prose--and perhaps best in the poetry. We
+could not have had anything at all like _Paradise Lost_ from a dainty,
+shy poet-scholar; nor anything half so great. The greatest men hold their
+power on this tenure, that they shall not husband it because the occasion
+that presents itself, although worthy of high effort, is not answerable
+to the refinement of their tastes. Milton, it is too often forgotten, was
+an Englishman. He held the privilege and the trust not cheap. When God
+intends some new and great epoch in human history, "what does he then,"
+this poet exultantly asks, "but reveal himself to his servants, and, as
+his manner is, first to his Englishmen?" To his chief work in poetry he
+was instigated by patriotic motives. "I applied myself," he says, "to
+that resolution which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo,
+to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my
+native tongue, not to make verbal curiosity the end (that were a toilsome
+vanity), but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest
+things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother
+dialect."
+
+There is plenty of "verbal curiosity" in Milton's poetry; he is in some
+respects the finest craftsman who ever handled the English speech: so
+that this declaration is the more timely to remind us by how wide a chasm
+he is separated from those modern greenhouse poets who move contentedly
+in an atmosphere of art ideals and art theories. He had his breeding from
+the ancient world, where Æschylus fought at Marathon, and he could not
+think of politics as of a separable part of human life.
+
+  To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
+  Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair,
+
+is a lyric ideal that may quite well consist with political indifference,
+but how should an epic inspiration be nourished where the prosperity of
+the State is lightly esteemed? Even had poetry lost by his political
+adventures, he would have been content that politics should gain. And
+politics did gain; for Milton's prose works raise every question they
+touch, even where they cannot truly be said to advance it. It is as
+unseemly for the politicians to complain of his choice, as it would be
+for the herdsmen of King Admetus to complain of the presence among them
+of a god. The large considerations and high passions imported into the
+treatment of practical questions by a Milton, or a Burke, have done much
+to keep even party politics at a high level in England, so that civil
+servants and journalists may join in the hymn of the herdsmen--
+
+  He has been our fellow, the morning of our days,
+  Us he chose for house-mates, and this way went.
+          God, of whom music
+          And song and blood are pure,
+          The day is never darkened
+          That had thee here obscure!
+
+In a long autobiographic passage in the _Second Defence of the People of
+England_ Milton makes a formal classification of his prose works written
+before that date. All of them, he says, were designed to promote Liberty.
+By the accidents of the time he was induced to treat first, in his
+anti-episcopal pamphlets, of religious liberty. Once that controversy was
+fairly ablaze, in the name of the same goddess he applied his incendiary
+torch to humbler piles. "I perceived," he says, "that there were three
+species of liberty which are essential to the happiness of social
+life--religious, domestic, and civil; and as I had already written
+concerning the first, and the magistrates were strenuously active in
+obtaining the third, I determined to turn my attention to the second, or
+the domestic species." He includes in this division of his work the
+Divorce pamphlets, the tractate _Of Education_, and the _Areopagitica_,
+as dealing with the "three material questions" (so he calls them) of
+domestic liberty, namely, "the conditions of the conjugal tie, the
+education of the children, and the free publication of the thoughts."
+
+It seems a strange conception of domestic liberty which makes it rest on
+a threefold support--divorce at will, an unrestrained printing-press, and
+the encyclopædic education of polyglot children. But the truth is that
+Milton's classification is an after-thought. The pamphlets that he names
+were all written by him much about the same time, between 1643 and 1645;
+but the true history of their origin is more interesting and less
+symmetrical than the later invented scheme of classification. The Divorce
+pamphlets were written because Milton was unhappily married. The
+_Areopagitica_ was written because his heterodox views concerning
+marriage had brought him into collision with the Presbyterian censors of
+the press. His treatise on education was written because he had
+undertaken the education of his own nephews, and had become deeply
+interested in that question. In all three his own experience is the first
+motive; in all three that experience is concealed beneath a formidable
+array of general considerations, dogmatically propounded.
+
+The case is the same with regard to the pamphlets that treat of religious
+and civil liberty; they are not only occasional, but intensely personal,
+even in their origins. The earliest of them, the five ecclesiastical
+pamphlets of the year 1641, deal with a question which had been of
+intimate concern to Milton ever since the beginning of his Cambridge
+days. The celebrated controversy with Salmasius and his abettors,
+concerning the death of King Charles, is a gladiatorial combat from which
+every element save the personal is often absent. In these bouts offensive
+biography and defensive autobiography serve for sword and shield. This
+personal character of the prose writings, while it has repelled some
+readers interested mainly in the questions discussed, has attracted
+others who are interested chiefly in the writer. A rich harvest of
+personal allusion has been gathered from the controversial treatises, and
+perhaps, even now, the field has not been gleaned to the last ear. It is
+worthy of remark, for instance, how Milton's pre-occupation with the
+themes which he had already pondered, and turned this way and that in his
+mind, to test their fitness for a monumental work, shows itself in his
+choice of figure and allusion. Attention has often been called to the
+elaborate comparison, founded on the history of Samson, in _The Reason of
+Church Government urged against Prelaty_:--
+
+"I cannot better liken the state and person of a king than to that mighty
+Nazarite Samson; who being disciplined from his birth in the precepts and
+the practice of temperance and sobriety, without the strong drink of
+injurious and excessive desires, grows up to a noble strength and
+perfection with those his illustrious and sunny locks, the laws, waving
+and curling about his god-like shoulders. And while he keeps them about
+him undiminished and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an ass, that is,
+with the word of his meanest officer, suppress and put to confusion
+thousands of those that rise against his just power. But laying down his
+head among the strumpet flatteries of prelates, while he sleeps and
+thinks no harm, they, wickedly shaving off all those bright and weighty
+tresses of his law, and just prerogatives, which were his ornament and
+strength, deliver him over to indirect and violent counsels, which, as
+those Philistines, put out the fair and far-sighted eyes of his natural
+discerning, and make him grind in the prison-house of their sinister ends
+and practices upon him: till he, knowing this prelatical rasor to have
+bereft him of his wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair, the
+golden beams of law and right; and they, sternly shook, thunder with ruin
+upon the heads of those his evil counsellors, but not without great
+affliction to himself."
+
+This ingenious allegorical application naturally finds no place in the
+grave poem of Milton's latest years. And yet, in one passage at least,
+his earlier love for the high-figured style took him captive again. The
+strong drink from which the Samson of the play abstains is strong drink,
+not "injurious and excessive desires." There is no hint of prelatical
+conspiracy in the enticements of Dalila. But perhaps some faint
+reminiscence of his earlier fable concerning Samson's hair recurred to
+Milton's mind when he gave to Manoa a speech comparing the locks of the
+hero to the strength, not of the law, but of a nation in arms:--
+
+  And I persuade me God had not permitted
+  His strength again to grow up with his hair,
+  Garrisoned round about him like a camp
+  Of faithful soldiery, were not his purpose
+  To use him further yet in some great service.
+
+The theme of _Samson Agonistes_ had thus already taken possession of
+Milton's imagination when he wrote his first prose tractates. But the
+same writings furnish even stronger evidence of his early dallyings with
+the theme of _Paradise Lost_. "It was from out the rind of one apple
+tasted," he says in the _Areopagitica_, "that the knowledge of good and
+evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world." And
+again, in _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_:--"The academics and
+stoics ... knew not what a consummate and most adorned Pandora was
+bestowed upon Adam, to be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happiness
+and perseverance, I mean, his native innocence and perfection, which
+might have kept him from being our true Epimetheus." Some of these
+references show the imaginative scheme of the _Paradise Lost_ in the
+process of building. In one passage, for instance, of the last quoted
+treatise, Milton expounds the pagan belief that God punishes his enemies
+most when he throws them furthest from him:--"Which then they held he
+did, when he blinded, hardened, and stirred up his offenders, to finish
+and pile up their desperate work since they had undertaken it. To banish
+for ever into a local hell, whether in the air or in the centre, or in
+that uttermost and bottomless gulf of chaos, deeper from holy bliss than
+the world's diameter multiplied, they thought not a punishing so proper
+and proportionate for God to inflict as to punish sin with sin." It would
+seem as if the poet had not as yet fixed the situation of his local hell,
+but remained suspended between rival theories. The other idea, of the
+Divine permission and impulse given to hardened sinners, finds a
+conspicuous place in the poem. In one instance, at least, a figure drawn
+from the story of the Creation is violently handled to serve strange
+uses. The evolution of the four elements from the chaotic welter of hot,
+cold, moist, and dry, is adduced as a proof that the laws of God and of
+nature approve free divorce:--"By his divorcing command the world first
+rose out of chaos, nor can be renewed again out of confusion, but by the
+separating of unmeet consorts."
+
+Allusions of this kind occur most frequently in the earlier prose
+writings, while the studies that had been interrupted by controversy were
+yet fresh in Milton's memory. They would hardly be worth the quotation,
+were it not that they are another evidence of the transparency of his
+mind. In looking through his prose works you see traces of all that was
+engaging his imagination and thought at the time. Poetry is the highest
+of expressive arts; and poets are the worst dissemblers or economisers of
+truth in the world. Their knowledge, like their feeling, possesses them,
+and must find expression as argument, or illustration, or figure,
+whatever the immediate matter in hand. The prose works of Milton are
+thus, from first to last, an exposition of himself. The divorce
+pamphlets, especially, are hot with smothered personal feeling. Long
+years afterwards, when time and change had softened and blurred it in
+memory, his early misadventure was reflected in more than one passage of
+the later poems. The humble plaint of Eve, and the description of her
+reunion with her alienated lord, in the Tenth Book of _Paradise Lost_,
+doubtless contains, as has often been said, some reflection of what took
+place at a similar interview in 1645, when Mistress Mary Milton returned
+to her offended husband. That one principal cause of the rupture has been
+rightly divined, by Mr. Mark Pattison and others, is probable from
+certain remarkable lines in the Eighth Book, where Adam describes how he
+was presented with his bride:--
+
+                      On she came,
+  Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen,
+  And guided by his voice, nor uninformed
+  Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites.
+
+Even at so wide a remove of time, the poet's wounded pride finds
+expression in this singular theory--or, rather, in this more than dubious
+piece of self-justification.
+
+But although the hurt he had suffered, in his most susceptible feelings,
+gives eloquence and plangency to his divorce pamphlets, it was not merely
+to voice his sufferings that he wrote those pamphlets. Most men in
+Milton's position, married to "a nothing, a desertrice, an adversary,"
+would have recognised that theirs was one of those exceptional cases for
+which the law cannot provide, and would have sat down under their unhappy
+chance, to bear it or mitigate it as best they might. Some poets of the
+time of the Romantic Revival would have claimed the privilege of genius
+to be a law unto itself; the law of the State being designed for the
+common rout, whose lesser sensibilities and weaker individuality make
+them amenable to its discipline. Milton did neither the one thing nor the
+other. The modern idolatry of genius was as yet uninvented; he was a
+citizen first, a poet and an unhappy man afterwards. He directed his
+energies to proving, not that he should be exempted from the operation of
+the law, but that the law itself should be changed. He had entered into
+marriage, with full ceremonial ushering, by the main door; he would go
+out the same way, or not at all. Thus even in this most personal matter
+he pleads, not for himself, but for the commonweal. He cannot conceive of
+happiness as of a private possession, to be secretly enjoyed; it stands
+rooted, like justice, in the wise and equal ordinances of the State; and
+the only freedom that he values is freedom under the law.
+
+Like the citizen of some antique state, he discourses of marriage in the
+market-place. In his efforts to be persuasive, both here and in the
+_Areopagitica_, he humbles himself to management and the seasonings of
+flattery. It is a new trade for him, and suits oddly with his pride. But
+he hoped much, at this time, from the Parliament, that "select assembly,"
+containing so many "worthy senators" and "Christian reformers," "judges
+and lawgivers." In the enthusiasm of his hopes, he credits them with a
+desire "to imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece," with a wisdom
+greater than that of the Athenian Parliament, with a magnanimous
+willingness to repeal their own acts at the dictate of the voice of
+reason. And all this at a time when the Presbyterians were in the
+ascendant, intent upon establishing a discipline neither old, nor
+elegant, nor humane, so little acquainted with Greece, that it was one of
+Selden's amusements to confute their divines by citing a reading from the
+Greek Testament. Milton was destined to grievous disappointment, and his
+rage against the Presbyterians, in some of his later pamphlets, was the
+fiercer.
+
+But although his pamphlets are both occasional and personal, and even
+address themselves at times to conciliation and persuasion, the views
+that they advocate and the system of thought that underlies them were not
+the products of time and accident. Milton was an idealist, pure and
+simple, in politics. Had he lived under the Tudor sovereigns, he would
+have been reduced, with Sir Thomas More, Montaigne, and John Barclay, the
+author of _Argenis_, to express himself by way of romance and allegory.
+It was his fortune to live at a time when the Tudor state system was
+breaking up with appalling suddenness, and along with it the Tudor
+compromise in the affairs of the Church, imposed from above upon an
+unawakened people, was falling into wreckage. Here was an opportunity
+that has not often, in the world's history, come to a poet, of realising
+the dream that he had dreamed in his study, of setting up again, for the
+admiration and comfort of posterity, the model of an ancient Republic.
+
+The best of all Milton's critics has left us the worst account of his
+political opinions. Johnson's censure of _Lycidas_, much as it has been
+ridiculed and decried, is judicious and discerning compared with his
+explanation of Milton's political creed:--"Milton's republicanism was, I
+am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire
+of independence, in petulance impatient of control, and pride disdainful
+of superiority. He hated monarchs in the State, and prelates in the
+Church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be
+suspected that his predominant desire was to destroy, rather than
+establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance
+to authority." It may, at least, be credited to Johnson for moderation,
+that he requires only four of the Seven Deadly Sins, to wit, Pride, Envy,
+Anger, and Sloth, to explain Milton's political tenets. Had he permitted
+himself another sentence, an easy place might surely have been made for
+Gluttony, Luxury, and Covetousness, the three whose absence cannot fail
+to be remarked by any lover of thorough and detailed treatment in these
+intricate problems of human character.
+
+If, in our more modern fashion, we seek for the origin of Milton's ideas
+in his education, his habits of thought, and his admirations, we shall be
+obliged to admit that they are all rooted in his conception of the
+ancient City State. It was the wish of Thomas Hobbes to abolish the study
+of Greek and Latin in our schools and colleges, because this study
+fosters a love of freedom, and unfits men to be the subjects of an
+absolute monarch. His happiest illustration would have been the case of
+his contemporary, Milton. Yet in all Milton's writings there is no trace
+of the modern democratic doctrine of equality. A hearing is all that he
+claims. So far from hating greatness, he carries his admiration for it,
+for personal virtue and prowess, almost to excess. The poet who described
+the infernal conclave in the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_ was not
+likely to be insensible to the part played in politics by men of eminent
+and dominating personality. To think of free government as of an engine
+for depressing unusual merit was impossible for Milton. He lived in an
+age that had found in Plutarch's men its highest ideals of political
+character. Never, since their own day, had the "noble Grecians and
+Romans" exercised so irresistible a fascination on the minds of men, or
+so real an influence on the affairs of the State, as was theirs at the
+time of the Renaissance. The mist in which they had long been enveloped
+was swept away, and these colossal figures of soldiers, patriots, and
+counsellors loomed large and clear across the ages, their majesty
+enhanced by distance and by art, which conspire to efface all that is
+accidental, petty, and distracting. We cannot see these figures as they
+appeared to the Renaissance world. One of the chief results of modern
+historical labour and research has been that it has peopled the Middle
+Ages for us, and interposed a whole society of living men, our ancestors,
+between us and ancient Rome. But in Milton's time this process was only
+beginning; the collections and researches that made it possible were
+largely the work of his contemporaries,--and were despised by him. When
+he looked back on the world's history, from his own standpoint, he saw,
+near at hand and stretching away into the distance, a desert, from which
+a black mass of cloud had just been lifted; and, across the desert, lying
+fair under the broad sunshine, a city--
+
+  With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,
+  Turrets and terrasses, and glittering spires.
+
+It was towards this ancient civic life, with its arts and arms and long
+renown, that he reached forth passionate hands of yearning. The
+intervening tract, whither his younger feet had wandered, almost ceased
+to exist for him; the paladins and ladies of mediæval story were the
+deceitful mirage of the desert; the true life of antiquity lay beyond. In
+all his allusions to the great themes of romance two things are
+noticeable: first, how deeply his imagination had been stirred by them,
+so that they are used as a last crown of decoration in some of the most
+exalted passages of his great poems; and next, how careful he is to stamp
+them as fiction. His studies for the early _History of Britain_ had
+cloyed him with legends conveyed from book to book. Once convinced that
+no certain historical ground could be found for the feet among the whole
+mass of these traditions, Milton ceased to regard them as eligible
+subjects for his greatest poem. But their beauty dwelt with him; the
+memory of the embattled chivalry of Arthur and Charlemagne recurs to him
+when he is seeking for the topmost reach of human power and splendour
+that he may belittle it by the side of Satan's rebel host; and the
+specious handmaidens who served the Tempter's phantom banquet in the
+desert are described as lovely beyond what has been
+
+                  Fabled since
+  Of fairy damsels met in forest wide
+  By Knights of Logres, or of Lyones,
+  Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore.
+
+If Milton's attitude to mediæval romance is one of regretful suspicion,
+his attitude to the greatest of mediæval institutions is one of bitter
+contempt. He inveighs even against the "antiquitarians," such as Camden,
+who, he says, "cannot but love bishops as well as old coins and his much
+lamented monasteries, for antiquity's sake." For near twelve hundred
+years these same bishops "have been in England to our souls a sad and
+doleful succession of illiterate and blind guides." It is needless to
+multiply extracts illustrative of Milton's opinions on the Church; behind
+the enormous wealth of rhetoric and invective poured forth in his
+pamphlets, the opinions that he holds are few and simple. When he had
+been disappointed by the Presbyterians, and had finally turned from them,
+his beliefs inclined more and more, in two points at least, to the tenets
+of the newly arisen sect of Quakers--to a pure spiritualism in religion,
+and the complete separation of Church and State. Their horror of war he
+never shared. The model of the Church he sought in the earliest records
+of Christianity, and less and less even there; the model of the State in
+the ancient republics. All subsequent experience and precedent was to him
+a hindrance and a mischief. So rapidly and easily does his mind leap from
+the ancient to the modern world, that even when he speaks of his love for
+the drama, as in his first Latin elegy or in _Il Penseroso_, it is
+sometimes difficult to say whether he is thinking of the Elizabethan or
+of the Attic dramatists.
+
+The lodestar of his hopes is liberty, his main end the establishment of
+"a free commonwealth." He knows as well as Montesquieu that democracy in
+its pristine dignity can be erected only on a wide foundation of public
+virtue. "To govern well," he declares in the treatise _Of Reformation in
+England_, "is to train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that
+which springs from thence, magnanimity (take heed of that), and that
+which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness to God,
+which in one word we call godliness;... other things follow as the shadow
+does the substance." In the same pamphlet this envious hater of greatness
+remarks that "to govern a nation piously and justly, which only is to say
+happily, is for a spirit of the greatest size, and divinest mettle." And
+men worthy of this description had, as it seemed to him, arisen in his
+own time. His praise of Cromwell and the leaders associated with him is
+almost extravagant in its enthusiasm. "While you, O Cromwell, are left
+among us, he hardly shows a proper confidence in the Supreme, who
+distrusts the security of England, when he sees that you are in so
+special a manner the favoured object of the Divine regard." His mind is
+full of the achievements of Cyrus, Epaminondas, and Scipio; he denies to
+the Protector no honour that may be drawn from these high comparisons.
+And then, as in _Lycidas_, so also in _The Second Defence of the People
+of England_, Milton concludes his celebration of another by a return to
+himself and his pride in a duty fulfilled. Opportunity, he declares, is
+offered for great achievements; if it be not seized, posterity will judge
+"that men only were wanting for the execution; while they were not
+wanting who could rightly counsel, exhort, inspire, and bind an unfading
+wreath of praise round the brows of the illustrious actors in so glorious
+a scene."
+
+In the measures that he recommends to Cromwell as necessary for the
+public welfare, his mistakes are the generous errors of an idealist. He
+writes as if all were either Cromwells or Miltons, and worthy of the
+fullest measure of liberty. "Now the time seems come," he exclaims,
+"wherein Moses, the great prophet, may sit in heaven rejoicing to see
+that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfilled, when not only our
+seventy elders, but all the Lord's people, are become prophets." His
+general propositions on the function of law are unimpeachable. "He who
+wisely would restrain the reasonable soul of man within due bounds, must
+first himself know perfectly how far the territory and dominion extends
+of just and honest liberty. As little must he offer to bind that which
+God hath loosened as to loosen that which He hath bound. The ignorance
+and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all the
+misery that hath been since Adam." But with the application to issues of
+the day it appears that the mistake has been all one way. "Laws are
+usually worse in proportion as they are more numerous." The free spirit
+of man can govern him without "a garrison upon his neck of empty and
+over-dignified precepts."
+
+Whether he treat of religion, of education, of divorce, or of civil
+government, the error is always the same, a confidence too absolute in
+the capacity and integrity of the reasonable soul of man. A liturgy, for
+example, is intolerable, because it is a slur upon the extemporary
+effusions of ministers of the Gospel. "Well may men of eminent gifts set
+forth as many forms and helps to prayer as they please; but to impose
+them on ministers lawfully called and sufficiently tried ... is a
+supercilious tyranny, impropriating the Spirit of God to themselves."
+Milton, we know, did not habitually attend public worship at any of the
+conventicles of the sectaries, or perhaps he might have found reason to
+modify this censure.
+
+Some of his impassioned pleadings were possibly not wholly without effect
+on the politics of the time. It is interesting, at any rate, to find
+Cromwell, in his letter written in 1650 to the Governor of Edinburgh
+Castle, adopting one of the main arguments of the _Areopagitica_, and
+enforcing it against the Presbyterians by a figure which may have been
+borrowed from that tract. "Your pretended fear," he writes, "lest error
+should step in, is like the man who would keep all wine out of the
+country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise
+jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition that
+he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge." But Cromwell never
+applied his logic to the removal of the restraint upon printing, which by
+this same argument Milton had judged to be "the greatest displeasure and
+indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him." He was
+too practical a statesman to be frightened into logic by a little paper
+shot.
+
+Logical Milton always was. He learned little or nothing from the
+political events of his time. He was throughout consistent with himself;
+prepared to take any risks that his advocacy might bring upon him, not
+prepared to forego or modify his opinions because of human incompetence
+or human imbecility. Between the consistent and unflinching Royalists on
+the one hand, and the consistent and unflinching Republicans on the
+other, the most of the population of England wavered and hung. But
+half-measures and half-heartedness were alike unintelligible to Milton.
+He fell upon the Presbyterians when they showed a disposition to palter
+with the logical consequences of their own action, and scourged them
+unmercifully. They had "banded and borne arms against their king,
+divested him, disanointed him, nay, cursed him all over in their pulpits,
+and their pamphlets." But when once the king was brought to trial, then
+"he who but erewhile in the pulpits was a cursed tyrant, an enemy to God
+and saints, laden with all the innocent blood spilt in three kingdoms,
+and so to be fought against, is now, though nothing penitent or altered
+from his first principles, a lawful magistrate, a sovereign lord, the
+Lord's anointed, not to be touched, though by themselves imprisoned." He
+prepares for them a similar dilemma, between the horns of which they have
+since been content to dwell, in his treatment of the question of divorce:
+"They dare not affirm that marriage is either a sacrament or a mystery
+... and yet they invest it with such an awful sanctity, and give it such
+adamantine chains to bind with, as if it were to be worshipped like some
+Indian deity, when it can confer no blessing upon us, but works more and
+more to our misery."
+
+Milton's astonishment and indignation in cases like these are a
+convincing evidence of his inability to understand average politics, and
+that world of convenience, precaution, and compromise which is their
+native place. His own tenacity and constancy have something grim about
+them. Andrew Marvell, in his tract called _The Rehearsal Transposed_,
+speaking of the intolerance of his adversary, Samuel Parker, says: "If
+you have a mind to die, or to be of his party (there are but these two
+conditions), you may perhaps be rendered capable of his charity." Neither
+of these two conditions was a certain title to the charity of Milton. In
+the _Eikonoklastes_ he pursues the dead king with jibe and taunt, and
+exults over the smallest advantage gained. The opening words of the tract
+show him conscious of the difficulty and delicacy of the part he acted in
+making war on one who had "paid his final debt to nature and his faults."
+But what then? If the king, being dead, could speak, the dead king must
+be answered, and his gauntlet taken up "in the behalf of liberty and the
+commonwealth."
+
+The manner in which he conducts this and other controversies has brought
+upon Milton's head universal reproach. He is intemperate and violent, he
+heaps up personal scurrilities against his adversaries, and triumphs in
+their misfortunes. There is nothing wherein our age more differs from his
+than in the accepted rules governing controversy, and he has lost
+estimation accordingly. Yet not a few critics, it may be suspected, have
+allowed their dislike of the thing he says to hurry them into an
+exaggerated censure on his manner of saying it. It is important, in the
+first place, to remember that his violences are not the violences of the
+hired rhetorician. He was prepared to stand by what he wrote, and he knew
+the risks that he ran in those shifting and uncertain times. His life was
+in danger at the Restoration, and was saved by some unknown piece of good
+fortune or clemency. He was not a coward reviler, a "tongue-doughty
+giant," whose ears are the most delicate part about him, but an open
+fighter, who got as good as he gave. And then it is sometimes forgotten
+that the most scurrilous of Milton's pamphlets were written in Latin, a
+language which has always enjoyed an excellent liberty in the matter of
+personal abuse; while even his English pamphlets, wherein at times he
+shows almost as pretty a talent in reviling, were written for an audience
+inured to the habitual amenities of Latin controversy. Sir Thomas More
+was famous for his knack of calling bad names in good Latin, yet his
+posterity rise up and call him blessed. Milton, like More, observed the
+rules of the game, which allowed practices condemned in the modern
+literary prize-ring. He calls Salmasius a poor grammarian, a pragmatical
+coxcomb, a silly little scholar, a mercenary advocate, a loggerhead, a
+hare-brained blunderbuss, a witless brawler, a mongrel cur; he reproaches
+him with the domestic tyranny put upon him by that barking she-wolf, his
+wife, and winds up with an elaborate comparison (not wholly unfamiliar to
+modern methods of controversy) between Salmasius and Judas. With his
+nameless opponent in the Divorce quarrel he deals--this time in
+English--no less contemptuously: "I mean not to dispute philosophy with
+this pork, who never read any." The creature is a conspicuous gull, an
+odious fool, a dolt, an idiot, a groom, a rank pettifogger, a
+presumptuous losel, a clown, a vice, a huckster-at-law, whose "jabberment
+is the flashiest and the fustiest that ever corrupted in such an
+unswilled hogshead." "What should a man say more to a snout in this
+pickle? What language can be low and degenerate enough?" In the _Apology_
+for Smectymnuus, Milton sets forth his own defence of his acrimony and
+violence: "There may be a sanctified bitterness," he remarks, "against
+the enemies of the truth;" and he dares to quote the casuistry of Electra
+in _Sophocles_:--
+
+  'Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds,
+  And your ungodly deeds find me the words.
+
+The exigencies of controversy revealed in Milton not only an
+inexhaustible store of coarse invective, but also, at times, the flash of
+real wit. "My fate," he says, with some sense of the incongruity of the
+thing, "extorts from me a talent of sport, which I had thought to hide in
+a napkin." We are privileged to hear Milton laugh. It is not mirthful nor
+gentle laughter, but rather the fierce, harsh, vehement laughter of the
+Hebrew Psalms, the laughter of scorn, the shooting out of the lips, the
+saying "Ha, ha." He speaks with his mouth, and swords are in his lips.
+Thus, of Alexander Morus, Professor of Sacred History at Amsterdam, whom
+he suspected to be the author of a tract in support of Salmasius, he
+says: "There is one More, part Frenchman and part Scot, so that one
+country or one people cannot be quite overwhelmed with the whole infamy
+of his extraction"; and he indulges himself in a debauch of punning on
+_Morus_, the Latin word for a mulberry. In the prelatical controversy,
+after discussing with his opponent the meaning of the word "angel," he
+continues: "It is not ordination nor jurisdiction that is angelical, but
+the heavenly message of the Gospel, which is the office of all ministers
+alike.... And if you will contend still for a superiority in one person,
+you must ground it better than from this metaphor, which you may now
+deplore as the axe-head that fell into the water, and say, 'Alas, master!
+for it was borrowed'; unless you have as good a faculty to make iron
+swim, as you had to make light froth sink." In the _Apology_ for
+Smectymnuus he heaps one grotesque comparison on another. His adversary,
+the son of Bishop Hall, is like "some empiric of false accusations to try
+his poisons upon me, whether they would work or not." The learning that
+was displayed by the champion of Episcopacy and the very typographical
+arrangement of his book incur an equal contempt: the margin of his
+treatise "is the sluice most commonly that feeds the drought of his
+text.... Nor yet content with the wonted room of his margin, but he must
+cut out large docks and creeks into his text, to unlade the foolish
+frigate of his unseasonable authorities." His best folios "are
+predestined to no better end than to make winding-sheets in Lent for
+pilchers." With this last stroke Milton is so well pleased that he
+repeats the same prediction in an elaborated form over the works of
+Salmasius, and even celebrates in numerous verse the forethought and
+bounty of one who has thus taken pity on the nakedness of fishes.
+
+The fantastic nature of these quips and taunts reminds us that Milton
+belonged to the age of the metaphysical poets and satirists, the age of
+Cowley, and Cleveland, and Butler. His prose works have been searched
+chiefly for passages that may be used to illustrate his poetry; and
+although the search has been rewarded with many natural coincidences of
+expression, not a few passages of lofty self-confidence, and some
+raptures of poetic metaphor, the result has been in the main a
+disappointment. His admirers, too jealous for the poetic dignity of their
+hero, have turned away sorrowfully from this memorial heap of odd-shaped
+missiles, hurled from his dire left hand for the confusion of his
+enemies. And yet, rightly judged, there is instruction, and an increased
+reverence for the poet, to be found in these also--in all that wild array
+of subjects and methods which he commands for the purposes of his prose,
+but dismisses from the service of his verse. It was a strict and rare
+selection that he made among the auxiliaries when he addressed himself to
+the more arduous attempt. Here and there, even in _Paradise Lost_, his
+education in the handling of satire and invective stood him in stead. The
+poem contains more than one "flyting"--to use the Scottish term--and the
+high war of words between Satan and Abdiel in heaven, or between Satan
+and Gabriel on earth, could not have been handled save by a master of all
+the weapons of verbal fence and all the devices of wounding invective. In
+the great close of the Fourth Book, especially, where the arch-fiend and
+the archangel retaliate defiance, and tower, in swift alternate flights,
+to higher and higher pitches of exultant scorn, Milton puts forth all his
+strength, and brings into action a whole armoury of sarcasm and insult
+whetted and polished from its earlier prosaic exercise. Even the
+grotesque element in his humour is not wholly excluded from the _Paradise
+Lost_; it has full scope, for once, in the episodical description of the
+Paradise of Fools--that barren continent, beaten on by the storms of
+chaos, dark save for some faint glimmerings from the wall of heaven, the
+inhabitants a disordered and depraved multitude of philosophers,
+crusaders, monks, and friars, blown like leaves into the air by the winds
+that sweep those desert tracts. Unlike the Paradise that was lost, this
+paradise is wholly of Milton's invention, and is the best extant monument
+to that spirit of mockery and savage triumph which is all the humour that
+he knows.
+
+The style of his prose works is a style formed upon oratorical models.
+The long winding sentence, propped on epithets and festooned with
+digressions, was the habitual vehicle of his meaning. The effect it
+produces at its best was well described by Marvell, who, in a letter to
+Milton thanking him for a copy of the _Defence of the People of England_,
+remarks: "When I consider how equally it turns and rises with so many
+figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding ascent we see
+embossed the several monuments of your learned victories." The clink of
+the rhyming couplet was not more displeasing to Milton's ear than the
+continued emphatic bark of a series of short sentences. Accustomed as he
+was to the heavy-armed processional manner of scholarly Renaissance
+prose, he felt it an indignity to "lie at the mercy of a coy, flirting
+style; to be girded with frumps and curtal jibes, by one who makes
+sentences by the statute, as if all above three inches long were
+confiscate." Later on in the _Apology_ he returns to this grievance, and
+describes how his adversary "sobs me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes,
+wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in
+which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of
+well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies."
+The men of the Renaissance despised the homely savour of the native
+English syntax with its rude rhetoric and abrupt logic and its lore of
+popular adages and maxims; they had learned to taste a subtler pleasure
+in the progressive undulations of a long mobile sentence, rising and
+falling alternately, reaching the limit of its height towards the middle,
+and at the close either dying away or breaking in a sudden crash of
+unexpected downward emphasis. This is the sentence preferred by Milton,
+and, where haste or zeal does not interfere with the leisurely ordering,
+handled by him with excellent skill. At its best and at its worst alike
+his prose is the prose of a poet. His sentences rarely conform to any
+strict periodic model; each idea, as it occurs to him, brings with it a
+train of variation and enrichment, which, by the time the sentence
+closes, is often found in sole possession. The architecture depends on
+melody rather than on logic. The emphasis and burden of the thought
+generally hangs on the epithets, descriptive terms, and phrases, which he
+strengthens by arranging them in pairs, after a fashion much practised by
+poets. Thus, to take a few examples from the Divorce pamphlets, a wife,
+who should be "an intimate and speaking help," "a ready and reviving
+associate," to comfort "the misinformed and wearied life of man" with "a
+sweet and gladsome society," is too often "a mute and spiritless mate,"
+united to her husband in "a disconsolate and unenjoined matrimony,"
+whereby the blessing that was expected with her is changed "into a
+familiar and coinhabiting mischief, at least into a drooping and
+disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemption." "The
+mystical and blessed union of marriage can be no way more unhallowed and
+profaned, than by the forcible uniting of such disunions and
+separations." "And it is a less breach of wedlock to part with wise and
+quiet consent betimes, than still to foil and profane that mystery of joy
+and union with a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper."
+
+The balance of epithet, the delicate music, the sentence that resembles a
+chain with link added to link rather than a hoop whose ends are welded
+together by the hammer--these are the characteristics of Milton's prose.
+They are illustrated in that short passage of the _Areopagitica_, well
+known to all readers of English: "I cannot praise a fugitive and
+cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and
+seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal
+garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." Or in the striking
+description of London during the Civil War: "Behold now this vast city, a
+city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded
+with his protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and
+hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed
+justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads
+there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new
+notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their
+fealty, the approaching reformation; others as fast reading, trying all
+things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement."
+
+This sonorous balance of phrase and epithet cannot always escape what
+Milton himself calls "the heathenish battology of multiplying words." It
+serves the uses of rhetoric rather than of logic, and by the fervour of
+its repetitions and enlargements unfits his prose for the plainer
+purposes of argument or exposition. His argument is sometimes destroyed
+or blemished by the fire that it kindles, his narrative overwhelmed in
+the tide of passions that it sways.
+
+His vocabulary is extraordinarily rich, and here again the contrast is
+great between his prose and his verse. A full-bodied and picturesque
+dictionary might be made of the words that occur only in the prose. Most
+of these words would be found to derive from the Saxon stock, which
+yields him almost all his store of invective and vituperation. The
+resources of his Latinised vocabulary enable him to rise by successive
+gyrations to a point of vantage above his prey, and then the downward
+rush that strikes the quarry is a Saxon monosyllable. In this cardinal
+point of art for those who have to do with the English speech he became
+the teacher of Burke, who, with a lesser wealth of Saxon at his command,
+employed it with a more telling parsimony.
+
+Milton avoids no word of humble origin, so it serve his purpose. His
+contempt finds voice in such expressions as to "huddle" prayers, and to
+"keck" at wholesome food. Gehazi "rooks" from Naaman; the bishops "prog
+and pander for fees," and are "the common stales to countenance every
+politic fetch that was then on foot." The Presbyterians were earnest
+enough "while pluralities greased them thick and deep"; the gentlemen who
+accompanied King Charles in his assault on the privileges of the House of
+Commons were "the spawn and shipwreck of taverns and dicing-houses." The
+people take their religion from their minister "by scraps and mammocks,
+as he dispenses it in his Sunday's dole"; and "the superstitious man by
+his good will is an atheist, but being scared from thence by the pangs
+and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in a pudder shuffles up to
+himself such a God and such a worship as is most agreeable to remedy his
+fear."
+
+There were few incidents in Milton's career, from his personal relations
+with his college tutor to his choice of blank verse for his epic, that he
+was not called upon at some time or other in his life to explain and
+defend. When his free use of homely figures and turns of speech was
+objected to him, his answer was ready: "Doth not Christ Himself teach the
+highest things by the similitude of old bottles and patched clothes? Doth
+He not illustrate best things by things most evil? His own coming to be
+as a thief in the night, and the righteous man's wisdom to that of an
+unjust steward?" But the defence is misleading, for the rules that
+governed Milton's usage are not what it would suggest. When he came to
+treat of the best and highest things his use of native English became
+more sparing and dainty, while the rank, strong words that smack of the
+home soil were all foregone.
+
+His prose works, therefore, help us to appreciate better the tribulations
+of the process whereby he became a classic poet. Eclecticism and the
+severe castigation of style are dangerous disciplines for any but a rich
+temperament; from others they produce only what is exquisite and thin and
+vapid. The "stylist" of the modern world is generally an interesting
+invalid; his complexion would lose all its transparency if it were
+exposed to the weather; his weak voice would never make itself heard in
+the hubbub of the bazaar. Sunbeams cannot be extracted from cucumbers,
+nor can the great manner in literature emanate from a chill self-culture.
+But Milton inherited the fulness and vigour of the Elizabethans, and so
+could afford to write an epic poem in a selection of the language really
+used by men. The grandeur of _Paradise Lost_ or _Samson Agonistes_ could
+never, by any conceivable device of chemistry or magic, be compounded
+from delicate sensibilities and a superfine ear for music. For the
+material of those palaces whole provinces were pillaged, and the waste
+might furnish forth a city.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+PARADISE LOST: THE SCHEME
+
+
+A prerogative place among the great epics of the world has sometimes been
+claimed for _Paradise Lost_, on the ground that the theme it handles is
+vaster and of a more universal human interest than any handled by
+Milton's predecessors. It concerns itself with the fortunes, not of a
+city or an empire, but of the whole human race, and with that particular
+event in the history of the race which has moulded all its destinies.
+Around this event, the plucking of an apple, are ranged, according to the
+strictest rules of the ancient epic, the histories of Heaven and Earth
+and Hell. The scene of the action is Universal Space. The time
+represented is Eternity. The characters are God and all his Creatures.
+And all these are exhibited in the clearest and most inevitable relation
+with the main event, so that there is not an incident, hardly a line of
+the poem, but leads backwards or forwards to those central lines in the
+Ninth Book:--
+
+    So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
+  Forth-reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat.
+  Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
+  Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
+  That all was lost.
+
+From this point radiates a plot so immense in scope, that the history of
+the world from the first preaching of the Gospel to the Millennium
+occupies only some fifty lines of Milton's epilogue. And if the plot be
+vast, the stage is large enough to set it forth. The size of Milton's
+theatre gives to his imagination those colossal scenical opportunities
+which are turned to such magnificent account. De Quincey enumerates some
+of them--"Heaven opening to eject her rebellious children; the
+unvoyageable depths of ancient Chaos, with its 'anarch old' and its
+eternal war of wrecks; these traversed by that great leading Angel that
+drew after him the third part of the heavenly host; earliest Paradise
+dawning upon the warrior-angel out of this far-distant 'sea without
+shore' of chaos; the dreadful phantoms of Sin and Death, prompted by
+secret sympathy and snuffing the distant scent of 'mortal change on
+earth,' chasing the steps of their great progenitor and sultan; finally
+the heart-freezing visions, shown and narrated to Adam, of human misery
+through vast successions of shadowy generations: all these scenical
+opportunities offered in the _Paradise Lost_ become in the hands of the
+mighty artist elements of undying grandeur not matched on earth."
+
+All these grandeurs and beauties are as real and living to-day as they
+were on the day when Milton conceived them. But the other advantage
+claimed for his epic, that it deals with matters of the dearest concern
+to all of us, has been sharply questioned. It was Mr. Pattison's
+complaint of _Paradise Lost_ that in it "Milton has taken a scheme of
+life for life itself," and that it requires a violent effort from the
+modern reader to accommodate his conceptions to the anthropomorphic
+theology of the poem. The world is now thickly peopled with men and women
+who, having bestowed their patronage on other ancestors, care little
+about Adam and Eve, and who therefore feel that Milton's poem is wanting
+in the note of actuality. Satan himself is not what he used to be; he is
+doubly fallen, in the esteem of his victims as well as of his Maker, and
+indeed
+
+  Comes to the place where he before had sat
+  Among the prime in splendour, now deposed,
+  Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned,
+  A spectacle of ruin.
+
+"He who aspires," says Mr. Pattison, "to be the poet of a nation is bound
+to adopt a hero who is already dear to that people." But how if the hero
+subsequently fall out of vogue, and his name lose its power with a fickle
+populace? Can even a poet save him?
+
+The drifting away of the popular belief from the tenets of Milton's
+theology doubtless does something to explain the lukewarm interest taken
+by most educated English readers in _Paradise Lost_. But it is a mistake
+to make much of this explanation. Certainly Milton held his own
+theological beliefs, as expounded in the poem, in perfect good faith and
+with great tenacity. But the generation after his own, which first gave
+him his great fame, was not seduced into admiration by any whole-hearted
+fellowship in belief. Dryden laments the presence in the poem of so many
+"machining persons,"--as he calls the supernatural characters of
+_Paradise Lost_. At almost the same date Dr. Thomas Burnet was causing a
+mild sensation in the theological world by expounding the earlier
+chapters of the Book of Genesis in an allegorical sense, and denying to
+them the significance of a literal history. Voltaire, while he praises
+Milton, remarks that the topic of _Paradise Lost_ has afforded nothing
+among the French but some lively lampoons, and that those who have the
+highest respect for the mysteries of the Christian religion cannot
+forbear now and then making free with the devil, the serpent, the frailty
+of our first parents, and the rib that was stolen from Adam. "I have
+often admired," he goes on, "how barren the subject appears, and how
+fruitful it grows under his hands."
+
+It seems likely that Milton himself, before he was fairly caught in the
+mesh of his own imagination, was well aware that his subject demanded
+something of the nature of a _tour de force_. He had to give physical,
+geometric embodiment to a far-reaching scheme of abstract speculation and
+thought,--parts of it very reluctant to such a treatment. The necessities
+of the epic form constrained him. When Satan, on the top of Mount
+Niphates, exclaims--
+
+  Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
+
+when Michael promises to Adam, after his expulsion from the garden--
+
+  A Paradise within thee; happier far;
+
+Milton must have known as well as any of his critics that this conception
+of Hell and of Paradise, if insisted on, would have shattered the fabric
+of his poem. His figures of Sin and Death were of his own invention, and
+we must not suppose him so obtuse as never to have realised the part that
+his shaping imagination bore in the presentment of other and greater
+figures in the poem. In some respects he tried rather to impose a scheme
+of thought and imagination upon his age than to express the ideas that he
+found current. His theology and his cosmical conceptions are equally
+tainted with his individual heresies. He flies in the face of the
+Athanasian Creed by representing the generation of the Son as an event
+occurring in time--"on such day as Heaven's great year brings forth." His
+later poem of _Paradise Regained_ and the posthumous treatise of
+Christian Doctrine show him an Arian; in the poem the Almighty is made to
+speak of
+
+  This perfect man, by merit called my Son.
+
+His account of the creation of the World as a mere ordering or
+re-arrangement of the wild welter of an uncreated material Chaos receives
+no countenance from the Fathers. In many points of theological teaching
+he is compelled to form definite and even visual conceptions where
+orthodoxy had cautiously confined itself to vague general propositions.
+So that the description of Sin and Death and of the causeway built by
+them between Hell-gates and the World, much as it has been objected to
+even by admirers of the poem, is only an extreme instance of the defining
+and hardening process that Milton found needful throughout for the
+concrete presentment of the high doings which are his theme. He congealed
+the mysteries of Time and Space, Love and Death, Sin and Forgiveness,
+into a material system; and in so doing, while paying the utmost
+deference to his authorities, he yet exercised many a choice with regard
+to matters indifferent or undefinable. Thus, for instance, he borrows
+from the Talmud the notion that Satan first learned the existence of a
+prohibited tree from overhearing a conversation between Adam and Eve. He
+was surely conscious of what he was doing, and would have been not
+ill-pleased to learn that the Universe, as he conceived of it, has since
+been called by his name. It is Milton's Paradise Lost, lost by Milton's
+Adam and Eve, who are tempted by Milton's Satan, and punished by Milton's
+God. The stamp of his clear hard imagination is on the whole fabric; and
+it is not much harder for us to coax ourselves into the belief that his
+is indeed the very world we inhabit than it was for the men of his own
+time. The senses and the intellect are older than modern science, and
+were employed to good effect before the invention of the spectroscope; it
+is they in their daily operation that make it difficult to leap the gulf
+which separates the amenities and trivialities of common life from the
+solemn theatre of the poet's imagination. The objection that the poem has
+lost much of its value because we are compelled to imagine where our
+elders believed is of little weight in a case like this, where our lack
+of belief is not brought home to us until insuperable difficulties are
+placed in the way of our imagination. Where Milton was freest, there we
+follow him most gladly; where he wrote in fetters, as notably in some of
+the scenes transacted in Heaven, our imagination, not our belief, is the
+first to rebel.
+
+We are deceived by names; the more closely _Paradise Lost_ is studied,
+the more does the hand of the author appear in every part. The epic poem,
+which in its natural form is a kind of cathedral for the ideas of a
+nation, is by him transformed into a chapel-of-ease for his own mind, a
+monument to his own genius and his own habits of thought. The _Paradise
+Lost_ is like the sculptured tombs of the Medici in Florence; it is not
+of Night and Morning, nor of Lorenzo and Giuliano, that we think as we
+look at them, but solely of the great creator, Michael Angelo. The same
+dull convention that calls the _Paradise Lost_ a religious poem might
+call these Christian statues. Each is primarily a great work of art in
+each the traditions of two eras are blended in a unity that is indicative
+of nothing but the character and powers of the artist. The _Paradise
+Lost_ is not the less an eternal monument because it is a monument to
+dead ideas.
+
+We do not know exactly when Milton made his choice of subject. His Latin
+verses addressed to Manso, Marquis of Villa, in January 1638-9, show that
+Arthur and the Round Table was at that time the uppermost theme in his
+mind, and that the warlike achievement of heroes was the aspect of it
+that most attracted him. After his return to England in 1639, it is
+mentioned once again in his elegy on Charles Diodati, and then we hear no
+more of it. In the tentative list of subjects, made in 1641, Arthur has
+disappeared, and the story of _Paradise Lost_ already occupies the most
+conspicuous place, with four separate drafts suggesting different
+treatments of the theme.
+
+It would be idle to speculate on what Milton might have made of the
+Arthur legends. One thing is certain; he would have set up the warrior
+king as a perfectly objective figure, hampered by no allegory, and with
+no inward and spiritual signification. The national cause, maintained
+heroically in a hundred battles, and overwhelmed at last by the brute
+violence of the foreign oppressor, was subject enough for him; he would
+never have marred his epic by sickly irresolution and the struggles of a
+divided will in the principal characters. Perhaps his mind reverted to
+his old dreams when he came to describe the pastimes wherewith the rebel
+angels beguile their time in Hell:--
+
+                  Others, more mild,
+  Retreated in a silent valley, sing
+  With notes angelical to many a harp
+  Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall
+  By doom of battle, and complain that Fate
+  Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.
+  Their song was partial; but the harmony
+  (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)
+  Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment
+  The thronging audience.
+
+This is only one of the very numerous places in _Paradise Lost_ where,
+before he is well aware of it, we catch Milton's sympathies dilating
+themselves upon the wrong side.
+
+His researches in British annals, begun at the time when he was still in
+quest of a theme, convinced him that the whole story of Arthur was
+"obscured and blemished with fables." He foraged among other British
+subjects, feeling that the great poem which was designed to raise England
+to the literary peerage and set her by the side of countries of older
+fame must deal with a theme of truly national import. Some of the
+subjects that he jotted down were obviously of too incidental and trivial
+a nature for his purpose, and a wise instinct confined him to the earlier
+history of the island, where his own freedom of treatment was less likely
+to be hampered by an excess of detail. And then, precisely how or when we
+do not know, the idea came to him that he would treat a subject still
+larger and of a more tremendous import,--the fortunes, not of the nation,
+but of the race:--
+
+  With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
+  Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.
+
+The attractions that this theme, once hit on, exercised on Milton's mind
+may easily be guessed. In the first place, it was a sacred subject: an
+opportunity for leading poetry back to its divine allegiance; and, by the
+creation of a new species of epic, an escape from a danger which must
+have been very present to his mind--the danger of too close an imitation
+of the ancients. More specific reasons concurred in recommending it. In
+the Garden of Eden he might present to an age which was overrun with a
+corrupt religion and governed by a decadent court the picture of a
+religion without a church, of life in its primitive simplicity, and of
+patriarchal worship without the noisome accretions of later ceremonial.
+His attitude to the Laudian movement is eloquently expressed, at this
+same time, in the treatise _Of Reformation in England_, where he
+describes how the religious teachers of his own and preceding ages "began
+to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea,
+the very shape of God himself into an exterior and bodily form, urgently
+pretending a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal
+reverence and worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it,
+they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but
+of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and
+mitres, gold, and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe or the
+flamen's vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and his
+postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means of
+over-bodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing
+apace downward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and
+sensuous colleague, the body, in performance of religious duties, her
+pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of
+high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and
+droiling carcase to plod on in the old road and drudging trade of outward
+conformity."
+
+But Adam and Eve, Milton is careful to explain, were not ritualists. They
+recite their evening hymn of praise as they stand at the entrance to
+their shady lodge:--
+
+  This said unanimous, and other rites
+  Observing none, but adoration pure
+  Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
+  Handed they went.
+
+The traits of Milton's Puritanism peep out at unexpected places in the
+poem. The happy Garden, Adam is told, will be destroyed after the Flood,
+for a reason that would have been approved by the image-breakers of the
+Commonwealth:--
+
+  To teach thee that God attributes to place
+  No sanctity, if none be thither brought
+  By men who there frequent, or therein dwell.
+
+The palace of Pandemonium is built by Satan's host in an hour, whence men
+may
+
+  Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
+  And strength, and art, are easily outdone
+  By spirits reprobate;
+
+--a perfectly sound moral, well illustrating Mr. Swinburne's remark that
+Puritanism has nothing to do with Art, and that the great Puritans and
+the great artists have never confused them.
+
+Milton must also have been drawn to the theme of _Paradise Lost_ by the
+scope it promised for scenes of quiet natural beauty:--
+
+          All that bowery loneliness,
+  The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring
+  And bloom profuse and cedar arches.
+
+His imagination was so susceptible to a touch of beauty that even in the
+bare sketch he has left for a drama dealing with the story of Lot and his
+escape from Sodom we see how likely he was, here also, to fall into the
+error of _Comus_. As Lot entertains the angels at supper, "the Gallantry
+of the town passe by in Procession, with musick and song, to the temple
+of Venus Urania." The opening Chorus is to relate the course of the city,
+"each evening every one with mistresse, or Ganymed, gitterning along the
+streets, or solacing on the banks of Jordan, or down the stream." But in
+the story of the Garden of Eden the beauty was, for once, on the side of
+the morality; innocence and purity might be depicted, not, as in a fallen
+world, clad in complete steel, but at ease in their native haunts,
+surrounded by all the inexhaustible bounty of an unsubdued and
+uncorrupted Nature.
+
+The chief dramatic interest of the poem, however, comes in with the great
+outcast angel, stirred up by his passions of envy and revenge to assault
+the new-created inhabitants of the Garden. It seems likely that Milton
+was drawn to this part of his theme by chains of interest and sympathy
+stronger than he confessed or knew. He was an epic poet, striving to
+describe great events worthily, but the dramatic situation betrayed him.
+He knew only that he could draw a rebel leader, noble in bearing,
+superbly outlined, a worthy adversary of the Most High. But it happened
+to him, as it has happened to others who have found themselves in a
+position where Satan could do them a service; before long, as if by some
+mediæval compact, the relations are reversed, and the poet is in the
+service of the Devil. He can hardly have foreseen this chance; although
+there are not wanting signs in the poem itself that, before it was half
+completed, he became uneasily conscious of what was happening, and
+attempted, too late, to remedy it. When he chose his subject he doubtless
+intended that the centre of interest should be fixed in the Garden of
+Eden, and did not perceive how of necessity it must tend to sink lower,
+to that realm in the shadow of darkness, innumerably more populous,
+inhabited by beings of a nobler origin, of greater (and more human)
+passions, with a longer and more distinguished history, and with this
+further claim upon the sympathy of the reader, that they are doomed to an
+eternity of suffering.
+
+It is worth our while as critics to try to put ourselves in Milton's
+place at the time when he had made his choice, that we may realise not
+only the attractions but also the difficulties of the theme. An Italian
+poet of the early seventeenth century, Giovanni Battista Andreini, from
+whose drama, entitled _Adamo_, Milton is alleged to have borrowed some
+trifles, has made a very full and satisfactory statement of these
+difficulties in the preface to his play. He mentions, for instance, the
+unpromising monotony of Adam's life during the time spent in the earthly
+paradise, and the difficulty of giving verisimilitude to the conversation
+between the woman and the snake. But he waxes most eloquent on the last
+and greatest difficulty--"since the composition must remain deprived of
+those poetic ornaments so dear to the Muses; deprived of the power to
+draw comparisons from implements of art introduced in the course of
+years, since in the time of the first man there was no such thing;
+deprived also of naming (at least while Adam speaks or discourse is held
+with him), for example, bows, arrows, hatchets, urns, knives, swords,
+spears, trumpets, drums, trophies, banners, lists, hammers, torches,
+bellows, funeral piles, theatres, exchequers, infinite things of a like
+nature, introduced by the necessities of sin;... deprived moreover of
+introducing points of history, sacred or profane, of relating fictions of
+fabulous deities, of rehearsing loves, furies, sports of hunting or
+fishing, triumphs, shipwrecks, conflagrations, enchantments, and things
+of a like nature, that are in truth the ornament and the soul of poetry."
+
+All these difficulties for Andreini's drama were difficulties also for
+Milton's poem. Yet no reader of _Paradise Lost_ is found to complain that
+the poem is lacking in poetic ornament. Milton has successfully
+surmounted or evaded many of this formidable catalogue of limitations,
+without the sacrifice of dramatic propriety. It is true that in the
+course of their morning orisons, addressed to their Maker, Adam and Eve
+apostrophise the Mists and Exhalations--
+
+                          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 speak the 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 manoeuvring 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 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 from the
+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 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.
+
+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 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 from _Paradise Lost_, but they are introduced 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 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 the North 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 the
+_Divine Institutes_ of 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 increasing race 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 apocryphal _Book 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 bringing that 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's _Ecclesiastical 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 of _dii 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--
+
+                          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 of _Paradise Lost_ escapes 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 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 with some 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 quiet colouring of the inevitable epithet, and the solemn music of
+the cadence:--
+
+  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 the figures 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 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 the purposes 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. The single 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, or _primum 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 only by 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 poet was 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 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 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 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 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 the _Treatise of
+Christian Doctrine_. He consigned the Fathers to 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--
+
+and bases himself upon Scripture. There he finds mention of seven chief
+angels, with some kind of pre-eminence enjoyed by Michael. In the poem he
+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 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 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 the _Paradise Lost_ in
+search of those 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
+Lost_ will 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 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 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 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 pastime of 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 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 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 in _Paradise
+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. There is 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 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 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 from a 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 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, in
+_Paradise Lost_, of a real human child, such as Shakespeare brings into
+_Coriolanus_ or _Macbeth_, would be like the bringing of a spark of fire
+into a powder magazine. None of these edifying speeches could be made in
+the presence 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 Lost_ will 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 the marvel, 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 of _Paradise Lost_
+does 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 that _Paradise Lost_ is 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 in
+effect, 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+PARADISE LOST: THE ACTORS. THE LATER POEMS
+
+
+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 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;
+
+--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 the _Paradise Lost_ which 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 the
+Son, the Filial Alterity, and in _those addresses_ slips 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 of power, and to test submission; as when Raphael
+is sent to keep the rebels confined in Hell, and explains subsequently to
+Adam:--
+
+  Not that they durst without his leave attempt;
+  But us he sends upon his high behests
+  For state, as sovran King, and to inure
+  Our prompt obedience.
+
+The particular event with which, according to Milton, the whole history
+begins is presented with a crudity that would have horrified the Fathers.
+The appointment of a Vicegerent to the Almighty, and the edict requiring
+homage to be done to him, are announced "on a day" to the host of Angels
+assembled by special summons for this purpose. During the night
+following, one of the chief Archangels, thereafter called Satan, draws
+off his forces to the north under pretext of preparing a welcome for the
+new Commander, who is to make a progress through his domain, promulgating
+more new laws. The purpose of the rebels is discerned by the All-Knowing,
+who makes this strange speech to the Son:--
+
+  Let us advise, and to this hazard draw
+  With speed what force is left, and all employ
+  In our defence, lest unawares we lose
+  This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill.
+
+It is unnecessary to quote more of the speeches in Heaven; they are
+tangles of Scriptural phrase, from which there can be extracted neither
+good divinity nor good humanity. "The glory of God," says the Wisdom of
+Solomon, "is to conceal a thing; the glory of the King is to find it
+out." But the glory of Milton's Deity is to explain a thing. The proud
+voluble candour of some of these speeches reminds us only of the author
+of _A Defence of the People of England_. In some of them there is even a
+flavour of uneasy boastfulness, as of one who is anxious not to be
+lessened in the estimation of the rebel adversary.
+
+It may be pleaded that the epical necessities of the poem imposed finite
+conceptions, of one sort or another, upon Milton; and that, when once he
+had begun to define and explain, he was carried further and further along
+that perilous way without being fully conscious of whither he was
+tending. Yet his persistent accumulation of harsh and dread traits seems
+wilful in its nature; he bases his description, no doubt, on hints from
+Scripture, but he pays no attention to any that do not fall in with his
+own narrow and gloomy conception. Satan is permitted to rise from the
+burning lake--
+
+  That with reiterated crimes he might
+  Heap on himself damnation.
+
+When he arrives at the foot of the stairway that joins Heaven and the
+World--
+
+  The stairs were then let down, whether to dare
+  The Fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate
+  His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss.
+
+Astronomy, it is suggested by "the affable Archangel," has perhaps been
+made a difficult subject in order to produce the droll fallacies of
+astronomers:
+
+                He his fabric of the Heavens
+  Hath left to their disputes--perhaps to move
+  His laughter at their quaint opinions wide.
+
+And this conjecture is borne out by what happened when the builders of
+the tower of Babel were frustrated, for then--
+
+                Great laughter was in Heaven,
+  And looking down to see the hubbub strange
+  And hear the din.
+
+Milton, in short, has hardened the heart of the God that hardened
+Pharaoh's heart, and has narrowed his love and his power.
+
+Some kind of internal blindness must have visited him if he did not
+perceive what must inevitably be the effect of all this on the sympathies
+and interest of the reader. And the irony of the thing is that his own
+sympathies were not proof against the trial that he had devised for them.
+He lavished all his power, all his skill, and, in spite of himself, the
+greater part of his sympathy, on the splendid figure of Satan. He avoids
+calling _Paradise Lost_ "an heroic poem"; when it was printed, in 1667,
+the title-page ran merely--_Paradise Lost, A Poem in Ten Books_. Had he
+inserted the word "heroic," the question as to who is the hero would have
+been broached at once. And to that question, if it be fairly faced, only
+one answer can be given,--the answer that has already been given by
+Dryden and Goethe, by Lord Chesterfield and Professor Masson. It was not
+for nothing that Milton stultified the professed moral of his poem, and
+emptied it of all spiritual content. He was not fully conscious, it
+seems, of what he was doing; but he builded better than he knew. A
+profound poetic instinct taught him to preserve epic truth at all costs.
+And the epic value of _Paradise Lost_ is centred in the character and
+achievements of Satan.
+
+Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus, and although there are
+essential differences, we are not made to feel them essential. His very
+situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a
+fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him
+a fool. The nobility and greatness of his bearing are brought home to us
+in some half-dozen of the finest poetic passages in the world. The most
+stupendous of the poet's imaginative creations are made the foil for a
+greater than themselves. Was ever terror more magnificently embodied than
+in the phantom figure of Death?--
+
+                      The other Shape--
+  If shape it might be called that shape had none
+  Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
+  Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
+  For each seemed either--black it stood as Night,
+  Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
+  And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head
+  The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
+  Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
+  The monster moving onward came as fast
+  With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.
+
+This is the passage that drew from Burke a rapture of praise. But as it
+stands in the poem its elevation is a scaffolding merely, whence we may
+view the greatness of Satan:--
+
+  The undaunted Fiend what this might be admired--
+  Admired, not feared (God and his Son except,
+  Created thing naught valued he nor shunned).
+
+The same magnificent effect of suggestion is wrought even more subtly in
+the scene where Satan approaches
+
+                          the throne
+  Of _Chaos_, and his dark pavilion spread
+  Wide on the wasteful Deep.
+
+Courteously and fearlessly Satan addresses himself to the monarch of the
+nethermost abyss. His speech contains no threats; he asks guidance in his
+quest; and, with politic forethought, promises that that quest, if
+successful, shall restore an outlying lost province to Chaos. There is
+nothing in his words to cause consternation; but the King is afraid:--
+
+                      Him thus the anarch old,
+  With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
+  Answered:--"I know thee, stranger, who thou art--
+  That mighty leading Angel, who of late
+  Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown."
+
+In the war on the plains of Heaven Satan ranges up and down the fighting
+line, like Cromwell; he fortifies his comrades to endurance, and
+encourages them to attack. In Hell he stands like a tower:--
+
+                His form had yet not lost
+  All her original brightness, nor appeared
+  Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess
+  Of glory obscured.
+
+In his contests with Michael in Heaven and with Gabriel on Earth he never
+falls below himself:--
+
+                  "If I must contend," said he,
+  "Best with the best--the sender, not the sent;
+  Or all at once."
+
+But his motive passions, it is objected, were envy, ambition, and hate,
+and his end was a crime. To which objection a modern poet has replied
+that a crime will serve as a measure for the spirit. Certainly to Satan
+there could never be imputed the sin of "the unlit lamp and the ungirt
+loin." And Milton has not left him devoid of the gentlest passion, the
+passion of pity:--
+
+                        Cruel his eye, but cast
+  Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
+  The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
+  (Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned
+  For ever now to have their lot in pain--
+  Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced
+  Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung
+  For his revolt--yet faithful how they stood,
+  Their glory withered.
+
+Thrice he attempts to address them, and thrice--
+
+                in spite of scorn
+  Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth.
+
+His followers are devotedly attached to him; they admire him "that for
+the general safety he despised his own"; and the only scene of rejoicing
+recorded in the annals of Hell, before the Fall of Man, is at the
+dissolution of the Stygian Council, when the devils come forth "rejoicing
+in their matchless Chief."
+
+As if of set purpose to raise Satan high above the heads of the other
+Archangels, Milton devises a pair of similar scenes, in Heaven and in
+Hell. In the one Satan takes upon himself the unknown dangers of the
+enterprise that has been approved by the assembly. In the other, which
+occurs in the very next book, the Heavenly Powers are addressed from the
+Throne, and asked--
+
+  "Which of ye will be mortal, to redeem
+  Man's mortal crime, and just, the unjust to save?
+  Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear?"
+    He asked, but all the Heavenly Quire stood mute,
+  And silence was in Heaven: on Man's behalf
+  Patron or intercessor none appeared--
+  Much less that durst upon his own head draw
+  The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.
+
+No wonder that Landor--although in another place he declares that Adam is
+the hero of _Paradise Lost_, and that "there is neither truth nor wit" in
+giving that name to Satan--is nevertheless startled by this passage into
+the comment, "I know not what interest Milton could have had in making
+Satan so august a creature, and so ready to share the dangers and sorrows
+of the angels he had seduced. I know not, on the other hand, what could
+have urged him to make the better ones so dastardly that even at the
+voice of their Creator not one among them offered his service to rescue
+from eternal perdition the last and weakest of intellectual beings."
+
+When Satan first comes in sight of Paradisal bliss and the new-created
+pair, here surely was a chance for attributing to him the foul passions
+of envy and hate unalloyed? On the contrary, he is struck with admiration
+for their grace and infused divinity. He could love and pity them--so he
+muses--though himself unpitied. He seeks alliance with them, and is
+prepared to give them a share in all he has--which, it must be allowed,
+is the spirit of true hospitality. He feels it beneath him to attack
+innocence and helplessness, but public reasons compel him to do what
+otherwise he would abhor:--
+
+  So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
+  The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.
+
+But no imputation is cast on the sincerity of the plea, and we are left
+to conceive of Satan as of a lover of beauty reluctantly compelled to
+shatter it in the pursuit of his high political aims. In the same way,
+when he finds Eve alone, on the morning of the temptation, he is disarmed
+by her beauty and innocence, and, for a spell, is struck "stupidly good."
+Truly, Adam might boast, with Gibbon, that he fell by a noble hand.
+
+It is possible that by the time he had completed the Fourth Book, Milton
+became uneasy as to the effect he was producing. Up to that point
+magnanimity and courage had been almost the monopoly of Satan. He had
+been the Great Dissenter, the undaunted and considerate leader of an
+outcast minority. But now, in the description of the war in Heaven, there
+came a chance of doing something to right the balance. Milton makes the
+most of the episode of Abdiel, who has been led away with the rest of
+Satan's followers, upon false pretences, and who, when he discovers the
+true purpose of the expedition, makes a lonely stand for the right:--
+
+  Among the faithless faithful only he; ...
+  Nor number nor example with him wrought
+  To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
+  Though single.
+
+And Abdiel, when he meets Satan again after the outbreak of the war,
+glories in his nonconformity, and hisses out defiance:--
+
+                          Thou seest
+  All are not of thy train; there be who faith
+  Prefer, and piety to God, though then
+  To thee not visible when I alone
+  Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent
+  From all: my Sect thou seest; now learn too late
+  How few sometimes may know when thousands err.
+
+In this way Milton attempted to allay his scruples, and to divide the
+honours of dissent. Later on, after the Fall, when Satan returns to Hell
+with tidings of his exploit, the change of all the devils to serpents,
+and of their applause to "a dismal universal hiss" was perhaps devised to
+cast a slur upon the success of his mission. Some critics have professed
+to discern a certain progressive degradation and shrinkage in Satan as
+the poem proceeds. But his original creation lived on in the imagination
+and memory of Milton, and was revived, with an added pathos, in _Paradise
+Regained_. The most moving of all Satan's speeches is perhaps the long
+pleading there made in answer to the challenge of Christ, and its tone of
+unutterable despair is deepened by the terrible severity of the speech
+made in answer.
+
+The other leaders of the rebel troops take little part in the action
+outside the scene of the Infernal Council. In his memories of the Long
+Parliament Milton could easily find examples of the types he has embodied
+under the names of Belial, Mammon, Moloch, and Beelzebub. Nor has he
+forgotten the Westminster Assembly of divines. The precise employments of
+that historic body are described by him as the recreation of the lost
+spirits:--
+
+  Others apart sat on a hill retired,
+  In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
+  Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--
+  Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--
+  And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
+
+It ill became Milton to cast contempt on these reasonings, seeing that a
+whole system of them was necessary for the argument of his poem. He is so
+little of a philosopher that he seems hardly to be conscious of the
+difficulties of his own theory. Both in _Paradise Lost_ and in the
+_Treatise of Christian Doctrine_ he enlarges with much dogmatism and some
+arrogance on the difference between foreknowledge and foreordination. He
+rejects predestination decisively, but he not only does not answer, he
+does not even so much as mention, the difficulty that arises in
+attempting to distinguish between what is foreordained by Omniscience and
+what is foreknown by Omnipotence. Pope compared some of the speeches
+delivered in Heaven to the arguments of a "School-divine." The comparison
+does injustice to the scholastic philosophers. There was never one of
+them who could have walked into a metaphysical bramble-bush with the
+blind recklessness that Milton displays.
+
+It is time to return to Eden and its inhabitants. They have little to do
+but "to lop and prune and prop and bind," to adore their Maker, and to
+avoid the prohibited tree. It would perhaps have been impossible for a
+poet with more dramatic genius than Milton to make these favourites of
+Heaven interesting in their happy state, while yet the key that was to
+admit them to our world of adventure and experience, of suffering and
+achievement, hung untouched on a tree. And Adam, from the wealth of his
+inexperience, is lavishly sententious; when anything is to do, even if it
+is only to go to sleep, he does it in a high style, and makes a speech.
+Milton plainly saw the danger of arousing a sense of incongruity and
+ludicrous disproportion from the contest between these harmless tame
+creatures and the great forces of Satan's empire. So he makes man strong
+in innocence, and, unlike the fallen angels, exempt from all physical
+pain or wound. He even goes so far as to make Satan afraid of Adam, of
+his heroic build and intellectual power. This last, it might be said, is
+a fear not explained by anything that we are privileged to hear from the
+lips of Adam himself; but perhaps, in the case of our great ancestor, we
+shall do well to remember Hamlet's advice to the players, "Follow that
+lord, and look you mock him not."
+
+There remains a more important person--Eve. And with Eve, since the
+beginning of Milton criticism, there enter all those questions concerning
+the comparative worthiness and the relative authority of husband and wife
+which critics of Milton so often and so gladly step aside to discuss.
+Every one knows the line:--
+
+  He for God only, she for God in him.
+
+Almost every one knows the lines:--
+
+          Nothing lovelier can be found
+  In woman than to study household good,
+  And good works in her husband to promote.
+
+Milton certainly shared the views of Knox concerning the "Monstrous
+Regiment of Women." It is unnecessary to meet him on his own ground, or
+to attempt a theory that shall explain or control Eve, Cleopatra, Joan of
+Arc, Catherine of the Medici, Mary Powell, and others of their sex. Such
+theories prove only that man is a generalising and rationalising animal.
+The poet brought his fate on himself, for since Eve was the mother of
+mankind, he thought fit to make her the embodiment of a doctrine. But he
+also (a thing of far deeper interest) coloured his account by the
+introduction of personal memories and feelings. Of Eve, at least, he
+never writes indifferently. When he came to write _Samson Agonistes_, the
+intensity of his feelings concerning Dalila caused him to deviate from
+the best Greek tradition and to assign inappropriate matter to the
+Chorus. And even in his matter-of-fact _History of Britain_, the name of
+Boadicea awakens him to a fit of indignation with the Britons who upheld
+her rule. There is full scope in _Paradise Lost_ for similar expressions
+of indignation. Adam, after the Fall, speaks of his wife as
+
+  Not to be trusted--longing to be seen
+  Though by the Devil himself.
+
+In the Eleventh Book the daughters of men are described as bred only
+
+                          to sing, to dance,
+  To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye.
+
+But Milton, it is sometimes forgotten, was also the author of that
+beautiful eulogy of Eve in the Eighth Book:--
+
+                          When I approach
+  Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
+  And in herself complete, so well to know
+  Her own, that what she wills to do or say
+  Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.
+  All higher Knowledge in her presence falls
+  Degraded; Wisdom in discourse with her
+  Loses, discountenanced, and like Folly shows;
+  Authority and Reason on her wait,
+  As one intended first, not after made
+  Occasionally; and, to consummate all,
+  Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
+  Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
+  About her, as a guard angelic placed.
+
+It is an exact parallel to Florizel's praise of Perdita in _The Winter's
+Tale_:--
+
+                          When you speak, sweet,
+  I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
+  I'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
+  Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
+  To sing them too; when you do dance, I wish you
+  A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
+  Nothing but that; move still, still so,
+  And own no other function: each your doing,
+  So singular in each particular,
+  Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
+  That all your acts are queens.
+
+But Florizel addresses his praise to the lady herself; while Adam, who
+had never been young, confides it in private to Raphael, after dinner,
+and studies a more instructive and authoritative strain in his
+conversations with Eve. And now comes a point worthy of remark. The
+Angel, to whom, it cannot be doubted, Milton committed the exposition of
+his own views, after hearing this confession, frowns, and administers a
+tart reproof. He describes Eve, somewhat grudgingly, as "an
+outside--fair, no doubt," and peremptorily teaches Adam the duties of
+self-appreciation and self-assertion:--
+
+                      Oft-times nothing profits more
+  Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
+  Well managed. Of that skill the more thou know'st,
+  The more she will acknowledge thee her head,
+  And to realities yield all her shows.
+
+And in the sequel, Adam bitterly laments that he had failed to profit by
+this advice. He might have been comforted by the wisdom of Chaucer's
+Franklin:--
+
+  When maistrie cometh, the god of love anon
+  Beteth his wynges and, farewel, he is gon!
+
+The explanation of all this is clear to see. Milton was not, as he has
+sometimes been described, a callous and morose Puritan. He was
+extraordinarily susceptible to the attractions of feminine beauty and
+grace. Adam's confession is his own. But the ideal of character that he
+had put before himself caused him passionately to resent this
+susceptibility. It was the joint in his harness, the main breach in his
+Stoicism, the great anomaly in a life regulated as for his Task-master.
+He felt that beauty was a power not himself, unbalancing and disturbing
+the rational self-centred poise of his soul. There have been poets whose
+service of Venus Verticordia was whole-hearted. But to Milton the power
+of Beauty was a magnetism to be distrusted for its very strength. He felt
+something of what he makes Satan express, that there is terror in love
+and beauty "not approached by stronger hate." The Chorus in _Samson
+Agonistes_ makes a similar observation:--
+
+  Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power
+  After offence returning, to regain
+  Love once possessed.
+
+To escape from the dominion of the tyrant is the duty of a wise man. When
+Raphael remarked that "Love ... hath his seat in Reason, and is
+judicious," he committed himself to a statement which a longer experience
+of the world would have enabled him to correct. But Milton wished it
+true; and perhaps even lured himself into a belief of its truth. At any
+rate, when Satan, in _Paradise Regained_, expounds his opinion on the
+matter, it is found, for once, to be in substantial agreement with
+Raphael's:--
+
+                          Beauty stands
+  In the admiration only of weak minds
+  Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes
+  Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy,
+  At every sudden slighting quite abashed.
+
+It is a great loss to literature that Mrs. Millamant, the delightful
+heroine of Congreve's comedy, was no reader of Milton. Her favourite
+author was Suckling:--
+
+  I prithee spare me, gentle boy,
+  Press me no more for that slight toy,
+  That foolish trifle of a heart.
+
+If she had a copy of the _Paradise Regained_, doubtless it stood in some
+conspicuous place, and was never opened,--like Mrs. Wishfort's "books
+over the chimney--Quarles and Prynne, and 'The Short View of the Stage,'
+with Bunyan's works, to entertain you." But all unawares she has answered
+the contention of Satan:--"O the vanity of these men!--Fainall, d'ye hear
+him? If they did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know
+that they could not commend one, if one was not handsome. Beauty the
+lover's gift!--Lord, what is a lover, that it can give? ... One no more
+owes one's beauty to a lover than one's wit to an echo."
+
+Like most men of an impressionable temperament and a strong will, Milton
+was not sympathetic, nor curious to place himself where he might see the
+world from a point of view other than his own. Besieged by their
+sensations and impressions, concerned above all things with maintaining
+their opinions and enforcing their beliefs on others, such men find
+enough to do within the citadel of their own personality. To judge from
+some passages of his works, one half of the human race was to Milton an
+illusion to which the other half was subject. One who is in love with his
+own ideas cannot but be disappointed alike with existing institutions and
+with the tissue of surprises that is a person. Milton's disappointment,
+which had inspired the early Divorce pamphlets, finds renewed expression
+in Adam's prophecy of unhappy marriages--a notable parallel to the
+similar prophecy in _Venus and Adonis_--
+
+                          For either
+  He never shall find out fit mate, but such
+  As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;
+  Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,
+  Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained
+  By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld
+  By parents; or his happiest choice too late
+  Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound
+  To a fell adversary, his hate or shame.
+
+But, with all this, of our two grand parents Eve is the better drawn and
+the more human. Milton did not intend that it should be so, but he could
+not help it. One consequence of the doctrine--
+
+  He for God only, she for God in him--
+
+is that Adam's single impulse of unselfishness, whereby he elects to
+share the offence and punishment of Eve, is a vice in him, a "bad
+compliance." Self-abnegation, the duty of Eve, is hardly within the right
+of Adam; and Dr. Johnson expressed a half-truth in violently paradoxical
+terms when he said that Milton "thought woman made only for obedience and
+man only for rebellion." It would be truer, and weaker, to say that
+Milton thought woman made for the exercise of private, and man for the
+exercise of public, virtues. Hence in their mutual relations Eve carries
+off all the honours, for her duty towards Adam coincides with her
+inclination, while in his case the two are at variance. There is no
+speech of Adam's to be matched with the pleading intensity of Eve's
+appeal, beginning--"Forsake me not thus, Adam!"--and to her Milton
+commits the last and best speech spoken in Paradise:--
+
+                          But now lead on;
+  In me is no delay; with thee to go
+  Is to stay here; without thee here to stay
+  Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me
+  Art all things under Heaven, all places thou,
+  Who for my wilful crime art banished hence.
+
+She is generous and loving; her only reproach addressed to Adam is that
+he acceded to her request, and permitted her, on that fateful morning, to
+do her gardening alone, among the roses and myrtles. She is a fair
+companion picture to set over against Dalila, and is utterly incapable of
+Dalila's hypocrisy in justifying private treachery by reasons of public
+policy. There is even a certain dramatic development in her character;
+after she has eaten of the fruit, audacity and deceit appear in her
+reflections; she meditates withholding from Adam the advantages of the
+tree, in order that she may become--
+
+          More equal, and perhaps--
+  A thing not undesirable--sometimes
+  Superior.
+
+It is easy to understand how tired Eve might well become (even before the
+fallacious fruit was tasted) of Adam's carefully maintained superiority.
+On thinking, however, of the judgment that she may have to suffer, and of
+her own death, she resolves to draw him in, her motive being not fear,
+but a sudden movement of jealousy at the thought of--
+
+  Adam wedded to another Eve.
+
+This is as near an approach to drama in the handling of a human situation
+as is to be found in all _Paradise Lost_.
+
+But enough of this vein of criticism, which is justified only by the
+pleasure of detecting Milton too imperfectly concealed behind his
+handiwork. To treat the scenes he portrays as if analysis of character
+were his aim, and truth of psychology his touchstone, is to do a wrong to
+the artist. He is an epic, not a dramatic, poet; to find him at his best
+we must look at those passages of unsurpassed magnificence wherein he
+describes some noble or striking attitude, some strong or majestic
+action, in its outward physical aspect.
+
+In this, the loftiest part of his task, his other defects, as if by some
+hidden law of compensation, are splendidly redeemed. While he deals with
+abstract thought or moral truth his handling is tight, pedantic, and
+disagreeably hard. But when he comes to describe his epic personages and
+his embodied visions, all is power, and vagueness, and grandeur. His
+imagination, escaped from the narrow prison of his thought, rises like a
+vapour, and, taking shape before his eyes, proclaims itself his master.
+
+No other poet has known so well how to portray, in a few strokes, effects
+of multitude and vastness. Now it is the sacred congregation in Heaven:--
+
+  About him all the Sanctities of Heaven
+  Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received
+  Beatitude past utterance.
+
+Now the warrior host of Hell:--
+
+  He spake; and, to confirm his words, outflew
+  Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
+  Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze
+  Far round illumined Hell.
+
+In these, as in other like scenes, he preserves epic unity by throwing
+the whole into the distance. So after the approach of the Messiah to
+battle, "the poet," says Coleridge, "by one touch from himself--'far off
+their coming shone!'--makes the whole one image." He describes at a
+greater range of vision than any other poet: the frame-work of his single
+scenes is often not less than a third of universal space. When he has
+added figure to figure in the endeavour to picture the multitudinous
+disarray of the fallen Angels on the lake, one line suffices to reduce
+the whole spectacle to its due dimensions beneath that cavernous tent of
+darkness:--
+
+  He called so loud that all the hollow deep
+  Of Hell resounded.
+
+The same effect of number and vastness, diminished and unified by the
+same reference to a larger setting, wherein all is seen at a glance, may
+be noted in the description of the raising of Satan's standard in Hell:--
+
+  The imperial ensign, which, full high advanced,
+  Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,
+  With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed,
+  Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while
+  Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds:
+  At which the universal host up-sent
+  A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond
+  Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
+  All in a moment through the gloom were seen
+  Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
+  With orient colours waving: with them rose
+  A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
+  Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
+  Of depth immeasureable.
+
+Sometimes a line or two gives him scope enough for the rendering of one
+of these epic scenes, immense and vivid. The ruin and prostration of the
+rebels is made visible in two lines:--
+
+  Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
+  With scattered arms and ensigns.
+
+And the picture of the East rises at a touch:--
+
+  Dusk faces with white silken turbants wreathed.
+
+In the drawing of single attitudes Milton studies the same large decorum
+and majesty. He is never tempted into detail in the describing of gesture
+or action; never loses the whole in the part. The bulk of _Paradise Lost_
+was written between the sixth and the thirteenth years of his blindness.
+Since the veil had fallen he had lived with the luminous shapes that he
+could picture against the dark. The human face had lost, in his
+recollection of it, something of its minuter delineation, but nothing of
+its radiance. On the other hand, the human figure, in its most
+significant gestures and larger movements, haunted his visions. His
+description of the appearance of the wife whom he had never seen is an
+early model of many of his later drawings. She comes to his bedside and
+leans over him, stretching forth her arms:
+
+  Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
+  Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
+  So clear as in no face with more delight.
+
+Adam and Eve, as they are first seen in Paradise, have the same shining
+quality, the same vagueness of beauty expressing itself in purely
+emotional terms. Satan standing on the top of Mount Niphates, looking
+down on Eden spread out at his feet, and then with fierce gesticulation
+addressing himself to the sun at the zenith, is one of the dim solitary
+figures that dwell in the mind's eye. No less impressive and no less
+indefinite are those two monumental descriptions of the rebel leader; the
+first, of his going forth to war in Heaven:--
+
+  High in the midst, exalted as a God,
+  The Apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat,
+  Idol of majesty divine, enclosed
+  With flaming Cherubim and golden shields.
+
+and the other, of his encounter with Gabriel:--
+
+                      Satan, alarmed,
+  Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
+  Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:
+  His stature reached the sky, and on his crest
+  Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp
+  What seemed both spear and shield.
+
+In these, and in a hundred other notable passages, the images are as
+simple and broad as the emotional effects that they produce,--the sun,
+flame, gold, a mountain, the sky.
+
+Some of the scenes and situations delineated by Milton are of a gentler
+and more elusive virtue than these terrors and sublimities. His
+descriptions of morning and evening are always charged with emotion--the
+quiet coming-on of night in Eden; or the break of day in the wilderness
+of the Temptation, with a sense of joy and relief "after a night of storm
+so ruinous." His feeling for the imaginative effects of architecture in a
+landscape is extraordinarily subtle. One, at least, of these effects is
+hardly to be experienced among the hedgerows and farmsteads and placid
+rambling towns of England. Travellers in Italy, or in the East, are
+better able to understand the transfiguration of a landscape by the
+distant view of a small compact array of walls and towers perched on a
+vantage-ground among the hills of the horizon. The lawlessness of Nature,
+the homelessness of the surface of the earth, and the fears that haunt
+uninhabited places, are all accentuated by the distrust that frowns from
+the battlements of such a stronghold of militant civility. For this
+reason, perhaps, the architectural features in certain pictures and
+drawings have an indescribable power of suggestion. The city,
+self-contained and fortified, overlooking a wide expanse of country,
+stands for safety and society; the little group of figures, parleying at
+the gate, or moving down into the plain, awakens in the mind a sense of
+far-off things,--the moving accidents of the great outer world, and the
+dangers and chances of the unknown. Bunyan, whose imagination was
+nourished on the Eastern scenery and sentiment of the Bible, shows
+himself powerfully affected by situations of this kind, as where, in the
+beginning of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, he describes the man with his face
+from his own home, running from the City of Destruction, and the group of
+his kindred calling after him to return:--"but the man put his fingers in
+his ears, and ran on crying, Life, Life, Eternal Life: so he looked not
+behind him, but fled towards the middle of the plain."
+
+Such another figure is Milton's Abdiel, who escaped from the rebel
+citadel--
+
+  And with retorted scorn his back he turned
+  On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed.
+
+The perils of his flight are vaguely indicated by a few admirable touches
+in the opening of the next Book:--
+
+  All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued,
+  Through Heaven's wide champaign held his way, till Morn
+  Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand
+  Unbarred the gates of Light.
+
+A more signal instance of the same poetic effect is to be found in the
+wonderful close of _Paradise Lost_, where Adam and Eve are led down from
+the garden by the archangel Michael, and are left standing in the vast
+plain below:--
+
+  They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
+  Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
+  Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
+  With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
+  Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
+  The world was all before them, where to choose
+  Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
+  They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
+  Through Eden took their solitary way.
+
+Criticism might exhaust itself in the effort to do justice to the beauty
+of this close. Of Adam and Eve it may be truly said that none of all
+their doings in the garden became them like the leaving of it. Yet
+Addison and Bentley, the ornaments of a polite and learned age, are at
+one in their depreciation of the last two lines. Addison, after a formal
+apology for "the smallest Alteration in this divine Work," boldly
+recommends amputation; while Bentley, with the caution of a more
+experienced surgeon, offers to crutch the lines on certain wooden
+contrivances of his own. The three epithets, "wandering," "slow," and
+"solitary," are all censured by him. Our first parents, he remarks, were
+guided by Providence, and therefore needed not to wander; they were
+reassured by Michael's predictions, and so might well display an engaging
+briskness; while as for "their solitary way," they were no more solitary
+than in Paradise, "there being no Body besides Them Two, both here and
+there." He therefore suggests a distich more agreeable to the general
+scheme:--
+
+  Then hand in hand with social steps their way
+  Through Eden took, with Heav'nly Comfort cheer'd
+
+It is impossible to answer such criticism; the organs of human speech are
+too frail. Let Bentley be left to contemplate with delight the hideous
+gash that his chopper has inflicted on the Miltonic rhythm of the last
+line. If Addison, for his part, had been less concerned with the opinions
+of M. Bossu, and the enumeration of the books of the _Æneid_, he might
+have found leisure to notice that the two later poems, _Paradise
+Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_, are each brought to a close which
+exactly resembles the close of _Paradise Lost_. After the splendours in
+the last book of _Paradise Regained_--the fall of Satan, "smitten with
+amazement," from the pinnacle of the Temple, the elaborate classical
+comparisons of Antaeus and the Sphinx, and the triumphal chorus of Angels
+who bear the Son of God aloft with anthems of victory--the poem ends with
+the same exquisite lull:--
+
+                  He, unobserved,
+  Home to his mother's house private returned.
+
+And _Samson Agonistes_ brings as glorious a triumph to no less peaceful a
+close:--
+
+  And calm of mind, all passion spent.
+
+The dying fall is the same in all three, and is the form of ending
+preferred by the musical and poetic genius of Milton.
+
+Passages of a crowded and ostentatious magnificence are more frequent in
+_Paradise Lost_ than in either of the two later poems. In _Paradise
+Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ the enhanced severity of a style which
+rejects almost all ornament was due in part, no doubt, to a gradual
+change in Milton's temper and attitude. It is not so much that his power
+of imagination waned, as that his interest veered, turning more to
+thought and reflection, less to action and picture. In these two poems,
+at the last, he celebrated that
+
+                better fortitude
+  Of patience and heroic martyrdom
+
+which he had professed to sing in _Paradise Lost_. We are told by his
+nephew that he "could not bear with patience any such thing related to
+him" as that _Paradise Regained_ was inferior to _Paradise Lost_. He was
+right; its merits and beauties are of a different and more sombre kind,
+yet of a kind perhaps further out of the reach of any other poet than
+even the constellated glories of _Paradise Lost_ itself. It should be
+remembered that _Paradise Lost_, although it was written by Milton
+between the fiftieth and the fifty-seventh years of his age, was
+conceived by him, in its main outlines, not later than his thirty-fourth
+year. Two of the passages noticed above, where Satan addresses himself to
+the Sun and where the Angel leads Adam and Eve out of Paradise, embody
+situations which had appealed to his younger imagination. Some of the
+very words of Satan's address were written, we learn from Phillips, about
+1642. And the expulsion of Adam and Eve seems to contain a reminiscence
+of the time when Milton was considering the history of Lot as a possible
+subject for an epic. The lines--
+
+  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 of _Paradise Lost_ would 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.
+In _Paradise Lost_ Milton at last delivered himself 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 of _Paradise 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, "of
+_Paradise Lost_; but what hast thou to say of _Paradise 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 of
+_Paradise Lost_, and already very fully in the Third Book, he had treated
+of _Paradise Found_ as 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
+stupidity is the kind that discovers something "unfinished" in a great
+work of art, and suggests desirable trimmings and additions. Milton knew
+that _Paradise Lost_ was 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, from _L' Allegro_ to
+_Samson Agonistes_--all are parts of _A 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. In _Comus_ is shown how the temptations
+of created pleasure may be resisted by the chastity of the "resolved
+soul." In _Paradise 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 in _Paradise Regained_ exhibited at
+length, with every variety of form and argument, the spectacle of--
+
+      one man's firm obedience fully tried
+  Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled
+  In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed
+
+The subject of _Comus_ is 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 in
+_Paradise Regained_ the 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 to
+_Paradise Lost_, those critics are doubtless right who think his chosen
+subject not 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 of _Paradise 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 in _Paradise 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: 'That light
+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 and said, '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 in _Samson 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 God
+  And justifiable to men--
+
+finding an echo in Samson's declaration--
+
+  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 of _Paradise Lost_. The academic proof of God's justice,
+contained in the earlier poem, if it were introduced into _Samson
+Agonistes_ could 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE STYLE OF MILTON: METRE AND DICTION
+
+
+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 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 of _Paradise 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?
+
+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's _Harmonie of the Church_ was 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.
+
+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 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 their devotional 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 be expected, 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 called _Psyche, 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 as _Paradise 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's _Original Poems_ in 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 full and 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 entitled _Davideis_. In the exordium of the
+First Book he proclaims his mission:--
+
+  Too long the _Muses-Lands_ have _Heathen_ bin
+  Their _Gods_ too long were _Devils_, and _Vertues Sin_;
+  But _Thou, Eternal World_, hast call'd forth _Me_,
+  Th' _Apostle_, to convert that _World_ to _Thee_:
+  T' unbind the charms that in slight _Fables_ lie,
+  And teach that _Truth_ is _truest Poesie_.
+
+But it was not to be. His "polisht _Pillars_ of strong _Verse_" 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 his _Gondibert_ shows 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's _Davideis_, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin brought out
+his sacred poem of _Clovis_, 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 his _Poetic_, settled the
+question for the nonce, and fixed the opinion of the succeeding
+generation of critics. He casts an equal ridicule upon _Clovis_ and upon
+the theory which it was designed to illustrate:--
+
+  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 of _Clovis_ was hastened by ridicule. Yet every one of the
+arguments brought against that poem by Boileau holds equally good against
+_Paradise 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 to _Clovis_ in 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, called
+_A Tale of Two Swannes_. While Milton was writing _Paradise Lost_ the
+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 of _Paradise Lost_, Dryden delivered his judgment, that the
+rhymed couplet was 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 follow his 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 poem _On
+the Death of a Fair Infant_, written in his seventeenth year:--
+
+  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 on _The Passion_, written in the same metre, are perhaps
+the last in which Milton echoes Spenser, however faintly. Meanwhile, in
+the hymn _On 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 written _At a Vacation Exercise_, he expressly sets aside
+
+  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 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 of _Comus_, 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 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 of the 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 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.
+
+And again:--
+
+  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 of _Il Penseroso_, which might be quoted against
+this statement, is susceptible of an easier explanation:--
+
+  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 in _Comus_ are these:--
+
+                  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 of _Comus_ from the _Old Wives' Tale_ of
+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 his _Lives 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 in _Il Penseroso_:--
+
+  Come, but keep thy wonted state
+
+and two lines of Jonson's _Hymn to Cynthia_:--
+
+  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 the _Areopagitica_. 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.
+
+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 in _Richard 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 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 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 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, in _Paradise
+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 impossible even 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 of _The 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 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
+injury done 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 in _Comus_, does not occur in _Paradise
+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 the _Idylls of the King_. Here is one:--
+
+  So all the ways were safe from shore to shore,
+  But in the heart of Arthur pain was lord.
+
+The elements of musical delight here are almost barbarous in their
+simplicity. There is a surfeit of assonance--_all, shore, shore, lord_;
+_heart, Arthur_; _ways, safe, pain_. The alliteration is without
+complexity,--a dreary procession of sibilants. Worst of all are the
+monotonous incidence of the stress, and the unrelieved, undistinguished,
+crowded poverty of the Saxon monosyllables.
+
+No two such consecutive lines were ever written by Milton. His verse,
+even in its least admirable passages, does not sing, nor trip with
+regular alternate stress; its movement suggests neither dance nor song,
+but rather the advancing march of a body of troops skilfully handled,
+with incessant changes in their disposition as they pass over broken
+ground. He can furnish them with wings when it so pleases him. No
+analysis of his prosody can explain the wonders of his workmanship. But
+it is not idle to ask for a close attention to the scansion of lines like
+these, wherein he describes the upward progress of the Son of God and his
+escort after the Creation:--
+
+  The heavens and all the constellations rung,
+  The planets in their station listening stood,
+  While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
+
+In the last line the first four words marshal the great procession in
+solid array; the last two lift it high into the empyrean. Let any one
+attempt to get the same upward effect with a stress, however light, laid
+on the last syllable of the line, or with words of fewer than three
+syllables apiece, and he will have to confess that, however abstruse the
+rules of its working may be, there is virtue in metrical cunning. The
+passage in the Seventh Book from which these lines are quoted would
+justify an entire treatise. The five regular alternate stresses first
+occur in a line describing the progress over the wide plain of Heaven:--
+
+                  He through Heaven,
+  That opened wide her blazing portals, led
+  To God's eternal house direct the way.
+
+But, indeed, the examination of the music of Milton involves so minute a
+survey of technical detail as to be tedious to all but a few lovers of
+theory. The laws of music in verse are very subtle, and, it must be
+added, very imperfectly ascertained; so that those who dogmatise on them
+generally end by slipping into fantasy or pedantry. How carefully and
+incessantly Milton adjusted the sound to the sense is known to every
+reader of _Paradise Lost_. The dullest ear is caught by the contrast
+between the opening of the gates of Heaven--
+
+                  Heaven opened wide
+  Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
+  On golden hinges moving--
+
+and the opening of those other gates--
+
+                On a sudden open fly,
+  With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
+  The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
+  Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
+  Of Erebus.
+
+But there are many more delicate instances than these. In the choruses of
+_Samson Agonistes_, where he reaches the top of his skill, Milton varies
+even the length of the line. So he has hardly a rule left, save the
+iambic pattern, which he treats merely as a point of departure or
+reference, a background or framework to carry the variations imposed upon
+it by the luxuriance of a perfectly controlled art. The great charm of
+the metre of Wither, which Charles Lamb admired and imitated, lies in its
+facile combination of what, for the sake of brevity, may be called the
+iambic and trochaic movements. In _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ Milton
+had proved his mastery of both its resources. The gaiety of these lines--
+
+  Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
+  Jest, and youthful Jollity--
+
+passes easily into the solemnity of these--
+
+  But let my due feet never fail
+  To walk the studious cloister's pale.
+
+In _Samson Agonistes_ he sought to extend something of the same liberty
+to the movement of blank verse. He freely intermixes the falling with the
+rising stress, shifting the weights from place to place, and often
+compensating a light patter of syllables in the one half of the line by
+the introduction of two or three consecutive strong stresses in the other
+half. Under this treatment the metre of _Gorboduc_ breaks into blossom
+and song:--
+
+  O, how comely it is, and how reviving
+  To the spirits of just men long oppressed,
+  When God into the hands of their deliverer
+  Puts invincible might.
+
+To try to explain this marvel of beauty is to beat the air.
+
+By his deliberate attention to the elements of verbal melody Milton gave
+a new character to English blank verse. But this is not all. Quite as
+important is the alteration that he made in the character of English
+poetic diction.
+
+The essence of the lyric is that it is made up of phrases, not of words.
+The lines run easily because they run on tracks chosen for their ease by
+the instinct of generations and worn smooth by use. The lyrical phrase,
+when the first two or three words of it have been pronounced, finishes
+itself. From Carew's "Ask me no more," with its long train of imitations,
+to the latest banality of the music-halls, the songs that catch the ear
+catch it by the same device. The lyric, that is to say, is almost always
+dependent for its music on easy idiomatic turns of speech. The surprising
+word occurs rarely; with all the greater effect inasmuch as it is
+embedded in phrases that slip from the tongue without a trace of thought
+or effort. These phrases naturally allow of little diversity of
+intonation; they have the unity of a single word, a single accepted
+emphasis, and a run of lightly-stressed syllables more or less musical in
+sequence.
+
+All this Milton changed. He chooses his every word. You cannot guess the
+adjective from the substantive, nor the end of the phrase from its
+beginning. He is much given to inverting the natural English order of
+epithet and noun, that he may gain a greater emphasis for the epithet.
+His style is not a simple loose-flowing garment, which takes its outline
+from its natural fall over the figure, but a satin brocade, stiff with
+gold, exactly fitted to the body. There is substance for it to clothe;
+but, as his imitators quickly discovered, it can stand alone. He packs
+his meaning into the fewest possible words, and studies economy in every
+trifle. In his later poetry there are no gliding connectives; no
+polysyllabic conjunctive clauses, which fill the mouth while the brain
+prepares itself for the next word of value; no otiose epithets, and very
+few that court neglect by their familiarity. His poetry is like the
+eloquence of the Lord Chancellor Bacon, as described by Ben Jonson:--"No
+man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered
+less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech
+but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look
+aside from him, without loss." It is this quality of Milton's verse that
+makes the exercise of reading it aloud a delight and a trial. Every word
+is of value. There is no mortar between the stones, each is held in place
+by the weight of the others, and helps to uphold the building. In
+reading, every word must be rendered clearly and articulately; to drop
+one out, or to slur it over, is to take a stone from an arch. Indeed, if
+Lamb and Hazlitt are right in thinking that Shakespeare's greatest plays
+cannot be acted, by the same token, Milton's greatest poems cannot be
+read aloud. For his most sonorous passages the human voice is felt to be
+too thin an instrument; the lightest word in the line demands some faint
+emphasis, so that the strongest could not be raised to its true value
+unless it were roared through some melodious megaphone.
+
+The carefully jewelled mosaic style was practised very early by Milton.
+It occurs already in the hymn on the Nativity:--
+
+  See how from far upon the eastern road
+  The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
+  O run, prevent them with thy humble ode
+  And lay it lowly at his blessed feet.
+
+The same deliberateness and gentle pause of words one after another
+rounding and falling like clear drops is found in the song of the Spirit
+in _Comus_:--
+
+  Sabrina fair,
+    Listen where thou art sitting
+  Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
+    In twisted braids of lilies knitting
+  The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.
+
+This is the effect which Sir Henry Wotton, Milton's earliest critic,
+speaks of, in a letter to Milton, as "a certain Doric delicacy in your
+songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing
+parallel in our language."
+
+There are poems, and good poems among the number, written on a more
+diffuse principle. If you miss one line you find the idea repeated or
+persisting in the next. It is quite possible to derive pleasure from the
+_Faerie Queene_ by attending to the leading words, and, for the rest,
+floating onward on the melody. You can catch the drift with ease. The
+stream circles in so many eddies that to follow it laboriously throughout
+its course is felt to be hardly necessary: miss it once and you can often
+join it again at very near the same point. "But a reader of Milton," as
+an early critic of Milton remarks, "must be always upon duty; he is
+surrounded with sense; it rises in every line, every word is to the
+purpose. There are no lazy intervals: all has been considered, and
+demands and merits observation. Even in the best writers you sometimes
+find words and sentences which hang on so loosely, you may blow them off.
+Milton's are all substance and weight: fewer would not have served his
+turn, and more would have been superfluous. His silence has the same
+effect, not only that he leaves work for the imagination, when he has
+entertained it and furnished it with noble materials; but he expresses
+himself so concisely, employs words so sparingly, that whoever will
+possess his ideas must dig for them, and oftentimes pretty far below the
+surface."
+
+An illustration and contrast may serve to point the moral. Here is an
+example of Spenser's diffuser style, taken from the second book of the
+_Faerie Queene_. Guyon, escaped from the cave of Mammon, is guarded,
+during his swoon, by an angel:--
+
+  Beside his head there satt a faire young man,
+
+(This announces the theme, as in music.)
+
+  Of wondrous beauty and of freshest yeares,
+
+(The fair young man was fair and young.)
+
+  Whose tender bud to blossom new began,
+
+(The fair young man was young.)
+
+  And florish faire above his equal peers.
+
+(The fair young man was fair, fairer even than his equals, who were also
+his peers.)
+
+In the remaining lines of the stanza the comparison of his hair to the
+rays of the sun is played with in the same way:--
+
+  His snowy front curled with golden heares,
+  Like Phoebus' face adorned with sunny rayes,
+  Divinely shone; and two sharp winged sheares,
+  Decked with diverse plumes, like painted Jayes,
+  Were fixed at his back to cut his ayery wayes.
+
+The whole stanza is beautiful, and musical with the music of redundance.
+Nothing could be less like Milton's mature style. His verse, "with frock
+of mail, Adamantean proof," advances proudly and irresistibly, gaining
+ground at every step. He brings a situation before us in two lines, every
+word contributing its share:--
+
+  Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,
+  Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night.
+
+With as decisive a touch he sketches the story of Jacob--
+
+                    In the field of Luz,
+  Dreaming by night under the open sky,
+  And waking cried, _This is the gate of Heaven_.
+
+Or the descent of Raphael:--
+
+                    Like Maia's son he stood,
+  And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled
+  The circuit wide.
+
+The packed line introduced by Milton is of a greater density and
+conciseness than anything to be found in English literature before it. It
+is our nearest native counterpart to the force and reserve of the high
+Virgilian diction. In his _Discourse of the Original and Progress of
+Satire_, Dryden has called attention to the close-wrought quality of
+Virgil's work. "Virgil," he says, "could have written sharper satires
+than either Horace or Juvenal, if he would have employed his talent that
+way. I will produce a verse and a half of his, in one of his Eclogues, to
+justify my opinion; and with commas after every word, to show that he has
+given almost as many lashes as he has written syllables: it is against a
+bad poet, whose ill verses he describes:--
+
+              _non tu, in triviis, indocte, solebas_
+  _Stridenti, miserum, stipula, disperdere, carmen?_"
+  [Wouldst thou not, blockhead, in the public ways,
+  Squander, on scrannel pipe, thy sorry lays?]
+
+Dryden appreciated the terrible force of this kind of writing for the
+purposes of satire. At its best, his own satire attains to something like
+it, as, for instance, in his description of Shaftesbury's early life:--
+
+  Next this (how wildly will ambition steer),
+  A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear,
+  Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold,
+  He cast himself into the saint-like mould;
+  Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain,
+  The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train.
+
+Except the first line, which is wholly idle, there is nothing that could
+be spared here. Pope, also, knew the value of condensation; but he works
+in antithetic phrases, so that his single words are less telling; and
+where Dryden's lines are swords edged with contempt, Pope's are stings,
+pointed with spite. Thus, of Lord Hervey:--
+
+  Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
+  The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
+  Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
+  Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
+  Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
+  A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
+  Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
+  Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
+
+The necessities of rhyme sometimes hamper both Dryden and Pope; and the
+nearest parallel to the manner of Virgil is to be sought in Milton. The
+famous line describing Samson--
+
+  Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves--
+
+is a good example; the sense of humiliation and abasement is intensified
+at every step. Or, to take a passage in a very different key of feeling,
+the same quality is seen in the description of the obedience of Eve:--
+
+              Required with gentle sway
+  And by her yielded, by him best received,
+  Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
+  And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
+
+The slight stress and pause needed after each word, to render the full
+meaning, produce, when the words are short as well as emphatic, a line of
+terrific weight and impact. What more heartbreaking effect of weariness
+and eternity of effort could be produced in a single line than this,
+descriptive of the dolorous march of the fallen angels?--
+
+  O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
+  Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.
+
+It would be difficult to match this line. In _The Tears of Peace_,
+Chapman has a line (he repeats it in the _Tragedy of Biron_) which owes
+some of its strength to the same cause. He describes the body as--
+
+  This glass of air, broken with less than breath,
+  This slave, bound face to face to death till death.
+
+The eight stresses give the line a passionate energy.
+
+All superfluous graces are usually discarded by Milton. He steers right
+onward, and gives the reader no rest. A French critic of that age, who
+has already been mentioned as the author of _Clovis_, praises Malherbe
+and Voiture and the worthies of their time, at the expense of the
+ancients. He calls Homer, especially, "a tattler, who is incessantly
+repeating the same things in the same idle ridiculous epithets,--_the
+swift-footed Achilles, the ox-eyed Juno, far-darting Apollo_." Milton
+felt none of this contempt for Homer, but he discarded the practice. His
+epithets are chosen to perform one exploit, and are dismissed when it is
+accomplished. As with single epithets, so with lines and phrases; he does
+not employ conventional repetitions either for their lyrical value or for
+wafting the story on to the next point of interest. He seeks no effects
+such as Marlowe obtained by the lyrical repetition of the line:--
+
+  To entertain divine Zenocrate.
+
+He arrests the attention at every word; and when the thing is once said,
+he has done with it.
+
+In his _Discourse of Satire_ Dryden raises an interesting point. He makes
+mention of "the beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are as
+requisite in this, as in heroick poetry itself, of which the satire is
+undoubtedly a species." His attention, he says, was first called to these
+by Sir George Mackenzie, who repeated many of them from Waller and
+Denham. Thereupon he searched other authors, Cowley, Davenant, and
+Milton, to find further examples of them; but in vain. At last he had
+recourse to Spenser, "and there I met with that which I had been looking
+for so long in vain. Spenser had studied Virgil to as much advantage as
+Milton had done Homer; and amongst the rest of his excellencies had
+copied that."
+
+By the "turns of words and thoughts" Dryden here means the repetition of
+a word or phrase in slightly altered guise as the thought is turned over
+in the mind and presented in a new aspect. There is an almost
+epigrammatic neatness about some of the examples that he cites from Ovid
+and Catullus. It is not surprising that he failed to find these elegant
+turns in Milton, for they are few. Addison and Steele, writing in the
+_Tatler_, reproach him with having overlooked the speech of Eve in the
+Fourth Book of _Paradise Lost_:--
+
+  Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet,
+  With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun,
+  When first on this delightful land he spreads
+  His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
+  Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth
+  After soft showers; and sweet the coming-on
+  Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night,
+  With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon,
+  And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train:
+  But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends
+  With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun
+  On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
+  Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers
+  Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent Night,
+  With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon,
+  Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet.
+
+Dryden remarks that the elegance he speaks of is common in Italian
+sonnets, which are usually written on the turn of the first thought; and
+certainly this speech of Eve might be truly compared, in all but the
+metrical structure, to an interspersed sonnet. There is another elaborate
+piece of repetition at the close of the Tenth Book, where the humble
+prostration of Adam and Eve is described in exactly the form of speech
+used by Adam to propose it. But the repetition in this case is too exact
+to suit Dryden's meaning; by a close verbal coincidence the ritual of
+penitence is emphasised in detail, and the book brought to a restful
+pause. Scattered here and there throughout Milton's longer poems Dryden
+might, nevertheless, have found the thing he sought. One instance that he
+gives is taken from the fourth Georgic of Virgil, where Orpheus, leading
+Eurydice up from Hell, suddenly turns to look on her:--
+
+  _Cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem;_
+  _Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes._
+
+This turn--"deserving grace, if grace were known in Hell"--may easily be
+matched in Milton. In the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_ is described how
+the damned
+
+                feel by turns the bitter change
+  Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.
+
+In the Fifth Book, when Raphael arrives at the gate of Paradise, the
+angels
+
+                          to his state
+  And to his message high in honour rise,
+  For on some message high they guessed him bound.
+
+In _Samson Agonistes_ it is noted that nations grown corrupt
+
+            love bondage more than liberty,
+  Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
+
+Yet in the main Dryden is right, for even instances like these are not
+many, and the tricky neatness of Ovid is nowhere to be found in the
+English epic poet.
+
+Milton seldom allows his verse to play in eddies; he taxes every line to
+its fullest capacity, and wrings the last drop of value from each word. A
+signal characteristic of his diction has its origin in this hard dealing.
+He is often not satisfied with one meaning from a word, but will make it
+do double duty. Here the Latin element in our language gave him his
+opportunity. Words borrowed from the Latin always change their usage and
+value in English air. To the ordinary intelligence they convey one
+meaning; to a scholar's memory they suggest also another. It became the
+habit of Milton to make use of both values, to assess his words in both
+capacities. Any page of his work furnishes examples of his delicate care
+for the original meaning of Latin words, such as _intend_--"intend at
+home ... what best may ease the present misery"; _arrive_--"ere he arrive
+the happy Isle"; _obnoxious_--"obnoxious more to all the miseries of
+life"; _punctual_--"this opacous Earth, this punctual spot";
+_sagacious_--"sagacious of his quarry from so far"; _explode_--"the
+applause they meant turned to exploding hiss"; _retort_--"with retorted
+scorn his back he turned"; _infest_--"find some occasion to infest our
+foes." The Speaker of the House of Commons had to determine, some years
+ago, whether it is in order to allude to the Members as "infesting" the
+House. Had Milton been called upon for such a decision he would doubtless
+have ruled that the word is applicable only to Members whose deliberate
+intention is to maim or destroy the constitution of Parliament.
+
+But he was not content to revive the exact classical meaning in place of
+the vague or weak English acceptation; he often kept both senses, and
+loaded the word with two meanings at once. When Samson speaks of Dalila
+as
+
+  That specious monster, my accomplished snare--
+
+something of this double sense resides in both epithets. In two words we
+are told that Dalila was both beautiful and deceitful, that she was
+skilled in the blandishments of art, and successful in the work of her
+husband's undoing. With a like double reference Samson calls the secret
+of his strength "my capital secret." Where light, again, is called the
+"prime work of God," or where we are told that Hell saw "Heaven ruining
+from Heaven," the original and derivative senses of the words "prime" and
+"ruin" are united in the conception. These words, and many others
+similarly employed, are of Latin origin; but Milton carried his practice
+over into the Saxon part of our vocabulary. The word "uncouth" is used in
+a double-barrelled sense in the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_--
+
+      Who shall tempt with wandering feet
+  The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss,
+  And through the palpable obscure find out
+  His uncouth way?
+
+And when Satan's eyes are called "baleful," the word, besides indicating
+the "huge affliction and dismay" that he feels, gives a hint of the woes
+that are in store for the victims on whom those eyes have not yet lit.
+
+It was this habit of "verbal curiosity" and condensation which seduced
+Milton into punning. Some of his puns are very bad. There is a modern
+idea that a pun is a thing to laugh at. Milton's puns, like
+Shakespeare's, give no smallest countenance to this theory. Sometimes he
+plays with what is merely a chance identity of sound, as where Satan,
+entering Paradise--
+
+  At one slight bound high overleapt all bound.
+
+But in most of these cases it seems likely that he believed in an
+etymological relation between the two words, and so fancied that he was
+drawing attention to an original unity of meaning. Some such hypothesis
+is needful to mitigate the atrocity of his worst pun, in _Paradise
+Regained_, where he describes
+
+              The ravens with their horny beaks
+  Food to Elijah bringing even and morn--
+  Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought.
+
+Milton was no philologist, and we may be permitted in charity to suppose
+that he derived "raven" and "ravenous" from the same root.
+
+Some of his puns are to be justified for another reason--that they are
+made the weapons of mockery. So when Satan rails against Abdiel he says--
+
+                      Thou shalt behold
+  Whether by supplication we intend
+  Address, and to begirt the Almighty Throne
+  Beseeching or besieging.
+
+The long punning-bout between Satan and Belial in the Sixth Book
+exemplifies the more usual form of the Miltonic pun. When he introduces
+the newly-invented artillery, Satan makes a speech, "scoffing in
+ambiguous words"--
+
+                    Ye, who appointed stand,
+  Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch
+  What we propound, and loud that all may hear.
+
+And again, when it has taken effect, scattering the heavenly host in
+unseemly disorder, he says--
+
+  If our proposals once again were heard,
+  We should compel them to a quick result.
+
+Belial, "in like gamesome mood," replies to the jests of his leader,
+until, by the providence of Heaven, his wit and his artillery are buried
+under a weight heavier than themselves. On this whole scene Landor
+remarks that "the first overt crime of the refractory angels was
+punning"; and adds, with true Miltonic conciseness, "they fell rapidly
+after that."
+
+Some minor flaws, which may be found in Milton by those who give a close
+examination to his works, are to be attributed to the same cause--his
+love of condensed statement. Mixture of metaphors in poetry is often
+caused merely by the speed of thought, which presents a subject in a new
+aspect without care taken to adjust or alter the figure. In these cases
+the obscurity or violence of expression arises not from defect, but from
+excess of thought. Some few instances occur in Milton, who, in _Lycidas_,
+writes thus--
+
+  But now my oat proceeds,
+  And listens to the Herald of the Sea.
+
+The syntax of the thought is sufficiently lucid and orderly, but it is
+compressed into too few words. In the Fifth Book of _Paradise Lost_ is
+described how--
+
+        The Eternal Eye, whose sight discerns
+  Abtrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount,
+  And from within the golden lamps that burn
+  Nightly before him, saw without their light
+  Rebellion rising--saw in whom, how spread
+  Among the Sons of Morn, what multitudes
+  Were banded to oppose his high decree;
+  And, smiling, to his only Son thus said.
+
+Here, it is true, "the Eternal Eye" smiles and speaks to his only Son.
+But Milton has really discarded the figure after the words "his high
+decree," which bring in a new order of thoughts. He trusts the reader to
+follow his thought without grammatical readjustment--to drop the symbol
+and remember only the thing symbolised. His trust was warranted, until
+Landor detected the solecism. The clearest case of mixed metaphor ever
+charged against Milton occurs in the Eleventh Book, where the lazar-house
+is described--
+
+  Sight so deform what heart of rock could long
+  Dry-eyed behold?
+
+Rogers pointed this out to Coleridge, who told Wordsworth that he could
+not sleep all the next night for thinking of it. What months of insomnia
+must he not have suffered from the perusal of Shakespeare's works!
+
+The close-wrought style of Milton makes the reading of _Paradise Lost_ a
+hard task in this sense, that it is a severe intellectual exercise,
+without relaxation. The attention that it demands, word by word, and line
+by line, could not profitably be given to most books; so that many
+readers, trained by a long course of novel-reading to nibble and browse
+through the pastures of literature, find that Milton yields little or no
+delight under their treatment, and abandon him in despair.
+
+And yet, with however great reluctance, it must be admitted that the
+close study and admiring imitation of Milton bring in their train some
+lesser evils. Meaning may be arranged too compactly in a sentence; for
+perfect and ready assimilation some bulk and distention are necessary in
+language as in diet. Now the study of Milton, if it teaches anything,
+teaches to discard and abhor all superfluity. He who models himself upon
+this master will never "go a-begging for some meaning, and labour to be
+delivered of the great burden of nothing." But he may easily fall into
+the opposite error of putting "riddles of wit, by being too scarce of
+words." He will be so intent upon the final and perfect expression of his
+thought, that his life may pass before he finds it, and even if, in the
+end, he should say a thing well, he is little likely to say it in due
+season. "Brevity is attained in matter," says a master of English prose,
+"by avoiding idle compliments, prefaces, protestations, parentheses,
+superfluous circuit of figures and digressions: in the composition, by
+omitting conjunctions--_not only ... but also, both the one and the
+other, whereby it cometh to pass_, and such like idle particles." Either
+sort of brevity may be learned from Milton. But any one who has been
+compelled to make efforts of unprompted eloquence, and to choose his
+expressions while he is on his feet, knows well how necessary is the
+function performed by these same prefaces, protestations, parentheses,
+and idle particles. Suavely uttered, they keep expectation alive in the
+audience, and give the orator time to think. Whether in speaking or in
+writing, no fluent and popular style can well be without them. _I should
+be inclined to say--If I may be permitted to use the expression--Speaking
+for myself and for those who agree with me--It is no great rashness to
+assert_-- a hundred phrases like these are an indispensable part of an
+easy writer's, as of an easy speaker's, equipment. To forego all these
+swollen and diluted forms of speech is to run the risk of the opposite
+danger, congestion of the thought and paralysis of the pen--the scholar's
+melancholy. To give long days and nights to the study of Milton is to
+cultivate the critical faculty to so high a pitch that it may possibly
+become tyrannical, and learn to distaste all free writing. Accustomed to
+control and punish wanton activity, it will anticipate its judicial
+duties, and, not content with inflicting death, will devote its malign
+energy to preventing birth.
+
+It is good, therefore, to remember that Milton himself took a holiday
+sometimes, and gave a loose to his pen and to his thought. Some parts of
+his prose writings run in a full torrent of unchastened eloquence. An
+open playground for exuberant activity is of the first importance for a
+writer. Johnson found such a playground in talk. There he could take the
+curb off his prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy, and better
+his expression as he talked. But where men must talk, as well as write,
+upon oath, paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little mincing
+societies addicted to intellectual and moral culture the creative zest is
+lost. The painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice, if it is
+never relaxed, cripples the activity of the mind. Those who can talk the
+best and most compact sense have often found irresponsible paradox and
+nonsense a useful and pleasant recreation ground. It was Milton's
+misfortune, not the least of those put upon him by the bad age in which
+he lived, that what Shakespeare found in the tavern he had to seek in the
+Church. Denied the wild wit-combats of the Mermaid, he disported himself
+in a pamphlet-war on bishops and divorce. But he found health and
+exercise for his faculties there; and the moral (for all things have a
+moral) is this: that when, in a mood of self-indulgence, we can write
+habitually with the gust, the licentious force, the flow, and the
+careless wealthy insolence of the _Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's
+Defence against Smectymnuus_, we need not then repine or be ill-content
+if we find that we can rise only occasionally to the chastity, the
+severity, and the girded majesty of _Paradise Lost_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE STYLE OF MILTON; AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY
+
+
+When Milton was born, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Dekker, Chapman,
+Daniel, Drayton, and half a hundred other Elizabethan notables were yet
+alive. When he died, Addison, Swift, Steele, and Arbuthnot were already
+born. Thus his life bridges the gulf between the age of Elizabeth and the
+age of Anne; and this further examination of his style has for object to
+inquire what part he may claim in the change of temper, method, subject,
+and form which came over English poetry during that period.
+
+The answer usually given to this question is that he had no part at all.
+He lived and died alone. He imitated no one, and founded no school. There
+was none of his more distinguished contemporaries with whom he was on
+terms of intimacy; none whose ideals in poetry remotely resembled his. So
+that although he is to be ranged among the greatest of English poets, a
+place in the legitimate hereditary succession would, on these
+considerations, be denied to him. When Dryden succeeded to the
+dictatorship of Jonson, the continuity of literary history was resumed.
+The great processes of change which affected English letters during the
+seventeenth century are in no way associated with the name of Milton.
+Waller and Denham, Davenant and Dryden, "reformed" English verse; Hobbes,
+Cowley, Tillotson, Dryden and Sprat remodelled English prose. And in the
+meantime, if this account is to be accepted, while English verse and
+English prose were in the melting-pot, this splendid efflorescence was an
+accident, a by-product, without meaning or causal virtue in the chemical
+process that was going forward.
+
+Others will have it that Milton was a belated Elizabethan. But the
+difficulty of that theory is that he reversed rather than continued many
+of the practices of the Elizabethans, and introduced reforms of his own,
+no less striking than the reforms effected by Dryden. Shirley is a good
+example of a genuine late Elizabethan. But in Shirley's works there is
+nothing that is not an echo. In Milton's, on the other hand, after the
+volume of 1645, there is nothing that echoes any earlier English poet
+even faintly. He renayed his ancestry; and, if he left no descendants, he
+must needs be regarded as "a vast species alone."
+
+The Elizabethans, including even the author of _Sejanus_ and the
+translator of Homer, were Romantics. The terms Romantic and Classic are
+perhaps something overworn; and, although they are useful to supply a
+reason, it may well be doubted whether they ever helped any one to an
+understanding. Yet here, if anywhere, they are in place; for Milton is,
+by common consent, not only a Classic poet, but the greatest exemplar of
+the style in the long bead-roll of English poets. The "Augustans" prided
+themselves on their resemblance to the poets of the great age of Rome.
+Was there nothing in common between them and Milton, and did they really
+borrow nothing and learn nothing from him?
+
+This much is agreed, that of all English styles Milton's is best entitled
+to the name of Classic. In his poems may be found every device that
+belongs to the Classic manner, as in Shakespeare's plays may be found
+every device that belongs distinctively to the Romantic. Perhaps the two
+manners are best compared by the juxtaposition of descriptive passages.
+In description it is impossible for literature to be exhaustive; a choice
+must be made, an aspect emphasised, and by far the greater part left to
+the imagination of the reader. A man, for instance, has stature, feature,
+bones, muscles, nerves, entrails; his eyes, hair, and skin are of certain
+colours; he stands in a particular attitude at a particular spot on the
+surface of the earth; he is agitated by certain passions and ideas; every
+movement that he makes is related to his constitution and his past
+history; he has affinity with other men by the ties of the family, the
+society, the State; he thinks and acts more in a minute than a hundred
+writers can describe and explain in a year; he is a laughing, weeping,
+money-making, clothes-wearing, lying, reasoning, worshipping, amorous,
+credulous, sceptical, imitative, combative, gregarious, prehensile,
+two-legged animal. He does not cease to be all this and more, merely
+because he happens to be at one of his thousand tricks, and you catch him
+in the act. How do you propose to describe him?
+
+Broadly speaking, there are two methods available. You may begin with the
+more general and comprehensive of the relations that fall in with your
+purpose, securing breadth of view and truth in the larger values, leaving
+the imagination to supply the more particular and personal details on the
+barest of hints from you: or you may fix your gaze exclusively on some
+vivid cluster of details, indicating their remoter relations and their
+place in a wider perspective by a few vague suggestions.
+
+The first of these ways is Milton's. He maps out his descriptions in bold
+outline, attending always to the unity of the picture and the truth of
+the larger relations. He is chary of detail, and what he adds is added
+for its own immediate importance rather than for its remoter power of
+suggestion. Adam and Eve when they are first introduced, are thus
+described:--
+
+  Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
+  Godlike erect, with native honour clad
+  In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,
+  And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
+  The image of their glorious Maker shone,
+  Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,--
+  Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,
+  Whence true authority in men.
+
+As pictorial description this is all but completely empty. It tells you
+only that they stood upright, that they were like their Maker, and that
+they were possessed of the virtues that their appearance would lead you
+to expect. Their physical delineation is to be accommodated by the
+imagination of the reader to this long catalogue of moral
+qualities,--nobility, honour, majesty, lordliness, worth, divinity,
+glory, brightness, truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severity, and purity. In
+the following lines the poet proceeds to distinguish the one figure from
+the other, adding a few details with regard to each. The epithets he
+chooses are still vague. Adam's forehead is "fair" and "large," his eye
+is "sublime," his locks are "hyacinthine," and (a detail that has escaped
+the notice of many illustrators of _Paradise Lost_) they fall in clusters
+as low as his shoulders. From beginning to end of the description the aim
+of the poet is to preserve the right key of large emotion, and the words
+that he chooses are chosen chiefly for their emotional value. The
+emotions are given; the portraiture is left to be filled in by the
+imagination.
+
+Shakespeare commonly works in the reverse way. He does not, like Crabbe,
+describe "as if for the police"; he chooses his detail with consummate
+skill, but he makes use of it to suggest the emotions. It is impossible
+to set his description of persons over against Milton's; for the drama
+does not describe persons, it presents them in action; and a description,
+where it occurs, is often designed merely to throw light on the character
+and feelings of the speaker. "Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low"
+is a description rather of Lear, as he hangs over the dead body of
+Cordelia, refusing to believe that she is dead, than of Cordelia herself.
+"An excellent thing in woman" is not a doctrine, but a last heartbreaking
+movement of defiance, as if to refute any stander-by who dares to think
+that there is something amiss, that a voice should not be so low as to be
+inaudible.
+
+The contrast of the methods may, therefore, be better noted in the
+description of scenes. There is no very close parallel obtainable; but
+the two passages compared by Lessing are not wholly dissimilar in theme,
+and serve well enough to illustrate the difference of the styles. The
+first, taken from the Seventh Book of _Paradise Lost_, tells how the King
+of Glory, from the verge of his heavenly domain, beholds the gulf of
+Chaos:--
+
+  On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore
+  They viewed the vast immeasurable Abyss,
+  Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
+  Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
+  And surging waves, as mountains to assault
+  Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole.
+
+The other is the imaginary view from Dover Cliff, described by Edgar in
+_King Lear_:--
+
+                      How fearful
+  And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!
+  The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
+  Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
+  Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
+  Methinks he seems no bigger than his head;
+  The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
+  Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
+  Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
+  Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge
+  That on th' unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
+  Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more;
+  Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight
+  Topple down headlong.
+
+Johnson objected to this description: "No, sir; it should be all
+precipice,--all vacuum. The crows impede your fall. The diminished
+appearance of the boats, and other circumstances, are all very good
+description, but do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea
+of immense height. The impression is divided; you pass on, by
+computation, from one stage of the tremendous space to another."
+
+This criticism is, in effect, a plea for Milton's method, although by a
+freak of fate it was uttered in vindication of Congreve. Some years
+earlier, in his edition of Shakespeare, Johnson had remarked on the same
+passage, and had indicated the poetic method that he approved: "He that
+looks from a precipice finds himself assailed by one great and dreadful
+image of irresistible destruction."
+
+Johnson's critical opinions on poetry are deserving of the most careful
+consideration, and, where they fail to convince, of an undiminished
+respect. But not Johnson himself can raise a doubt as to which of the two
+passages quoted above is the greater masterpiece of description proper.
+Shakespeare sets a scene before your eyes, and by his happy choice of
+vivid impression makes you giddy. The crows help, rather than impede your
+fall; for to look into illimitable vacuum is to look at nothing, and
+therefore to be unmoved. But the classic manner is so careful for unity
+of emotional impression that it rejects these humble means for attaining
+even to so great an end. It refuses to work by mice and beetles, lest the
+sudden intrusion of trivial associations should mar the main impression.
+No sharp discords are allowed, even though they should be resolved the
+moment after. Every word and every image must help forward the main
+purpose. Thus, while the besetting sin of the Romantics is the employment
+of excessive, or irrelevant, or trivial or grotesque detail, the
+besetting sin of the Classics is so complete an omission of realistic
+detail that the description becomes inflated, windy and empty, and the
+strongest words in the language lose their vital force because they are
+set fluttering hither and thither in multitudes, with no substantial hold
+upon reality. There is nothing that dies sooner than an emotion when it
+is cut off from the stock on which it grows. The descriptive epithet or
+adjective, if only it be sparingly and skilfully employed, so that the
+substantive carry it easily, is the strongest word in a sentence. But
+when once it loses its hold upon concrete reality it becomes the weakest,
+and not all the protests of debility, superlative degrees, and rhetorical
+insistence, can save it from neglect.
+
+It is apparent, therefore, how necessary to Milton were the concrete epic
+realities with which his poem deals,--the topographical scheme of things,
+and the definite embodiment of all his spiritual essences. Keats'
+_Hyperion_ fails largely for want of an exact physical system such as
+Milton devises. Keats works almost wholly with vague Romantic suggestion,
+and there is nothing for the poem to hang on by. Something is happening;
+but it is difficult to say what, for we see only dream-imagery, and hear
+only muffled echoes. Had Milton made unsparing use of abstraction and
+suggestion, his poem would have fallen into windy chaos. The
+"philosophical poems" of his age did so fall. Henry More's _Platonick
+Song of the Soul_ (1642), wherein are treated the Life of the Soul, her
+Immortality, the Sleep of the Soul, the Unity of Souls, and Memory after
+Death, is a dust-storm of verbiage. Such words as "calefaction,"
+"exility," "self-reduplication," "tricentreity," "individuation,"
+"circumvolution," "presentifick circularity," struggle and sprawl within
+the narrow room of the Spenserian stanza. Milton keeps us in better
+company than this, even in Hell. He uses abstract terms magnificently,
+but almost always with a reference to concrete realities, not as the
+names of separate entities. By the substitution of abstract nouns for
+concrete he achieves a wonderful effect of majesty. He does not name, for
+instance, the particular form of wind instrument that the heralds blew in
+Hell:--
+
+                  Four speedy Cherubim
+  Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy.
+
+He avoids defining his creatures by names that lend themselves to
+definite picture: of Death he says--
+
+  So spake the grisly Terror;
+
+and he makes Raphael, at the call of Heaven's king, rise
+
+            from among
+  Thousand celestial Ardours.
+
+In the Tenth Book, Death, snuffing the distant scent of mortality,
+becomes all nose--
+
+  So scented the grim Feature, and upturned
+  His nostril wide into the murky air.
+
+A superb example of this powerful use of abstract terms is contained in
+the First Book of _Paradise Regained_, where is described how Satan,
+disguised as an old man, took his leave of the Son of God, and
+
+                  Bowing low
+  His gray dissimulation, disappeared
+  Into thin air diffused.
+
+The word "dissimulation" expresses the fact of the gray hairs assumed,
+the purpose of deceit, the cringing attitude, and adds a vague effect of
+power. The same vagueness is habitually studied by Milton in such phrases
+as "the vast abrupt," "the palpable obscure," "the void immense," "the
+wasteful deep," where, by the use of an adjective in place of a
+substantive, the danger of a definite and inadequate conception is
+avoided.
+
+Milton, therefore, describes the concrete, the specific, the individual,
+using general and abstract terms for the sake of the dignity and scope
+that they lend. The best of our Romantic poets follow the opposite
+course: they are much concerned with abstract conceptions and general
+truths, but they bring them home by the employment of concrete and
+specific terms, and figures so familiar that they cannot easily avoid
+grotesque associations. These grotesque associations, however trivial,
+are the delight of humour: Alexander's dust will stop a beer-barrel;
+divine ambition exposes
+
+              what is mortal and unsure
+  To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
+  Even for an egg-shell.
+
+The comments made by Johnson on a certain well-known passage in _Macbeth_
+are an excellent example of the objections urged against the Romantic
+method--a method whereby, says Johnson, poetry is "debased by mean
+expressions." He takes for text the invocation of Night by Lady Macbeth--
+
+                  Come, thick night,
+  And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
+  That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
+  Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
+  To cry, "Hold, hold!"
+
+Johnson's criticisms, which take up a whole paper in _The Rambler_, may
+be conveniently stated in summary. The epithet _dun_, he says, is "an
+epithet now seldom heard but in the stable, and _dun_ night may come and
+go without any other notice but contempt." A _knife_, again, is "an
+instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments; we do
+not immediately conceive that any crime of importance is to be committed
+with a _knife_." In the third place, although to wish to elude the eye of
+Providence is "the utmost extravagance of determined wickedness," yet
+even this great conception is debased by two unfortunate words when the
+avengers of guilt are made to _peep_ through a _blanket_.
+
+It is easy, in this case at least, to defend Shakespeare. There is no
+need to make much of the fact that Johnson attributes the speech to
+Macbeth. The essence of the crime is that it is the treacherous and
+cowardly crime of an assassin, committed on a guest while he sleeps.
+Implements of war are out of place here; it is the very crime for a
+knife, and Lady Macbeth shows her sense of this when she uses the word.
+Again, the darkness that she invokes is not the solemn shadow of night,
+but the stifling, opaque smoke of Hell. The blanket was perhaps suggested
+to Shakespeare by the black canopy that hung over the Elizabethan stage
+to represent night; but, in any case, it gives the notion of an
+artificial privacy, shutting out light and shutting in sound, a smothered
+unnatural secrecy. The use of the word _blanket_, in fact, carries with
+it a new fantastic horror. Night herself, who has brought the fatal gift
+of sleep to Duncan, is represented as the cowardly accomplice of the
+murderers, performing the most dastardly office that can fall to the
+hireling of a bravo.
+
+The mean associations, therefore, in so far as they exist, help
+Shakespeare's purpose. Milton had no purpose that could be furthered by
+such help. The omissions in his descriptions cannot be supplied by an
+appeal to experience, for what he describes is outside the pale of human
+experience, and is, in that sense, unreal. His descriptions do not so
+much remind us of what we have seen as create for us what we are to see.
+He is bound, therefore, to avoid the slightest touch of unworthy
+association; the use of even a few domestic figures and homely phrases
+would bring his hanging palace about his ears. What dangers he escaped
+may be well seen in Cowley's _Davideis_, which fell into them all. This
+is how Cowley describes the attiring of his Gabriel, who is commissioned
+to bear a message to David--
+
+  He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
+  That e'er the midday Sun pierced through with light:
+  Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spred;
+  Washt from the morning beauties deepest red.
+  An harmless flaming _Meteor_ shone for haire,
+  And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.
+  He cuts out a silk _Mantle_ from the skies,
+  Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes.
+  This he with starry vapours spangles all,
+  Took in their prime ere they grow _ripe_ and _fall_,--
+
+--and so on. The whole business suggests the arming of Pigwiggin; or the
+intricacies of Belinda's toilet in _The Rape of the Lock_. Such a Gabriel
+should add the last touch of adornment from a patch-box filled with
+sun-spots; and then is fit only to be--
+
+  Drawn with a team of little atomies
+  Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep.
+
+Milton was not in the least likely to fall into this fantastic-familiar
+vein. But he was also debarred from dealing freely in realism; from
+carrying conviction by some sudden startling piece of fidelity to the
+mixed texture of human experience and human feeling. When the feast is
+spread in Eden he remarks, it is true,--"No fear lest dinner cool"; but a
+lapse like this is of the rarest. His success--and he knew it--depended
+on the untiring maintenance of a superhuman elevation. His choice of
+subject had therefore not a little to do with the nature of his diction;
+and, through the influence of his diction, as shall be shown hereafter,
+with the establishment of the poetic tradition that dominated Eighteenth
+Century poetry.
+
+The same motives and tendencies, the same consistent care for remoteness
+and loftiness, may be seen in the character of the similes that he most
+frequently employs. Almost all his figures and comparisons illustrate
+concrete objects by concrete objects, and occurrences in time by other
+occurrences later in time. The essentially Romantic sort of figure,
+scarcely used by Milton, illustrates subtle conceptual relations by
+parable--
+
+  Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
+  When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
+  And Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
+  And Innocence is closing up his eyes,--
+  Now, if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
+  From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
+
+Sometimes, by a curious reversal, poets, especially the more
+sophisticated poets of the Romantic Revival, describe a perfectly
+definite outward object or scene by a figure drawn from the most complex
+abstract conceptions. So Shelley, with whom these inverted figures are
+habitual, compares the skylark to
+
+        A poet hidden
+  In the light of thought;
+
+and Byron, describing the rainbow over a waterfall, likens it to
+
+  Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
+
+Both ways are foreign to the epic manner of Milton. His figures may be
+called historic parallels, whereby the names and incidents of human
+history are made to elucidate and ennoble the less familiar names and
+incidents of his prehistoric theme. Sometimes, following Homer, he
+borrows a figure from rustic life, as where, for instance, he compares
+the devils, crowding into Pandemonium, to a swarm of bees. But he
+perceived clearly enough that he could not, for the reasons already
+explained, afford to deal largely in this class of figure: he prefers to
+maintain dignity and distance by choosing comparisons from ancient
+history and mythology, or from those great and strange things in Nature
+which repel intimacy--the sun, the moon, the sea, planets in opposition,
+a shooting star, an evening mist, a will-o'-the-wisp, a vulture
+descending from the Himalayas, the ice-floes on the North-East passage,
+the sea-beast leviathan, Xerxes' Hellespontic bridge, the gryphon
+pursuing the Arimaspian, the madness of Alcides in Oeta, the rape of
+Proserpine, and a hundred more reminiscences of the ancient world.
+
+Even the great events of ancient history seemed to him at times too
+familiar, too little elevated and remote to furnish a resting-place for a
+song that intended "no middle flight." He transforms his proper names,
+both to make them more melodious, and to make them more unfamiliar to the
+ear. No praise is too high for his art and skill in this matter. An
+example may be found in those four lines--the earliest that have the full
+Miltonic resonance--describing the fate of Lycidas, carried by the tide
+southward to the Cornish coast:--
+
+  Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
+  Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
+  Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
+  Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.
+
+"Bellerus" seems to be a name of Milton's coinage. He had written
+"Corineus," and probably disliked the sound, for in this case it can
+hardly have been that the name was too familiar. Both reasons concurred
+in prompting the allusion to Pharaoh and his Egyptian squadrons as--
+
+  Busiris and his Memphian chivalry.
+
+One would think "Italy" a pleasant enough sound, and "Vulcan" a good
+enough name for poetry. Neither was musical enough for Milton; both
+perhaps had associations too numerous, familiar, and misleading. Vulcan
+is mentioned, by that name, in _Comus_; but in _Paradise Lost_, where the
+story of his fall from Heaven is told, and the architect of Pandemonium
+is identified with him, both names, "Italy" and "Vulcan," are heightened
+and improved:--
+
+                  In Ausonian land
+  Men called him Mulciber.
+
+"Hephaistos," the name dear to moderns, could have found no place in
+Milton's works, unless it had been put in a description of the God's
+smithy, or, perhaps, in the sonnet where are pilloried those
+harsh-sounding Presbyterian names:--
+
+  Collkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp.
+
+Milton's use of proper names is a measure of his poetic genius. He does
+not forego it even in the lyric. Was there ever so learned a lyric as
+that beginning "Sabrina fair"--with its rich stores of marine mythology?
+History, not philosophy, was the source that he drew on for his
+splendours; and history, according to Milton, had, since the Fall of Man,
+furnished nothing but fainter and weaker repetitions of those stupendous
+events which filled the early theatre of universal space.
+
+His epic catalogues, which are few in number, show the same predominant
+interest in history and geography. The story of the Creation gave him an
+excellent opportunity of enumerating the kinds and properties of birds,
+beasts, fishes, and reptiles, plants and trees, after the manner of
+Chaucer and Spenser. This opportunity he refuses, or, at any rate, turns
+to but small account. His general descriptions are highly picturesque,
+but he spends little time on enumeration and detail. Of vegetables, only
+the vine, the gourd, and the corn are mentioned by name; of the
+inhabitants of the sea only the seal, the dolphin, and the whale. Natural
+knowledge, although he made a fair place for it in his scheme of
+education, was not one of his dearer studies. It was enough for him, as
+for Raphael, that Adam knew the natures of the beasts, and gave them
+appropriate names. The mere mention, on the other hand, of historic and
+geographic names rouses all the poet in him. The splendid roll-call of
+the devils, in the First Book of _Paradise Lost_, and the only less
+splendid enumeration, in the Eleventh Book, of the Kingdoms of the Earth,
+shown to Adam in vision, are a standing testimony to his powers. Compared
+with these, the list of human diseases and maladies in the Eleventh Book,
+suggested perhaps by Du Bartas, is rehearsed in a slighter and more
+perfunctory fashion.
+
+One last point in Milton's treatment must not be left unnoticed. Much
+adverse criticism has been spent on his allegorical figures of Sin and
+Death. There is good classical precedent for the introduction of such
+personified abstractions among the actors of a drama; and, seeing that
+the introduction of sin and death into the world was the chief effect of
+his main action, Milton no doubt felt that this too must be handled in
+right epic fashion, and must not be left to be added to the theme as a
+kind of embroidery of moral philosophy. In no other way could he have
+treated the topic half so effectively. There is enough of his philosophy
+in Milton's Heaven to damp our desire for more of it on his Earth or in
+his Hell. And when once we have given him license to deal only in
+persons, we are amply rewarded. His management of the poetic figure of
+personification is superb. It is a figure difficult to handle, and
+generally fails of effect through falling into one of two extremes.
+Either the quality, or the person, is forgotten. The figures in the
+_Romaunt of the Rose_ are good examples of the one type, of the minute
+materialistic personifications of the Middle Ages, pictorial rather than
+literary in essence, like the illuminated figures in a psalter. The
+feeble abstractions that people Gray's Odes, where, as Coleridge
+remarked, the personification depends wholly on the use of an initial
+capital, are examples of the other. Neither has the art of combining the
+vastness and vagueness of the abstract with the precise and definite
+conception of a person, as is done in the great figure of Religion drawn
+by Lucretius, as is done also in those other figures--the only creations
+of English poetry which approach the Latin in grandeur--the horrible
+phantoms of Sin and Death.
+
+These, then, here outlined slightly and imperfectly, are some of the most
+noteworthy features of Milton's style. By the measured roll of his verse,
+and the artful distribution of stress and pause to avoid monotony and to
+lift the successive lines in a climax; by the deliberate and choice
+character of his diction, and his wealth of vaguely emotional epithets;
+by the intuition which taught him to use no figures that do not heighten
+the majesty, and no names that do not help the music of his poem; by the
+vivid outlines of the concrete imaginations that he imposes on us for
+real, and the cloudy brilliance that he weaves for them out of all great
+historical memories, and all far-reaching abstract conceptions, he
+attained to a finished style of perhaps a more consistent and unflagging
+elevation than is to be found elsewhere in literature. There is nothing
+to put beside him. "His natural port," says Johnson, "is gigantick
+loftiness." And Landor: "After I have been reading the _Paradise Lost_, I
+can take up no other poet with satisfaction. I seem to have left the
+music of Handel for the music of the streets, or, at best, for drums and
+fifes." The secret of the style is lost; and no poet, since Milton's day,
+has recaptured the solemnity and beauty of the large utterance of
+Gabriel, or Belial, or Satan.
+
+
+The success of _Paradise Lost_, when it was published in 1667, was
+immediate and startling. Some of the poet's biographers have shed tears
+over the ten pounds that was all Milton ever received for his greatest
+work; others, magnanimously renouncing the world on his behalf, have
+rejoiced in the smallness of the sum paid him for a priceless work.
+Lament and heroics are both out of place. London was a small town, and it
+may well be doubted whether any modern provincial town of the same size
+would buy up in eighteen months thirteen hundred copies of a poem so
+serious and difficult and novel as _Paradise Lost_. Moreover, before the
+close of the century, six editions had appeared, three of them in folio,
+and so--judged by the number of editions--Milton's epic had outrun
+Shakespeare's plays in popularity. The folio edition of 1695, with notes
+and elucidations by one Patrick Hume, a Scottish scholar, appeared
+fourteen years before Nicholas Rowe produced the first critical edition
+of Shakespeare. The literary world quickly came to the opinion expressed
+by Dryden in the year of Milton's death, that the _Paradise Lost_ was
+"one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either
+this age or nation has produced." Barely twenty years later the editors
+of the _Athenian Mercury_ were asked to determine "Whether Milton and
+Waller were not the best English Poets; and which the better of the two?"
+Their verdict, reflecting, no doubt, the average opinion of the time, ran
+thus: "They were both excellent in their kind, and exceeded each other,
+and all besides. Milton was the fullest and loftiest; Waller the neatest
+and most correct poet we ever had." Long before Addison wrote the papers
+on _Paradise Lost_ in the _Spectator_, Milton had received full
+recognition in the literary handbooks of that age. Langbaine, in his
+_Account of the English Dramatick Poets_ (1691), takes notice of Dryden's
+debts to _Samson Agonistes_, and, with an effort to be just, remarks of
+Milton:--" Had his Principles been as good as his Parts, he had been an
+Excellent Person." Sir Thomas Pope Blount, in his _De Re Poetica_ (1694),
+and Bysshe in his _Art of English Poetry_ (1702), bear witness, in their
+several ways, to Milton's great and assured fame. Indeed, Thomas Rymer,
+of Gray's Inn, Esquire, who in 1677 had sneered at "that Paradise Lost of
+Milton's which some are pleased to call a Poem," and William Winstanley,
+who, in the _Lives of the Most Famous English Poets_ (1687), had remarked
+of Milton that "his Fame is gone out like a Candle in a Snuff, and his
+Memory will always stink," were almost alone among the voices of their
+time. They were still under the influence of the old political prejudice,
+but they did battle for a doomed opinion, and, among judges not
+illiterate, they are the poet's last detractors.
+
+The singular thing to note is that the eighteenth century, which broke
+with almost every other seventeenth-century poet before Dryden, did not
+break with Milton. "Who now reads Cowley?" Pope asked: Cowley, whose works
+ran through so many editions that no modern reprint has been called for.
+If he had asked, "Who now reads Milton?" the answer must have been,
+"Every writer of English verse"; and so it has continued from the time of
+Milton's death to the present day. The choice of blank verse for
+_Paradise Lost_ established that metre in formidable rivalry to the
+heroic couplet, so that it became the usual metre for long poems of a
+reflective or descriptive cast. Professed imitations of Milton's verse
+were many; among them, Addison's _Translation of a Story out of the Third
+Aeneid_, Broome's experiment in the translation of the Eleventh Odyssey,
+Fenton's fragments of two books of the _Iliad_, and Christopher Pitt's
+paraphrase of Psalm cxxxix. In the first year of the eighteenth century
+John Philips showed, in his _Splendid Shilling_, how the style of Milton
+might be applied, for the purposes of burlesque, to humble subjects, a
+lesson which he further illustrated, with no ostensible comic intent, in
+his later poems, _Cyder_ and _Blenheim_. Gay, in _Wine, a Poem_,
+Somerville in _The Chase_, Armstrong in _The Oeconomy of Love_ and _The
+Art of Preserving Health_, Christopher Smart in The Hop-Garden, Dyer in
+_The Fleece_, and Grainger in _The Sugar-Cane_, all followed where
+Philips' _Cyder_ had led, and multiplied year by year what may be called
+the technical and industrial applications of Milton's style. Among the
+many other blank verse poems produced during the middle part of the
+century it is enough to name Thomson's _Seasons_; Blair's _Grave_;
+Glover's _Leonidas_; Shenstone's _Economy_, _The Ruined Abbey_, and _Love
+and Honour_; Young's _Night Thoughts_; Akenside's _Pleasures of the
+Imagination_; Thomas Warton's _Pleasures of Melancholy_; Mallet's _The
+Excursion_, and _Amyntor and Theodora_; Cooper's _The Power of Harmony_;
+and Lyttelton's _Blenheim_. The influence of Milton is not equally
+apparent in all of these, but in none is it wholly wanting; in most it is
+visible on every page. The mere invocation often tells a tale. Thus
+Akenside:--
+
+  Thou chief, Poetic Spirit, from the banks
+  Of Avon, whence thy holy fingers cull
+  Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
+  Where Shakespeare lies, be present. And with thee
+  Let Fiction come; on her aërial wings
+  Wafting ten thousand colours.
+
+The quotation need not be prolonged; even while he commemorates
+Shakespeare, Akenside goes to Milton for his material, and plays a feeble
+variation on the Miltonic phrase:--
+
+                In his right hand
+  Grasping ten thousand thunders.
+
+Thus Lyttelton:--
+
+  Minerva, thee to my adventurous lyre
+  Assistant I invoke, that means to sing
+  Blenheim, proud monument of British fame
+  Thy glorious work!
+
+"The building, not the field, I sing," he might have added, for Philips
+had already chanted the battle of Blenheim in like Miltonic fashion.
+Thus, again, the worthy Grainger, flattest of agricultural bards:--
+
+  Spirit of Inspiration, that did'st lead
+  Th' Ascrean poet to the sacred mount,
+  And taught'st him all the precepts of the swain;
+  Descend from Heaven, and guide my trembling steps
+  To Fame's eternal dome, where Maro reigns;
+  Where pastoral Dyer, where Pomona's bard,
+  And Smart and Somervile in varying strains,
+  Their sylvan lore convey: O may I join
+  This choral band, and from their precepts learn
+  To deck my theme, which though to song unknown,
+  Is most momentous to my country's weal!
+
+Grainger frequently echoes Milton; and in the passage where he addresses
+the Avon, at Bristol, he pays a more explicit tribute:--
+
+  Though not to you, young Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
+  All-rudely warbled his first woodland notes;
+  *      *      *      *      *
+  On you reclined, another tuned his pipe,
+  Whom all the Muses emulously love,
+  And in whose strains your praises shall endure
+  While to Sabrina speeds your healing stream.
+
+Better and more striking instances of the Miltonic spell laid on blank
+verse are easily to be found for the seeking. But since it is the
+omnipresence of this Miltonic influence that is asserted, passages like
+these, which catch the eye on any chance page of eighteenth-century blank
+verse, and are representative of hundreds more, suffice for the purpose.
+
+There has been a tendency among recent historians of English literature
+to group together the poets who, like Dyer in _Grongar Hill_, and Thomas
+Warton in _The Pleasures of Melancholy_, echo the strains of Milton's
+early poems, and to name them "Miltonics," precursors of the Romantic
+Revival. No doubt there is a marked difference between Milton's earlier
+manner and his later; not a few of his lovers, if they were forced to
+choose, would readily give up the three major poems to save the five best
+of the minor. But it is going far to appropriate the name of "Miltonic"
+to imitators of the earlier poems. Perhaps the study of _L'Allegro_ and
+_Il Penseroso_ and _Comus_ helped forward the Romantic Revival; but the
+chief influence of Milton on the development of English poetry was not
+this. It was natural enough that those who had been taught from childhood
+to read and admire _Paradise Lost_ should find relief and novelty in the
+freer and more spontaneous music of these youthful poems. But the truth
+is that before ever he abetted the escape, he helped to forge the
+fetters; that Milton, as much as any other single writer, was responsible
+for the wide and potent sway of the classical convention.
+
+Above all, he may fairly be called the inventor and, by the irony of
+fate, the promulgator of that "poetic diction" which, in the time of its
+deformity and decay, Wordsworth sought to destroy. Johnson attributes the
+invention to Dryden. "There was therefore," he says, "before the time of
+Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words, at once refined from the
+grossness of domestick use, and free from the harshness of terms
+appropriated to particular arts. Words too familiar or too remote defeat
+the purpose of a poet."
+
+There is no need to quarrel with this account, if we are careful to
+understand exactly what Johnson means. Dryden, he says in effect, wrote
+plain, well-bred English; he eschewed technical terms, shunned the florid
+licenses of the Elizabethans, and yet, in his more studied verse, never
+dropped into the town-gallant vein of some of his contemporaries, the
+slang of Butler or Lestrange. Johnson, it should be remembered, thought
+the diction of _Lycidas_ "harsh," and it is plain enough from many of his
+utterances that he ranged Milton with the poets who use words and phrases
+"too remote" from the language of natural intercourse. He was a devoted
+adherent of the school of Dryden and Pope; in the _Lives of the Poets_ he
+loses no opportunity of expressing his contempt for blank verse; he was
+only too likely to exalt the influence of his masters on the poets of his
+own time, and to ignore the influence of Milton. Since handbooks of
+literature are commonly formed by a process of attrition from such works
+as Johnson's _Lives_, his opinions on a point like this persist in
+epidemic fashion; they are detached from their authority, and repeated so
+often that at last they become orthodox. But no ignoring of Milton can
+alter the fact that English verse went Milton-mad during the earlier half
+of the eighteenth century. Miltonic cadences became a kind of patter, and
+the diction that Milton had invented for the rendering of his colossal
+imaginations was applied indifferently to all subjects--to apple-growing,
+sugar-boiling, the drainage of the Bedford level, the breeding of
+negroes, and the distempers of sheep. Milton's shadowy grandeur, his
+avoidance of plain concrete terms, his manner of linking adjective with
+substantive, were all necessary to him for the describing of his strange
+world; but these habits became a mere vicious trick of absurd periphrasis
+and purposeless vagueness when they were carried by his imitators into
+the description of common and familiar objects. A reader making his first
+acquaintance with Thomson's _Seasons_ might suppose that the poem was
+written for a wager, to prove that country life may be described, and
+nothing called by its name. The philosophic pride of the eighteenth
+century was tickled by the use of general terms in description; the
+chosen periphrases are always more comprehensive than the names that they
+replace. When Thomson, for instance, speaks of "the feathered nations" or
+of "the glossy kind," it is only by the context that we are saved from
+supposing him to allude, in the one case to Red Indians, in the other to
+moles. And these are but two of some dozen devices for escaping from the
+flat vulgarity of calling birds by that name.
+
+Milton himself, it must be admitted, is not wholly free from blame. The
+elevation and vagueness of his diction, which were a mere necessity to
+him in the treatment of large parts of his subject, are yet maintained by
+him in the description of things comparatively familiar. When Sin is
+described as "rolling her bestial train" towards the gates of Hell, the
+diction is faultless; when the serpent (as yet an innocent reptile in
+Paradise),
+
+  Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine
+  His braided train,
+
+it is impossible to cavil; but when Raphael, in conversation with Adam,
+describes the formation of the banks--
+
+                    where rivers now
+  Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train,
+
+criticism is less at ease. We feel that we are drawing near to the
+"poetic diction" of the eighteenth century. Eve's tears are called
+
+              precious drops that ready stood
+  Each in their crystal sluice,
+
+but the description is saved by the lines that immediately precede, where
+Milton says the word, and thereby shows that he is not seeking idle
+periphrasis:--
+
+  But silently a gentle tear let fall
+  From either eye, and wiped them with her hair.
+
+His constant preference for words of Latin origin certainly brings Milton
+near at times to the poetic diction banned by Wordsworth. "Vernal bloom"
+for "spring flowers," "humid bow" for "rainbow," the description of the
+brooks rolling--
+
+  With mazy error under pendent shades,
+
+the use of phrases like "nitrous powder" or "smutty grain" for
+"gunpowder," and "optic glass" or "optic tube" for the telescope or
+"perspective," are instances of the approximation. A certain number of
+these circuitous phrases are justified by considerations of dramatic
+propriety. When Raphael describes the artillery used in Heaven, he speaks
+of cannon balls as "iron globes" and "balls of missive ruin," and calls
+the linstock the "incentive reed pernicious," thereby perhaps drawing
+attention to the strange character of the new invention. No such reason
+can be invoked for his justification when he tells how the sun receives
+from earth
+
+            his alimental recompense
+  In humid exhalations;
+
+still less when, speaking of food, with which he confesses himself to be
+familiar, he calls it "corporal nutriment."
+
+But the chief sinner is Adam. If the evil passions of the rebel Angels
+invented the pun, it was the pomposity of our father Adam that first
+brought "poetic diction" into vogue. When the curse has fallen in Eden he
+makes a long speech for the comfort of Eve, in the course of which he
+alludes to "the graceful locks of these fair spreading trees," speaks of
+the sun as "this diurnal star," and, studying protection against the
+newly experienced cold, advises--
+
+          how we his gathered beams
+  Reflected may with matter sere foment,
+  Or by collision of two bodies grind
+  The air attrite to fire;
+
+--for all the world as if he were a man of science lecturing to some
+Philosophic Institute on the customs of savages.
+
+If, then, the term "poetic diction" is to be used as Wordsworth used it,
+Johnson's account of its origin must be amended. There was little or no
+poetic diction, of the kind condemned by Wordsworth, before the time of
+Milton. In the Elizabethan age all diction was free to poetry, and was
+freely used. Drawing on his accumulated stores of literary reminiscence,
+and using them for his own special purpose, Milton invented "poetic
+diction," and bore a main part in the founding of the English school of
+poetry which is called "Classical." His diction is called "poetic,"
+because it was absolutely fitted to his purpose, which could have been
+conceived only by the loftiest poetic genius. His style was admired,
+misunderstood, and imitated for a century. The diction of his imitators
+is called "poetic," because, for the most part, they believed that dull
+nonsense and trading platitudes could be made into poetry by a borrowed
+system of diction.
+
+Even the best poets of the age are not freer than the rest from the
+baneful Miltonic infection. Coleridge found the source of "our
+pseudo-poetic diction" in Pope's _Homer_. But Pope was from boyhood a
+sedulous student of Milton, and a frequent borrower. The mock-heroics of
+the _Dunciad_ are stilted on Miltonic phrases; and in the translation of
+Homer, above all, reminiscences of Milton abound. In most of them
+Milton's phraseology is weakened and misapplied. Two instances among many
+may serve. When Vulcan, in the First Iliad, warns Juno against rousing
+the anger of Jove, he adds:--
+
+  Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,
+  Hurled headlong downward from th' ethereal height.
+
+The word "flaming" in Milton's splendid line did not suit Pope's
+purpose--so it disappears, and with it half the glory of the original. In
+place of it, to eke out the syllables, he inserts the idle, if not
+foolish, substitute "downward." This is the art of sinking in poetry.
+Again, Ulysses, narrating his adventures, in the Ninth Odyssey,
+remarks:--
+
+  In vain Calypso long constrained my stay,
+  With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
+
+The whole line, so beautiful when it describes the modesty of Eve, in its
+new context becomes stark nonsense. It is Ulysses who is "reluctant," and
+Calypso who is "amorous." The misuse of Milton's line makes the situation
+comic.
+
+James Thomson (to take another example) with a genuine thin vein of
+originality, too often conceals it under Miltonic lendings. The trail of
+_Paradise Lost_ runs all through _The Seasons_. In such a description as
+this of the Moon in Autumn there is a cluster of reminiscences:--
+
+                          Meanwhile the Moon
+  Full-orbed and breaking through the scattered clouds,
+  Shows her broad visage in the crimsoned east.
+  Turned to the Sun direct, her spotted disk,
+  Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,
+  And caverns deep, as optic tube descries,
+  A smaller Earth, gives all his blaze again,
+  Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
+
+Thomson could not resist the attractions of Milton's stately Latin
+vocabulary. Where Milton describes how, in Paradise--
+
+                      the flowery lap
+  Of some irriguous valley spread her store;
+
+Thomson follows with--
+
+  See where the winding vale its lavish stores
+  Irriguous spreads.
+
+Where Milton describes how Satan, wounded by Michael--
+
+          writhed him to and fro convolved,
+
+Thomson follows with a description of the Spring meadows, where
+
+                      the sportive lambs
+  This way and that convolved, in friskful glee
+  Their frolics play.
+
+The lambs emulating Satan are a kind of epitome and emblem of those
+descriptive poets of the eighteenth century who took Milton for their
+model.
+
+But perhaps the best example of all is Gray, whose work is full of
+Miltonic reminiscence. He frequently borrows; and, like Pope, almost
+always spoils in the borrowing. Thus what Milton writes of the
+nightingale--
+
+  She all night long her amorous descant sung,--
+
+is echoed by Gray in the _Sonnet on the Death of Richard West_:--
+
+  The birds in vain their amorous descant join.
+
+Now a "descant" is a variation imposed upon a plain-song. The word
+exactly describes the song of the nightingale; but the addition of the
+verb "join" robs it of all meaning. Again, the passage in the Second Book
+of _Paradise Lost_ where Moloch describes the pains of Hell--
+
+                when the scourge
+  Inexorably, and the torturing hour
+  Calls us to penance,--
+
+lingered in Gray's memory when he addressed Adversity--
+
+  Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
+  The bad affright, afflict the best.
+
+The "torturing hour" in Gray's line becomes one of the chance possessions
+of Adversity, suspended from her belt with the rest of her trinkets.
+Observe how the word "hour" has been emptied of its meaning. It affrights
+one class of persons, and afflicts another, which anything that is
+"torturing" might easily do. In Milton the most awful property of Time is
+indicated; the hour "calls--inexorably." Here, then, in two cases, is
+plagiarism, which may be defined as unblest theft--the theft of what you
+do not want, and cannot use.
+
+In these and many other passages of eighteenth-century verse it may be
+seen how literary reminiscence sometimes strangles poetry; and how a
+great man suffers at the hands of his disciples and admirers. The thing
+has happened so often that it ceases to cause surprise; were not Lydgate
+and Occleve pupils (save the mark!) of Chaucer? And yet it remains a
+paradox that Milton's, of all styles in the world, unapproachable in its
+loftiness, invented by a temper of the most burning zeal and the
+profoundest gravity for the treatment of a subject wildly intractable by
+ordinary methods, should have been chosen by a generation of
+philosophical organ-grinders as the fittest pattern for their
+professional melodies; and that a system of diction employed by a blind
+man for the description of an imaginary world should have been borrowed
+by landscape-gardeners and travelling pedlars for the setting forth of
+their works and their wares.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+In the meantime, while Dryden and Milton both had their schools, most of
+our seventeenth-century poetry fell into an almost complete oblivion.
+Dryden's satiric, and Milton's epic strains engrossed attention, and
+shaped the verses of an age. But the seventeenth century was
+extraordinarily wealthy in poetic kinds quite distinct from these: in
+metaphysic, and mysticism, in devotional ecstasy, and love-lyric, and
+romance. The English genius in poetry is essentially metaphysical and
+romantic. Milton was neither. He could not have excelled in any of these
+kinds; nor have come near to Suckling, or Crashaw, or Vaughan, or
+Herrick, or Marvell, in their proper realms. It is a permissible
+indulgence, therefore, in taking leave of Milton, to turn from the
+_Paradise Lost_ for a moment, and, escaping from the solid materialism of
+the heroic and epic strain, to find passion once more among the Court
+lyrists, and spiritual insight among the retired mystics, to find
+Religion and Love, and the humility that has access to both. A profound
+humility, impossible to Milton, inspired Vaughan when he wrote such a
+verse as this:--
+
+        There is in God, some say,
+  A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here
+  Say it is late and dusky, because they
+        See not all clear.
+  O for that night! where I in him
+  Might live invisible and dim!
+
+There is a natural vision, and there is a spiritual vision; the spiritual
+belongs to Vaughan, not to Milton. If Milton persuades us to a willing
+suspension of disbelief for the moment, Vaughan thrills us with a sense
+of vivid reality. His _Ascension Day_ is a thing seen, as if it were a
+memory of yesterday:--
+
+  The day-star smiles, and light, with thee deceast,
+  Now shines in all the chambers of the East.
+  What stirs, what posting intercourse and mirth
+  Of Saints and Angels glorifie the earth!
+  What sighs, what whispers, busie stops and stays;
+  Private and holy talk fill all the ways!
+  They pass as at the last great day, and run
+  In their white robes to seek the risen Sun;
+  I see them, hear them, mark their haste, and move
+  Amongst them, with them, wing'd with faith and love.
+
+To the intensity of his aspiration and hushed expectance the world seems
+only a turbulent passing pageant, or a hard wayfaring, suffered in a
+dream:--
+
+                          Who stays
+  Here long must passe
+  O'er dark hills, swift streames, and steep ways
+            As smooth as glasse.
+
+Or a brief sickness:--
+
+  So for this night I linger here,
+  And, full of tossings to and fro,
+  Expect still when thou wilt appear,
+  That I may get me up and go.
+
+His eyes are fixed on the shining lights that beckon him; the world is
+full of voices, but its sights and sounds appeal to him in vain; the
+beauties that surround him are things of naught--
+
+  Glorious deceptions, gilded mists,
+  False joyes, phantastick flights.
+
+In the distance before him there shines
+
+            An air of glory
+  Whose light doth trample on my days;
+  My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
+            Meer glimmering and decays;
+
+and he lifts up his voice in passionate desire for the ultimate
+deliverance:--
+
+  Ah! what time will it come? When shall that crie
+  _The Bridegroome's comming_! fill the sky?
+          Shall it in the evening run,
+          When our words and works are done?
+  Or will thy all-surprising light
+          Break at midnight?
+
+He broods over it till nothing else is present to him in the
+night-watches:--
+
+  I saw Eternity the other night
+  Like a great ring of calm and endless light.
+
+The history of the struggles and corruption of mankind may close at any
+moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at a signal given:--
+
+  All's in deep sleep and night; thick darkness lyes
+      And hatcheth o'er thy people--
+  But hark! what trumpet's that, what angel cries
+      _Arise! Thrust in thy sickle!_
+
+Here is a religious poet indeed, a visionary, a mystic, and a Christian;
+none of which names can be truly applied to Milton. And if we wish to
+find Love enjoying his just supremacy in poetry, we cannot do better than
+seek him among the lyrists of the Court of Charles II. Milton,
+self-sufficient and censorious, denies the name of love to these songs of
+the sons of Belial. Love, he says, reigns and revels in Eden, not
+
+                      in court amours,
+  Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
+  Or serenate, which the starved lover sings
+  To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
+
+Yet for the quick and fresh spirit of love in the poetry of that time we
+must go to the sons of Belial. There is a pathetic passage in one of
+Milton's divorce pamphlets, where, speaking of the unhappy choices in
+marriage to which "soberest and best governed men" are liable, he
+remarks:--"It is not strange though many, who have spent their youth
+chastely, are in some things not so quick-sighted while they haste too
+eagerly to light the nuptial torch; nor is it therefore that for a modest
+error a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means
+to release him, since they who have lived most loosely, by reason of
+their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because
+their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces
+to teach them experience."
+
+The wild affections, unsettling at will, wrote better love-songs than the
+steadfast principles of the sober and well-governed. Roystering
+libertines like Sir Charles Sedley were more edifying lovers than the
+austere husbands of Mary Powell and of Eve. Milton would have despised
+and detested the pleasure-seeking philosophy of Sedley:--
+
+  Let us then ply those joys we have,
+  'Tis vain to think beyond the grave;
+  Out of our reach the Gods have laid
+      Of Time to come th' event,
+  And laugh to see the Fools afraid
+      Of what the Knaves invent.
+
+But the self-abandonment and the passion of two or three of Sedley's
+songs are out of Milton's reach:--
+
+  Not _Celia_ that I juster am,
+    Or better than the rest,
+  For I would change each hour like them,
+    Were not my heart at rest.
+
+  But I am ty'd to very thee
+    By every thought I have,
+  Thy face I only care to see,
+    Thy heart I only crave.
+
+  All that in woman is ador'd
+    In thy dear self I find,
+  For the whole sex can but afford
+    The handsome and the kind.
+
+  Why should I then seek further store,
+    And still make love anew;
+  When change itself can give no more,
+    'Tis easie to be true.
+
+It is like a cup of cold water after the didactic endearments of Adam,
+and his repeated apostrophe:
+
+  Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve--
+  For such thou art, from sin and blame entire.
+
+Then there was John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He was drunk for five
+years on end,--so his biographer, who had it from his own lips,
+alleges--and he died at the age of thirty-two. Like Sedley, he professes
+no virtues, and holds no far-reaching views. But what a delicate turn of
+personal affection he gives to the expression of his careless creed:--
+
+  The time that is to come is not,
+    How can it then be mine?
+  The present moment's all my lot,
+  And that, as fast as it is got,
+    Phyllis, is only thine.
+
+  Then talk not of inconstancy,
+    False hearts, and broken vows
+  If I by miracle can be
+  This live-long minute true to thee,
+    'Tis all that Heaven allows.
+
+Rochester's best love-poetry reaches the topmost pinnacle of achievement
+in that kind. None has ever been written more movingly beautiful than
+this:--
+
+  When, wearied with a world of woe,
+    To thy safe bosom I retire,
+  Where love and peace and truth does flow,
+    May I contented there expire!
+
+  Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,
+    I fall on some base heart unblest--
+  Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven--
+    And lose my everlasting rest!
+
+Or than that other piece (too beautiful and too intense to be cited as a
+sudden illustration of a thesis) beginning--
+
+  Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why
+  Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny
+  The sunshine of the Sun's enlivening eye?
+
+The wind bloweth where it listeth; the wandering fire of song touches the
+hearts and lips of whom it will. Milton built an altar in the name of the
+Lord, and he made a great trench about the altar, and he put the wood in
+order, and loaded the altar with rich exotic offerings, cassia and nard,
+odorous gums and balm, and fruit burnished with golden rind. But the fire
+from Heaven descended on the hastily piled altars of the sons of Belial,
+and left Milton's gorgeous altar cold.
+
+His fame is now old-established and settled, so there is no place left
+for the eloquence of the memorialist, or the studied praises of the
+pleader. I have tried to understand Milton; and have already praised him
+as well as I know how, with no stinted admiration, I trust, and certainly
+with no merely superstitious reverence. If I must round my discourse by
+repeating something that I have already said or suggested, it shall be
+this--that as he stands far aloof from his contemporaries, so in the
+succession of great figures that mark for us the centuries of our
+literature he is seen once more singular and a stranger. We bred
+Shakespeare in our Midlands; he was nourished from the soil that still
+grows our daily bread. But Milton was an alien conqueror. The crowd of
+native-born Puritans, who sometimes (not without many searchings of heart
+and sharp misgivings) attempt to claim him for their leader, have no
+title in him. It is a proof of his dominating power, and no credit to
+their intelligence, that they accept him as their representative. His
+influence on the destinies and history of our literature might be
+compared to the achievement of Napoleon while he was winning the
+victories that changed the map of Europe. He could not change the
+character of a people, nor perpetuate his dynasty. But nothing is as it
+would have been without him. Our literature is as hospitable as the
+Hindoo pantheon; the great revolutionary has won a place even in our
+creed. And the writer has this advantage, at least, over the conqueror
+and legislator, that he has bequeathed to us not maps, nor laws, but
+poems, whose beauty, like the World's unwithered countenance, is bright
+as at the day of their creation.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+[For the following Index I am indebted to the kindness of three of my
+pupils, Miss F. Marston, Miss E. L. Morice, and Miss D. E. Yates.]
+
+Abdiel, 72, 138-39, 156, 211
+Abstract terms, Milton's use of, 227-31
+Adam, 32, 35, 54, 64, 82-4, 87, 92, 95-6, 105, 112, 115, 122, 141-45,
+    148-50, 154-57, 160, 207, 222, 237, 248-50, 261
+_Adamo_, 95
+Addison, Joseph, 157-58, 206, 218, 242
+_Æneid_, Virgil's, 158
+Akenside, Mark, 243
+Allegorical figures, Milton's, 237-38
+_Amyntor and Theodora_, Mallet's, 243
+Andreini, 95-7, 104, 106
+Angelo, Michael, 88
+_Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus_, 217
+_Apology for Smectymnuus_, 16, 69, 71, 74
+Arbuthnot, John, 218
+_Areopagitica_, 43, 46, 48, 49, 52, 56-7, 65, 76, 180
+Arianism, 86
+Ariosto, 171
+Armstrong, John, 242
+_Art of English Poetry_, Bysshe's, 241
+_Art of Preserving Health, The_, Armstrong's, 242
+Arthurian Legend, 23, 60, 89-90
+_Ascension Day_, Vaughan's, 257
+Athanasian Creed, 86
+_Athenian Mercury_, 240
+Augustine, Saint, 112
+
+Bacon, Francis, 1, 198
+Barclay, John, 57
+Baxter, Richard, 20-21
+Beaumont, Francis, 218
+Beaumont, Joseph, 176
+Beelzebub, 140
+Belial, 140, 211-12, 239, 259
+Bembo, Pietro, 46
+Bentley, Richard, 157-58
+_Biron, Tragedy of_, Chapman's, 204
+Blair, Robert, 243
+_Blenheim_, Lyttelton's, 243
+_Blenheim_, Philips's, 242
+Blount, Sir Thomas Pope, 241
+Bodley, Sir Thomas, 17
+Boileau, Nicolas, 178
+_Book of Sports_, 25
+Bossu, Charles, 158
+Boyd, Zachary, 175
+Brice, Thomas, 173
+Broome, William, 242
+Bunyan, John, 147, 155
+Burke, Edmund, 40, 47, 77, 134
+Burnet, Dr. Thomas, 84
+Butler, Samuel, 44, 72, 246
+Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 233
+Bysshe, 241
+
+Cædmon, 106
+Cambridge, Milton at, 13
+Camden, William, 61
+Carew, Thomas, 197
+Catalogues, Milton's Epic, 236
+Catullus, 206
+Chapman, George, 204, 218
+Charlemagne, 60
+Charles I., 23
+Charles II., Court of, 26, 259
+_Chase, The_, Somerville's, 242
+Chaucer, Geoffrey, 145, 236, 255
+Chesterfield, Lord, 133
+_Christian Doctrine, Treatise of_, 43, 113, 140
+Church of England, 17, 19-21, 24, 34
+_City Match, The_, Mayne's, 189
+Classic School, 220, 226
+Cleveland, John, 72
+_Clovis_, Saint-Sorlin's, 178-79, 205
+Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 127, 151, 173, 214, 238, 251
+_Comus_, 28, 93, 162-63, 182, 184, 191, 199, 235, 245
+Congreve, William, 147, 225
+Cooper, John Gilbert, 243
+_Coriolanus_, Shakespeare's, 122
+Court lyrists, 259-63
+Cowley, Abraham, 72, 177, 206, 219, 231, 242
+Crabbe, George, 223
+Crashaw, Richard, 106, 256
+Cromwell, Oliver, 62-3, 65, 135
+_Cyder_, Philips's, 242
+_Cynthia, Hymn to_, Jonson's, 185
+Dalila, 51, 149, 209-10
+Daniel, Samuel, 218
+Davenant, William, 177, 180, 206, 219
+_Davideis_, Cowley's, 177-78, 231
+_De Re Poetica_, Blount's, 241
+_Death of a Fair Infant, On the_, 181-82
+_Defence of the People of England_, 47, 74, 131
+_Defence of the People of England, Second_, 34, 47, 63
+Dekker, John, 218
+Denham, John, 206, 219
+De Quincey, Thomas, 82, 103, 120, 192
+_Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure_, Marvell's, 162
+_Discourse of Satire_, Dryden's, 202, 205
+_Divine Institutes_ of Lactantius, 101
+_Divine Weekes and Workes_, Du Bartas's, 18
+_Divorce Pamphlets_, 16, 19, 48, 52, 54, 69, 75, 248, 259
+Donne, John, 181, 183
+Dramatists, influence of, on Milton, 15-16, 185-87
+Drayton, Michael, 27, 174, 218
+Dryden, John, 10, 17, 133, 180, 202, 203, 206-208, 219, 240-41, 246-47,
+    256
+Du Bartas, Guillaume, 18, 237
+_Dunciad_, Pope's, 251
+Dyer, John, 242, 245
+
+_Ecclesiastical Pamphlets_, 49
+_Ecclesiastical Polity_, Hooker's, 103
+_Economy_, Shenstone's, 243
+_Economy of Love, The_, Armstrong's, 242
+_Education, Of_, 48-9
+Eighteenth-century poetry, 233;
+  influence of Milton on, 241 _seq._
+_Eikonoklastes_, 16, 67
+Elizabethan Poetry, 116, 173-75, 186-87;
+  Milton's relation to, 15, 16, 218-20
+Ellwood, Thomas, 161, 163
+_English Dramatick Poets, Account of the_, Langbaine's, 241
+Epic catalogues, Milton's, 236
+Etherege, George, 190
+Eve,27, 54, 83, 87, 92, 96, 112, 121-22, 142-50, 154-59, 160, 204,
+    206-207, 222, 249-50, 260
+_Excursion, The_, Mallet's, 243
+
+_Faerie Queene_, Spenser's, 199-200
+Fenton, Elijah, 242
+_Fleece, The_, Dyer's, 242
+Fletcher, Giles, 106
+Fletcher, Phineas, 106
+Ford, John, 117
+
+Gabriel, 72, 129, 135, 154, 239
+Galileo, 100
+Gay, John, 242
+Gibbon, Edward, 138
+Glover, Richard, 243
+Godwin, William, 185
+Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 133
+_Gondibert_, Davenant's, 177
+_Gorboduc_, Sackville's, 196
+Grainger, James, 242, 244
+_Grave, The_, Blair's, 243
+Gray, Thomas, 238, 253-55
+_Grongar Hill_, Dyer's, 245
+
+Hall, John, 71
+_Hamlet_, Shakespeare's, 142
+Hampton Court Conference, 17
+Handel, 239
+_Harmonie of the Church_, Drayton's, 174
+Hazlitt, William, 198
+Herbert, George, 174
+Herodotus, 100
+Herrick, Robert, 21, 256
+Hervey, Lord, 203
+_History of Britain_, 60, 143
+Hobbes, Thomas, 58, 219
+Homer, 171, 206, 220, 234
+_Homer_, Pope's, 251
+_Hop Garden, The_, Smart's, 242
+Horace, 202
+Horton, 22
+Howard, Sir Robert, 180
+Hume, Patrick, 240
+_Hyperion_, Keats's, 227
+
+_Idylls of the King_, Tennyson's, 193
+_Iliad, The_, 242
+_Il Penseroso_, 22, 62, 184-85, 195, 245
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 22, 31, 35, 57-8, 127, 149, 175, 216, 224-25, 229-30,
+    239, 246-47, 251
+Jonson, Ben, 18, 27, 185-86, 198, 218-19
+Juvenal, 202
+
+Keats, John, 227
+King, Edward, 34
+Knox, John, 142
+
+Lactantius, 101-102
+_L'Allegro_, 22, 24-5, 27, 195, 245
+Lamb, Charles, 198
+Landor, Walter Savage, 137, 212-13, 239
+Langbaine, Gerard, 241
+Latinisms, Milton's, 208-10
+Laud, Archbishop, 21, 23
+Laudian movement, 91
+Lawrence, Henry, 8
+_Lear, King_, Shakespeare's, 223-24
+_Leonidas_, Glover's, 243
+Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 224
+Lestrange, Sir Roger, 246
+Licensing Act, 6
+_Lives of the Most Famous English Poets_, Winstanley's, 241
+_Lives of the Poets_, Johnson's, 247
+_Love and Honour_, Shenstone's, 243
+Lucretius, 238
+_Lycidas_, 23-4, 33, 57, 63, 213, 235, 246
+Lydgate, John, 255
+Lyttelton, Lord, 243
+
+_Macbeth_, Shakespeare's, 16, 118, 122, 229
+Mackenzie, Sir George, 206
+Malherbe, Chrétien Guillaume de, 205
+Mallet, David, 243
+Mammon, 140, 172
+Manoa, 51
+Manso, 88
+Marlowe, Christopher, 190
+Marot, Clement, 173
+Marvell, Andrew, 67, 73, 162, 256
+Masson, Professor David, 133
+Meredith, George, 118
+Metaphors, Milton's use of, 13-14, 213, 234
+Michael, 97, 129, 135, 156-57, 167, 253
+"Miltonics," the, 245
+Miracle plays, 101
+Moloch, 140, 254
+_Monstrous Regiment of Women_, Knox's, 142
+Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 57
+Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de, 62
+More, Henry, 227
+More, Sir Thomas, 57, 69
+Morus, Alexander, 70
+Moryson, Fynes, 15
+
+_Nativity, Ode on the Morning of Christ's_, 181, 199
+Nicodemus, Apocryphal Gospel of, 164
+_Night Thoughts_, Young's, 243
+_Nightingale, Sonnet to the_, 30
+
+Occleve, Thomas, 255
+_Odes_, Gray's, 238
+_Olaus Magnus_, 100
+_Old Wives' Tale_, Peele's, 185
+_Original Poems_, Dr. Joseph Beaumont's, 176
+Ovid, 206, 208
+
+_Paradise Lost_, 28, 32, 45, 52, 58, 72-3, 79, 81 _seq._, 122-24, 127,
+    133, 140, 143, 150, 153, 158-64, 168, 176, 179, 188, 191, 195, 206,
+    208, 210, 213-14, 217, 223-24, 235, 237, 239-42, 245, 252, 254, 256
+  Characters of, 132-69
+  Chronology of, 110-11
+  Cosmography of, 107-10
+  Criticisms of, by Addison, 157-58
+  Bentley, 157
+  Coleridge, 127, 151, 173
+  De Quincey, 82, 103, 120, 192
+  Dryden, 240
+  Johnson, 127, 149, 175
+  Landor, 137, 212-13, 239
+  Pattison, 83, 101
+  Pope, 141
+  Voltaire, 84
+  Descriptive scenes in, 120-22, 155-58, 225-26
+  Sources of, 18, 95, 106
+  Theme of, 81-9, 91-4, 97-106, 127-28
+  Theology of, 85-7, 126-27, 128-32
+  Verse of, 179 _seq._, 191-98
+_Paradise Regained_, 86, 120, 146-47, 158-59, 161, 163, 211, 228
+Parker, Samuel, 67
+Parliament, the Long, 56, 140
+_Passion, The_, 181
+Pattison, Mark, 54, 83, 101
+Peele, George, 185, 190
+Philips, John, 242, 244
+Phillips, Edward, 160
+_Phillips, Lives of Edward and John_, Godwin's, 185
+Philosophical poetry, 227
+_Pilgrim's Progress_, Bunyan's, 156
+Pitt, Christopher, 242
+_Platonick Song of the Soul_, More's, 227
+_Pleasures of the Imagination_, Akenside's, 243
+_Pleasures of Melancholy, The_, Warton's, 243, 245
+Plutarch, 59
+_Poetics_, Boileau's, 178
+Pope, Alexander, 141, 203, 242, 247, 251-52, 254
+Powell, Mary, 7, 54, 142, 260
+_Power of Harmony, The_, Cooper's, 243
+Prelatical controversy, 70
+Proper names, poetical use of, by Milton, 235-36
+Prynne, William, 147
+_Psyche_, Beaumont's, 176
+Puns, Milton's, 210-12
+Puritanism, Milton's, 28-31, 92, 145, 162, 263
+
+Quakerism, 29, 61
+Quarles, Francis, 147
+
+_Rape of the Lock, The_, Pope's, 232
+Raphael, 97, 111, 115, 130, 144, 146, 202, 208, 228, 237, 248-49
+_Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty_, 50
+_Reformation in England, Of_, 42, 62, 91
+_Rehearsal Transposed, The_, Marvell's, 67
+Religious poetry, 173-77
+Renaissance, the, 19, 59, 74, 173
+Republicanism, 66
+Restoration, the, 26, 35-8, 68
+_Richard II._, Shakespeare's, 187
+_Richard III._, Shakespeare's, 16
+Rogers, Samuel, 214
+Romanticism, 55, 220, 226, 229, 233, 245
+_Romaunt of the Rose_, 238
+Rowe, Nicholas, 240
+_Ruined Abbey, The_, Shenstone's, 243
+Rymer, Thomas, 241
+
+Salmasius, 49, 69, 70, 71
+_Samson Agonistes_, 26, 29, 37, 50-1, 79, 143, 146, 158-59, 162, 167,
+    168, 195-96, 203, 208-10, 241
+Satan, 28, 60, 72, 85, 94, 102, 105, 109, 110-11, 129, 130, 132-39, 146,
+    152, 158, 160, 167, 211-12, 228, 239, 253
+_Seasons, The_, Thomson's, 243, 248, 252
+Sedley, Sir Charles, 260
+_Sejanus_, Ben Jonson's, 220
+Selden, Thomas, 56
+Seneca, 189
+Seventeenth-century poetry, 175-77, 256-62;
+  Milton's relation to, 218-20
+Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 203
+_Shakespeare, Lines on_, Milton's, 182
+Shakespeare, William, 3, 4, 5, 7, 15, 18, 19, 22, 25, 116, 118, 171, 175,
+    190, 198, 214, 217, 218, 220, 223, 225, 230, 231, 240, 243, 263
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 233
+Shenstone, William, 243
+Shirley, James, 219
+_Short View of the Stage_, Collier's, 147
+Sidney, Sir Philip, 174
+Simile, Milton's use of, 234
+Simmons, Samuel, 180
+Smart, Christopher, 242
+Somerville, William, 242
+Sophocles, 70
+Southwell, Robert, 174
+_Spectator, The_, Addison's, 241
+Spenser, Edmund, 17, 18, 106, 181, 200, 206, 236
+_Splendid Shilling, The_, Philips's, 242
+Spratt, Thomas, 219
+Steele, Richard, 206, 218
+Sternhold, Thomas, 173
+Stoicism, 29, 145, 163
+Strafford, Earl of, 23
+Suckling, Sir John, 147, 188, 256
+_Sugar Cane, The_, Grainger's, 242
+Swift, Jonathan, 218
+Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 93
+Sylvester, Thomas, 18, 106
+Synod of Dort, 17
+
+_Tale of Two Swannes, A_, 179
+_Talmud, The_, 87
+_Tatler, The_, Steele's, 206
+_Tears of Peace_, Chapman's, 204
+Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 193
+_Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, 41
+Thomson, James, 243, 248, 252-53
+Tillotson, John, 219
+_Translation of the Eleventh Odyssey_, Broome's, 242
+_Translation of a Story out of the Third Æneid_, Addison's, 242
+Tudor state system, the, 57
+
+_Vacation Exercise, At a_, 181
+Vaughan, Henry, 256-60
+_Venus and Adonis_, Shakespeare's, 148
+Virgil, 171, 202-203, 206-207
+Voiture, 205
+Voltaire, 84
+Vondel, Joost van den, 106
+
+Waller, Edmund, 206, 219, 240-41
+Warton, Thomas, 243, 245
+_West, Sonnet on the Death of Richard_, Gray's, 254
+Westminster Assembly of Divines, 140
+Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester, 261-62
+_Wine, a Poem_, Gay's, 242
+Winstanley, William, 241
+_Winter's Tale_, Shakespeare's, 25, 144
+Wither, George, 195
+Wood, Anthony à, 173
+Wordsworth, William, 214, 246, 249, 251
+Wotton, Sir Henry, 199
+
+Young, Thomas, 12, 243
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 21677-8.txt or 21677-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/6/7/21677
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/21677-8.zip b/21677-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2c6c44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-8.zip
diff --git a/21677-h.zip b/21677-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..383a0ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-h.zip
diff --git a/21677-h/21677-h.htm b/21677-h/21677-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3aff79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-h/21677-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,9977 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Milton, by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+verse, .verse         { margin-top:1em; }
+  body                { margin-left:5%; margin-right:5%; }
+  h1, h2, h3, .center { text-align:center; clear:right; }
+  small, .small { font-size:70%; }
+  sc, .sc     { font-variant:small-caps; }
+  .gsw        { word-spacing:3em; }
+  .pb         { text-align:right; float:right; font-size:70%;
+                margin-left:3em; margin-top:.5em; margin-bottom:.5em;
+                display:inline; }
+  p           { text-align:justify; display:block; }
+  l, .l, verse, .verse { text-align:left; display:block; }
+  l, .t0      { text-indent:2em; }
+  l.t,   .t   { text-indent:3em; }
+  l.t2,  .t2  { text-indent:4em; }
+  l.t3,  .t3  { text-indent:5em; }
+  l.t4,  .t4  { text-indent:6em; }
+  l.t5,  .t5  { text-indent:7em; }
+  l.t6,  .t6  { text-indent:8em; }
+  l.t7,  .t7  { text-indent:9em; }
+  l.t8,  .t8  { text-indent:10em; }
+  l.t9,  .t9  { text-indent:11em; }
+  l.t10, .t10 { text-indent:12em; }
+  l.t11, .t11 { text-indent:13em; }
+  l.t12, .t12 { text-indent:14em; }
+  hr          { width:65%; }
+  sc, .sc  { font-variant:small-caps; }
+  .toc   td   { text-align:justify; padding-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; }
+  .toc  td.jr { text-align:right;  padding-left:0em; text-indent:0em; vertical-align:bottom; }
+  .toc    .jl { text-align:left; }
+    hr.full { width: 100%;
+              margin-top: 3em;
+              margin-bottom: 0em;
+              margin-left: auto;
+              margin-right: auto;
+              height: 4px;
+              border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */
+              border-style: solid;
+              border-color: #000000;
+              clear: both; }
+    pre      {font-size: 75%;}
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Milton, by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Milton</p>
+<p>Author: Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh</p>
+<p>Release Date: June 4, 2007  [eBook #21677]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer, Stephen Hutcheson,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_i">[i]</div>
+
+<h1>MILTON</h1>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="small">BY</span>
+<br />SIR WALTER RALEIGH
+<br />Author of
+<br />'Style,' 'Wordsworth,' &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i><span class="small">TENTH IMPRESSION</span></i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="small">LONDON</span>
+<br />EDWARD ARNOLD
+<br /><span class="small">41 &amp; 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.</span>
+<br />1915</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_ii">[ii]</div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="small">TO</span>
+<br />R. A. M. STEVENSON
+<br /><span class="small">WHOSE RADIANT AND SOARING INTELLIGENCE
+<br />ENLIGHTENED AND GUIDED ME
+<br />DURING THE YEARS OF OUR LOST COMPANIONSHIP
+<br />THIS UNAVAILING TRIBUTE OF
+<br />MEMORY AND LOVE</span></p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_iii">[iii]</div>
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table class="toc">
+<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#c0">INTRODUCTION</a></th></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td class="jr"><span class="small">PAGE</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>"Sciences of conceit"; the difficulties and imperfections of literary
+criticism; illustrated in the case of Shakespeare; and of Milton;
+the character and temper of Milton; intensity, simplicity,
+egotism; his estimate of himself</td>
+<td class="jr">1</td></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#c1">CHAPTER I
+<br /><span class="sc">John Milton</span></a></th></tr>
+<tr><td>His birth, and death; his education; early life in
+London; ships and
+shipping; adventurers and players; Milton and the Elizabethan
+drama; the poetic masters of his youth; state of the Church of
+England; Baxter's testimony; growing unrest; Milton's early
+poems; the intrusion of politics; the farewell to mirth; the
+Restoration, and Milton's attitude; the lost paradise of the
+early poems; Milton's Puritanism; his melancholy; the
+political and public preoccupations of the later poems; the
+drama of Milton's life; his egotism explained; an illustration
+from <i>Lycidas</i>; the lost cause; the ultimate triumph</td>
+<td class="jr">12</td></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#c2">CHAPTER II
+<br /><span class="sc">The Prose Works</span></a></th></tr>
+<tr><td>Poets and politics; practical aim of Milton's prose writings; the
+reforms advocated by him, with one exception, unachieved;
+<span class="pb" id="pg_iv">[iv]</span>
+critical mourners over Milton's political writings; the mourners
+comforted; Milton's classification of his prose tracts; the
+occasional nature of these tracts; allusions in the early prose
+works to the story of Samson, and to the theme of <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>; Milton's personal and public motives; his persuasive vein;
+his political idealism; Johnson's account of his political opinions;
+the citizen of an antique city; Milton's attitude towards
+medi&aelig;val romance, and towards the medi&aelig;val Church; his
+worship of liberty; and of greatness; his belief in human
+capacity and virtue; Milton and Cromwell; Milton's clear
+logic; his tenacity; his scurrility, and its excuse; his fierce and
+fantastic wit; reappearance of these qualities in <i>Paradise Lost</i>;
+the style of his prose works analysed and illustrated; his rich
+vocabulary; his use of Saxon; the making of an epic poet</td>
+<td class="jr">39</td></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#c3">CHAPTER III
+<br /><span class="sc">Paradise Lost: The Scheme</span></a></th></tr>
+<tr><td>Vastness of the theme; scenical opportunities; the poetry independent
+of the creed; Milton's choice of subject; King Arthur; <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>; attractions of the theme: primitive religion, natural
+beauty, dramatic interest; difficulties of the theme, and forbidden
+topics; how Milton overcomes these difficulties by his episodes,
+his similes, and the tradition that he adopts concerning the fallen
+angels; the cosmography of <i>Paradise Lost</i>; its chronology; some
+difficulties and inconsistencies; Milton's spiritual beings, their
+physical embodiment; the poem no treasury of wisdom, but a
+world-drama; its inhumanity, and artificial elevation; the effect
+of Milton's simpler figures drawn from rural life; De Quincey's
+explanation of this effect; another explanation; the homelessness
+of Eden; the enchanted palace and its engineer; the tyranny of
+Milton's imagination; its effect on his diction</td>
+<td class="jr">81</td></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#c4">CHAPTER IV
+<br /><span class="sc">Paradise Lost: The Actors. The Later Poems</span></a></th></tr>
+<tr><td>Milton's argumentative end; its bearing on the scenes in Heaven;
+his political bias, and materialism; Milton's Deity; his Satan;
+<span class="pb" id="pg_v">[v]</span>
+the minor devils; Adam; Eve; personal memories; Adam's
+eulogy of Eve, criticised by Raphael; Milton's philosophy of love
+and beauty; the opinions of Raphael, of Satan, and of Mrs.
+Millamant; the comparative merits of Adam and Eve; Milton's
+great epic effects; his unity and large decorum; morning and
+evening; architectural effects; the close of <i>Paradise Lost</i>; Addison
+and Bentley; <i>Paradise Regained;</i> the choice of subject;
+Milton's favourite theme--temptation; other possible subjects;
+the Harrying of Hell; <i>Samson Agonistes;</i> the riddle of life.</td>
+<td class="jr">126</td></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#c5">CHAPTER V
+<br /><span class="sc">The Style of Milton: Metre and Diction</span></a></th></tr>
+<tr><td>Difficulties of literary genealogy; the ledger school of criticism; Milton's
+strength and originality; his choice of a sacred subject;
+earlier attempts in England and France; Boileau's opinion;
+Milton's choice of metre an innovation; the little influence on
+Milton of Spenser, and of Donne; Milton a pupil of the
+dramatists; the history of dramatic blank verse; Milton's
+handling of the measure; the "elements of musical delight";
+Tennyson's blank verse; Milton's metrical licenses; the
+Choruses of <i>Samson Agonistes</i>; Milton's diction a close-wrought
+mosaic; compared with the diffuser diction of Spenser; conciseness
+of Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Milton; Homer's repetitions;
+repetitions and "turns of words and thoughts" rare in Milton;
+double meanings of words; Milton's puns; extenuating circumstances;
+his mixed metaphors and violent syntax, due to compression;
+Milton's poetical style a dangerous model; the
+spontaneity and license of his prose</td>
+<td class="jr">170</td></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#c6">CHAPTER VI
+<br /><span class="sc">The Style of Milton; and its Influence on English Poetry</span></a></th></tr>
+<tr><td>The relation of Milton's work to the 17th-century "reforms" of
+verse and prose; the Classicism of Milton, and of the Augustans;
+<span class="pb" id="pg_vi">[vi]</span>
+Classic and Romantic schools contrasted in their descriptions;
+Milton's Chaos, Shakespeare's Dover Cliff; Johnson's comments;
+the besetting sins of the two schools; Milton's physical
+machinery justified; his use of abstract terms; the splendid use
+of mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidance
+of mean associations, and of realism; nature of his similes and
+figures; his use of proper names; his epic catalogues; his
+personifications; loftiness of his perfected style; the popularity
+of <i>Paradise Last</i>; imitations, adaptations, and echoes of Milton's
+style during the 18th century; his enormous influence; the
+origin of "poetic diction"; Milton's phraseology stolen by Pope,
+Thomson, and Gray; the degradation of Milton's style by his
+pupils and parodists</td>
+<td class="jr">218</td></tr>
+<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#c7">EPILOGUE</a></th></tr>
+<tr><td>Milton's contemporaries; the poetry of Religion, and of Love; Henry
+Vaughan; the Court lyrists; Milton's contempt for them;
+how they surpass him; Sedley; Rochester; the prophet of the
+Lord and the sons of Belial; unique position of Milton in the
+history of our literature</td>
+<td class="jr">256</td></tr>
+<tr><th class="jl"><a href="#cx"><span class="sc">Index</span></a></th><td class="jr">265</td></tr>
+</table>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_1">[1]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="c0">INTRODUCTION</a></h2>
+
+<p>Francis Bacon, in one of his prose fragments,
+draws a memorable distinction between "arts
+mechanical" and "sciences of conceit." "In
+arts mechanical," he says, "the first device comes
+shortest, and time addeth and perfecteth. But in
+sciences of conceit the first author goeth farthest,
+and time leeseth and corrupteth.... In the
+former, many wits and industries contributed in
+one. In the latter, many men's wits spent to
+deprave the wit of one."</p>
+
+<p>I fear that literary criticism of the kind that
+I propose to myself in these chapters on Milton
+must be classified with the "sciences of conceit."
+Indeed, Bacon puts it out of question that he himself
+would so have regarded it, for he goes on to
+explain how, after the deliverances of a master,
+"then begin men to aspire to the second prizes, to
+be a profound interpreter and commentor, to be
+a sharp champion and defender, to be a methodical
+compounder and abridger. And this is the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_2">[2]</span>
+unfortunate succession of wits which the world
+hath yet had, whereby the patrimony of all knowledge
+goeth not on husbanded and improved, but
+wasted and decayed."</p>
+
+<p>The blow is aimed at the scholastic philosophers,
+but it falls heavy on the critics of literature, on all
+who "aspire to the second prizes," or who think
+"that a borrowed light can increase the original
+light from whom it is taken." It is a searching
+arraignment of all who set themselves to expound
+in words the meaning and purpose of a master
+of verbal expression. Yet the very breadth of the
+indictment brings comfort and a means of escape.
+For the chief difficulties of an attempt to understand
+and judge Milton are difficulties inherent in
+the nature, not only of all criticism in the large
+sense, but also of all reading. In this association
+with great spirits which we call reading we receive
+but what we give, and take away only what we are
+fit to carry. Milton himself has stated the doctrine
+in its most absolute form, and has sought an enhanced
+authority for it by attributing it to the
+Christ--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">Who reads</div>
+<div class="t0">Incessantly, and to his reading brings not</div>
+<div class="t0">A spirit and judgment equal or superior</div>
+<div class="t0">(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)</div>
+<div class="t0">Uncertain and unsettled still remains,</div>
+<div class="t0">Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,</div>
+<div class="t0">Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_3">[3]</span>
+<div class="t0">And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge,</div>
+<div class="t0">As children gathering pebbles on the shore.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Literally taken, this is the negation of all the
+higher functions of criticism, and the paralysis of
+all learning. Only his peers, it is argued, can
+read Shakespeare intelligently; and, as if that did
+not give him few enough readers, they are further
+told that they will be wasting their time! But
+love, unlike this proud Stoicism, is humble, and
+contented with a little. I would put my apology
+in the language of love rather than of philosophy.
+I know that in Shakespeare, or in Milton, or in
+any rare nature, as in Faire Virtue, the mistress of
+Philarete--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">There is some conceal&egrave;d thing</div>
+<div class="t0">So each gazer limiting,</div>
+<div class="t0">He can see no more of merit</div>
+<div class="t0">Than beseems his worth and spirit.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The appreciation of a great author asks knowledge
+and industry before it may be attempted,
+but in the end it is the critic, not the author, who
+is judged by it, and, where his sympathies have
+been too narrow, or his sight too dim, condemned
+without reprieve, and buried without a tombstone.</p>
+
+<p>Imperfect sympathy, that eternal vice of criticism,
+is sometimes irremediable, sometimes caused
+by imperfect knowledge. It takes forms as various
+as the authors whom it misjudges. In the case of
+Shakespeare, when we attempt to estimate him, to
+<span class="pb" id="pg_4">[4]</span>
+gauge him, to see him from all sides, we become
+almost painfully conscious of his immensity. We
+can build no watch-tower high enough to give us a
+bird's-eye view of that "globe of miraculous continents."
+We are out of breath when we attempt
+to accompany him on his excursions, where he,</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">through strait, rough, dense, or rare,</div>
+<div class="t0">With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,</div>
+<div class="t0">And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He moves so easily and so familiarly among human
+passions and human emotions, is so completely at
+home in all societies and all companies, that he
+makes us feel hide-bound, prejudiced and ill-bred,
+by the side of him. We have to widen our
+conception of human nature in order to think of
+him as a man. How hard a thing it is to conceive
+of Shakespeare as of a human spirit, embodied
+and conditioned, whose affections, though higher
+mounted than ours, yet, when they stooped, stooped
+with the like wing, is witnessed by all biographies
+of Shakespeare, and by many thousands of the
+volumes of criticism and commentary that have
+been written on his works. One writer is content
+to botanise with him--to study plant-lore, that is,
+with a theatrical manager, in his hard-earned leisure,
+for teacher. Another must needs read the Bible
+with him, although, when all is said, Shakespeare's
+study was but little on the Bible. Others elect to
+<span class="pb" id="pg_5">[5]</span>
+keep him to music, astronomy, law, hunting, hawking,
+fishing. He is a good companion out of doors,
+and some would fain keep him there, to make a
+country gentleman of him. His incorrigible preoccupation
+with humanity, the ruling passion and
+employment of his life, is beyond the range of their
+complete sympathy; they like to catch him out of
+hours, to draw him aside and bespeak his interest,
+for a few careless minutes, in the trades and pastimes
+that bulk so largely and so seriously in their
+own perspective of life. They hardly know what
+to make of his "unvalued book"; but they know
+that he was a great man, and to have bought a
+wool-fell or a quarter of mutton from him, that
+would have been something! Only the poet-critics
+attempt to see life, however brokenly, through
+Shakespeare's eyes, to let their enjoyment keep
+attendance upon his. And from their grasp, too,
+he escapes by sheer excess.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of Milton the imperfection of our
+sympathy is due to other causes. In the first
+place, we know him as we do not know Shakespeare.
+The history of his life can be, and has
+been, minutely written. The affairs of his time,
+political and religious, have been recorded with
+enormous wealth of detail; and this wealth, falling
+into fit hands, has given us those learned modern
+historians to whom the seventeenth century means
+a period of five thousand two hundred and
+<span class="pb" id="pg_6">[6]</span>
+eighteen weeks. Milton's own attitude towards
+these affairs is in no way obscure; he has explained
+it with great fulness and candour in
+numerous publications, so that it would be easy
+to draw up a declaration of his chief tenets in
+politics and religion. The slanders of his adversaries
+he met again and again with lofty passages
+of self-revelation. "With me it fares now," he
+remarks in one of these, "as with him whose
+outward garment hath been injured and ill-bedighted;
+for having no other shift, what help
+but to turn the inside outwards, especially if the
+lining be of the same, or, as it is sometimes, much
+better." In his poetry, too, he delights to reveal
+himself, to take the knowing reader into his
+confidence, to honour the fit audience with a
+confession.</p>
+
+<p>But the difficulty is there none the less. Few
+critics have found Milton too wide or too large
+for them; many have found him too narrow,
+which is another form of imperfect sympathy.
+His lack of humour has alienated the interest of
+thousands. His ardent advocacy of toleration in
+the noblest of his prose treatises has been belittled
+by a generation which prides itself on that flaccid
+form of benevolence, and finds the mere repeal of
+the Licensing Act the smallest part of it. His
+pamphlets on divorce and on government have
+earned him the reputation of a theorist and
+<span class="pb" id="pg_7">[7]</span>
+dreamer. The shrewd practical man finds it
+easy to despise him. The genial tolerant man,
+whose geniality of demeanour towards others is a
+kind of quit-rent paid for his own moral laxity,
+regards him as a Pharisee. The ready humourist
+devises a pleasant and cheap entertainment by
+dressing Adam and Eve in modern garments
+and discussing their relations in the jargon of
+modish frivolity. Even the personal history of
+the poet has been made to contribute to the gaiety
+of nations, and the flight of Mary Powell, the
+first Mrs. Milton, from the house in Aldersgate
+Street, has become something of a stock comic
+episode in the history of English literature. So
+heavy is the tax paid, even by a poet, for deficiency
+in breadth and humour. Almost all men are less
+humorous than Shakespeare; but most men are
+more humorous than Milton, and these, it is to
+be feared, having suffered themselves to be
+dragooned by the critics into professing a distant
+admiration for <i>Paradise Lost</i>, have paid their last
+and utmost tribute to the genius of its author.</p>
+
+<p>It may be admitted without hesitation that his
+lonely greatness rather forces admiration on us
+than attracts us. That unrelenting intensity;
+that lucidity, as clear as air and as hard as agate;
+that passion which burns with a consuming heat
+or with a blinding light in all his writings, have
+endeared him to none. It is impossible to take
+<span class="pb" id="pg_8">[8]</span>
+one's ease with Milton, to induce him to forget
+his principles for a moment in the name of social
+pleasure. The most genial of his personal sonnets
+is addressed to Henry Lawrence, the son of the
+President of Cromwell's Council, and is an invitation
+to dinner. The repast promised is "light
+and choice"; the guest is apostrophised, somewhat
+formidably, as "Lawrence, of virtuous father,
+virtuous son," and is reminded, before he has
+dined, that</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">He who of these delights can judge, and spare</div>
+<div class="t0">To interpose them oft, is not unwise.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But the qualities that make Milton a poor
+boon-companion are precisely those which combine
+to raise his style to an unexampled loftiness,
+a dignity that bears itself easily in society greater
+than human. To attain to this height it was
+needful that there should be no aimless expatiation
+of the intellect, no facile diffusion of the sympathies
+over the wide field of human activity and
+human character. All the strength of mind and
+heart and will that was in Milton went into the
+process of raising himself. He is like some giant
+palm-tree; the foliage that sprang from it as it
+grew has long since withered, the stem rises
+gaunt and bare; but high up above, outlined
+against the sky, is a crown of perennial verdure.</p>
+
+<p>It is essential for the understanding of Milton
+<span class="pb" id="pg_9">[9]</span>
+that we should take account of the rare simplicity
+of his character. No subtleties; no tricks of the
+dramatic intellect, which dresses itself in a hundred
+masquerading costumes and peeps out of a thousand
+spy-holes; no development, one might almost
+say, only training, and that self-imposed. There
+is but one Milton, and he is throughout one
+and the same, in his life, in his prose, and in his
+verse; from those early days, when we find him,
+an uncouth swain,</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">With eager thought warbling his Doric lay,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>to the last days when, amid a swarm of disasters,
+he approved himself like Samson, and earned for
+himself the loftiest epitaph in the language, his
+own--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail</div>
+<div class="t0">Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,</div>
+<div class="t0">Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,</div>
+<div class="t0">And what may quiet us in a death so noble.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The world has not wholly misunderstood or
+failed to appreciate this extraordinary character,
+as one curious piece of evidence will serve to
+show. Milton is one of the most egotistic of
+poets. He makes no secret of the high value he
+sets upon his gifts--"gifts of God's imparting,"
+as he calls them, "which I boast not, but thankfully
+acknowledge, and fear also lest at my
+certain account they be reckoned to me many
+<span class="pb" id="pg_10">[10]</span>
+rather than few." Before he has so much as begun
+his great poem he covenants with his reader "that
+for some few years yet I may go on trust with
+him toward the payment of what I am now indebted,
+as being a work not to be raised from the
+heat of youth or the vapours of wine; ... nor
+to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory
+and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to
+that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance
+and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim,
+with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and
+purify the lips of whom he pleases; to this must
+be added industrious and select reading, steady
+observation, insight into all seemly and generous
+arts and affairs; till which in some measure be
+compassed, at mine own peril and cost, I refuse
+not to sustain this expectation from as many as
+are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the
+best pledges that I can give them." And when
+he came to redeem his pledge, in the very opening
+lines of his epic, trusting to the same inspiration,
+he challenges the supremacy of the ancients by his</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">adventrous song</div>
+<div class="t0">That with no middle flight intends to soar</div>
+<div class="t0">Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues</div>
+<div class="t0">Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"This man cuts us all out, and the Ancients
+too," Dryden is reported to have said. But this
+<span class="pb" id="pg_11">[11]</span>
+man intended to do no less, and formally announced
+his intention. It is impossible to outface Milton,
+or to abash him with praise. His most enthusiastic
+eulogists are compelled merely to echo the
+remarks of his earliest and greatest critic, himself.
+Yet with all this, none of the later critics, not the
+most cavalier nor the dullest, has dared to call him
+vain. His estimate of himself, offered as simple
+fact, has been accepted in the same spirit, and one
+abyss of ineptitude still yawns for the heroic folly,
+or the clownish courage, of the New Criticism.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_12">[12]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="c1">CHAPTER I
+<br />JOHN MILTON</a></h2>
+
+<p>John Milton, the son of a middle-aged scrivener,
+was born on Friday, December the 9th, 1608, at
+his father's house in Bread Street, Cheapside; and
+died on Sunday, November the 8th, 1674, in a
+small house, with but one room on a floor, in
+Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, London. Of his
+father the records that remain show him to have
+been a convinced member of the Puritan party in
+the Church, a man of liberal culture and intelligence,
+a lover of music (which taste Milton inherited),
+a wise and generous friend to the son
+who became a poet. We owe it to his wisdom
+rather than to his prosperity that Milton was
+allowed to live at home without any ostensible
+profession until he was thirty years of age and
+more.</p>
+
+<p>For the first sixteen years of his life Milton
+was educated partly at home, by a Presbyterian
+tutor called Thomas Young, partly at St. Paul's
+<span class="pb" id="pg_13">[13]</span>
+School, which he attended for some years as a day-scholar.
+From his twelfth year onward he was an
+omnivorous reader, and before he left school had
+written some boyish verses, void of merit. The
+next fourteen years of his life, after leaving school,
+were spent at Cambridge, in Buckinghamshire, and
+in foreign travel, so that he was thirty years old
+before he lived continuously in London again.</p>
+
+<p>We know pretty well how he spent his time at
+Cambridge and at Horton, sedulously turning over
+the Greek and Latin classics, dreaming of immortality.
+We know less about his early years in
+London, where there were wider and better opportunities
+of gaining an insight into "all seemly and
+generous arts and affairs." London was a great
+centre of traffic, a motley crowd of adventurers
+and traders even in those days, and the boy
+Milton must often have wandered down to the
+river below London Bridge to see the ships come
+in. His poems are singularly full of figures
+drawn from ships and shipping, some of them
+bookish in their origin, others which may have
+been suggested by the sight of ships. Now it is
+Satan, who, after his fateful journey through chaos,
+nears the world,</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">And like a weather-beaten vessel holds</div>
+<div class="t0">Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now it is Dalila, whom the Chorus behold approaching.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_14">[14]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Like a stately ship</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Tarsus, bound for the isles</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Javan or Gadire,</div>
+<div class="t0">With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,</div>
+<div class="t0">Sails filled, and streamers waving,</div>
+<div class="t0">Courted by all the winds that hold them play.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Or, again, it is Samson reproaching himself,</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked</div>
+<div class="t0">My vessel trusted to me from above,</div>
+<div class="t0">Gloriously rigged.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The bulk of Satan is compared to the great sea-beast
+Leviathan, beheld off the coast of Norway by</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In his approach to the happy garden the Adversary
+is likened to</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">them who sail</div>
+<div class="t0">Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past</div>
+<div class="t0">Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow</div>
+<div class="t0">Sabaean odours from the spicy shore</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Araby the Blest, with such delay</div>
+<div class="t0">Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league</div>
+<div class="t0">Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles;</div>
+<div class="t0">So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And when he draws near to Eve in the rose-thicket,</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">sidelong he works his way,</div>
+<div class="t0">As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought,</div>
+<div class="t0">Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind</div>
+<div class="t0">Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_15">[15]</div>
+
+<p>There is nothing here that is not within the
+reach of any inland reader, but Milton's choice of
+nautical similitudes may serve to remind us how
+much of the interest of Old London centred round
+its port. Here were to be heard those tales of
+far-sought adventure and peril which gave even
+to the boisterous life of Elizabethan London an air
+of triviality and security. Hereby came in "the
+variety of fashions and foreign stuffs," which Fynes
+Moryson, writing in Milton's childhood, compares
+to the stars of heaven and the sands of the sea for
+number. All sorts of characters, nationalities, and
+costumes were daily to be seen in Paul's Walk,
+adjoining Milton's school. One sort interests us
+pre-eminently. "In the general pride of England,"
+says Fynes Moryson, "there is no fit difference
+made of degrees; for very Bankrupts, Players,
+and Cutpurses go apparelled like gentlemen."
+Shakespeare was alive during the first seven years
+of Milton's life, and was no doubt sometimes a
+visitor to the Mermaid, a stone's throw from the
+scrivener's house. Perhaps his cloak brushed the
+child Milton in the street. Milton was born in
+the golden age of the drama, and a score of
+masterpieces were put upon the London stage
+while he was in his cradle. But the golden age
+passed rapidly; the quality of the drama degenerated
+and the opposition to it grew strong before
+he was of years to attend a play. Perhaps he
+<span class="pb" id="pg_16">[16]</span>
+never saw a play by the masters during his boyhood,
+and his visits</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">to the well-trod stage anon,</div>
+<div class="t0">If Jonson's learned sock be on,</div>
+<div class="t0">Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,</div>
+<div class="t0">Warble his native woodnotes wild,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>were either excursions of the imagination or belong
+to his later occasional sojourns in London. In his
+<i>Eikonoklastes</i> he quotes certain lines from <i>Richard
+III.</i>, and here and there in his prose, as well as in
+his verse, there are possibly some faint reminiscences
+of Shakespearian phrases. So, for instance, in <i>The
+Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce</i>, he seems to
+echo a famous speech of Macbeth, while he claims
+that his remedy of free divorce "hath the virtue to
+soften and dispel rooted and knotty sorrows, and
+without enchantment." But these are doubtless
+the memories of reading. In the <i>Apology for
+Smectymnuus</i>, when he has to reply to the charge
+that he "haunted playhouses" during his college
+days, he retorts the charge, it is true, rather than
+denies it. Yet the retort bespeaks a certain
+severity and preciseness in judging of plays and
+their actors, which can hardly have found gratification
+in the licenses and exuberances of the contemporary
+drama. It was not difficult, he remarks,
+to see plays, "when in the Colleges so many of
+the young divines, and those in next aptitude to
+divinity, have been seen so often upon the stage,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_17">[17]</span>
+writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all
+the antic and dishonest gestures of Trinculoes,
+buffoons, and bawds." "If it be unlawful," he
+continues, "to sit and behold a mercenary
+comedian personating that which is least unseemly
+for a hireling to do, how much more blameful is it
+to endure the sight of as vile things acted by
+persons either entered, or presently to enter into
+the ministry; and how much more foul and
+ignominious for them to be the actors!"</p>
+
+<p>It was, at least, a happy chance that the first of
+Milton's verses to appear in print should have
+been <i>An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet,
+W. Shakespeare</i>, contributed to the Second Folio
+in 1632. The main interests of the household at
+the Spread Eagle in Bread Street must have been
+far enough remote from the doings of the companies
+of players. John Milton the elder would
+probably have agreed with Sir Thomas Bodley,
+who called plays "riffe-raffes," and declared that
+they should never come into his library. The
+Hampton Court Conference, the Synod of Dort,
+the ever-widening divisions in the Church, between
+Arminian and Calvinist, between Prelatist
+and Puritan, were probably subjects of a nearer
+interest, even to the poet in his youth, than the
+production of new or old plays upon the stage.
+Milton's childhood was spent in the very twilight
+of the Elizabethan age; it was greatly fortunate
+<span class="pb" id="pg_18">[18]</span>
+for him, and for us, that he caught the after-glow
+of the sunset upon his face. He read Spenser
+while Spenser was still the dominant influence in
+English poetry. "He hath confessed to me,"
+said Dryden, "that Spenser was his original,"--an
+incredible statement unless we understand
+"original" in the sense of his earliest admiration,
+his poetic godfather who first won him to poetry.
+He read Shakespeare and Jonson in the first
+editions. He read Sylvester's translation of <i>Du
+Bartas, His Divine Weekes and Workes</i>; and
+perhaps thence conceived the first vague idea of a
+poem on a kindred subject. It is necessary to
+insist on his English masters, because, although the
+greater part of his time and study was devoted to
+the classics, the instrument that he was to use was
+learned in a native school. His metre, his magnificent
+vocabulary, his unerring phraseology, took
+learning and practice. He attached a high value
+to his study of English poetry. When he spoke
+of "our sage and serious Spenser (whom I dare be
+known to think a better teacher than Scotus or
+Aquinas)," he was conscious that he was maintaining
+what seemed a bold paradox in an age when
+scholasticism still controlled education. It is
+pleasant to think of Milton during these early
+years, whether in London or at Christ's College,
+in his "calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with
+cheerful and confident thoughts," before ever he
+<span class="pb" id="pg_19">[19]</span>
+had a hint that he must perforce "embark in a
+troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put
+from beholding the bright countenance of truth in
+the quiet and still air of delightful studies." From
+the first, we may be sure, he read the poets as one
+poet reads another, and apprenticed himself to
+them for their craft. He was never drawn out of
+the highroad of art by the minuter and more entangling
+allurements of scholarship. In one of his
+Divorce pamphlets he tells, with the inevitable
+touch of pride, how he never could delight in long
+citations, much less in whole traductions, "whether
+it be natural disposition or education in me, or
+that my mother bore me a speaker of what God
+made mine own, and not a translator."</p>
+
+<p>Milton was intended by his family, and by his own
+early resolves, for the service of the Church. The
+growing unrest, therefore, in matters ecclesiastical
+during the early part of the seventeenth century
+could not but affect him. The various parties and
+tendencies in the Church of England had never,
+since the Reformation, attained to a condition of
+stable equilibrium. But the settlement under
+Elizabeth was strengthened, and the parties bound
+together for thirty years, by the ever-present fear
+of Rome. When that fear was allayed, and the
+menace that hung over the very existence of the
+nation removed by the defeat of the Armada, the
+differences within the Church broke out afresh, and
+<span class="pb" id="pg_20">[20]</span>
+waxed fiercer every year. Shakespeare grew to
+manhood during the halcyon years between the
+Marian persecutions and the Marprelate pamphlets--a
+kind of magic oasis, which gave us our
+English Renaissance. Milton's youth breathed a
+very different air. The Church, as it was, pleased
+hardly any party. Much of the old temple had
+been hastily pulled down; the new government
+offices that were to replace it had as yet been
+but partially built, and commanded no general
+approval. Considered as a social organisation,
+moreover, the Church throughout large parts of the
+country had fallen into a state not unlike decay.
+Richard Baxter, whose testimony there is no
+sufficient reason to reject, tells of its state in Shropshire
+during the years of his youth, from 1615
+onwards:--"We lived in a country that had but
+little preaching at all: In the Village where I was
+born there was four Readers successively in Six
+years time, ignorant Men, and two of them
+immoral in their lives; who were all my School-masters.
+In the Village where my Father lived,
+there was a Reader of about Eighty years of Age
+that never preached, and had two Churches about
+Twenty miles distant: His Eyesight failing him,
+he said Common-Prayer without Book; but for
+the Reading of the Psalms and Chapters he got a
+Common Thresher and Day-Labourer one year,
+and a Taylor another year: (for the Clerk could
+<span class="pb" id="pg_21">[21]</span>
+not read well): And at last he had a Kinsman of
+his own (the excellentest Stage-player in all the
+Country, and a good Gamester and good Fellow)
+that got Orders and supplied one of his Places....
+After him another Neighbour's Son took
+Orders, when he had been a while an Attorney's
+Clerk, and a common Drunkard, and tipled himself
+into so great Poverty that he had no other way to
+live.... These were the School-masters of my
+Youth ... who read Common Prayer on Sundays
+and Holy Days, and taught School and
+tipled on the Weekdays, and whipt the Boys when
+they were drunk, so that we changed them very
+oft. Within a few miles about us were near a
+dozen more Ministers that were near Eighty years
+old apiece, and never preached; poor ignorant
+Readers, and most of them of Scandalous Lives."
+Some few there were, Baxter admits, who preached
+in the neighbourhood, but any one who went to
+hear them "was made the Derision of the Vulgar
+Rabble under the odious Name of a <i>Puritane</i>."</p>
+
+<p>In one of his Latin letters written from Cambridge,
+Milton himself speaks of the ignorance of
+those designed for the profession of divinity, how
+they knew little or nothing of literature and philosophy.
+The high prelacy and ritualism of Laud
+on the one hand, the Puritan movement on the
+other, each in some measure a protest against this
+state of things, were at fierce variance with each
+<span class="pb" id="pg_22">[22]</span>
+other, and Milton's ear, from his youth upward,
+was "pealed with noises loud and ruinous." The
+age of Shakespeare was irrecoverably past, and it
+was impossible for any but a few imperturbable
+Cyrenaics, like Herrick, to "fleet the time carelessly,
+as they did in the golden world." The
+large indifference of Shakespeare to current politics
+was impossible for Milton. "I had as lief be a
+Brownist as a politician," said the folly of Sir
+Andrew Aguecheek and the wisdom of Shakespeare.
+But now the Brownists and the politicians
+had it their own way; and Milton was something
+of both.</p>
+
+<p>His notable early poems, written at College and
+during his retreat in Buckinghamshire, have therefore
+a singular interest and pathos. He was not
+long for the world in which these poems move
+with so ineffable a native grace. They are the
+poems of his youth, instinct with the sensibility
+of youth, and of a delicate and richly nurtured
+imagination. But they are also the poems of an
+age that was closing, and they have a touch of the
+sadness of evening. "I know not," says Dr.
+Johnson, speaking of <i>L'Allegro</i> and <i>Il Penseroso</i>,
+"whether the characters are kept sufficiently apart.
+No mirth can indeed be found in his melancholy,
+but I am afraid that I always meet some melancholy
+in his mirth." It is true; for both characters
+are Milton himself, who embodies in separate
+<span class="pb" id="pg_23">[23]</span>
+poems the cheerful and pensive elements of his own
+nature--and already his choice is made. There is
+something disinterested and detached about his
+sketches of the merriment which he takes part
+in only as a silent onlooker, compared with the
+profound sincerity of the lines--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">And may at last my weary age</div>
+<div class="t0">Find out the peaceful hermitage,</div>
+<div class="t0">The hairy gown and mossy cell,</div>
+<div class="t0">Where I may sit and rightly spell</div>
+<div class="t0">Of every star that heaven doth shew,</div>
+<div class="t0">And every herb that sips the dew,</div>
+<div class="t0">Till old experience do attain</div>
+<div class="t0">To something like prophetic strain.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The rising tide of political passion submerged
+the solemn Arcadia of his early fancies. Like
+Lycidas, he was carried far from the flowers and
+the shepherds to visit "the bottom of the monstrous
+world." Hence there may be made a whole
+index of themes, touched on by Milton in his
+early poems, as if in promise, of which no fulfilment
+is to be found in the greater poems of his
+maturity. His political career under the Commonwealth
+is often treated, both by those who applaud
+and by those who lament it, as if it were the
+merest interlude between two poetic periods. It
+was not so; political passion dominates and informs
+all his later poems, dictating even their
+subjects. How was it possible for him to choose
+King Arthur and his Round Table for the subject
+<span class="pb" id="pg_24">[24]</span>
+of his epic, as he had intended in his youthful
+days; when chivalry and the spirit of chivalry had
+fought its last fight on English soil, full in the
+sight of all men, round the forlorn banner of King
+Charles? The policy of Laud and Stratford kept
+Milton out of the Church, and sent him into
+retirement at Horton; the same policy, it may be
+plausibly conjectured, had something to do with
+the change in the subject of his long-meditated
+epic. From the very beginning of the civil troubles
+contemporary events leave their mark on all his
+writings. The topical bias (so to call it) is very
+noticeable in many of the subjects tentatively
+jotted down by him on the paper that is now in
+the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The
+corrupted clergy, who make so splendid and, as
+some think, so irrelevant an appearance in <i>Lycidas</i>,
+figure frequently, either directly or by implication,
+in the long list of themes.</p>
+
+<p>Without misgiving or regret, when the time
+came, Milton shut the gate on the sequestered
+paradise of his youth, and hastened downward to
+join the fighters in the plain. Before we follow
+him we may well "interpose a little ease" by
+looking at some of the beauties proper to the
+earlier poems, and listening to some of the
+simple pastoral melodies that were drowned when
+the organ began to blow. <i>L'Allegro</i> is full of
+them--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_25">[25]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Sometimes, with secure delight,</div>
+<div class="t0">The upland hamlets will invite,</div>
+<div class="t0">When the merry bells ring round,</div>
+<div class="t0">And the jocund rebecks sound</div>
+<div class="t0">To many a youth and many a maid</div>
+<div class="t0">Dancing in the chequered shade,</div>
+<div class="t0">And young and old come forth to play</div>
+<div class="t0">On a sunshine holiday.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>That is Merry England of Shakespeare's time.
+But already the controversy concerning the <i>Book
+of Sports</i> had begun to darken the air. Already
+the Maypole, that "great stinking idol," as an
+Elizabethan Puritan called it, had been doomed to
+destruction. Some years before <i>L'Allegro</i> was
+written, a bard, who hailed from Leeds, had lamented
+its downfall in the country of his nativity--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Happy the age, and harmelesse were the dayes,</div>
+<div class="t">(For then true love and amity was found)</div>
+<div class="t0">When every village did a May-pole raise,</div>
+<div class="t">And Whitson Ales and May games did abound;</div>
+<div class="t0">And all the lusty Yonkers in a rout</div>
+<div class="t0">With merry Lasses danced the rod about;</div>
+<div class="t0">Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests,</div>
+<div class="t0">And poor men far'd the better for their feasts.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The next verse recalls that scene in <i>The Winter's
+Tale</i> where Shakespeare draws a vivid picture of
+Elizabethan country merrymaking--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The Lords of Castles, Manners, Townes, and Towers</div>
+<div class="t">Rejoyc'd when they beheld the Farmers flourish,</div>
+<div class="t0">And would come down unto the Summer-Bowers</div>
+<div class="t">To see the Country gallants dance the Morrice,</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_26">[26]</span>
+<div class="t0">And sometimes with his tenant's handsome daughter</div>
+<div class="t0">Would fall in liking, and espouse her after</div>
+<div class="t0">Unto his Serving-man, and for her portion</div>
+<div class="t0">Bestow on him some farme, without extortion.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Alas poore Maypoles, what should be the cause</div>
+<div class="t">That you were almost banish't from the earth?</div>
+<div class="t0">You never were rebellious to the lawes,</div>
+<div class="t">Your greatest crime was harmelesse honest mirth;</div>
+<div class="t0">What fell malignant spirit was there found</div>
+<div class="t">To cast your tall <i>Piramides</i> to ground?</div>
+<div class="t0"><span class="gsw">*      *      *      *      *</span></div>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">And you my native towne, which was of old,</div>
+<div class="t">(When as thy Bon-fires burn'd and May-poles stood,</div>
+<div class="t0">And when thy Wassell-cups were uncontrol'd)</div>
+<div class="t">The Summer Bower of Peace and neighbourhood,</div>
+<div class="t0">Although since these went down, thou ly'st forlorn,</div>
+<div class="t0">By factious schismes and humours over-borne,</div>
+<div class="t0">Some able hand I hope thy rod will raise,</div>
+<div class="t0">That thou maist see once more thy happy daies.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The hopes of the bard of Leeds were fulfilled
+at the Restoration. Merriment, of a sort, came
+back to England; but it found no congenial acceptance
+from Milton. The Court roysterers, the
+Hectors, Nickers, Scourers, and Mohocks, among
+whom were numbered Sedley and Rochester, and
+others of the best poets of the day, are celebrated
+by him incidentally in those lines, unsurpassable
+for sombre magnificence, which he appends to his
+account of Belial--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">In courts and palaces he also reigns,</div>
+<div class="t0">And in luxurious cities, where the noise</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_27">[27]</span>
+<div class="t0">Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,</div>
+<div class="t0">And injury and outrage; and, when night</div>
+<div class="t0">Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The public festivals of these later days are
+glanced at in <i>Samson Agonistes</i>--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t2">Lords are lordliest in their wine;</div>
+<div class="t0">And the well-feasted priest then soonest fired</div>
+<div class="t0">With zeal, if aught religion seem concerned;</div>
+<div class="t0">No less the people on their holy-days</div>
+<div class="t0">Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is no relaxation, no trace of innocent
+lightheartedness, in any of the later poems. Even
+the garden of Paradise, where some gentle mirth
+might perhaps be permissible, is tenanted by grave
+livers, majestic, but not sprightly. In <i>L' Allegro</i> the
+morning song of the milk-maid is "blithe," and
+the music of the village dance is "jocund." But
+Eve is described as "jocund" and "blithe" only
+when she is intoxicated by the mortal fruit of the
+tree; and the note of gaiety that is heard faintly,
+like a distant echo, in the earlier poems, is never
+sounded again by Milton.</p>
+
+<p>So it is also with other things. The flowers
+scattered on the laureate hearse of Lycidas make
+a brighter, more various, and withal a homelier
+display than ever meets the eye in the Hesperian
+wildernesses of Eden. Or take the world of fairy
+lore that Milton inherited from the Elizabethans--a
+<span class="pb" id="pg_28">[28]</span>
+world to which not only Shakespeare, but also
+laborious and arrogant poet-scholars like Jonson
+and Drayton had free right of entry. Milton,
+too, could write of the fairies--in his youth--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">With stories told of many a feat,</div>
+<div class="t0">How Faery Mab the junkets eat.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But even in <i>Comus</i> the most exquisite passage of
+fairy description is put into the mouth of Comus
+himself, chief of the band of ugly-headed monsters
+in glistering apparel--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,</div>
+<div class="t0">Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;</div>
+<div class="t0">And on the tawny sands and shelves</div>
+<div class="t0">Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.</div>
+<div class="t0">By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,</div>
+<div class="t0">The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim,</div>
+<div class="t0">Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:</div>
+<div class="t0">What hath night to do with sleep?</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The song and the dance are broken off, never
+to be resumed, when the staid footfall of the lady
+is heard approaching. Milton cannot draw ugliness;
+it turns into beauty or majesty on his hands.
+Satan has a large and enthusiastic party among
+readers of <i>Paradise Lost</i>. Comus, we are told,
+stands for a whole array of ugly vices--riot,
+intemperance, gluttony, and luxury. But what a
+delicate monster he is, and what a ravishing lyric
+strain he is master of! The pleasure that Milton
+forswore was a young god, the companion of Love
+<span class="pb" id="pg_29">[29]</span>
+and Youth, not an aged Silenus among the wine-skins.
+He viewed and described one whole realm
+of pagan loveliness, and then he turned his face the
+other way, and never looked back. Love is of the
+valley, and he lifted his eyes to the hills. His
+guiding star was not Christianity, which in its
+most characteristic and beautiful aspects had no
+fascination for him, but rather that severe and self-centred
+ideal of life and character which is called
+Puritanism. It is not a creed for weak natures;
+so that as the nominal religion of a whole populace
+it has inevitably fallen into some well-merited disrepute.
+Puritanism for him was not a body of
+law to be imposed outwardly on a gross and timid
+people, but an inspiration and a grace that falls
+from Heaven upon choice and rare natures--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Nor do I name of men the common rout,</div>
+<div class="t0">That, wandering loose about,</div>
+<div class="t0">Grow up and perish as the summer fly,</div>
+<div class="t0">Heads without name, no more remember'd;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>so sings the Chorus in <i>Samson Agonistes</i>--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">But such as thou hast solemnly elected,</div>
+<div class="t0">With gifts and graces eminently adorned,</div>
+<div class="t0">To some great work, thy glory,</div>
+<div class="t0">And people's safety, which in part they effect.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Under one form or another Puritanism is to be
+found in almost all religions, and in many systems
+of philosophy. Milton's Puritanism enabled him
+<span class="pb" id="pg_30">[30]</span>
+to combine his classical and Biblical studies, to
+reconcile his pagan and Christian admirations,
+Stoicism, and the Quakers. It was with no sense
+of incongruity that he gave to the Christ a speech
+in praise of--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Quintus, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,...</div>
+<div class="t0">Who could do mighty things, and could contemn</div>
+<div class="t0">Riches, though offered from the hand of Kings.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>To reject common ambitions, to refuse common
+enticements, to rule passions, desires, and fears,
+"neither to change, nor falter, nor repent,"--this
+was the wisdom and this the virtue that he set
+before himself. There is no beatific vision to keep
+his eyes from wandering among the shows of earth.
+Milton's heaven is colder than his earth, the home
+of Titans, whose employ is political and martial.
+When his imagination deals with earthly realities,
+the noble melancholy of the Greeks lies upon it.
+His last word on human life might be translated
+into Greek with no straining and no loss of
+meaning--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">His servants He, with new acquist</div>
+<div class="t0">Of true experience from this great event,</div>
+<div class="t0">With peace and consolation hath dismissed,</div>
+<div class="t0">And calm of mind, all passion spent.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He is therefore one of the few English poets
+(alone in this respect among the greatest) who
+have not sung of Love. His only English love-poem,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_31">[31]</span>
+the sonnet <i>To the Nightingale</i>, is his earliest
+and poorest sonnet. He elected in his later poems
+to sing of Marriage, its foundation in reason, its
+utility, its respectability and antiquity as an institution,
+and, above all, its amazing dangers. He
+has thus lost the devotion of the young, who, while
+they read poetry by the ear and eye for its sonorous
+suggestions, and its processions of vague shapes,
+love Milton; but when they come to read it for
+its matter and sentiment, leave him--in most cases
+never to return. The atmosphere of his later
+poems is that of some great public institution.
+Heaven is an Oriental despotism. Hell is a
+Secession parliament. In the happy garden itself
+there is no privacy, no individualism; it is the
+focus of the action, the central point of the attack
+and the defence; and a great part of the conversation
+of its inhabitants turns on the regulations
+under which they live. They never forget that
+they are all mankind, and when their psalm goes
+up in grateful adoration to their Creator, it is like
+the unanimous voice of all nations and kindreds
+and people and tongues.</p>
+
+<p>"The plan of <i>Paradise Lost</i>" says Johnson,
+"has this inconvenience, that it comprises neither
+human actions nor human manners. The man
+and woman who act and suffer are in a state which
+no other man and woman can ever know. The
+reader finds no transaction in which he can be
+<span class="pb" id="pg_32">[32]</span>
+engaged; beholds no condition in which he can by
+any effort of imagination place himself; he has,
+therefore, little natural curiosity and sympathy."
+Milton, he goes on to explain, "knew human
+nature only in the gross, and had never studied
+the shades of character, nor the combinations
+of concurring or the perplexity of contending
+passions."</p>
+
+<p>He knew human nature only in the gross. He
+treated nothing less momentous than the fortunes
+of the race. It is precisely from this cause that
+the incomparable grandeur of Milton's characters
+and situations springs. The conversations that he
+records are like international parleyings. Eve is
+the official Mother of mankind. Adam walks
+forth to meet the angel, in ambassadorial dignity,
+the accredited representative of the human race--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">Without more train</div>
+<div class="t0">Accompanied than with his own complete</div>
+<div class="t0">Perfections; in himself was all his state,</div>
+<div class="t0">More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits</div>
+<div class="t0">On princes, when their rich retinue long</div>
+<div class="t0">Of horses led and grooms besmeared with gold</div>
+<div class="t0">Dazzles the crowd and sets them all agape.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And if the other characters of <i>Paradise Lost</i> have
+this generic stamp, it is because the chief character
+of all has it--the character of the poet himself. It
+lends a strange dignity to the story of Milton's
+life that in all his doings he felt himself to be a
+<span class="pb" id="pg_33">[33]</span>
+"cause," an agent of mighty purposes. This it is
+that more than excuses, it glorifies, his repeated
+magniloquent allusions to himself throughout the
+prose works. Holding himself on trust or on
+commission, he must needs report himself, not only
+to his great Taskmaster, but also from time to
+time to men, his expectant and impatient beneficiaries.
+Even in <i>Lycidas</i> he is thinking of
+himself as much as of his dead companion--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">So may some gentle Muse</div>
+<div class="t0">With lucky words favour <i>my</i> destined urn,</div>
+<div class="t0">And as he passes turn,</div>
+<div class="t0">And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>What if he die young himself? Are his dreams
+and hopes for his own future an illusion?
+He agonises with the question in the famous
+digression on poetry and poetic fame. But he
+consoles himself by appeal to a Court where the
+success and the fame of this world are as straw in
+the furnace; and then, having duly performed the
+obsequies of his friend, with reinvigorated heart
+he turns once more to the future--"To-morrow
+to fresh woods and pastures new." A singular
+ending, no doubt, to an elegy! But it is blind
+and hasty to conclude that therefore the precedent
+laments are "not to be considered as the effusion
+of real passion." A soldier's burial is not the less
+honoured because his comrades must turn from
+<span class="pb" id="pg_34">[34]</span>
+his grave to give their thought and strength and
+courage to the cause which was also his. The
+maimed rites, interrupted by the trumpet calling
+to action, are a loftier commemoration than the
+desolating laments of those who "weep the more
+because they weep in vain." And in this way
+Milton's fierce tirade against the Church hirelings,
+and his preoccupation with his own ambitions
+support and explain each other, and find a fit place
+in the poem. He is looking to his equipment, if
+perchance he may live to do that in poetry and
+politics, which Edward King had died leaving
+unaccomplished. When his own time came he
+desired to be lamented in no other way--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Come, come; no time for lamentation now,</div>
+<div class="t0">Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself</div>
+<div class="t0">Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished</div>
+<div class="t0">A life heroic, on his enemies</div>
+<div class="t0">Fully revenged.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This overmastering sense of the cause breathes
+through all his numerous references to himself.
+He stands in the Forum,</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t2">Disturbed, yet comely, and in act</div>
+<div class="t0">Raised, as of some great matter to begin;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and addresses himself, as he boasts in <i>The Second
+Defence of the People of England</i>, to "the whole
+collective body of people, cities, states, and
+councils of the wise and eminent, through the
+wide expanse of anxious and listening Europe."
+<span class="pb" id="pg_35">[35]</span>
+Having sacrificed the use of his eyes to the service
+of the commonweal, he bates not a jot of heart or
+hope--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">What supports me, dost thou ask?</div>
+<div class="t0">The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied</div>
+<div class="t0">In Liberty's defence, my noble task,</div>
+<div class="t0">Of which all Europe talks from side to side.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And while thus his fighting years are filled with
+the exaltation of battle, as he plumes and lifts
+himself upon the cause that is going forward, the
+story of his closing years has in it much of the
+pathos of a lost cause. It was remarked by
+Johnson that there is in the <i>Paradise Lost</i> little
+opportunity for the pathetic; only one passage,
+indeed, is allowed by him to be truly deserving of
+that name. But the description of the remorse
+and reconcilement of Adam and Eve, which
+Johnson doubtless intended, will not compare, for
+moving quality, with the matchless invocation to
+the Seventh Book--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged</div>
+<div class="t0">To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,</div>
+<div class="t0">On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,</div>
+<div class="t0">In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,</div>
+<div class="t0">And solitude; yet not alone, while thou</div>
+<div class="t0">Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn</div>
+<div class="t0">Purples the East. Still govern thou my song,</div>
+<div class="t0">Urania, and fit audience find, though few.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then the noise that he had heard, in imagination
+only, thirty years earlier, assails his bodily
+<span class="pb" id="pg_36">[36]</span>
+ears; as evening sets in, the wonted roar is up,
+not in the wild woods of fancy inhabited by the
+sensual magician and his crew, but in the unlighted
+streets of Restoration London, as a chorus of cup-shotten
+brawlers goes roaring by. The king is
+enjoying his own again; and the poet, hunted
+and harassed in his last retreat, raises his petition
+again to the Muse whom he had invoked at the
+beginning of his task,--not Clio nor her sisters,
+but the spirit of heavenly power and heavenly
+wisdom; his mind reverts to that story of Orpheus
+which had always had so singular and personal
+a fascination for him; of Orpheus, who, holding
+himself aloof from the mad amorists of Thrace,
+was by them torn to pieces during the orgy of the
+Dionysia, and sent rolling down the torrent of the
+Hebrus; and he prays to his goddess and
+guardian--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">But drive far off the barbarous dissonance</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race</div>
+<div class="t0">Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard</div>
+<div class="t0">In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears</div>
+<div class="t0">To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned</div>
+<div class="t0">Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend</div>
+<div class="t0">Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores;</div>
+<div class="t0">For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Disappointed of all his political hopes, living on
+neglected and poor for fourteen years after the
+Restoration, and dying a private citizen, passably
+<span class="pb" id="pg_37">[37]</span>
+obscure, Milton yet found and took a magnanimous
+revenge upon his enemies. They had crippled
+only his left hand in silencing the politician, but
+his right hand, which had hung useless by his side
+for so many years while he served the State, was
+his own still, and wielded a more Olympian
+weapon. In prose and politics he was a baffled
+man, but in poetry and vision he found his
+triumph. His ideas, which had gone a-begging
+among the politicians of his time, were stripped by
+him of the rags of circumstance, and cleansed of
+its dust, to be enthroned where they might secure
+a hearing for all time. The surprise that he prepared
+for the courtiers of the Restoration world
+was like Samson's revenge, in that it fell on them
+from above; and, as elsewhere in the poem of
+<i>Samson Agonistes</i>, Milton was thinking not very
+remotely of his own case when he wrote that
+jubilant semi-chorus, with the marvellous fugal
+succession of figures, wherein Samson, and by
+inference Milton himself, is compared to a
+smouldering fire revived, to a serpent attacking a
+hen-roost, to an eagle swooping on his helpless
+prey, and last, his enemies now silent for ever, to
+the ph&oelig;nix, self-begotten and self-perpetuating.
+The Philistian nobility (or the Restoration notables)
+are described, with huge scorn, as ranged along
+the tiers of their theatre, like barnyard fowl
+blinking on their perch, watching, not without a
+<span class="pb" id="pg_38">[38]</span>
+flutter of apprehension, the vain attempts made on
+their safety by the reptile grovelling in the dust
+below--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t2">But he, though blind of sight,</div>
+<div class="t0">Despised, and thought extinguished quite,</div>
+<div class="t0">With inward eyes illuminated,</div>
+<div class="t0">His fiery virtue roused</div>
+<div class="t0">From under ashes into sudden flame,</div>
+<div class="t0">And as an evening dragon came,</div>
+<div class="t0">Assailant on the perch&egrave;d roosts</div>
+<div class="t0">And nests in order ranged</div>
+<div class="t0">Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle</div>
+<div class="t0">His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.</div>
+<div class="t0">So Virtue, given for lost,</div>
+<div class="t0">Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,</div>
+<div class="t0">Like that self-begotten bird</div>
+<div class="t0">In the Arabian woods embost,</div>
+<div class="t0">That no second knows nor third,</div>
+<div class="t0">And lay erewhile a holocaust,</div>
+<div class="t0">From out her ashy womb now teemed,</div>
+<div class="t0">Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most</div>
+<div class="t0">When most unactive deemed;</div>
+<div class="t0">And, though her body die, her fame survives.</div>
+<div class="t0">A secular bird, ages of lives.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_39">[39]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="c2">CHAPTER II
+<br />THE PROSE WORKS</a></h2>
+
+<p>It is customary for the friends of Milton to approach
+his prose works with a sigh of apology.
+There is a deep-rooted prejudice among the English
+people against a poet who concerns himself
+intimately with politics. Whether this feeling has
+its origin in solicitude for the poet or for the
+politics is hard to determine; indeed it is pretty
+generally maintained that each is detrimental to
+the other. But seeing that for one man in the
+modern world who cares for poets there are at
+least ten who care for politics, it is safe to assume
+that the poets, when they are deprived of the
+franchise, are deprived rather to maintain the
+purity and efficiency of politics than for the good
+of their own souls. They have been compared to
+birds of Paradise, which were long believed to
+have no feet; and the common sense of the English
+people, with a touch of the municipal logic of
+Dogberry, has enacted that whereas they have no
+<span class="pb" id="pg_40">[40]</span>
+feet, and have moreover been proved to have no
+feet, it shall be forbidden them, under the strictest
+pains and penalties, to alight and walk. Their
+function is to beautify the distant landscape with
+the flash of wings.</p>
+
+<p>For most men common-sense is the standard,
+and immediate utility the end, whereby they judge
+political questions, great and small. Now common-sense
+judges only the questions that are
+brought home to it by instant example; and
+utility is appealed to for a verdict only amid the
+dense crowd of actual conflicting interests. Neither
+the one nor the other is far-sighted or imaginative.
+So it comes about that the political system, in
+England, at least, is built up piecemeal; it is
+founded on appetites and compromises, and mortared
+by immemorial habit. To explain this
+process, and to transfigure it in the pure light
+of imagination, was the work of the great poet-politician,
+Edmund Burke. But the poet usually
+goes a hastier way to work. Looking at the
+whole domiciliary structure from outside, he finds
+it shapeless and ugly, like an ant-heap; and
+volunteers to play the architect. His design treats
+the details of individual habit and happiness in
+strict subordination to the desired whole. What
+he wants is consistency, symmetry, dignity; and
+to achieve these he is willing to make a holocaust
+of human selfishnesses. He may be a deep scholar
+<span class="pb" id="pg_41">[41]</span>
+and thinker, but he is apt to forget one point of
+ancient wisdom,--that it is the wearer of the shoe,
+and not the cobbler, who best knows where the
+shoe wrings him.</p>
+
+<p>The speculations of the poet awaken no hostile
+resentment so long as they are admittedly abstract.
+He is at liberty to build his Republic, his City of
+the Sun, his Utopia, or his New Atlantis, amid
+the indifferent applause of mankind. But when
+his aim becomes practical and immediate, when he
+seeks to stir the heap by introducing into it the
+ruthless discomfort of an idea, a million littlenesses
+assail him with deadly enmity, and he is found
+sorrowfully protesting his amazement:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs</div>
+<div class="t">By the known rules of ancient liberty,</div>
+<div class="t">When straight a barbarous noise environs me</div>
+<div class="t0">Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>So he is brought, with great reluctance, to the
+estimate of men which is expressed by Milton
+in <i>The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates</i>; "being
+slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so
+much to have the public state conformably
+governed to the inward vicious rule whereby they
+govern themselves. For indeed none can love
+freedom heartily but good men."</p>
+
+<p>Milton cannot claim the exemption from
+censure which is allowed to the theorists, the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_42">[42]</span>
+builders of ideal states somewhere in the clouds.
+On his own behalf he expressly disclaims any such
+intention. "To sequester out of the world," he
+says, "into Atlantic and Utopian politics, which
+never can be drawn into use, will not mend our
+condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of
+evil, in the midst whereof God has placed us unavoidably."
+Poetry might well have served him,
+if his object had been to add another to imaginary
+commonwealths. He took up with politics because
+he believed that in the disorder of the times his
+ideas might be made a "programme," and carried
+into effect.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1641, when already "the vigour of
+the Parliament had begun to humble the pride of
+the bishops," that he first intervened. "I saw,"
+he says, "that a way was opening for the establishment
+of real liberty; that the foundation was
+laying for the deliverance of mankind from the
+yoke of slavery and superstition.... I perceived
+that if I ever wished to be of use, I ought at least
+not to be wanting to my country, to the church,
+and to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis
+of so much danger; I therefore determined to
+relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged,
+and to transfer the whole force of my
+talents and my industry to this one important
+object." So he wrote the treatise in two books,
+<i>Of Reformation in England, and the causes that
+<span class="pb" id="pg_43">[43]</span>
+hitherto have hindered it.</i> His later pamphlets are
+all similarly occasional in nature, written with a
+particular and definite object in view. In these
+he advocates as practicable and much-needed reforms,
+among other things, the establishment of a
+perpetual republic on the lines of an oligarchy; the
+abolition of bishops, religious ceremonials, liturgies,
+tithes, and, indeed, of all regular payment or salary
+given to ministers of religion; the supersession of
+universities and public schools by the erection of
+new academic institutions, combining the functions
+of both, "in every City throughout this Land";
+the legalisation of free divorce; and the repeal of
+the ordinances compelling all books to be licensed.
+If he did not advocate, in any of the works put
+forth during his lifetime, the legal toleration of
+polygamy, it was probably only because he perceived
+that that, at least, did not fall within the
+scope of practical politics. He defends it in his
+posthumous treatise, <i>De Doctrin&acirc; Christian&acirc;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It will readily be seen that on almost all these
+questions Milton was not only--to use the foolish
+modern phrase--"in advance of his time," but
+also considerably in advance of ours. Twenty
+years after his death the Licensing Acts were
+abolished; for the rest, his reforms are yet to
+accomplish. It is an odd remark of one of his
+learned biographers that the <i>Areopagitica</i> is the
+only one of all Milton's prose writings "whose
+<span class="pb" id="pg_44">[44]</span>
+topic is not obsolete." It is the only one of his
+prose writings whose thesis commands the general
+assent of modern readers, and is, therefore, from
+his own practical point of view, obsolete.</p>
+
+<p>The mere enumeration of his opinions suffices
+to show that Milton's is a sad case of the poet in
+politics. The labours of the twenty prime years
+of his manhood have been copiously bewailed. To
+have Pegasus in harness is bad enough; but when
+the waggon that he draws is immovably stuck in
+the mud, and he himself bespattered by his efforts,
+the spectacle is yet more pitiable. Many of his
+critics have expressed regret that he did not make
+for himself an artificial seclusion, and continue
+his purely poetical labours, with the classics for
+companions. The questions that drew him into
+politics were burning questions, it is true; but
+were there not others to deal with them, good,
+earnest, sensible, homely people? Samuel Butler
+has enumerated some of those who were dedicating
+their time and thought to politics at this
+important crisis:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The oyster-women locked their fish up,</div>
+<div class="t0">And trudged away to cry "No Bishop":</div>
+<div class="t0">The mouse-trap men laid save-alls by,</div>
+<div class="t0">And 'gainst ev'l counsellors did cry;</div>
+<div class="t0">Botchers left old cloaths in the lurch,</div>
+<div class="t0">And fell to turn and patch the Church;</div>
+<div class="t0">Some cried the Covenant, instead</div>
+<div class="t0">Of pudding-pies and ginger-bread,</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_45">[45]</span>
+<div class="t0">And some for brooms, old boots and shoes,</div>
+<div class="t0">Bawled out to purge the Common-house:</div>
+<div class="t0">Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry</div>
+<div class="t0">A gospel-preaching ministry;</div>
+<div class="t0">And some for old shirts, coats or cloak,</div>
+<div class="t0">No surplices nor service-book;</div>
+<div class="t0">A strange harmonious inclination</div>
+<div class="t0">Of all degrees to reformation.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But what was Milton doing in this malodorous
+and noisy assembly? Might he not with all confidence
+have left the Church to the oyster-women,
+and the State to the mouse-trap men? The
+company that he kept with them ruined his
+manners; he had to speak loud in order to be
+heard, to speak broad in order to be respected;
+and so (bitterest thought of all!) he lost something
+of that sweet reasonableness which is a poet's
+proper grace.</p>
+
+<p>The answer to this strain of criticism is to be
+found in the study of Milton's works, poetry and
+prose--and perhaps best in the poetry. We could
+not have had anything at all like <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+from a dainty, shy poet-scholar; nor anything
+half so great. The greatest men hold their power
+on this tenure, that they shall not husband it
+because the occasion that presents itself, although
+worthy of high effort, is not answerable to the refinement
+of their tastes. Milton, it is too often
+forgotten, was an Englishman. He held the
+privilege and the trust not cheap. When God
+<span class="pb" id="pg_46">[46]</span>
+intends some new and great epoch in human history,
+"what does he then," this poet exultantly asks,
+"but reveal himself to his servants, and, as his
+manner is, first to his Englishmen?" To his
+chief work in poetry he was instigated by patriotic
+motives. "I applied myself," he says, "to that
+resolution which Ariosto followed against the
+persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and
+art I could unite to the adorning of my native
+tongue, not to make verbal curiosity the end (that
+were a toilsome vanity), but to be an interpreter
+and relater of the best and sagest things among
+mine own citizens throughout this island in the
+mother dialect."</p>
+
+<p>There is plenty of "verbal curiosity" in
+Milton's poetry; he is in some respects the finest
+craftsman who ever handled the English speech:
+so that this declaration is the more timely to remind
+us by how wide a chasm he is separated from those
+modern greenhouse poets who move contentedly
+in an atmosphere of art ideals and art theories.
+He had his breeding from the ancient world,
+where &AElig;schylus fought at Marathon, and he could
+not think of politics as of a separable part of
+human life.</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,</div>
+<div class="t0">Or with the tangles of Ne&aelig;ra's hair,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>is a lyric ideal that may quite well consist with
+<span class="pb" id="pg_47">[47]</span>
+political indifference, but how should an epic inspiration
+be nourished where the prosperity of the
+State is lightly esteemed? Even had poetry lost
+by his political adventures, he would have been
+content that politics should gain. And politics
+did gain; for Milton's prose works raise every
+question they touch, even where they cannot truly
+be said to advance it. It is as unseemly for the
+politicians to complain of his choice, as it would
+be for the herdsmen of King Admetus to complain
+of the presence among them of a god. The
+large considerations and high passions imported
+into the treatment of practical questions by a
+Milton, or a Burke, have done much to keep
+even party politics at a high level in England, so
+that civil servants and journalists may join in the
+hymn of the herdsmen--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">He has been our fellow, the morning of our days,</div>
+<div class="t0">Us he chose for house-mates, and this way went.</div>
+<div class="t4">God, of whom music</div>
+<div class="t4">And song and blood are pure,</div>
+<div class="t4">The day is never darkened</div>
+<div class="t4">That had thee here obscure!</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In a long autobiographic passage in the <i>Second
+Defence of the People of England</i> Milton makes a
+formal classification of his prose works written
+before that date. All of them, he says, were
+designed to promote Liberty. By the accidents
+of the time he was induced to treat first, in his
+<span class="pb" id="pg_48">[48]</span>
+anti-episcopal pamphlets, of religious liberty.
+Once that controversy was fairly ablaze, in the
+name of the same goddess he applied his incendiary
+torch to humbler piles. "I perceived," he says,
+"that there were three species of liberty which are
+essential to the happiness of social life--religious,
+domestic, and civil; and as I had already written
+concerning the first, and the magistrates were
+strenuously active in obtaining the third, I determined
+to turn my attention to the second, or the
+domestic species." He includes in this division of
+his work the Divorce pamphlets, the tractate
+<i>Of Education</i>, and the <i>Areopagitica</i>, as dealing with
+the "three material questions" (so he calls them)
+of domestic liberty, namely, "the conditions of the
+conjugal tie, the education of the children, and the
+free publication of the thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>It seems a strange conception of domestic
+liberty which makes it rest on a threefold support--divorce
+at will, an unrestrained printing-press,
+and the encyclop&aelig;dic education of polyglot
+children. But the truth is that Milton's classification
+is an after-thought. The pamphlets that
+he names were all written by him much about the
+same time, between 1643 and 1645; but the true
+history of their origin is more interesting and less
+symmetrical than the later invented scheme of
+classification. The Divorce pamphlets were
+written because Milton was unhappily married.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_49">[49]</span>
+The <i>Areopagitica</i> was written because his heterodox
+views concerning marriage had brought him into
+collision with the Presbyterian censors of the press.
+His treatise on education was written because he
+had undertaken the education of his own nephews,
+and had become deeply interested in that question.
+In all three his own experience is the first motive;
+in all three that experience is concealed beneath a
+formidable array of general considerations, dogmatically
+propounded.</p>
+
+<p>The case is the same with regard to the
+pamphlets that treat of religious and civil liberty;
+they are not only occasional, but intensely personal,
+even in their origins. The earliest of them, the
+five ecclesiastical pamphlets of the year 1641, deal
+with a question which had been of intimate concern
+to Milton ever since the beginning of his Cambridge
+days. The celebrated controversy with
+Salmasius and his abettors, concerning the death of
+King Charles, is a gladiatorial combat from which
+every element save the personal is often absent.
+In these bouts offensive biography and defensive
+autobiography serve for sword and shield. This
+personal character of the prose writings, while it
+has repelled some readers interested mainly in the
+questions discussed, has attracted others who are
+interested chiefly in the writer. A rich harvest of
+personal allusion has been gathered from the controversial
+treatises, and perhaps, even now, the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_50">[50]</span>
+field has not been gleaned to the last ear. It
+is worthy of remark, for instance, how Milton's
+pre-occupation with the themes which he had
+already pondered, and turned this way and that in
+his mind, to test their fitness for a monumental
+work, shows itself in his choice of figure and
+allusion. Attention has often been called to the
+elaborate comparison, founded on the history of
+Samson, in <i>The Reason of Church Government
+urged against Prelaty</i>:--</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot better liken the state and person of
+a king than to that mighty Nazarite Samson; who
+being disciplined from his birth in the precepts
+and the practice of temperance and sobriety,
+without the strong drink of injurious and excessive
+desires, grows up to a noble strength and
+perfection with those his illustrious and sunny locks,
+the laws, waving and curling about his god-like
+shoulders. And while he keeps them about
+him undiminished and unshorn, he may with the
+jawbone of an ass, that is, with the word of his
+meanest officer, suppress and put to confusion
+thousands of those that rise against his just power.
+But laying down his head among the strumpet flatteries
+of prelates, while he sleeps and thinks no
+harm, they, wickedly shaving off all those bright and
+weighty tresses of his law, and just prerogatives,
+which were his ornament and strength, deliver him
+over to indirect and violent counsels, which, as those
+<span class="pb" id="pg_51">[51]</span>
+Philistines, put out the fair and far-sighted eyes of
+his natural discerning, and make him grind in the
+prison-house of their sinister ends and practices
+upon him: till he, knowing this prelatical rasor to
+have bereft him of his wonted might, nourish
+again his puissant hair, the golden beams of law
+and right; and they, sternly shook, thunder with
+ruin upon the heads of those his evil counsellors,
+but not without great affliction to himself."</p>
+
+<p>This ingenious allegorical application naturally
+finds no place in the grave poem of Milton's
+latest years. And yet, in one passage at least,
+his earlier love for the high-figured style took
+him captive again. The strong drink from which
+the Samson of the play abstains is strong drink,
+not "injurious and excessive desires." There is
+no hint of prelatical conspiracy in the enticements
+of Dalila. But perhaps some faint reminiscence of
+his earlier fable concerning Samson's hair recurred
+to Milton's mind when he gave to Manoa a
+speech comparing the locks of the hero to the
+strength, not of the law, but of a nation in arms:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">And I persuade me God had not permitted</div>
+<div class="t0">His strength again to grow up with his hair,</div>
+<div class="t0">Garrisoned round about him like a camp</div>
+<div class="t0">Of faithful soldiery, were not his purpose</div>
+<div class="t0">To use him further yet in some great service.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The theme of <i>Samson Agonistes</i> had thus already
+taken possession of Milton's imagination when he
+<span class="pb" id="pg_52">[52]</span>
+wrote his first prose tractates. But the same
+writings furnish even stronger evidence of his
+early dallyings with the theme of <i>Paradise Lost</i>.
+"It was from out the rind of one apple tasted," he
+says in the <i>Areopagitica</i>, "that the knowledge of
+good and evil, as two twins cleaving together,
+leaped forth into the world." And again, in
+<i>The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce</i>:--"The
+academics and stoics ... knew not what a consummate
+and most adorned Pandora was bestowed
+upon Adam, to be the nurse and guide of his
+arbitrary happiness and perseverance, I mean, his
+native innocence and perfection, which might have
+kept him from being our true Epimetheus."
+Some of these references show the imaginative
+scheme of the <i>Paradise Lost</i> in the process of
+building. In one passage, for instance, of the last
+quoted treatise, Milton expounds the pagan belief
+that God punishes his enemies most when he
+throws them furthest from him:--"Which then
+they held he did, when he blinded, hardened, and
+stirred up his offenders, to finish and pile up their
+desperate work since they had undertaken it. To
+banish for ever into a local hell, whether in the
+air or in the centre, or in that uttermost and
+bottomless gulf of chaos, deeper from holy bliss
+than the world's diameter multiplied, they thought
+not a punishing so proper and proportionate for
+God to inflict as to punish sin with sin." It
+<span class="pb" id="pg_53">[53]</span>
+would seem as if the poet had not as yet fixed the
+situation of his local hell, but remained suspended
+between rival theories. The other idea, of the
+Divine permission and impulse given to hardened
+sinners, finds a conspicuous place in the poem. In
+one instance, at least, a figure drawn from the
+story of the Creation is violently handled to serve
+strange uses. The evolution of the four elements
+from the chaotic welter of hot, cold, moist, and
+dry, is adduced as a proof that the laws of God
+and of nature approve free divorce:--"By his
+divorcing command the world first rose out of
+chaos, nor can be renewed again out of confusion,
+but by the separating of unmeet consorts."</p>
+
+<p>Allusions of this kind occur most frequently in
+the earlier prose writings, while the studies that
+had been interrupted by controversy were yet fresh
+in Milton's memory. They would hardly be
+worth the quotation, were it not that they are
+another evidence of the transparency of his mind.
+In looking through his prose works you see traces
+of all that was engaging his imagination and
+thought at the time. Poetry is the highest of expressive
+arts; and poets are the worst dissemblers
+or economisers of truth in the world. Their
+knowledge, like their feeling, possesses them, and
+must find expression as argument, or illustration,
+or figure, whatever the immediate matter in hand.
+The prose works of Milton are thus, from first to
+<span class="pb" id="pg_54">[54]</span>
+last, an exposition of himself. The divorce
+pamphlets, especially, are hot with smothered
+personal feeling. Long years afterwards, when
+time and change had softened and blurred it in
+memory, his early misadventure was reflected in
+more than one passage of the later poems. The
+humble plaint of Eve, and the description of her
+reunion with her alienated lord, in the Tenth Book
+of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, doubtless contains, as has often
+been said, some reflection of what took place at a
+similar interview in 1645, when Mistress Mary
+Milton returned to her offended husband. That
+one principal cause of the rupture has been rightly
+divined, by Mr. Mark Pattison and others, is
+probable from certain remarkable lines in the
+Eighth Book, where Adam describes how he was
+presented with his bride:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">On she came,</div>
+<div class="t0">Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen,</div>
+<div class="t0">And guided by his voice, nor uninformed</div>
+<div class="t0">Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Even at so wide a remove of time, the poet's
+wounded pride finds expression in this singular
+theory--or, rather, in this more than dubious piece
+of self-justification.</p>
+
+<p>But although the hurt he had suffered, in his
+most susceptible feelings, gives eloquence and
+plangency to his divorce pamphlets, it was not
+merely to voice his sufferings that he wrote those
+<span class="pb" id="pg_55">[55]</span>
+pamphlets. Most men in Milton's position,
+married to "a nothing, a desertrice, an adversary,"
+would have recognised that theirs was one of those
+exceptional cases for which the law cannot provide,
+and would have sat down under their unhappy
+chance, to bear it or mitigate it as best they
+might. Some poets of the time of the Romantic
+Revival would have claimed the privilege of genius
+to be a law unto itself; the law of the State being
+designed for the common rout, whose lesser
+sensibilities and weaker individuality make them
+amenable to its discipline. Milton did neither
+the one thing nor the other. The modern
+idolatry of genius was as yet uninvented; he was
+a citizen first, a poet and an unhappy man afterwards.
+He directed his energies to proving, not
+that he should be exempted from the operation of
+the law, but that the law itself should be changed.
+He had entered into marriage, with full ceremonial
+ushering, by the main door; he would go out the
+same way, or not at all. Thus even in this most
+personal matter he pleads, not for himself, but for
+the commonweal. He cannot conceive of happiness
+as of a private possession, to be secretly
+enjoyed; it stands rooted, like justice, in the wise
+and equal ordinances of the State; and the only
+freedom that he values is freedom under the law.</p>
+
+<p>Like the citizen of some antique state, he discourses
+of marriage in the market-place. In his
+<span class="pb" id="pg_56">[56]</span>
+efforts to be persuasive, both here and in the
+<i>Areopagitica</i>, he humbles himself to management
+and the seasonings of flattery. It is a new trade
+for him, and suits oddly with his pride. But he
+hoped much, at this time, from the Parliament,
+that "select assembly," containing so many
+"worthy senators" and "Christian reformers,"
+"judges and lawgivers." In the enthusiasm of
+his hopes, he credits them with a desire "to
+imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece,"
+with a wisdom greater than that of the Athenian
+Parliament, with a magnanimous willingness to
+repeal their own acts at the dictate of the voice of
+reason. And all this at a time when the Presbyterians
+were in the ascendant, intent upon establishing
+a discipline neither old, nor elegant, nor
+humane, so little acquainted with Greece, that it
+was one of Selden's amusements to confute their
+divines by citing a reading from the Greek
+Testament. Milton was destined to grievous
+disappointment, and his rage against the Presbyterians,
+in some of his later pamphlets, was the
+fiercer.</p>
+
+<p>But although his pamphlets are both occasional
+and personal, and even address themselves at times
+to conciliation and persuasion, the views that they
+advocate and the system of thought that underlies
+them were not the products of time and
+accident. Milton was an idealist, pure and simple,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_57">[57]</span>
+in politics. Had he lived under the Tudor
+sovereigns, he would have been reduced, with Sir
+Thomas More, Montaigne, and John Barclay, the
+author of <i>Argenis</i>, to express himself by way of
+romance and allegory. It was his fortune to live
+at a time when the Tudor state system was breaking
+up with appalling suddenness, and along with it the
+Tudor compromise in the affairs of the Church,
+imposed from above upon an unawakened people,
+was falling into wreckage. Here was an opportunity
+that has not often, in the world's history,
+come to a poet, of realising the dream that he
+had dreamed in his study, of setting up again, for
+the admiration and comfort of posterity, the model
+of an ancient Republic.</p>
+
+<p>The best of all Milton's critics has left us the
+worst account of his political opinions. Johnson's
+censure of <i>Lycidas</i>, much as it has been ridiculed
+and decried, is judicious and discerning compared
+with his explanation of Milton's political creed:--"Milton's
+republicanism was, I am afraid, founded
+in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen
+desire of independence, in petulance impatient of
+control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He
+hated monarchs in the State, and prelates in the
+Church; for he hated all whom he was required to
+obey. It is to be suspected that his predominant
+desire was to destroy, rather than establish, and
+that he felt not so much the love of liberty as
+<span class="pb" id="pg_58">[58]</span>
+repugnance to authority." It may, at least, be
+credited to Johnson for moderation, that he requires
+only four of the Seven Deadly Sins, to wit,
+Pride, Envy, Anger, and Sloth, to explain Milton's
+political tenets. Had he permitted himself
+another sentence, an easy place might surely have
+been made for Gluttony, Luxury, and Covetousness,
+the three whose absence cannot fail to be
+remarked by any lover of thorough and detailed
+treatment in these intricate problems of human
+character.</p>
+
+<p>If, in our more modern fashion, we seek for the
+origin of Milton's ideas in his education, his habits
+of thought, and his admirations, we shall be
+obliged to admit that they are all rooted in his
+conception of the ancient City State. It was the
+wish of Thomas Hobbes to abolish the study of
+Greek and Latin in our schools and colleges,
+because this study fosters a love of freedom, and
+unfits men to be the subjects of an absolute
+monarch. His happiest illustration would have
+been the case of his contemporary, Milton. Yet in
+all Milton's writings there is no trace of the modern
+democratic doctrine of equality. A hearing is all
+that he claims. So far from hating greatness, he
+carries his admiration for it, for personal virtue and
+prowess, almost to excess. The poet who described
+the infernal conclave in the Second Book of
+<i>Paradise Lost</i> was not likely to be insensible to the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_59">[59]</span>
+part played in politics by men of eminent and
+dominating personality. To think of free government
+as of an engine for depressing unusual merit
+was impossible for Milton. He lived in an age
+that had found in Plutarch's men its highest ideals
+of political character. Never, since their own day,
+had the "noble Grecians and Romans" exercised so
+irresistible a fascination on the minds of men, or so
+real an influence on the affairs of the State, as was
+theirs at the time of the Renaissance. The mist in
+which they had long been enveloped was swept
+away, and these colossal figures of soldiers, patriots,
+and counsellors loomed large and clear across the
+ages, their majesty enhanced by distance and by
+art, which conspire to efface all that is accidental,
+petty, and distracting. We cannot see these
+figures as they appeared to the Renaissance world.
+One of the chief results of modern historical labour
+and research has been that it has peopled the
+Middle Ages for us, and interposed a whole society
+of living men, our ancestors, between us and
+ancient Rome. But in Milton's time this process
+was only beginning; the collections and researches
+that made it possible were largely the work of his
+contemporaries,--and were despised by him.
+When he looked back on the world's history, from
+his own standpoint, he saw, near at hand and
+stretching away into the distance, a desert, from
+which a black mass of cloud had just been lifted;
+<span class="pb" id="pg_60">[60]</span>
+and, across the desert, lying fair under the broad
+sunshine, a city--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,</div>
+<div class="t0">Turrets and terrasses, and glittering spires.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was towards this ancient civic life, with its
+arts and arms and long renown, that he reached
+forth passionate hands of yearning. The intervening
+tract, whither his younger feet had wandered,
+almost ceased to exist for him; the paladins and
+ladies of medi&aelig;val story were the deceitful mirage
+of the desert; the true life of antiquity lay beyond.
+In all his allusions to the great themes of romance
+two things are noticeable: first, how deeply his
+imagination had been stirred by them, so that they
+are used as a last crown of decoration in some of
+the most exalted passages of his great poems; and
+next, how careful he is to stamp them as fiction.
+His studies for the early <i>History of Britain</i> had
+cloyed him with legends conveyed from book to
+book. Once convinced that no certain historical
+ground could be found for the feet among the
+whole mass of these traditions, Milton ceased to
+regard them as eligible subjects for his greatest
+poem. But their beauty dwelt with him; the
+memory of the embattled chivalry of Arthur and
+Charlemagne recurs to him when he is seeking for
+the topmost reach of human power and splendour
+that he may belittle it by the side of Satan's rebel
+<span class="pb" id="pg_61">[61]</span>
+host; and the specious handmaidens who served
+the Tempter's phantom banquet in the desert are
+described as lovely beyond what has been</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">Fabled since</div>
+<div class="t0">Of fairy damsels met in forest wide</div>
+<div class="t0">By Knights of Logres, or of Lyones,</div>
+<div class="t0">Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>If Milton's attitude to medi&aelig;val romance is one
+of regretful suspicion, his attitude to the greatest of
+medi&aelig;val institutions is one of bitter contempt.
+He inveighs even against the "antiquitarians,"
+such as Camden, who, he says, "cannot but love
+bishops as well as old coins and his much lamented
+monasteries, for antiquity's sake." For near
+twelve hundred years these same bishops "have
+been in England to our souls a sad and doleful
+succession of illiterate and blind guides." It is
+needless to multiply extracts illustrative of Milton's
+opinions on the Church; behind the enormous
+wealth of rhetoric and invective poured forth in
+his pamphlets, the opinions that he holds are few
+and simple. When he had been disappointed by
+the Presbyterians, and had finally turned from them,
+his beliefs inclined more and more, in two points
+at least, to the tenets of the newly arisen sect of
+Quakers--to a pure spiritualism in religion, and
+the complete separation of Church and State.
+Their horror of war he never shared. The model
+of the Church he sought in the earliest records of
+<span class="pb" id="pg_62">[62]</span>
+Christianity, and less and less even there; the
+model of the State in the ancient republics. All
+subsequent experience and precedent was to him a
+hindrance and a mischief. So rapidly and easily
+does his mind leap from the ancient to the modern
+world, that even when he speaks of his love for the
+drama, as in his first Latin elegy or in <i>Il Penseroso</i>,
+it is sometimes difficult to say whether he is thinking
+of the Elizabethan or of the Attic dramatists.</p>
+
+<p>The lodestar of his hopes is liberty, his main
+end the establishment of "a free commonwealth."
+He knows as well as Montesquieu that democracy
+in its pristine dignity can be erected only on a
+wide foundation of public virtue. "To govern
+well," he declares in the treatise <i>Of Reformation
+in England</i>, "is to train up a nation in true
+wisdom and virtue, and that which springs from
+thence, magnanimity (take heed of that), and
+that which is our beginning, regeneration, and
+happiest end, likeness to God, which in one word
+we call godliness;... other things follow as the
+shadow does the substance." In the same pamphlet
+this envious hater of greatness remarks that
+"to govern a nation piously and justly, which
+only is to say happily, is for a spirit of the greatest
+size, and divinest mettle." And men worthy of
+this description had, as it seemed to him, arisen
+in his own time. His praise of Cromwell and the
+leaders associated with him is almost extravagant
+<span class="pb" id="pg_63">[63]</span>
+in its enthusiasm. "While you, O Cromwell, are
+left among us, he hardly shows a proper confidence
+in the Supreme, who distrusts the security of
+England, when he sees that you are in so special
+a manner the favoured object of the Divine regard."
+His mind is full of the achievements of
+Cyrus, Epaminondas, and Scipio; he denies to
+the Protector no honour that may be drawn from
+these high comparisons. And then, as in <i>Lycidas</i>,
+so also in <i>The Second Defence of the People of
+England</i>, Milton concludes his celebration of
+another by a return to himself and his pride in
+a duty fulfilled. Opportunity, he declares, is
+offered for great achievements; if it be not
+seized, posterity will judge "that men only
+were wanting for the execution; while they were
+not wanting who could rightly counsel, exhort,
+inspire, and bind an unfading wreath of praise
+round the brows of the illustrious actors in so
+glorious a scene."</p>
+
+<p>In the measures that he recommends to Cromwell
+as necessary for the public welfare, his mistakes
+are the generous errors of an idealist. He
+writes as if all were either Cromwells or Miltons,
+and worthy of the fullest measure of liberty.
+"Now the time seems come," he exclaims,
+"wherein Moses, the great prophet, may sit in
+heaven rejoicing to see that memorable and
+glorious wish of his fulfilled, when not only our
+<span class="pb" id="pg_64">[64]</span>
+seventy elders, but all the Lord's people, are
+become prophets." His general propositions on
+the function of law are unimpeachable. "He
+who wisely would restrain the reasonable soul of
+man within due bounds, must first himself know
+perfectly how far the territory and dominion
+extends of just and honest liberty. As little must
+he offer to bind that which God hath loosened
+as to loosen that which He hath bound. The
+ignorance and mistake of this high point hath
+heaped up one huge half of all the misery that
+hath been since Adam." But with the application
+to issues of the day it appears that the mistake has
+been all one way. "Laws are usually worse in
+proportion as they are more numerous." The
+free spirit of man can govern him without "a
+garrison upon his neck of empty and over-dignified
+precepts."</p>
+
+<p>Whether he treat of religion, of education, of
+divorce, or of civil government, the error is always
+the same, a confidence too absolute in the capacity
+and integrity of the reasonable soul of man. A
+liturgy, for example, is intolerable, because it is a
+slur upon the extemporary effusions of ministers
+of the Gospel. "Well may men of eminent gifts
+set forth as many forms and helps to prayer as
+they please; but to impose them on ministers
+lawfully called and sufficiently tried ... is a supercilious
+tyranny, impropriating the Spirit of God to
+<span class="pb" id="pg_65">[65]</span>
+themselves." Milton, we know, did not habitually
+attend public worship at any of the conventicles
+of the sectaries, or perhaps he might have found
+reason to modify this censure.</p>
+
+<p>Some of his impassioned pleadings were possibly
+not wholly without effect on the politics of the
+time. It is interesting, at any rate, to find Cromwell,
+in his letter written in 1650 to the Governor
+of Edinburgh Castle, adopting one of the main
+arguments of the <i>Areopagitica</i>, and enforcing it
+against the Presbyterians by a figure which may
+have been borrowed from that tract. "Your
+pretended fear," he writes, "lest error should step
+in, is like the man who would keep all wine out of
+the country lest men should be drunk. It will be
+found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a
+man of his natural liberty upon a supposition that
+he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge."
+But Cromwell never applied his logic to the
+removal of the restraint upon printing, which by
+this same argument Milton had judged to be
+"the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free
+and knowing spirit that can be put upon him."
+He was too practical a statesman to be frightened
+into logic by a little paper shot.</p>
+
+<p>Logical Milton always was. He learned little
+or nothing from the political events of his time.
+He was throughout consistent with himself;
+prepared to take any risks that his advocacy
+<span class="pb" id="pg_66">[66]</span>
+might bring upon him, not prepared to forego
+or modify his opinions because of human incompetence
+or human imbecility. Between the
+consistent and unflinching Royalists on the one
+hand, and the consistent and unflinching Republicans
+on the other, the most of the population
+of England wavered and hung. But half-measures
+and half-heartedness were alike unintelligible to
+Milton. He fell upon the Presbyterians when
+they showed a disposition to palter with the
+logical consequences of their own action, and
+scourged them unmercifully. They had "banded
+and borne arms against their king, divested him,
+disanointed him, nay, cursed him all over in their
+pulpits, and their pamphlets." But when once
+the king was brought to trial, then "he who but
+erewhile in the pulpits was a cursed tyrant, an
+enemy to God and saints, laden with all the
+innocent blood spilt in three kingdoms, and so to
+be fought against, is now, though nothing penitent
+or altered from his first principles, a lawful
+magistrate, a sovereign lord, the Lord's anointed,
+not to be touched, though by themselves imprisoned."
+He prepares for them a similar
+dilemma, between the horns of which they have
+since been content to dwell, in his treatment of the
+question of divorce: "They dare not affirm that
+marriage is either a sacrament or a mystery ... and
+yet they invest it with such an awful sanctity,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_67">[67]</span>
+and give it such adamantine chains to bind with,
+as if it were to be worshipped like some Indian
+deity, when it can confer no blessing upon us,
+but works more and more to our misery."</p>
+
+<p>Milton's astonishment and indignation in cases
+like these are a convincing evidence of his inability
+to understand average politics, and that
+world of convenience, precaution, and compromise
+which is their native place. His own tenacity
+and constancy have something grim about them.
+Andrew Marvell, in his tract called <i>The Rehearsal
+Transposed</i>, speaking of the intolerance of his
+adversary, Samuel Parker, says: "If you have a
+mind to die, or to be of his party (there are
+but these two conditions), you may perhaps be
+rendered capable of his charity." Neither of
+these two conditions was a certain title to the
+charity of Milton. In the <i>Eikonoklastes</i> he pursues
+the dead king with jibe and taunt, and exults
+over the smallest advantage gained. The opening
+words of the tract show him conscious of the
+difficulty and delicacy of the part he acted in
+making war on one who had "paid his final
+debt to nature and his faults." But what then?
+If the king, being dead, could speak, the dead
+king must be answered, and his gauntlet taken
+up "in the behalf of liberty and the commonwealth."</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which he conducts this and
+<span class="pb" id="pg_68">[68]</span>
+other controversies has brought upon Milton's
+head universal reproach. He is intemperate and
+violent, he heaps up personal scurrilities against
+his adversaries, and triumphs in their misfortunes.
+There is nothing wherein our age more differs
+from his than in the accepted rules governing
+controversy, and he has lost estimation accordingly.
+Yet not a few critics, it may be suspected, have
+allowed their dislike of the thing he says to hurry
+them into an exaggerated censure on his manner
+of saying it. It is important, in the first place,
+to remember that his violences are not the
+violences of the hired rhetorician. He was
+prepared to stand by what he wrote, and he
+knew the risks that he ran in those shifting and
+uncertain times. His life was in danger at the
+Restoration, and was saved by some unknown
+piece of good fortune or clemency. He was not
+a coward reviler, a "tongue-doughty giant," whose
+ears are the most delicate part about him, but an
+open fighter, who got as good as he gave. And
+then it is sometimes forgotten that the most
+scurrilous of Milton's pamphlets were written in
+Latin, a language which has always enjoyed an
+excellent liberty in the matter of personal abuse;
+while even his English pamphlets, wherein at
+times he shows almost as pretty a talent in reviling,
+were written for an audience inured to the habitual
+amenities of Latin controversy. Sir Thomas
+<span class="pb" id="pg_69">[69]</span>
+More was famous for his knack of calling bad
+names in good Latin, yet his posterity rise up and
+call him blessed. Milton, like More, observed
+the rules of the game, which allowed practices
+condemned in the modern literary prize-ring.
+He calls Salmasius a poor grammarian, a pragmatical
+coxcomb, a silly little scholar, a mercenary
+advocate, a loggerhead, a hare-brained blunderbuss,
+a witless brawler, a mongrel cur; he reproaches
+him with the domestic tyranny put upon
+him by that barking she-wolf, his wife, and winds
+up with an elaborate comparison (not wholly
+unfamiliar to modern methods of controversy)
+between Salmasius and Judas. With his nameless
+opponent in the Divorce quarrel he deals--this
+time in English--no less contemptuously: "I
+mean not to dispute philosophy with this pork,
+who never read any." The creature is a conspicuous
+gull, an odious fool, a dolt, an idiot, a
+groom, a rank pettifogger, a presumptuous losel,
+a clown, a vice, a huckster-at-law, whose "jabberment
+is the flashiest and the fustiest that ever
+corrupted in such an unswilled hogshead." "What
+should a man say more to a snout in this pickle?
+What language can be low and degenerate
+enough?" In the <i>Apology</i> for Smectymnuus,
+Milton sets forth his own defence of his acrimony
+and violence: "There may be a sanctified bitterness,"
+he remarks, "against the enemies of the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_70">[70]</span>
+truth;" and he dares to quote the casuistry of
+Electra in <i>Sophocles</i>:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">'Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds,</div>
+<div class="t0">And your ungodly deeds find me the words.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The exigencies of controversy revealed in
+Milton not only an inexhaustible store of coarse
+invective, but also, at times, the flash of real wit.
+"My fate," he says, with some sense of the incongruity
+of the thing, "extorts from me a talent of
+sport, which I had thought to hide in a napkin."
+We are privileged to hear Milton laugh. It is
+not mirthful nor gentle laughter, but rather the
+fierce, harsh, vehement laughter of the Hebrew
+Psalms, the laughter of scorn, the shooting out of
+the lips, the saying "Ha, ha." He speaks with
+his mouth, and swords are in his lips. Thus, of
+Alexander Morus, Professor of Sacred History at
+Amsterdam, whom he suspected to be the author
+of a tract in support of Salmasius, he says: "There
+is one More, part Frenchman and part Scot, so
+that one country or one people cannot be quite
+overwhelmed with the whole infamy of his extraction";
+and he indulges himself in a debauch of
+punning on <i>Morus</i>, the Latin word for a mulberry.
+In the prelatical controversy, after discussing with
+his opponent the meaning of the word "angel," he
+continues: "It is not ordination nor jurisdiction
+that is angelical, but the heavenly message of the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_71">[71]</span>
+Gospel, which is the office of all ministers alike....
+And if you will contend still for a superiority
+in one person, you must ground it better than
+from this metaphor, which you may now deplore
+as the axe-head that fell into the water, and say,
+'Alas, master! for it was borrowed'; unless you
+have as good a faculty to make iron swim, as you
+had to make light froth sink." In the <i>Apology</i>
+for Smectymnuus he heaps one grotesque comparison
+on another. His adversary, the son of
+Bishop Hall, is like "some empiric of false
+accusations to try his poisons upon me, whether
+they would work or not." The learning that was
+displayed by the champion of Episcopacy and the
+very typographical arrangement of his book incur
+an equal contempt: the margin of his treatise "is
+the sluice most commonly that feeds the drought
+of his text.... Nor yet content with the wonted
+room of his margin, but he must cut out large
+docks and creeks into his text, to unlade the
+foolish frigate of his unseasonable authorities."
+His best folios "are predestined to no better end
+than to make winding-sheets in Lent for pilchers."
+With this last stroke Milton is so well pleased
+that he repeats the same prediction in an elaborated
+form over the works of Salmasius, and even celebrates
+in numerous verse the forethought and
+bounty of one who has thus taken pity on the
+nakedness of fishes.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_72">[72]</div>
+
+<p>The fantastic nature of these quips and taunts
+reminds us that Milton belonged to the age of
+the metaphysical poets and satirists, the age of
+Cowley, and Cleveland, and Butler. His prose
+works have been searched chiefly for passages that
+may be used to illustrate his poetry; and although
+the search has been rewarded with many natural
+coincidences of expression, not a few passages of
+lofty self-confidence, and some raptures of poetic
+metaphor, the result has been in the main a
+disappointment. His admirers, too jealous for
+the poetic dignity of their hero, have turned away
+sorrowfully from this memorial heap of odd-shaped
+missiles, hurled from his dire left hand for
+the confusion of his enemies. And yet, rightly
+judged, there is instruction, and an increased
+reverence for the poet, to be found in these also--in
+all that wild array of subjects and methods
+which he commands for the purposes of his prose,
+but dismisses from the service of his verse. It
+was a strict and rare selection that he made among
+the auxiliaries when he addressed himself to the
+more arduous attempt. Here and there, even in
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, his education in the handling of
+satire and invective stood him in stead. The
+poem contains more than one "flyting"--to use
+the Scottish term--and the high war of words
+between Satan and Abdiel in heaven, or between
+Satan and Gabriel on earth, could not have been
+<span class="pb" id="pg_73">[73]</span>
+handled save by a master of all the weapons of
+verbal fence and all the devices of wounding
+invective. In the great close of the Fourth Book,
+especially, where the arch-fiend and the archangel
+retaliate defiance, and tower, in swift alternate
+flights, to higher and higher pitches of exultant
+scorn, Milton puts forth all his strength, and
+brings into action a whole armoury of sarcasm and
+insult whetted and polished from its earlier prosaic
+exercise. Even the grotesque element in his
+humour is not wholly excluded from the <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>; it has full scope, for once, in the episodical
+description of the Paradise of Fools--that barren
+continent, beaten on by the storms of chaos, dark
+save for some faint glimmerings from the wall of
+heaven, the inhabitants a disordered and depraved
+multitude of philosophers, crusaders, monks, and
+friars, blown like leaves into the air by the winds
+that sweep those desert tracts. Unlike the
+Paradise that was lost, this paradise is wholly of
+Milton's invention, and is the best extant monument
+to that spirit of mockery and savage triumph
+which is all the humour that he knows.</p>
+
+<p>The style of his prose works is a style formed
+upon oratorical models. The long winding
+sentence, propped on epithets and festooned with
+digressions, was the habitual vehicle of his
+meaning. The effect it produces at its best was
+well described by Marvell, who, in a letter to
+<span class="pb" id="pg_74">[74]</span>
+Milton thanking him for a copy of the <i>Defence of
+the People of England</i>, remarks: "When I consider
+how equally it turns and rises with so many
+figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in
+whose winding ascent we see embossed the several
+monuments of your learned victories." The clink
+of the rhyming couplet was not more displeasing
+to Milton's ear than the continued emphatic bark
+of a series of short sentences. Accustomed as he
+was to the heavy-armed processional manner of
+scholarly Renaissance prose, he felt it an indignity
+to "lie at the mercy of a coy, flirting style; to be
+girded with frumps and curtal jibes, by one who
+makes sentences by the statute, as if all above
+three inches long were confiscate." Later on in
+the <i>Apology</i> he returns to this grievance, and
+describes how his adversary "sobs me out half a
+dozen phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them,
+hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits;
+in which labour the agony of his wit having
+escaped narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he
+greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies."
+The men of the Renaissance despised the homely
+savour of the native English syntax with its rude
+rhetoric and abrupt logic and its lore of popular
+adages and maxims; they had learned to taste a
+subtler pleasure in the progressive undulations of
+a long mobile sentence, rising and falling alternately,
+reaching the limit of its height towards the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_75">[75]</span>
+middle, and at the close either dying away or
+breaking in a sudden crash of unexpected downward
+emphasis. This is the sentence preferred by
+Milton, and, where haste or zeal does not interfere
+with the leisurely ordering, handled by him
+with excellent skill. At its best and at its worst
+alike his prose is the prose of a poet. His
+sentences rarely conform to any strict periodic
+model; each idea, as it occurs to him, brings with
+it a train of variation and enrichment, which, by
+the time the sentence closes, is often found in sole
+possession. The architecture depends on melody
+rather than on logic. The emphasis and burden
+of the thought generally hangs on the epithets,
+descriptive terms, and phrases, which he strengthens
+by arranging them in pairs, after a fashion much
+practised by poets. Thus, to take a few examples
+from the Divorce pamphlets, a wife, who should be
+"an intimate and speaking help," "a ready and
+reviving associate," to comfort "the misinformed
+and wearied life of man" with "a sweet and gladsome
+society," is too often "a mute and spiritless
+mate," united to her husband in "a disconsolate
+and unenjoined matrimony," whereby the blessing
+that was expected with her is changed "into a
+familiar and coinhabiting mischief, at least into a
+drooping and disconsolate household captivity,
+without refuge or redemption." "The mystical
+and blessed union of marriage can be no way more
+<span class="pb" id="pg_76">[76]</span>
+unhallowed and profaned, than by the forcible
+uniting of such disunions and separations."
+"And it is a less breach of wedlock to part
+with wise and quiet consent betimes, than still
+to foil and profane that mystery of joy and
+union with a polluting sadness and perpetual
+distemper."</p>
+
+<p>The balance of epithet, the delicate music, the
+sentence that resembles a chain with link added to
+link rather than a hoop whose ends are welded
+together by the hammer--these are the characteristics
+of Milton's prose. They are illustrated
+in that short passage of the <i>Areopagitica</i>, well
+known to all readers of English: "I cannot
+praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised
+and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks
+her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where
+that immortal garland is to be run for, not without
+dust and heat." Or in the striking description of
+London during the Civil War: "Behold now this
+vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of
+liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his
+protection; the shop of war hath not there more
+anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the
+plates and instruments of armed justice in defence
+of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads
+there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing,
+searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith
+to present, as with their homage and their
+<span class="pb" id="pg_77">[77]</span>
+fealty, the approaching reformation; others as
+fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the
+force of reason and convincement."</p>
+
+<p>This sonorous balance of phrase and epithet
+cannot always escape what Milton himself calls
+"the heathenish battology of multiplying words."
+It serves the uses of rhetoric rather than of logic,
+and by the fervour of its repetitions and enlargements
+unfits his prose for the plainer purposes of
+argument or exposition. His argument is sometimes
+destroyed or blemished by the fire that it
+kindles, his narrative overwhelmed in the tide of
+passions that it sways.</p>
+
+<p>His vocabulary is extraordinarily rich, and here
+again the contrast is great between his prose and
+his verse. A full-bodied and picturesque dictionary
+might be made of the words that occur only in
+the prose. Most of these words would be found
+to derive from the Saxon stock, which yields him
+almost all his store of invective and vituperation.
+The resources of his Latinised vocabulary enable
+him to rise by successive gyrations to a point of
+vantage above his prey, and then the downward
+rush that strikes the quarry is a Saxon monosyllable.
+In this cardinal point of art for those who have to
+do with the English speech he became the teacher
+of Burke, who, with a lesser wealth of Saxon at
+his command, employed it with a more telling
+parsimony.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_78">[78]</div>
+
+<p>Milton avoids no word of humble origin, so it
+serve his purpose. His contempt finds voice in
+such expressions as to "huddle" prayers, and to
+"keck" at wholesome food. Gehazi "rooks"
+from Naaman; the bishops "prog and pander for
+fees," and are "the common stales to countenance
+every politic fetch that was then on foot." The
+Presbyterians were earnest enough "while pluralities
+greased them thick and deep"; the gentlemen
+who accompanied King Charles in his assault
+on the privileges of the House of Commons
+were "the spawn and shipwreck of taverns and
+dicing-houses." The people take their religion
+from their minister "by scraps and mammocks,
+as he dispenses it in his Sunday's dole"; and
+"the superstitious man by his good will is an
+atheist, but being scared from thence by the
+pangs and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in
+a pudder shuffles up to himself such a God and
+such a worship as is most agreeable to remedy
+his fear."</p>
+
+<p>There were few incidents in Milton's career,
+from his personal relations with his college tutor
+to his choice of blank verse for his epic, that he
+was not called upon at some time or other in his
+life to explain and defend. When his free use of
+homely figures and turns of speech was objected to
+him, his answer was ready: "Doth not Christ
+Himself teach the highest things by the similitude
+<span class="pb" id="pg_79">[79]</span>
+of old bottles and patched clothes? Doth He not
+illustrate best things by things most evil? His
+own coming to be as a thief in the night, and the
+righteous man's wisdom to that of an unjust
+steward?" But the defence is misleading, for the
+rules that governed Milton's usage are not what
+it would suggest. When he came to treat of the
+best and highest things his use of native English
+became more sparing and dainty, while the rank,
+strong words that smack of the home soil were all
+foregone.</p>
+
+<p>His prose works, therefore, help us to appreciate
+better the tribulations of the process whereby he
+became a classic poet. Eclecticism and the severe
+castigation of style are dangerous disciplines for
+any but a rich temperament; from others they
+produce only what is exquisite and thin and vapid.
+The "stylist" of the modern world is generally an
+interesting invalid; his complexion would lose all
+its transparency if it were exposed to the weather;
+his weak voice would never make itself heard in
+the hubbub of the bazaar. Sunbeams cannot be extracted
+from cucumbers, nor can the great manner
+in literature emanate from a chill self-culture.
+But Milton inherited the fulness and vigour of the
+Elizabethans, and so could afford to write an epic
+poem in a selection of the language really used by
+men. The grandeur of <i>Paradise Lost</i> or <i>Samson
+Agonistes</i> could never, by any conceivable device
+<span class="pb" id="pg_80">[80]</span>
+of chemistry or magic, be compounded from
+delicate sensibilities and a superfine ear for music.
+For the material of those palaces whole provinces
+were pillaged, and the waste might furnish forth a city.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_81">[81]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="c3">CHAPTER III
+<br />PARADISE LOST: THE SCHEME</a></h2>
+
+<p>A prerogative place among the great epics of
+the world has sometimes been claimed for <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>, on the ground that the theme it handles is
+vaster and of a more universal human interest than
+any handled by Milton's predecessors. It concerns
+itself with the fortunes, not of a city or an empire,
+but of the whole human race, and with that
+particular event in the history of the race which
+has moulded all its destinies. Around this event,
+the plucking of an apple, are ranged, according to
+the strictest rules of the ancient epic, the histories
+of Heaven and Earth and Hell. The scene of the
+action is Universal Space. The time represented
+is Eternity. The characters are God and all his
+Creatures. And all these are exhibited in the
+clearest and most inevitable relation with the main
+event, so that there is not an incident, hardly a
+line of the poem, but leads backwards or forwards
+to those central lines in the Ninth Book:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_82">[82]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t">So saying, her rash hand in evil hour</div>
+<div class="t0">Forth-reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat.</div>
+<div class="t0">Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,</div>
+<div class="t0">Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe</div>
+<div class="t0">That all was lost.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>From this point radiates a plot so immense in
+scope, that the history of the world from the first
+preaching of the Gospel to the Millennium occupies
+only some fifty lines of Milton's epilogue. And
+if the plot be vast, the stage is large enough to set
+it forth. The size of Milton's theatre gives to his
+imagination those colossal scenical opportunities
+which are turned to such magnificent account.
+De Quincey enumerates some of them--"Heaven
+opening to eject her rebellious children; the unvoyageable
+depths of ancient Chaos, with its
+'anarch old' and its eternal war of wrecks;
+these traversed by that great leading Angel that
+drew after him the third part of the heavenly host;
+earliest Paradise dawning upon the warrior-angel
+out of this far-distant 'sea without shore' of
+chaos; the dreadful phantoms of Sin and Death,
+prompted by secret sympathy and snuffing the
+distant scent of 'mortal change on earth,' chasing
+the steps of their great progenitor and sultan;
+finally the heart-freezing visions, shown and narrated
+to Adam, of human misery through vast
+successions of shadowy generations: all these
+scenical opportunities offered in the <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_83">[83]</span>
+become in the hands of the mighty artist elements
+of undying grandeur not matched on earth."</p>
+
+<p>All these grandeurs and beauties are as real
+and living to-day as they were on the day when
+Milton conceived them. But the other advantage
+claimed for his epic, that it deals with matters of
+the dearest concern to all of us, has been sharply
+questioned. It was Mr. Pattison's complaint of
+<i>Paradise Lost</i> that in it "Milton has taken a
+scheme of life for life itself," and that it requires a
+violent effort from the modern reader to accommodate
+his conceptions to the anthropomorphic
+theology of the poem. The world is now thickly
+peopled with men and women who, having bestowed
+their patronage on other ancestors, care little about
+Adam and Eve, and who therefore feel that
+Milton's poem is wanting in the note of actuality.
+Satan himself is not what he used to be; he is
+doubly fallen, in the esteem of his victims as well
+as of his Maker, and indeed</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Comes to the place where he before had sat</div>
+<div class="t0">Among the prime in splendour, now deposed,</div>
+<div class="t0">Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned,</div>
+<div class="t0">A spectacle of ruin.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"He who aspires," says Mr. Pattison, "to be the
+poet of a nation is bound to adopt a hero who
+is already dear to that people." But how if the
+hero subsequently fall out of vogue, and his name
+<span class="pb" id="pg_84">[84]</span>
+lose its power with a fickle populace? Can even
+a poet save him?</p>
+
+<p>The drifting away of the popular belief from
+the tenets of Milton's theology doubtless does
+something to explain the lukewarm interest taken
+by most educated English readers in <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>. But it is a mistake to make much of this
+explanation. Certainly Milton held his own
+theological beliefs, as expounded in the poem, in
+perfect good faith and with great tenacity. But
+the generation after his own, which first gave him
+his great fame, was not seduced into admiration
+by any whole-hearted fellowship in belief. Dryden
+laments the presence in the poem of so many
+"machining persons,"--as he calls the supernatural
+characters of <i>Paradise Lost</i>. At almost the same
+date Dr. Thomas Burnet was causing a mild sensation
+in the theological world by expounding the
+earlier chapters of the Book of Genesis in an
+allegorical sense, and denying to them the significance
+of a literal history. Voltaire, while he praises
+Milton, remarks that the topic of <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+has afforded nothing among the French but some
+lively lampoons, and that those who have the
+highest respect for the mysteries of the Christian
+religion cannot forbear now and then making free
+with the devil, the serpent, the frailty of our first
+parents, and the rib that was stolen from Adam.
+"I have often admired," he goes on, "how barren
+<span class="pb" id="pg_85">[85]</span>
+the subject appears, and how fruitful it grows
+under his hands."</p>
+
+<p>It seems likely that Milton himself, before he
+was fairly caught in the mesh of his own imagination,
+was well aware that his subject demanded
+something of the nature of a <i>tour de force</i>. He
+had to give physical, geometric embodiment to a
+far-reaching scheme of abstract speculation and
+thought,--parts of it very reluctant to such a
+treatment. The necessities of the epic form constrained
+him. When Satan, on the top of Mount
+Niphates, exclaims--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>when Michael promises to Adam, after his expulsion
+from the garden--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">A Paradise within thee; happier far;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Milton must have known as well as any of his
+critics that this conception of Hell and of Paradise,
+if insisted on, would have shattered the fabric of
+his poem. His figures of Sin and Death were of
+his own invention, and we must not suppose him
+so obtuse as never to have realised the part that
+his shaping imagination bore in the presentment
+of other and greater figures in the poem. In some
+respects he tried rather to impose a scheme of
+thought and imagination upon his age than to express
+the ideas that he found current. His theology
+and his cosmical conceptions are equally tainted
+<span class="pb" id="pg_86">[86]</span>
+with his individual heresies. He flies in the face
+of the Athanasian Creed by representing the
+generation of the Son as an event occurring in
+time--"on such day as Heaven's great year
+brings forth." His later poem of <i>Paradise Regained</i>
+and the posthumous treatise of Christian
+Doctrine show him an Arian; in the poem the
+Almighty is made to speak of</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">This perfect man, by merit called my Son.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>His account of the creation of the World as a mere
+ordering or re-arrangement of the wild welter of
+an uncreated material Chaos receives no countenance
+from the Fathers. In many points of theological
+teaching he is compelled to form definite
+and even visual conceptions where orthodoxy had
+cautiously confined itself to vague general propositions.
+So that the description of Sin and Death
+and of the causeway built by them between Hell-gates
+and the World, much as it has been objected
+to even by admirers of the poem, is only an
+extreme instance of the defining and hardening
+process that Milton found needful throughout for
+the concrete presentment of the high doings which
+are his theme. He congealed the mysteries of
+Time and Space, Love and Death, Sin and Forgiveness,
+into a material system; and in so doing,
+while paying the utmost deference to his authorities,
+he yet exercised many a choice with regard
+<span class="pb" id="pg_87">[87]</span>
+to matters indifferent or undefinable. Thus, for
+instance, he borrows from the Talmud the notion
+that Satan first learned the existence of a prohibited
+tree from overhearing a conversation between
+Adam and Eve. He was surely conscious of what
+he was doing, and would have been not ill-pleased
+to learn that the Universe, as he conceived of it,
+has since been called by his name. It is Milton's
+Paradise Lost, lost by Milton's Adam and Eve,
+who are tempted by Milton's Satan, and punished
+by Milton's God. The stamp of his clear hard
+imagination is on the whole fabric; and it is not
+much harder for us to coax ourselves into the
+belief that his is indeed the very world we inhabit
+than it was for the men of his own time. The
+senses and the intellect are older than modern
+science, and were employed to good effect before
+the invention of the spectroscope; it is they in
+their daily operation that make it difficult to leap
+the gulf which separates the amenities and trivialities
+of common life from the solemn theatre
+of the poet's imagination. The objection that the
+poem has lost much of its value because we are
+compelled to imagine where our elders believed is
+of little weight in a case like this, where our lack
+of belief is not brought home to us until insuperable
+difficulties are placed in the way of our
+imagination. Where Milton was freest, there we
+follow him most gladly; where he wrote in fetters,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_88">[88]</span>
+as notably in some of the scenes transacted in
+Heaven, our imagination, not our belief, is the first
+to rebel.</p>
+
+<p>We are deceived by names; the more closely
+<i>Paradise Lost</i> is studied, the more does the hand
+of the author appear in every part. The epic
+poem, which in its natural form is a kind of
+cathedral for the ideas of a nation, is by him transformed
+into a chapel-of-ease for his own mind, a
+monument to his own genius and his own habits
+of thought. The <i>Paradise Lost</i> is like the sculptured
+tombs of the Medici in Florence; it is not
+of Night and Morning, nor of Lorenzo and
+Giuliano, that we think as we look at them,
+but solely of the great creator, Michael Angelo.
+The same dull convention that calls the <i>Paradise
+Lost</i> a religious poem might call these Christian
+statues. Each is primarily a great work of art
+in each the traditions of two eras are blended in a
+unity that is indicative of nothing but the character
+and powers of the artist. The <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+is not the less an eternal monument because it is a
+monument to dead ideas.</p>
+
+<p>We do not know exactly when Milton made
+his choice of subject. His Latin verses addressed
+to Manso, Marquis of Villa, in January 1638-9,
+show that Arthur and the Round Table was at
+that time the uppermost theme in his mind, and
+that the warlike achievement of heroes was the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_89">[89]</span>
+aspect of it that most attracted him. After his
+return to England in 1639, it is mentioned once
+again in his elegy on Charles Diodati, and then
+we hear no more of it. In the tentative list of
+subjects, made in 1641, Arthur has disappeared,
+and the story of <i>Paradise Lost</i> already occupies
+the most conspicuous place, with four separate
+drafts suggesting different treatments of the theme.</p>
+
+<p>It would be idle to speculate on what Milton
+might have made of the Arthur legends. One
+thing is certain; he would have set up the warrior
+king as a perfectly objective figure, hampered by
+no allegory, and with no inward and spiritual signification.
+The national cause, maintained heroically
+in a hundred battles, and overwhelmed at
+last by the brute violence of the foreign oppressor,
+was subject enough for him; he would never have
+marred his epic by sickly irresolution and the
+struggles of a divided will in the principal characters.
+Perhaps his mind reverted to his old
+dreams when he came to describe the pastimes
+wherewith the rebel angels beguile their time in
+Hell:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">Others, more mild,</div>
+<div class="t0">Retreated in a silent valley, sing</div>
+<div class="t0">With notes angelical to many a harp</div>
+<div class="t0">Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall</div>
+<div class="t0">By doom of battle, and complain that Fate</div>
+<div class="t0">Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.</div>
+<div class="t0">Their song was partial; but the harmony</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_90">[90]</span>
+<div class="t0">(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)</div>
+<div class="t0">Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment</div>
+<div class="t0">The thronging audience.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This is only one of the very numerous places in
+<i>Paradise Lost</i> where, before he is well aware of it,
+we catch Milton's sympathies dilating themselves
+upon the wrong side.</p>
+
+<p>His researches in British annals, begun at the
+time when he was still in quest of a theme, convinced
+him that the whole story of Arthur was
+"obscured and blemished with fables." He
+foraged among other British subjects, feeling that
+the great poem which was designed to raise England
+to the literary peerage and set her by the side of
+countries of older fame must deal with a theme of
+truly national import. Some of the subjects that
+he jotted down were obviously of too incidental
+and trivial a nature for his purpose, and a wise
+instinct confined him to the earlier history of the
+island, where his own freedom of treatment was less
+likely to be hampered by an excess of detail.
+And then, precisely how or when we do not know,
+the idea came to him that he would treat a subject
+still larger and of a more tremendous import,--the
+fortunes, not of the nation, but of the race:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">With loss of Eden, till one greater Man</div>
+<div class="t0">Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The attractions that this theme, once hit on,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_91">[91]</span>
+exercised on Milton's mind may easily be guessed.
+In the first place, it was a sacred subject: an
+opportunity for leading poetry back to its divine
+allegiance; and, by the creation of a new species
+of epic, an escape from a danger which must have
+been very present to his mind--the danger of too
+close an imitation of the ancients. More specific
+reasons concurred in recommending it. In the
+Garden of Eden he might present to an age which
+was overrun with a corrupt religion and governed
+by a decadent court the picture of a religion
+without a church, of life in its primitive simplicity,
+and of patriarchal worship without the
+noisome accretions of later ceremonial. His
+attitude to the Laudian movement is eloquently
+expressed, at this same time, in the treatise <i>Of
+Reformation in England</i>, where he describes how
+the religious teachers of his own and preceding
+ages "began to draw down all the divine intercourse
+betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very
+shape of God himself into an exterior and bodily
+form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement
+of joining the body in a formal reverence and
+worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they
+fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not
+in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with
+other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and
+mitres, gold, and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's
+old wardrobe or the flamen's vestry: then was the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_92">[92]</span>
+priest set to con his motions and his postures, his
+liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means
+of over-bodying herself, given up justly to fleshly
+delights, bated her wing apace downward: and
+finding the ease she had from her visible and
+sensuous colleague, the body, in performance of
+religious duties, her pinions now broken and
+flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high
+soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and
+left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on in the
+old road and drudging trade of outward conformity."</p>
+
+<p>But Adam and Eve, Milton is careful to explain,
+were not ritualists. They recite their evening
+hymn of praise as they stand at the entrance to
+their shady lodge:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">This said unanimous, and other rites</div>
+<div class="t0">Observing none, but adoration pure</div>
+<div class="t0">Which God likes best, into their inmost bower</div>
+<div class="t0">Handed they went.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The traits of Milton's Puritanism peep out at unexpected
+places in the poem. The happy Garden,
+Adam is told, will be destroyed after the Flood,
+for a reason that would have been approved by
+the image-breakers of the Commonwealth:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">To teach thee that God attributes to place</div>
+<div class="t0">No sanctity, if none be thither brought</div>
+<div class="t0">By men who there frequent, or therein dwell.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_93">[93]</div>
+
+<p>The palace of Pandemonium is built by Satan's
+host in an hour, whence men may</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,</div>
+<div class="t0">And strength, and art, are easily outdone</div>
+<div class="t0">By spirits reprobate;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>--a perfectly sound moral, well illustrating Mr.
+Swinburne's remark that Puritanism has nothing
+to do with Art, and that the great Puritans and
+the great artists have never confused them.</p>
+
+<p>Milton must also have been drawn to the theme
+of <i>Paradise Lost</i> by the scope it promised for
+scenes of quiet natural beauty:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">All that bowery loneliness,</div>
+<div class="t0">The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring</div>
+<div class="t0">And bloom profuse and cedar arches.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>His imagination was so susceptible to a touch of
+beauty that even in the bare sketch he has left for
+a drama dealing with the story of Lot and his
+escape from Sodom we see how likely he was, here
+also, to fall into the error of <i>Comus</i>. As Lot entertains
+the angels at supper, "the Gallantry of the
+town passe by in Procession, with musick and song,
+to the temple of Venus Urania." The opening
+Chorus is to relate the course of the city, "each
+evening every one with mistresse, or Ganymed,
+gitterning along the streets, or solacing on the
+banks of Jordan, or down the stream." But in
+the story of the Garden of Eden the beauty was,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_94">[94]</span>
+for once, on the side of the morality; innocence
+and purity might be depicted, not, as in a fallen
+world, clad in complete steel, but at ease in their
+native haunts, surrounded by all the inexhaustible
+bounty of an unsubdued and uncorrupted Nature.</p>
+
+<p>The chief dramatic interest of the poem, however,
+comes in with the great outcast angel, stirred
+up by his passions of envy and revenge to assault
+the new-created inhabitants of the Garden. It
+seems likely that Milton was drawn to this part of
+his theme by chains of interest and sympathy
+stronger than he confessed or knew. He was an
+epic poet, striving to describe great events worthily,
+but the dramatic situation betrayed him. He
+knew only that he could draw a rebel leader, noble
+in bearing, superbly outlined, a worthy adversary
+of the Most High. But it happened to him, as it
+has happened to others who have found themselves
+in a position where Satan could do them a service;
+before long, as if by some medi&aelig;val compact, the
+relations are reversed, and the poet is in the service
+of the Devil. He can hardly have foreseen this
+chance; although there are not wanting signs in
+the poem itself that, before it was half completed,
+he became uneasily conscious of what was happening,
+and attempted, too late, to remedy it. When
+he chose his subject he doubtless intended that the
+centre of interest should be fixed in the Garden of
+Eden, and did not perceive how of necessity it
+<span class="pb" id="pg_95">[95]</span>
+must tend to sink lower, to that realm in the
+shadow of darkness, innumerably more populous,
+inhabited by beings of a nobler origin, of greater
+(and more human) passions, with a longer and
+more distinguished history, and with this further
+claim upon the sympathy of the reader, that they
+are doomed to an eternity of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth our while as critics to try to put
+ourselves in Milton's place at the time when he
+had made his choice, that we may realise not only
+the attractions but also the difficulties of the theme.
+An Italian poet of the early seventeenth century,
+Giovanni Battista Andreini, from whose drama,
+entitled <i>Adamo</i>, Milton is alleged to have borrowed
+some trifles, has made a very full and satisfactory
+statement of these difficulties in the preface to his
+play. He mentions, for instance, the unpromising
+monotony of Adam's life during the time spent in
+the earthly paradise, and the difficulty of giving
+verisimilitude to the conversation between the
+woman and the snake. But he waxes most eloquent
+on the last and greatest difficulty--"since the
+composition must remain deprived of those poetic
+ornaments so dear to the Muses; deprived of the
+power to draw comparisons from implements of
+art introduced in the course of years, since in the
+time of the first man there was no such thing;
+deprived also of naming (at least while Adam
+speaks or discourse is held with him), for example,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_96">[96]</span>
+bows, arrows, hatchets, urns, knives, swords, spears,
+trumpets, drums, trophies, banners, lists, hammers,
+torches, bellows, funeral piles, theatres, exchequers,
+infinite things of a like nature, introduced by the
+necessities of sin;... deprived moreover of
+introducing points of history, sacred or profane, of
+relating fictions of fabulous deities, of rehearsing
+loves, furies, sports of hunting or fishing, triumphs,
+shipwrecks, conflagrations, enchantments, and
+things of a like nature, that are in truth the ornament
+and the soul of poetry."</p>
+
+<p>All these difficulties for Andreini's drama were
+difficulties also for Milton's poem. Yet no reader
+of <i>Paradise Lost</i> is found to complain that the
+poem is lacking in poetic ornament. Milton has
+successfully surmounted or evaded many of this
+formidable catalogue of limitations, without the
+sacrifice of dramatic propriety. It is true that in
+the course of their morning orisons, addressed to
+their Maker, Adam and Eve apostrophise the Mists
+and Exhalations--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">that now rise</div>
+<div class="t0">From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,</div>
+<div class="t0">Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>--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 speak
+<span class="pb" id="pg_97">[97]</span>
+the 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 man&oelig;uvring 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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t9">As armies at the call</div>
+<div class="t0">Of trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard)</div>
+<div class="t0">Troop to their standard, so the watery throng,</div>
+<div class="t0">Wave rolling after wave.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 from
+<span class="pb" id="pg_98">[98]</span>
+the 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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Not sedulous by nature to indite</div>
+<div class="t0">Wars, hitherto the only argument</div>
+<div class="t0">Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect</div>
+<div class="t0">With long and tedious havoc fabled knights</div>
+<div class="t0">In battles feigned (the better fortitude</div>
+<div class="t0">Of patience and heroic martyrdom</div>
+<div class="t0">Unsung), or to describe races and games</div>
+<div class="t0">Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields,</div>
+<div class="t0">Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,</div>
+<div class="t0">Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights</div>
+<div class="t0">At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast</div>
+<div class="t0">Served up in hall with sewers and seneshals:</div>
+<div class="t0">The skill of artifice and office mean;</div>
+<div class="t0">Not that which justly gives heroic name</div>
+<div class="t0">To person or to poem! Me, of these</div>
+<div class="t0">Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument</div>
+<div class="t0">Remains, sufficient of itself to raise</div>
+<div class="t0">That name, unless an age too late, or cold</div>
+<div class="t0">Climate, or years, damp my intended wing</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_99">[99]</span>
+<div class="t0">Depressed; and much they may if all be mine,</div>
+<div class="t0">Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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,</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t5">War seemed a civil game</div>
+<div class="t0">To this uproar.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 from <i>Paradise Lost</i>, but they are
+<span class="pb" id="pg_100">[100]</span>
+introduced 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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">A covered field, where champions bold</div>
+<div class="t0">Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair</div>
+<div class="t0">Defied the best of Panim chivalry</div>
+<div class="t0">To mortal combat, or career with lance.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_101">[101]</span>
+North 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."</p>
+
+<p>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 the <i>Divine Institutes</i>
+of 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 increasing
+<span class="pb" id="pg_102">[102]</span>
+race 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 apocryphal <i>Book of Enoch</i>, 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 bringing
+<span class="pb" id="pg_103">[103]</span>
+that 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's <i>Ecclesiastical
+Polity</i>, 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 of <i>dii inferi</i>, '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--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_104">[104]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">Held</div>
+<div class="t0">Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth</div>
+<div class="t0">Their boasted parents.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>By these devices the author of <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+escapes 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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high abode,</div>
+<div class="t0"><span class="gsw">*      *      *      *      *</span></div>
+<div class="t0">Followed with acclamation, and the sound</div>
+<div class="t0">Symphonious often thousand harps, that tuned</div>
+<div class="t0">Angelic harmonies,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>is the grandest triumphal procession in all literature.
+On the other hand, he manages to dispense with
+<span class="pb" id="pg_105">[105]</span>
+some 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 quiet
+<span class="pb" id="pg_106">[106]</span>
+colouring of the inevitable epithet, and the solemn
+music of the cadence:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray</div>
+<div class="t0">Had in her sober livery all things clad;</div>
+<div class="t0">Silence accompanied; for beast and bird</div>
+<div class="t0">They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,</div>
+<div class="t0">Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.</div>
+<div class="t0">She all night long her amorous descant sung:</div>
+<div class="t0">Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament</div>
+<div class="t0">With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led</div>
+<div class="t0">The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,</div>
+<div class="t0">Rising in clouded majesty, at length</div>
+<div class="t0">Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,</div>
+<div class="t0">And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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 C&aelig;dmon, 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 the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_107">[107]</span>
+figures of his characters are outlined in shapes of
+light, and in this vacancy he mapped out his local
+Heaven and Hell.</p>
+
+<p>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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">Extended wide</div>
+<div class="t0">In circuit, undetermined square or round;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_108">[108]</span>
+purposes 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.</p>
+
+<p>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. The
+<span class="pb" id="pg_109">[109]</span>
+single occasion that presented itself for a neglect
+of their duty was by them eagerly seized.</p>
+
+<p>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,
+or <i>primum mobile</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 only
+<span class="pb" id="pg_110">[110]</span>
+by 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 poet
+<span class="pb" id="pg_111">[111]</span>
+was 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</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">As far removed from God and light of Heaven</div>
+<div class="t0">As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">This pendent World, in bigness as a star</div>
+<div class="t0">Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_112">[112]</span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">But, lest his heart exalt him in the harm</div>
+<div class="t0">Already done, to have dispeopled Heaven--</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_113">[113]</span>
+<div class="t0">My damage fondly deemed,--I can repair</div>
+<div class="t0">That detriment, if such it be to lose</div>
+<div class="t0">Self-lost, and in a moment will create</div>
+<div class="t0">Another world; out of one man a race</div>
+<div class="t0">Of men innumerable.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Between the pass and fell incensed points</div>
+<div class="t0">Of mighty opposites.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But he was probably also aware that this view had
+not the highest warrant of orthodoxy.</p>
+
+<p>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 the <i>Treatise
+of Christian Doctrine</i>. He consigned the Fathers
+<span class="pb" id="pg_114">[114]</span>
+to 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,' <i>Exodus</i>, xxxi. 17; if it be said
+that 'He feared the wrath of the enemy,' <i>Deuteronomy</i>,
+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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and bases himself upon Scripture. There he finds
+mention of seven chief angels, with some kind of
+pre-eminence enjoyed by Michael. In the poem
+<span class="pb" id="pg_115">[115]</span>
+he 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.</p>
+
+<p>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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t6">Unarmed they might</div>
+<div class="t0">Have easily, as spirits, evaded swift</div>
+<div class="t0">By quick contraction or remove; but now</div>
+<div class="t0">Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">What if Earth</div>
+<div class="t0">Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein</div>
+<div class="t0">Each to other like more than on Earth is thought?</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 the <i>Paradise Lost</i> in search of
+<span class="pb" id="pg_116">[116]</span>
+those 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, <i>Paradise Lost</i> will
+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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">So spake the false dissembler unperceived;</div>
+<div class="t0">For neither man nor angel can discern</div>
+<div class="t0">Hypocrisy--the only evil that walks</div>
+<div class="t0">Invisible, except to God alone,</div>
+<div class="t0">By His permissive will, through Heaven and Earth;</div>
+<div class="t0">And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps</div>
+<div class="t0">At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity</div>
+<div class="t0">Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill</div>
+<div class="t0">Where no ill seems.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_117">[117]</span>
+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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">Smooth formality</div>
+<div class="t0">Is usher to the rankness of the blood,</div>
+<div class="t0">But impudence bears up the train.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">They say that Pity in Love's service dwells,</div>
+<div class="t0">A porter at the rosy temple's gate.</div>
+<div class="t0">I missed him going; but it is my fate</div>
+<div class="t0">To come upon him now beside his wells;</div>
+<div class="t0">Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave,</div>
+<div class="t0">And that the purple doors have closed behind.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 pastime
+<span class="pb" id="pg_118">[118]</span>
+of Shakespeare and of Meredith. Beautiful
+figured writing and keen psychological observation
+of this kind are beside the purpose of Milton, and
+beyond his power.</p>
+
+<p>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.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_119">[119]</span>
+She has lost her Paradise even while Adam's was
+building--the Paradise where the flowers fade, and
+loves and hates are mortal.</p>
+
+<p>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</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">Faery elves</div>
+<div class="t0">Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side</div>
+<div class="t0">Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,</div>
+<div class="t0">Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon</div>
+<div class="t0">Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth</div>
+<div class="t0">Wheels her pale course.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_120">[120]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds</div>
+<div class="t0">Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread</div>
+<div class="t0">Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element</div>
+<div class="t0">Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower,</div>
+<div class="t0">If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,</div>
+<div class="t0">Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,</div>
+<div class="t0">The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds</div>
+<div class="t0">Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 in <i>Paradise Regained</i>--"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."</p>
+
+<p>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. There
+<span class="pb" id="pg_121">[121]</span>
+is 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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">As one who, long in populous city pent,</div>
+<div class="t0">Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,</div>
+<div class="t0">Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe</div>
+<div class="t0">Among the pleasant villages and farms</div>
+<div class="t0">Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight--</div>
+<div class="t0">The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,</div>
+<div class="t0">Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound--</div>
+<div class="t0">If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,</div>
+<div class="t0">What pleasing seemed for her now pleases more,</div>
+<div class="t0">She most, and in her look sums all delight:</div>
+<div class="t0">Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold</div>
+<div class="t0">This flowery plot, the sweet recess of Eve.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Serpent is glad to escape from Hell, to
+breathe the morning air of Eden. But how glad
+we are to escape from Eden</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">To breathe</div>
+<div class="t0">Among the pleasant villages and farms!</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 from
+<span class="pb" id="pg_122">[122]</span>
+a 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</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t9">Fruit of all kinds, in coat</div>
+<div class="t0">Rough or smooth rined, or bearded husk, or shell,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>There are no children in any of Milton's
+poems. The introduction, in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, of a
+real human child, such as Shakespeare brings into
+<i>Coriolanus</i> or <i>Macbeth</i>, would be like the bringing
+of a spark of fire into a powder magazine. None
+of these edifying speeches could be made in the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_123">[123]</span>
+presence 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.</p>
+
+<p><i>Paradise Lost</i> will 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 the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_124">[124]</span>
+marvel, 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 of <i>Paradise Lost</i> does
+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
+that <i>Paradise Lost</i> is 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 in
+<span class="pb" id="pg_125">[125]</span>
+effect, 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.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_126">[126]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="c4">CHAPTER IV
+<br />PARADISE LOST: THE ACTORS. THE LATER POEMS</a></h2>
+
+<p>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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">That, to the highth of this great argument,</div>
+<div class="t0">I may assert Eternal Providence</div>
+<div class="t0">And justify the ways of God to men.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The living Throne, the sapphire blaze,</div>
+<div class="t0">Where angels tremble, while they gaze,</div>
+<div class="t0">He saw;</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_127">[127]</div>
+
+<p>--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.</p>
+
+<p>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 the <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+which 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_128">[128]</span>
+Son, the Filial Alterity, and in <i>those addresses</i> slips
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_129">[129]</span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 of
+<span class="pb" id="pg_130">[130]</span>
+power, and to test submission; as when Raphael
+is sent to keep the rebels confined in Hell, and
+explains subsequently to Adam:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Not that they durst without his leave attempt;</div>
+<div class="t0">But us he sends upon his high behests</div>
+<div class="t0">For state, as sovran King, and to inure</div>
+<div class="t0">Our prompt obedience.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The particular event with which, according to
+Milton, the whole history begins is presented with
+a crudity that would have horrified the Fathers.
+The appointment of a Vicegerent to the Almighty,
+and the edict requiring homage to be done to him,
+are announced "on a day" to the host of Angels
+assembled by special summons for this purpose.
+During the night following, one of the chief
+Archangels, thereafter called Satan, draws off his
+forces to the north under pretext of preparing a
+welcome for the new Commander, who is to make
+a progress through his domain, promulgating more
+new laws. The purpose of the rebels is discerned
+by the All-Knowing, who makes this strange
+speech to the Son:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Let us advise, and to this hazard draw</div>
+<div class="t0">With speed what force is left, and all employ</div>
+<div class="t0">In our defence, lest unawares we lose</div>
+<div class="t0">This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to quote more of the speeches
+in Heaven; they are tangles of Scriptural phrase,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_131">[131]</span>
+from which there can be extracted neither good
+divinity nor good humanity. "The glory of
+God," says the Wisdom of Solomon, "is to conceal
+a thing; the glory of the King is to find it
+out." But the glory of Milton's Deity is to explain
+a thing. The proud voluble candour of
+some of these speeches reminds us only of the
+author of <i>A Defence of the People of England</i>.
+In some of them there is even a flavour of
+uneasy boastfulness, as of one who is anxious
+not to be lessened in the estimation of the rebel
+adversary.</p>
+
+<p>It may be pleaded that the epical necessities of
+the poem imposed finite conceptions, of one sort
+or another, upon Milton; and that, when once he
+had begun to define and explain, he was carried
+further and further along that perilous way without
+being fully conscious of whither he was tending.
+Yet his persistent accumulation of harsh and
+dread traits seems wilful in its nature; he bases
+his description, no doubt, on hints from Scripture,
+but he pays no attention to any that do not fall in
+with his own narrow and gloomy conception.
+Satan is permitted to rise from the burning lake--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">That with reiterated crimes he might</div>
+<div class="t0">Heap on himself damnation.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>When he arrives at the foot of the stairway that
+joins Heaven and the World--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_132">[132]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The stairs were then let down, whether to dare</div>
+<div class="t0">The Fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate</div>
+<div class="t0">His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Astronomy, it is suggested by "the affable Archangel,"
+has perhaps been made a difficult subject in
+order to produce the droll fallacies of astronomers:</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">He his fabric of the Heavens</div>
+<div class="t0">Hath left to their disputes--perhaps to move</div>
+<div class="t0">His laughter at their quaint opinions wide.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And this conjecture is borne out by what happened
+when the builders of the tower of Babel were
+frustrated, for then--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">Great laughter was in Heaven,</div>
+<div class="t0">And looking down to see the hubbub strange</div>
+<div class="t0">And hear the din.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Milton, in short, has hardened the heart of
+the God that hardened Pharaoh's heart, and has
+narrowed his love and his power.</p>
+
+<p>Some kind of internal blindness must have
+visited him if he did not perceive what must inevitably
+be the effect of all this on the sympathies
+and interest of the reader. And the irony of the
+thing is that his own sympathies were not proof
+against the trial that he had devised for them. He
+lavished all his power, all his skill, and, in spite of
+himself, the greater part of his sympathy, on the
+splendid figure of Satan. He avoids calling <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_133">[133]</span>
+"an heroic poem"; when it was printed,
+in 1667, the title-page ran merely--<i>Paradise Lost,
+A Poem in Ten Books</i>. Had he inserted the word
+"heroic," the question as to who is the hero would
+have been broached at once. And to that question,
+if it be fairly faced, only one answer can be
+given,--the answer that has already been given by
+Dryden and Goethe, by Lord Chesterfield and
+Professor Masson. It was not for nothing that
+Milton stultified the professed moral of his poem,
+and emptied it of all spiritual content. He was
+not fully conscious, it seems, of what he was doing;
+but he builded better than he knew. A profound
+poetic instinct taught him to preserve epic truth
+at all costs. And the epic value of <i>Paradise Lost</i> is
+centred in the character and achievements of Satan.</p>
+
+<p>Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus,
+and although there are essential differences, we are
+not made to feel them essential. His very situation
+as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence
+makes him either a fool or a hero, and Milton is
+far indeed from permitting us to think him a fool.
+The nobility and greatness of his bearing are
+brought home to us in some half-dozen of the
+finest poetic passages in the world. The most
+stupendous of the poet's imaginative creations are
+made the foil for a greater than themselves. Was
+ever terror more magnificently embodied than in
+the phantom figure of Death?--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_134">[134]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">The other Shape--</div>
+<div class="t0">If shape it might be called that shape had none</div>
+<div class="t0">Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;</div>
+<div class="t0">Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,</div>
+<div class="t0">For each seemed either--black it stood as Night,</div>
+<div class="t0">Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,</div>
+<div class="t0">And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head</div>
+<div class="t0">The likeness of a kingly crown had on.</div>
+<div class="t0">Satan was now at hand, and from his seat</div>
+<div class="t0">The monster moving onward came as fast</div>
+<div class="t0">With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This is the passage that drew from Burke a rapture
+of praise. But as it stands in the poem its elevation
+is a scaffolding merely, whence we may view
+the greatness of Satan:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The undaunted Fiend what this might be admired--</div>
+<div class="t0">Admired, not feared (God and his Son except,</div>
+<div class="t0">Created thing naught valued he nor shunned).</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The same magnificent effect of suggestion is
+wrought even more subtly in the scene where
+Satan approaches</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">the throne</div>
+<div class="t0">Of <i>Chaos</i>, and his dark pavilion spread</div>
+<div class="t0">Wide on the wasteful Deep.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Courteously and fearlessly Satan addresses himself
+to the monarch of the nethermost abyss. His
+speech contains no threats; he asks guidance in
+his quest; and, with politic forethought, promises
+that that quest, if successful, shall restore an outlying
+lost province to Chaos. There is nothing
+<span class="pb" id="pg_135">[135]</span>
+in his words to cause consternation; but the King
+is afraid:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">Him thus the anarch old,</div>
+<div class="t0">With faltering speech and visage incomposed,</div>
+<div class="t0">Answered:--"I know thee, stranger, who thou art--</div>
+<div class="t0">That mighty leading Angel, who of late</div>
+<div class="t0">Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown."</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the war on the plains of Heaven Satan ranges
+up and down the fighting line, like Cromwell;
+he fortifies his comrades to endurance, and encourages
+them to attack. In Hell he stands like
+a tower:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">His form had yet not lost</div>
+<div class="t0">All her original brightness, nor appeared</div>
+<div class="t0">Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess</div>
+<div class="t0">Of glory obscured.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In his contests with Michael in Heaven and with
+Gabriel on Earth he never falls below himself:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">"If I must contend," said he,</div>
+<div class="t0">"Best with the best--the sender, not the sent;</div>
+<div class="t0">Or all at once."</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But his motive passions, it is objected, were
+envy, ambition, and hate, and his end was a crime.
+To which objection a modern poet has replied
+that a crime will serve as a measure for the spirit.
+Certainly to Satan there could never be imputed
+the sin of "the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin."
+And Milton has not left him devoid of the
+gentlest passion, the passion of pity:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_136">[136]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t11">Cruel his eye, but cast</div>
+<div class="t0">Signs of remorse and passion, to behold</div>
+<div class="t0">The fellows of his crime, the followers rather</div>
+<div class="t0">(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned</div>
+<div class="t0">For ever now to have their lot in pain--</div>
+<div class="t0">Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung</div>
+<div class="t0">For his revolt--yet faithful how they stood,</div>
+<div class="t0">Their glory withered.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thrice he attempts to address them, and thrice--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">in spite of scorn</div>
+<div class="t0">Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>His followers are devotedly attached to him;
+they admire him "that for the general safety he
+despised his own"; and the only scene of rejoicing
+recorded in the annals of Hell, before the
+Fall of Man, is at the dissolution of the Stygian
+Council, when the devils come forth "rejoicing
+in their matchless Chief."</p>
+
+<p>As if of set purpose to raise Satan high above
+the heads of the other Archangels, Milton devises
+a pair of similar scenes, in Heaven and in Hell.
+In the one Satan takes upon himself the unknown
+dangers of the enterprise that has been approved
+by the assembly. In the other, which occurs in
+the very next book, the Heavenly Powers are
+addressed from the Throne, and asked--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">"Which of ye will be mortal, to redeem</div>
+<div class="t0">Man's mortal crime, and just, the unjust to save?</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_137">[137]</span>
+<div class="t0">Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear?"</div>
+<div class="t">He asked, but all the Heavenly Quire stood mute,</div>
+<div class="t0">And silence was in Heaven: on Man's behalf</div>
+<div class="t0">Patron or intercessor none appeared--</div>
+<div class="t0">Much less that durst upon his own head draw</div>
+<div class="t0">The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>No wonder that Landor--although in another
+place he declares that Adam is the hero of <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>, and that "there is neither truth nor wit"
+in giving that name to Satan--is nevertheless
+startled by this passage into the comment, "I
+know not what interest Milton could have had in
+making Satan so august a creature, and so ready
+to share the dangers and sorrows of the angels he
+had seduced. I know not, on the other hand,
+what could have urged him to make the better
+ones so dastardly that even at the voice of their
+Creator not one among them offered his service to
+rescue from eternal perdition the last and weakest
+of intellectual beings."</p>
+
+<p>When Satan first comes in sight of Paradisal
+bliss and the new-created pair, here surely was a
+chance for attributing to him the foul passions of
+envy and hate unalloyed? On the contrary, he is
+struck with admiration for their grace and infused
+divinity. He could love and pity them--so he
+muses--though himself unpitied. He seeks
+alliance with them, and is prepared to give them a
+share in all he has--which, it must be allowed, is
+<span class="pb" id="pg_138">[138]</span>
+the spirit of true hospitality. He feels it beneath
+him to attack innocence and helplessness, but
+public reasons compel him to do what otherwise
+he would abhor:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,</div>
+<div class="t0">The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But no imputation is cast on the sincerity of the
+plea, and we are left to conceive of Satan as of a
+lover of beauty reluctantly compelled to shatter it
+in the pursuit of his high political aims. In the
+same way, when he finds Eve alone, on the morning
+of the temptation, he is disarmed by her beauty
+and innocence, and, for a spell, is struck "stupidly
+good." Truly, Adam might boast, with Gibbon,
+that he fell by a noble hand.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that by the time he had completed
+the Fourth Book, Milton became uneasy as to
+the effect he was producing. Up to that point
+magnanimity and courage had been almost the
+monopoly of Satan. He had been the Great
+Dissenter, the undaunted and considerate leader of
+an outcast minority. But now, in the description
+of the war in Heaven, there came a chance of
+doing something to right the balance. Milton
+makes the most of the episode of Abdiel, who has
+been led away with the rest of Satan's followers,
+upon false pretences, and who, when he discovers
+the true purpose of the expedition, makes a lonely
+stand for the right:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_139">[139]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Among the faithless faithful only he; ...</div>
+<div class="t0">Nor number nor example with him wrought</div>
+<div class="t0">To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,</div>
+<div class="t0">Though single.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And Abdiel, when he meets Satan again after the
+outbreak of the war, glories in his nonconformity,
+and hisses out defiance:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">Thou seest</div>
+<div class="t0">All are not of thy train; there be who faith</div>
+<div class="t0">Prefer, and piety to God, though then</div>
+<div class="t0">To thee not visible when I alone</div>
+<div class="t0">Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent</div>
+<div class="t0">From all: my Sect thou seest; now learn too late</div>
+<div class="t0">How few sometimes may know when thousands err.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In this way Milton attempted to allay his
+scruples, and to divide the honours of dissent.
+Later on, after the Fall, when Satan returns to
+Hell with tidings of his exploit, the change of all
+the devils to serpents, and of their applause to "a
+dismal universal hiss" was perhaps devised to cast
+a slur upon the success of his mission. Some
+critics have professed to discern a certain progressive
+degradation and shrinkage in Satan as
+the poem proceeds. But his original creation
+lived on in the imagination and memory of
+Milton, and was revived, with an added pathos,
+in <i>Paradise Regained</i>. The most moving of all
+Satan's speeches is perhaps the long pleading there
+made in answer to the challenge of Christ, and
+<span class="pb" id="pg_140">[140]</span>
+its tone of unutterable despair is deepened by the
+terrible severity of the speech made in answer.</p>
+
+<p>The other leaders of the rebel troops take little
+part in the action outside the scene of the Infernal
+Council. In his memories of the Long Parliament
+Milton could easily find examples of the
+types he has embodied under the names of Belial,
+Mammon, Moloch, and Beelzebub. Nor has he
+forgotten the Westminster Assembly of divines.
+The precise employments of that historic body
+are described by him as the recreation of the lost
+spirits:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Others apart sat on a hill retired,</div>
+<div class="t0">In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--</div>
+<div class="t0">Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--</div>
+<div class="t0">And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It ill became Milton to cast contempt on these
+reasonings, seeing that a whole system of them
+was necessary for the argument of his poem. He
+is so little of a philosopher that he seems hardly
+to be conscious of the difficulties of his own
+theory. Both in <i>Paradise Lost</i> and in the <i>Treatise
+of Christian Doctrine</i> he enlarges with much
+dogmatism and some arrogance on the difference
+between foreknowledge and foreordination. He
+rejects predestination decisively, but he not only
+does not answer, he does not even so much as
+mention, the difficulty that arises in attempting
+<span class="pb" id="pg_141">[141]</span>
+to distinguish between what is foreordained by
+Omniscience and what is foreknown by Omnipotence.
+Pope compared some of the speeches
+delivered in Heaven to the arguments of a
+"School-divine." The comparison does injustice
+to the scholastic philosophers. There was never
+one of them who could have walked into a
+metaphysical bramble-bush with the blind recklessness
+that Milton displays.</p>
+
+<p>It is time to return to Eden and its inhabitants.
+They have little to do but "to lop and prune and
+prop and bind," to adore their Maker, and to
+avoid the prohibited tree. It would perhaps have
+been impossible for a poet with more dramatic
+genius than Milton to make these favourites of
+Heaven interesting in their happy state, while yet
+the key that was to admit them to our world of
+adventure and experience, of suffering and achievement,
+hung untouched on a tree. And Adam,
+from the wealth of his inexperience, is lavishly
+sententious; when anything is to do, even if it is
+only to go to sleep, he does it in a high style, and
+makes a speech. Milton plainly saw the danger
+of arousing a sense of incongruity and ludicrous
+disproportion from the contest between these
+harmless tame creatures and the great forces of
+Satan's empire. So he makes man strong in
+innocence, and, unlike the fallen angels, exempt
+from all physical pain or wound. He even goes
+<span class="pb" id="pg_142">[142]</span>
+so far as to make Satan afraid of Adam, of his
+heroic build and intellectual power. This last, it
+might be said, is a fear not explained by anything
+that we are privileged to hear from the lips of
+Adam himself; but perhaps, in the case of our
+great ancestor, we shall do well to remember
+Hamlet's advice to the players, "Follow that lord,
+and look you mock him not."</p>
+
+<p>There remains a more important person--Eve.
+And with Eve, since the beginning of Milton
+criticism, there enter all those questions concerning
+the comparative worthiness and the relative
+authority of husband and wife which critics of
+Milton so often and so gladly step aside to discuss.
+Every one knows the line:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">He for God only, she for God in him.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Almost every one knows the lines:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">Nothing lovelier can be found</div>
+<div class="t0">In woman than to study household good,</div>
+<div class="t0">And good works in her husband to promote.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Milton certainly shared the views of Knox
+concerning the "Monstrous Regiment of Women."
+It is unnecessary to meet him on his own ground,
+or to attempt a theory that shall explain or control
+Eve, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Catherine of the
+Medici, Mary Powell, and others of their sex. Such
+theories prove only that man is a generalising and
+<span class="pb" id="pg_143">[143]</span>
+rationalising animal. The poet brought his fate
+on himself, for since Eve was the mother of mankind,
+he thought fit to make her the embodiment
+of a doctrine. But he also (a thing of far deeper
+interest) coloured his account by the introduction
+of personal memories and feelings. Of Eve, at
+least, he never writes indifferently. When he came
+to write <i>Samson Agonistes</i>, the intensity of his
+feelings concerning Dalila caused him to deviate
+from the best Greek tradition and to assign
+inappropriate matter to the Chorus. And even in
+his matter-of-fact <i>History of Britain</i>, the name of
+Boadicea awakens him to a fit of indignation with
+the Britons who upheld her rule. There is full
+scope in <i>Paradise Lost</i> for similar expressions of
+indignation. Adam, after the Fall, speaks of his
+wife as</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Not to be trusted--longing to be seen</div>
+<div class="t0">Though by the Devil himself.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the Eleventh Book the daughters of men are
+described as bred only</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">to sing, to dance,</div>
+<div class="t0">To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But Milton, it is sometimes forgotten, was also the
+author of that beautiful eulogy of Eve in the
+Eighth Book:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">When I approach</div>
+<div class="t0">Her loveliness, so absolute she seems</div>
+<div class="t0">And in herself complete, so well to know</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_144">[144]</span>
+<div class="t0">Her own, that what she wills to do or say</div>
+<div class="t0">Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.</div>
+<div class="t0">All higher Knowledge in her presence falls</div>
+<div class="t0">Degraded; Wisdom in discourse with her</div>
+<div class="t0">Loses, discountenanced, and like Folly shows;</div>
+<div class="t0">Authority and Reason on her wait,</div>
+<div class="t0">As one intended first, not after made</div>
+<div class="t0">Occasionally; and, to consummate all,</div>
+<div class="t0">Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat</div>
+<div class="t0">Build in her loveliest, and create an awe</div>
+<div class="t0">About her, as a guard angelic placed.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is an exact parallel to Florizel's praise of
+Perdita in <i>The Winter's Tale</i>:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">When you speak, sweet,</div>
+<div class="t0">I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,</div>
+<div class="t0">I'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms,</div>
+<div class="t0">Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,</div>
+<div class="t0">To sing them too; when you do dance, I wish you</div>
+<div class="t0">A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do</div>
+<div class="t0">Nothing but that; move still, still so,</div>
+<div class="t0">And own no other function: each your doing,</div>
+<div class="t0">So singular in each particular,</div>
+<div class="t0">Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,</div>
+<div class="t0">That all your acts are queens.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But Florizel addresses his praise to the lady herself;
+while Adam, who had never been young, confides
+it in private to Raphael, after dinner, and studies
+a more instructive and authoritative strain in his
+conversations with Eve. And now comes a point
+worthy of remark. The Angel, to whom, it
+cannot be doubted, Milton committed the exposition
+<span class="pb" id="pg_145">[145]</span>
+of his own views, after hearing this confession,
+frowns, and administers a tart reproof. He
+describes Eve, somewhat grudgingly, as "an outside--fair,
+no doubt," and peremptorily teaches
+Adam the duties of self-appreciation and self-assertion:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">Oft-times nothing profits more</div>
+<div class="t0">Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right</div>
+<div class="t0">Well managed. Of that skill the more thou know'st,</div>
+<div class="t0">The more she will acknowledge thee her head,</div>
+<div class="t0">And to realities yield all her shows.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And in the sequel, Adam bitterly laments that he
+had failed to profit by this advice. He might
+have been comforted by the wisdom of Chaucer's
+Franklin:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">When maistrie cometh, the god of love anon</div>
+<div class="t0">Beteth his wynges and, farewel, he is gon!</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The explanation of all this is clear to see.
+Milton was not, as he has sometimes been described,
+a callous and morose Puritan. He was
+extraordinarily susceptible to the attractions of
+feminine beauty and grace. Adam's confession is
+his own. But the ideal of character that he had put
+before himself caused him passionately to resent
+this susceptibility. It was the joint in his harness,
+the main breach in his Stoicism, the great anomaly
+in a life regulated as for his Task-master. He
+felt that beauty was a power not himself, unbalancing
+and disturbing the rational self-centred
+<span class="pb" id="pg_146">[146]</span>
+poise of his soul. There have been poets whose
+service of Venus Verticordia was whole-hearted.
+But to Milton the power of Beauty was a
+magnetism to be distrusted for its very strength.
+He felt something of what he makes Satan express,
+that there is terror in love and beauty "not
+approached by stronger hate." The Chorus in
+<i>Samson Agonistes</i> makes a similar observation:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power</div>
+<div class="t0">After offence returning, to regain</div>
+<div class="t0">Love once possessed.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>To escape from the dominion of the tyrant is the
+duty of a wise man. When Raphael remarked
+that "Love ... hath his seat in Reason, and is
+judicious," he committed himself to a statement
+which a longer experience of the world would have
+enabled him to correct. But Milton wished it
+true; and perhaps even lured himself into a
+belief of its truth. At any rate, when Satan, in
+<i>Paradise Regained</i>, expounds his opinion on the
+matter, it is found, for once, to be in substantial
+agreement with Raphael's:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">Beauty stands</div>
+<div class="t0">In the admiration only of weak minds</div>
+<div class="t0">Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes</div>
+<div class="t0">Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy,</div>
+<div class="t0">At every sudden slighting quite abashed.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is a great loss to literature that Mrs.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_147">[147]</span>
+Millamant, the delightful heroine of Congreve's
+comedy, was no reader of Milton. Her favourite
+author was Suckling:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">I prithee spare me, gentle boy,</div>
+<div class="t0">Press me no more for that slight toy,</div>
+<div class="t0">That foolish trifle of a heart.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>If she had a copy of the <i>Paradise Regained</i>,
+doubtless it stood in some conspicuous place, and
+was never opened,--like Mrs. Wishfort's "books
+over the chimney--Quarles and Prynne, and 'The
+Short View of the Stage,' with Bunyan's works, to
+entertain you." But all unawares she has answered
+the contention of Satan:--"O the vanity of these
+men!--Fainall, d'ye hear him? If they did not
+commend us, we were not handsome! Now you
+must know that they could not commend one, if
+one was not handsome. Beauty the lover's gift!--Lord,
+what is a lover, that it can give? ... One
+no more owes one's beauty to a lover than one's
+wit to an echo."</p>
+
+<p>Like most men of an impressionable temperament
+and a strong will, Milton was not sympathetic,
+nor curious to place himself where he might see the
+world from a point of view other than his own.
+Besieged by their sensations and impressions, concerned
+above all things with maintaining their
+opinions and enforcing their beliefs on others, such
+men find enough to do within the citadel of their
+<span class="pb" id="pg_148">[148]</span>
+own personality. To judge from some passages
+of his works, one half of the human race was to
+Milton an illusion to which the other half was
+subject. One who is in love with his own ideas
+cannot but be disappointed alike with existing
+institutions and with the tissue of surprises that is
+a person. Milton's disappointment, which had
+inspired the early Divorce pamphlets, finds renewed
+expression in Adam's prophecy of unhappy
+marriages--a notable parallel to the similar
+prophecy in <i>Venus and Adonis</i>--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">For either</div>
+<div class="t0">He never shall find out fit mate, but such</div>
+<div class="t0">As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;</div>
+<div class="t0">Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,</div>
+<div class="t0">Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained</div>
+<div class="t0">By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld</div>
+<div class="t0">By parents; or his happiest choice too late</div>
+<div class="t0">Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound</div>
+<div class="t0">To a fell adversary, his hate or shame.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But, with all this, of our two grand parents Eve
+is the better drawn and the more human. Milton
+did not intend that it should be so, but he could
+not help it. One consequence of the doctrine--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">He for God only, she for God in him--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>is that Adam's single impulse of unselfishness,
+whereby he elects to share the offence and
+punishment of Eve, is a vice in him, a "bad compliance."
+<span class="pb" id="pg_149">[149]</span>
+Self-abnegation, the duty of Eve, is
+hardly within the right of Adam; and Dr. Johnson
+expressed a half-truth in violently paradoxical
+terms when he said that Milton "thought woman
+made only for obedience and man only for
+rebellion." It would be truer, and weaker, to say
+that Milton thought woman made for the exercise
+of private, and man for the exercise of public,
+virtues. Hence in their mutual relations Eve
+carries off all the honours, for her duty towards
+Adam coincides with her inclination, while in his
+case the two are at variance. There is no speech
+of Adam's to be matched with the pleading
+intensity of Eve's appeal, beginning--"Forsake
+me not thus, Adam!"--and to her Milton commits
+the last and best speech spoken in Paradise:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">But now lead on;</div>
+<div class="t0">In me is no delay; with thee to go</div>
+<div class="t0">Is to stay here; without thee here to stay</div>
+<div class="t0">Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me</div>
+<div class="t0">Art all things under Heaven, all places thou,</div>
+<div class="t0">Who for my wilful crime art banished hence.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>She is generous and loving; her only reproach
+addressed to Adam is that he acceded to her request,
+and permitted her, on that fateful morning, to do
+her gardening alone, among the roses and myrtles.
+She is a fair companion picture to set over against
+Dalila, and is utterly incapable of Dalila's hypocrisy
+in justifying private treachery by reasons of public
+<span class="pb" id="pg_150">[150]</span>
+policy. There is even a certain dramatic development
+in her character; after she has eaten of the
+fruit, audacity and deceit appear in her reflections;
+she meditates withholding from Adam the advantages
+of the tree, in order that she may become--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">More equal, and perhaps--</div>
+<div class="t0">A thing not undesirable--sometimes</div>
+<div class="t0">Superior.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is easy to understand how tired Eve might well
+become (even before the fallacious fruit was tasted)
+of Adam's carefully maintained superiority. On
+thinking, however, of the judgment that she may
+have to suffer, and of her own death, she resolves
+to draw him in, her motive being not fear, but a
+sudden movement of jealousy at the thought of--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Adam wedded to another Eve.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This is as near an approach to drama in the handling
+of a human situation as is to be found in all
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But enough of this vein of criticism, which is
+justified only by the pleasure of detecting Milton
+too imperfectly concealed behind his handiwork.
+To treat the scenes he portrays as if analysis of
+character were his aim, and truth of psychology
+his touchstone, is to do a wrong to the artist. He
+is an epic, not a dramatic, poet; to find him at his
+best we must look at those passages of unsurpassed
+magnificence wherein he describes some noble or
+<span class="pb" id="pg_151">[151]</span>
+striking attitude, some strong or majestic action,
+in its outward physical aspect.</p>
+
+<p>In this, the loftiest part of his task, his other
+defects, as if by some hidden law of compensation,
+are splendidly redeemed. While he deals with
+abstract thought or moral truth his handling is
+tight, pedantic, and disagreeably hard. But when
+he comes to describe his epic personages and his
+embodied visions, all is power, and vagueness, and
+grandeur. His imagination, escaped from the
+narrow prison of his thought, rises like a vapour,
+and, taking shape before his eyes, proclaims itself
+his master.</p>
+
+<p>No other poet has known so well how to portray,
+in a few strokes, effects of multitude and vastness.
+Now it is the sacred congregation in Heaven:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">About him all the Sanctities of Heaven</div>
+<div class="t0">Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received</div>
+<div class="t0">Beatitude past utterance.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now the warrior host of Hell:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">He spake; and, to confirm his words, outflew</div>
+<div class="t0">Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs</div>
+<div class="t0">Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze</div>
+<div class="t0">Far round illumined Hell.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In these, as in other like scenes, he preserves epic
+unity by throwing the whole into the distance.
+So after the approach of the Messiah to battle,
+"the poet," says Coleridge, "by one touch from
+<span class="pb" id="pg_152">[152]</span>
+himself--'far off their coming shone!'--makes the
+whole one image." He describes at a greater range
+of vision than any other poet: the frame-work
+of his single scenes is often not less than a third
+of universal space. When he has added figure to
+figure in the endeavour to picture the multitudinous
+disarray of the fallen Angels on the lake, one line
+suffices to reduce the whole spectacle to its due
+dimensions beneath that cavernous tent of darkness:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">He called so loud that all the hollow deep</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Hell resounded.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The same effect of number and vastness, diminished
+and unified by the same reference to a larger
+setting, wherein all is seen at a glance, may be
+noted in the description of the raising of Satan's
+standard in Hell:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The imperial ensign, which, full high advanced,</div>
+<div class="t0">Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,</div>
+<div class="t0">With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed,</div>
+<div class="t0">Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while</div>
+<div class="t0">Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds:</div>
+<div class="t0">At which the universal host up-sent</div>
+<div class="t0">A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond</div>
+<div class="t0">Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.</div>
+<div class="t0">All in a moment through the gloom were seen</div>
+<div class="t0">Ten thousand banners rise into the air,</div>
+<div class="t0">With orient colours waving: with them rose</div>
+<div class="t0">A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms</div>
+<div class="t0">Appeared, and serried shields in thick array</div>
+<div class="t0">Of depth immeasureable.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_153">[153]</div>
+
+<p>Sometimes a line or two gives him scope enough
+for the rendering of one of these epic scenes,
+immense and vivid. The ruin and prostration of
+the rebels is made visible in two lines:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood</div>
+<div class="t0">With scattered arms and ensigns.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And the picture of the East rises at a touch:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Dusk faces with white silken turbants wreathed.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the drawing of single attitudes Milton
+studies the same large decorum and majesty. He
+is never tempted into detail in the describing of
+gesture or action; never loses the whole in the
+part. The bulk of <i>Paradise Lost</i> was written
+between the sixth and the thirteenth years of his
+blindness. Since the veil had fallen he had lived
+with the luminous shapes that he could picture
+against the dark. The human face had lost, in
+his recollection of it, something of its minuter
+delineation, but nothing of its radiance. On the
+other hand, the human figure, in its most significant
+gestures and larger movements, haunted his
+visions. His description of the appearance of the
+wife whom he had never seen is an early model of
+many of his later drawings. She comes to his bedside
+and leans over him, stretching forth her arms:</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight</div>
+<div class="t0">Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined</div>
+<div class="t0">So clear as in no face with more delight.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_154">[154]</div>
+
+<p>Adam and Eve, as they are first seen in Paradise,
+have the same shining quality, the same vagueness
+of beauty expressing itself in purely emotional
+terms. Satan standing on the top of Mount
+Niphates, looking down on Eden spread out at his
+feet, and then with fierce gesticulation addressing
+himself to the sun at the zenith, is one of the dim
+solitary figures that dwell in the mind's eye. No
+less impressive and no less indefinite are those two
+monumental descriptions of the rebel leader; the
+first, of his going forth to war in Heaven:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">High in the midst, exalted as a God,</div>
+<div class="t0">The Apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat,</div>
+<div class="t0">Idol of majesty divine, enclosed</div>
+<div class="t0">With flaming Cherubim and golden shields.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and the other, of his encounter with Gabriel:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">Satan, alarmed,</div>
+<div class="t0">Collecting all his might, dilated stood,</div>
+<div class="t0">Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:</div>
+<div class="t0">His stature reached the sky, and on his crest</div>
+<div class="t0">Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp</div>
+<div class="t0">What seemed both spear and shield.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In these, and in a hundred other notable passages,
+the images are as simple and broad as the emotional
+effects that they produce,--the sun, flame, gold, a
+mountain, the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the scenes and situations delineated by
+Milton are of a gentler and more elusive virtue
+<span class="pb" id="pg_155">[155]</span>
+than these terrors and sublimities. His descriptions
+of morning and evening are always charged
+with emotion--the quiet coming-on of night in
+Eden; or the break of day in the wilderness of
+the Temptation, with a sense of joy and relief
+"after a night of storm so ruinous." His feeling
+for the imaginative effects of architecture in a
+landscape is extraordinarily subtle. One, at least,
+of these effects is hardly to be experienced among
+the hedgerows and farmsteads and placid rambling
+towns of England. Travellers in Italy, or in the
+East, are better able to understand the transfiguration
+of a landscape by the distant view of a small
+compact array of walls and towers perched on a
+vantage-ground among the hills of the horizon.
+The lawlessness of Nature, the homelessness of the
+surface of the earth, and the fears that haunt uninhabited
+places, are all accentuated by the distrust
+that frowns from the battlements of such a stronghold
+of militant civility. For this reason, perhaps,
+the architectural features in certain pictures and
+drawings have an indescribable power of suggestion.
+The city, self-contained and fortified, overlooking
+a wide expanse of country, stands for safety and
+society; the little group of figures, parleying at
+the gate, or moving down into the plain, awakens
+in the mind a sense of far-off things,--the moving
+accidents of the great outer world, and the dangers
+and chances of the unknown. Bunyan, whose
+<span class="pb" id="pg_156">[156]</span>
+imagination was nourished on the Eastern scenery
+and sentiment of the Bible, shows himself powerfully
+affected by situations of this kind, as where,
+in the beginning of the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, he
+describes the man with his face from his own home,
+running from the City of Destruction, and the
+group of his kindred calling after him to return:--"but
+the man put his fingers in his ears, and ran
+on crying, Life, Life, Eternal Life: so he looked
+not behind him, but fled towards the middle of
+the plain."</p>
+
+<p>Such another figure is Milton's Abdiel, who
+escaped from the rebel citadel--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">And with retorted scorn his back he turned</div>
+<div class="t0">On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The perils of his flight are vaguely indicated by
+a few admirable touches in the opening of the next
+Book:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued,</div>
+<div class="t0">Through Heaven's wide champaign held his way, till Morn</div>
+<div class="t0">Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand</div>
+<div class="t0">Unbarred the gates of Light.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>A more signal instance of the same poetic
+effect is to be found in the wonderful close of
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, where Adam and Eve are led
+down from the garden by the archangel Michael,
+and are left standing in the vast plain below:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_157">[157]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,</div>
+<div class="t0">Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate</div>
+<div class="t0">With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.</div>
+<div class="t0">Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;</div>
+<div class="t0">The world was all before them, where to choose</div>
+<div class="t0">Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.</div>
+<div class="t0">They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,</div>
+<div class="t0">Through Eden took their solitary way.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Criticism might exhaust itself in the effort to
+do justice to the beauty of this close. Of Adam
+and Eve it may be truly said that none of all
+their doings in the garden became them like the
+leaving of it. Yet Addison and Bentley, the
+ornaments of a polite and learned age, are at one
+in their depreciation of the last two lines.
+Addison, after a formal apology for "the smallest
+Alteration in this divine Work," boldly recommends
+amputation; while Bentley, with the
+caution of a more experienced surgeon, offers to
+crutch the lines on certain wooden contrivances of
+his own. The three epithets, "wandering,"
+"slow," and "solitary," are all censured by him.
+Our first parents, he remarks, were guided by
+Providence, and therefore needed not to wander;
+they were reassured by Michael's predictions, and
+so might well display an engaging briskness;
+while as for "their solitary way," they were no
+more solitary than in Paradise, "there being no
+Body besides Them Two, both here and there."
+<span class="pb" id="pg_158">[158]</span>
+He therefore suggests a distich more agreeable to
+the general scheme:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Then hand in hand with social steps their way</div>
+<div class="t0">Through Eden took, with Heav'nly Comfort cheer'd</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is impossible to answer such criticism; the
+organs of human speech are too frail. Let
+Bentley be left to contemplate with delight the
+hideous gash that his chopper has inflicted on the
+Miltonic rhythm of the last line. If Addison, for
+his part, had been less concerned with the opinions
+of M. Bossu, and the enumeration of the books
+of the <i>&AElig;neid</i>, he might have found leisure
+to notice that the two later poems, <i>Paradise
+Regained</i> and <i>Samson Agonistes</i>, are each brought
+to a close which exactly resembles the close of
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>. After the splendours in the last
+book of <i>Paradise Regained</i>--the fall of Satan,
+"smitten with amazement," from the pinnacle of
+the Temple, the elaborate classical comparisons of
+Antaeus and the Sphinx, and the triumphal chorus
+of Angels who bear the Son of God aloft with
+anthems of victory--the poem ends with the same
+exquisite lull:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">He, unobserved,</div>
+<div class="t0">Home to his mother's house private returned.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And <i>Samson Agonistes</i> brings as glorious a triumph
+to no less peaceful a close:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">And calm of mind, all passion spent.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_159">[159]</div>
+
+<p>The dying fall is the same in all three, and is the
+form of ending preferred by the musical and
+poetic genius of Milton.</p>
+
+<p>Passages of a crowded and ostentatious magnificence
+are more frequent in <i>Paradise Lost</i> than in
+either of the two later poems. In <i>Paradise
+Regained</i> and <i>Samson Agonistes</i> the enhanced
+severity of a style which rejects almost all ornament
+was due in part, no doubt, to a gradual
+change in Milton's temper and attitude. It is not
+so much that his power of imagination waned, as
+that his interest veered, turning more to thought
+and reflection, less to action and picture. In
+these two poems, at the last, he celebrated that</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">better fortitude</div>
+<div class="t0">Of patience and heroic martyrdom</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>which he had professed to sing in <i>Paradise Lost</i>.
+We are told by his nephew that he "could not
+bear with patience any such thing related to him"
+as that <i>Paradise Regained</i> was inferior to <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>. He was right; its merits and beauties are
+of a different and more sombre kind, yet of a kind
+perhaps further out of the reach of any other poet
+than even the constellated glories of <i>Paradise
+Lost</i> itself. It should be remembered that
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, although it was written by Milton
+between the fiftieth and the fifty-seventh years of
+his age, was conceived by him, in its main outlines,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_160">[160]</span>
+not later than his thirty-fourth year. Two of
+the passages noticed above, where Satan addresses
+himself to the Sun and where the Angel leads
+Adam and Eve out of Paradise, embody situations
+which had appealed to his younger imagination.
+Some of the very words of Satan's address were
+written, we learn from Phillips, about 1642. And
+the expulsion of Adam and Eve seems to contain
+a reminiscence of the time when Milton was considering
+the history of Lot as a possible subject for
+an epic. The lines--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">In either hand the hastening Angel caught</div>
+<div class="t0">Our lingering parents--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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).</p>
+
+<p>The gravity and density of the style of
+<i>Paradise Lost</i> would 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. In <i>Paradise Lost</i> Milton at last delivered
+<span class="pb" id="pg_161">[161]</span>
+himself 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 of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, 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, "of <i>Paradise Lost</i>; but what
+hast thou to say of <i>Paradise Found</i>?" 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 of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and already
+very fully in the Third Book, he had treated of
+<i>Paradise Found</i> as 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 stupidity
+<span class="pb" id="pg_162">[162]</span>
+is the kind that discovers something "unfinished"
+in a great work of art, and suggests desirable
+trimmings and additions. Milton knew that
+<i>Paradise Lost</i> was 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, from
+<i>L' Allegro</i> to <i>Samson Agonistes</i>--all are parts of <i>A
+Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created
+Pleasure</i>. 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.
+In <i>Comus</i> is shown how the temptations of created
+pleasure may be resisted by the chastity of the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_163">[163]</span>
+"resolved soul." In <i>Paradise Lost</i>, 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 in
+<i>Paradise Regained</i> exhibited at length, with every
+variety of form and argument, the spectacle of--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t2">one man's firm obedience fully tried</div>
+<div class="t0">Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled</div>
+<div class="t0">In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The subject of <i>Comus</i> is 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 in <i>Paradise
+Regained</i> the 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.</p>
+
+<p>If his only purpose had been to make a worthy
+epical counterpart to <i>Paradise Lost</i>, those critics
+are doubtless right who think his chosen subject
+<span class="pb" id="pg_164">[164]</span>
+not 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 of <i>Paradise Lost</i>; 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 in
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, 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:--</p>
+
+<p>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: 'That
+<span class="pb" id="pg_165">[165]</span>
+light 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.'</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 and
+<span class="pb" id="pg_166">[166]</span>
+said, '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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.'</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_167">[167]</div>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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 in <i>Samson
+Agonistes</i>. 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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Just are the ways of God</div>
+<div class="t0">And justifiable to men--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>finding an echo in Samson's declaration--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_168">[168]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me</div>
+<div class="t0">But justly; I myself have brought them on;</div>
+<div class="t0">Sole author I, sole cause;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>--these together make up a theme where there is
+no possible place for the gay theology of <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>. The academic proof of God's justice, contained
+in the earlier poem, if it were introduced
+into <i>Samson Agonistes</i> could 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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t3">Yet toward these thus dignified thou oft</div>
+<div class="t3">Amidst their height of noon</div>
+<div class="t0">Changest thy countenance, and thy hand with no regard</div>
+<div class="t3">Of highest favours past</div>
+<div class="t0">From thee or them, or them to thee of service.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And there follows their humble prayer, heard
+and answered with Divine irony on the very day
+of their asking:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">So deal not with this once thy glorious champion,</div>
+<div class="t0">The image of thy strength and mighty minister.</div>
+<div class="t0">What do I beg? How hast thou dealt already?</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_169">[169]</span>
+<div class="t0">Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn</div>
+<div class="t0">His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_170">[170]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="c5">CHAPTER V
+<br />THE STYLE OF MILTON: METRE AND DICTION</a></h2>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_171">[171]</div>
+
+<p>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,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_172">[172]</span>
+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--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">the least erected Spirit that fell</div>
+<div class="t0">From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts</div>
+<div class="t0">Were always downward bent, admiring more</div>
+<div class="t0">The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,</div>
+<div class="t0">Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed</div>
+<div class="t0">In vision beatific.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>With curious finger and thumb they pick holes in
+the mosaic; and wherever there is wealth they are
+always ready to cry "Thief!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_173">[173]</span>
+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 of <i>Paradise Lost</i>." 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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+&agrave; 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:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_174">[174]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">We are not Ethnickes, we forsoth at least professe not so;</div>
+<div class="t0">Why range we then to Ethnickes' trade? Come back, where will ye go?</div>
+<div class="t0">Tel me, is Christe or Cupide lord? Doth God or Venus reign?</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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's <i>Harmonie
+of the Church</i> was 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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Stil finest wits are 'stilling Venus' rose,</div>
+<div class="t0">In Paynim toyes the sweetest vaines are spent;</div>
+<div class="t0">To Christian workes few have their talents lent.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">Cannot thy dove</div>
+<div class="t0">Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight?</div>
+<div class="t">Or, since thy ways are deep, and still the same,</div>
+<div class="t">Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name?</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But although Herbert and his successors, in their
+<span class="pb" id="pg_175">[175]</span>
+devotional 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 be
+<span class="pb" id="pg_176">[176]</span>
+expected, 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 called <i>Psyche, or
+Love's Mystery</i>, 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 as
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, 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's <i>Original Poems</i>
+in 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 full
+<span class="pb" id="pg_177">[177]</span>
+and 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."</p>
+
+<p>Next, Cowley "came in robustiously and put
+for it with a deal of violence" in his sacred poem
+entitled <i>Davideis</i>. In the exordium of the First
+Book he proclaims his mission:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Too long the <i>Muses-Lands</i> have <i>Heathen</i> bin</div>
+<div class="t0">Their <i>Gods</i> too long were <i>Devils</i>, and <i>Vertues Sin</i>;</div>
+<div class="t0">But <i>Thou, Eternal World</i>, hast call'd forth <i>Me</i>,</div>
+<div class="t0">Th' <i>Apostle</i>, to convert that <i>World</i> to <i>Thee</i>:</div>
+<div class="t0">T' unbind the charms that in slight <i>Fables</i> lie,</div>
+<div class="t0">And teach that <i>Truth</i> is <i>truest Poesie</i>.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But it was not to be. His "polisht <i>Pillars</i> of
+strong <i>Verse</i>" 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.</p>
+
+<p>After Cowley in date of composition, but before
+him in date of publication, Davenant in his
+<i>Gondibert</i> shows traces of the prevalent ambition.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_178">[178]</span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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's <i>Davideis</i>, Desmarets de
+Saint-Sorlin brought out his sacred poem of <i>Clovis</i>,
+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 his <i>Poetic</i>, settled the question
+for the nonce, and fixed the opinion of the
+succeeding generation of critics. He casts an
+equal ridicule upon <i>Clovis</i> and upon the theory
+which it was designed to illustrate:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The arts of fiction give the air of lies</div>
+<div class="t0">Even to the most unquestioned verities;</div>
+<div class="t0">And what a pious entertainment, too,</div>
+<div class="t0">The yells of Satan and his damn&egrave;d crew,</div>
+<div class="t0">When, proud to assail your Hero's matchless might,</div>
+<div class="t0">With God himself they wage a doubtful fight.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>So the burial of <i>Clovis</i> was hastened by ridicule.
+Yet every one of the arguments brought against
+<span class="pb" id="pg_179">[179]</span>
+that poem by Boileau holds equally good against
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, which Milton, knowing as little of
+Boileau as Boileau knew of him, had published
+some six years earlier. <i>Paradise Lost</i>, it might
+almost be said, is superior to <i>Clovis</i> in 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.</p>
+
+<p>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, called
+<i>A Tale of Two Swannes</i>. While Milton was
+writing <i>Paradise Lost</i> the 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 of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, Dryden
+delivered his judgment, that the rhymed couplet
+<span class="pb" id="pg_180">[180]</span>
+was 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."</p>
+
+<p>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 follow
+<span class="pb" id="pg_181">[181]</span>
+his achievement as he won step by step out of the
+void.</p>
+
+<p>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 poem <i>On the
+Death of a Fair Infant</i>, written in his seventeenth
+year:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Or wert thou of the golden-wing&egrave;d host</div>
+<div class="t0">Who, having clad thyself in human weed,</div>
+<div class="t0">To earth from thy prefixed seat didst post,</div>
+<div class="t0">And after short abode fly back with speed,</div>
+<div class="t0">As if to show what creatures Heaven doth breed;</div>
+<div class="t">Thereby to set the hearts of men on fire</div>
+<div class="t0">To scorn the sordid world, and unto Heaven aspire?</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The later verses on <i>The Passion</i>, written in the
+same metre, are perhaps the last in which Milton
+echoes Spenser, however faintly. Meanwhile, in
+the hymn <i>On the Morning of Christ's Nativity</i>, 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."</p>
+
+<p>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 written <i>At a Vacation Exercise</i>, he
+expressly sets aside</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_182">[182]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Those new-fangled toys and trimming slight</div>
+<div class="t0">Which takes our late fantastics with delight;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">For he, being amorous on that lovely dye</div>
+<div class="t">That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss,</div>
+<div class="t0">But killed, alas! and then bewailed his fatal bliss.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 of
+<i>Comus</i>, where the Lady accuses Night of having
+stolen her brothers:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">O thievish Night,</div>
+<div class="t0">Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,</div>
+<div class="t0">In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars</div>
+<div class="t0">Which Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps</div>
+<div class="t0">With everlasting oil to give due light</div>
+<div class="t0">To the misled and lonely traveller?</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>When Milton does fall into a vein of conceit, it
+is generally both trivial and obvious, with none of
+<span class="pb" id="pg_183">[183]</span>
+the 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.</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;</div>
+<div class="t0">A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,</div>
+<div class="t0">A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,</div>
+<div class="t0">A forked mountain, or blue promontory</div>
+<div class="t0">With trees upon't that nod unto the world,</div>
+<div class="t0">And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;</div>
+<div class="t0">They are black Vesper's pageants.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">But yet thou canst not die, I know;</div>
+<div class="t">To leave this world behind, is death;</div>
+<div class="t0">But when thou from this world wilt go,</div>
+<div class="t">The whole world vapours with thy breath.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_184">[184]</div>
+
+<p>And again:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Twice or thrice had I loved thee,</div>
+<div class="t">Before I knew thy face or name;</div>
+<div class="t">So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame</div>
+<div class="t0">Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 of <i>Il Penseroso</i>, which
+might be quoted against this statement, is susceptible
+of an easier explanation:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">And if aught else great bards beside</div>
+<div class="t0">In sage and solemn tunes have sung</div>
+<div class="t0">Of turneys, and of trophies hung,</div>
+<div class="t0">Of forests, and enchantments drear,</div>
+<div class="t0">Where more is meant than meets the ear.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 in <i>Comus</i> are
+these:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_185">[185]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">A thousand fantasies</div>
+<div class="t0">Begin to throng into my memory,</div>
+<div class="t0">Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,</div>
+<div class="t0">And airy tongues that syllable men's names</div>
+<div class="t0">On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 of
+<i>Comus</i> from the <i>Old Wives' Tale</i> of 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 his <i>Lives of Edward and John Phillips</i>,
+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
+in <i>Il Penseroso</i>:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Come, but keep thy wonted state</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and two lines of Jonson's <i>Hymn to Cynthia</i>:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_186">[186]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Seated in thy silver chair</div>
+<div class="t0">State in wonted manner keep.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 the <i>Areopagitica</i>. 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?--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race:</div>
+<div class="t0">Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours,</div>
+<div class="t0">Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;</div>
+<div class="t0">And glut thyself with what thy womb devours.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Elizabethan style is not to be mistaken, the
+high-figured phrases, loosely welded together,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_187">[187]</span>
+lulling the imagination into acquiescence by the
+flow of the melody. Lines like these might well
+occur in <i>Richard II</i>. The same Shakespearian
+note is clearly audible in such a passage as this,
+where Comus describes the two brothers:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Their port was more than human, as they stood.</div>
+<div class="t0">I took it for a faery vision</div>
+<div class="t0">Of some gay creatures of the element,</div>
+<div class="t0">That in the colours of the rainbow live,</div>
+<div class="t0">And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook,</div>
+<div class="t0">And, as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek,</div>
+<div class="t0">It were a journey like the path to Heaven</div>
+<div class="t0">To help you find them.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t9">If this fail,</div>
+<div class="t0">The pillared firmament is rottenness</div>
+<div class="t0">And earth's base built on stubble.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_188">[188]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound</div>
+<div class="t0">Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,</div>
+<div class="t0">And stole upon the air, that even Silence</div>
+<div class="t0">Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might</div>
+<div class="t0">Deny her nature, and be never more</div>
+<div class="t0">Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,</div>
+<div class="t0">And took in strains that might create a soul</div>
+<div class="t0">Under the ribs of Death.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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, in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, "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.</p>
+
+<p>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 impossible
+<span class="pb" id="pg_189">[189]</span>
+even 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 of <i>The City Match</i>
+(1639). As a sample of blank verse it is perhaps
+somewhat smoother and more regular than the
+average workmanship of that time:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">She works religious petticoats; for flowers</div>
+<div class="t0">She'll make church-histories. Her needle doth</div>
+<div class="t0">So sanctify my cushionets; besides</div>
+<div class="t0">My smock-sleeves have such holy embroideries,</div>
+<div class="t0">And are so learned, that I fear in time</div>
+<div class="t0">All my apparel will be quoted by</div>
+<div class="t0">Some pure instructor. Yesterday I went</div>
+<div class="t0"><i>To see a lady that has a parrot: my woman</i></div>
+<div class="t0"><i>While I was in discourse converted the fowl</i>;</div>
+<div class="t0">And now it can speak nought but Knox's works;</div>
+<div class="t0">So there's a parrot lost.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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 injury
+<span class="pb" id="pg_190">[190]</span>
+done 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.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_191">[191]</div>
+
+<p>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 in
+<i>Comus</i>, does not occur in <i>Paradise Lost</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 c&aelig;sura he permits to fall at any place
+in the line, usually towards the middle, but, on
+occasion, even after the first or ninth syllables.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_192">[192]</span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_193">[193]</span>
+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 the <i>Idylls of the King</i>. Here is one:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">So all the ways were safe from shore to shore,</div>
+<div class="t0">But in the heart of Arthur pain was lord.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The elements of musical delight here are almost
+barbarous in their simplicity. There is a surfeit
+of assonance--<i>all, shore, shore, lord</i>; <i>heart, Arthur</i>;
+<i>ways, safe, pain</i>. The alliteration is without
+complexity,--a dreary procession of sibilants.
+Worst of all are the monotonous incidence of the
+stress, and the unrelieved, undistinguished, crowded
+poverty of the Saxon monosyllables.</p>
+
+<p>No two such consecutive lines were ever written
+by Milton. His verse, even in its least admirable
+passages, does not sing, nor trip with regular alternate
+stress; its movement suggests neither dance
+nor song, but rather the advancing march of a
+body of troops skilfully handled, with incessant
+changes in their disposition as they pass over
+broken ground. He can furnish them with wings
+when it so pleases him. No analysis of his prosody
+can explain the wonders of his workmanship. But
+it is not idle to ask for a close attention to the
+scansion of lines like these, wherein he describes
+the upward progress of the Son of God and his
+escort after the Creation:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_194">[194]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The heavens and all the constellations rung,</div>
+<div class="t0">The planets in their station listening stood,</div>
+<div class="t0">While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the last line the first four words marshal the
+great procession in solid array; the last two lift
+it high into the empyrean. Let any one attempt
+to get the same upward effect with a stress, however
+light, laid on the last syllable of the line, or
+with words of fewer than three syllables apiece,
+and he will have to confess that, however abstruse
+the rules of its working may be, there is virtue in
+metrical cunning. The passage in the Seventh
+Book from which these lines are quoted would
+justify an entire treatise. The five regular alternate
+stresses first occur in a line describing the progress
+over the wide plain of Heaven:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">He through Heaven,</div>
+<div class="t0">That opened wide her blazing portals, led</div>
+<div class="t0">To God's eternal house direct the way.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But, indeed, the examination of the music of
+Milton involves so minute a survey of technical
+detail as to be tedious to all but a few lovers of
+theory. The laws of music in verse are very
+subtle, and, it must be added, very imperfectly
+ascertained; so that those who dogmatise on them
+generally end by slipping into fantasy or pedantry.
+How carefully and incessantly Milton adjusted the
+sound to the sense is known to every reader of
+<span class="pb" id="pg_195">[195]</span>
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>. The dullest ear is caught by the
+contrast between the opening of the gates of
+Heaven--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">Heaven opened wide</div>
+<div class="t0">Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound</div>
+<div class="t0">On golden hinges moving--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and the opening of those other gates--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">On a sudden open fly,</div>
+<div class="t0">With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,</div>
+<div class="t0">The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate</div>
+<div class="t0">Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Erebus.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But there are many more delicate instances than
+these. In the choruses of <i>Samson Agonistes</i>, where
+he reaches the top of his skill, Milton varies even
+the length of the line. So he has hardly a rule
+left, save the iambic pattern, which he treats merely
+as a point of departure or reference, a background
+or framework to carry the variations imposed upon
+it by the luxuriance of a perfectly controlled art.
+The great charm of the metre of Wither, which
+Charles Lamb admired and imitated, lies in its
+facile combination of what, for the sake of brevity,
+may be called the iambic and trochaic movements.
+In <i>L'Allegro</i> and <i>Il Penseroso</i> Milton had proved
+his mastery of both its resources. The gaiety of
+these lines--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee</div>
+<div class="t0">Jest, and youthful Jollity--</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_196">[196]</div>
+
+<p>passes easily into the solemnity of these--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">But let my due feet never fail</div>
+<div class="t0">To walk the studious cloister's pale.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In <i>Samson Agonistes</i> he sought to extend something
+of the same liberty to the movement of
+blank verse. He freely intermixes the falling with
+the rising stress, shifting the weights from place
+to place, and often compensating a light patter of
+syllables in the one half of the line by the introduction
+of two or three consecutive strong stresses
+in the other half. Under this treatment the metre
+of <i>Gorboduc</i> breaks into blossom and song:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">O, how comely it is, and how reviving</div>
+<div class="t0">To the spirits of just men long oppressed,</div>
+<div class="t0">When God into the hands of their deliverer</div>
+<div class="t0">Puts invincible might.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>To try to explain this marvel of beauty is to beat
+the air.</p>
+
+<p>By his deliberate attention to the elements of
+verbal melody Milton gave a new character to
+English blank verse. But this is not all. Quite
+as important is the alteration that he made in the
+character of English poetic diction.</p>
+
+<p>The essence of the lyric is that it is made up
+of phrases, not of words. The lines run easily
+because they run on tracks chosen for their ease by
+the instinct of generations and worn smooth by
+use. The lyrical phrase, when the first two or
+<span class="pb" id="pg_197">[197]</span>
+three words of it have been pronounced, finishes
+itself. From Carew's "Ask me no more," with
+its long train of imitations, to the latest banality
+of the music-halls, the songs that catch the ear
+catch it by the same device. The lyric, that is to
+say, is almost always dependent for its music on
+easy idiomatic turns of speech. The surprising
+word occurs rarely; with all the greater effect
+inasmuch as it is embedded in phrases that slip
+from the tongue without a trace of thought or
+effort. These phrases naturally allow of little
+diversity of intonation; they have the unity of a
+single word, a single accepted emphasis, and a run
+of lightly-stressed syllables more or less musical in
+sequence.</p>
+
+<p>All this Milton changed. He chooses his every
+word. You cannot guess the adjective from the
+substantive, nor the end of the phrase from its
+beginning. He is much given to inverting the
+natural English order of epithet and noun, that he
+may gain a greater emphasis for the epithet. His
+style is not a simple loose-flowing garment, which
+takes its outline from its natural fall over the
+figure, but a satin brocade, stiff with gold, exactly
+fitted to the body. There is substance for it to
+clothe; but, as his imitators quickly discovered, it
+can stand alone. He packs his meaning into the
+fewest possible words, and studies economy in
+every trifle. In his later poetry there are no
+<span class="pb" id="pg_198">[198]</span>
+gliding connectives; no polysyllabic conjunctive
+clauses, which fill the mouth while the brain
+prepares itself for the next word of value; no
+otiose epithets, and very few that court neglect by
+their familiarity. His poetry is like the eloquence
+of the Lord Chancellor Bacon, as described by
+Ben Jonson:--"No man ever spake more neatly,
+more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less
+emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No
+member of his speech but consisted of his own
+graces. His hearers could not cough, or look
+aside from him, without loss." It is this quality
+of Milton's verse that makes the exercise of reading
+it aloud a delight and a trial. Every word is of
+value. There is no mortar between the stones,
+each is held in place by the weight of the others,
+and helps to uphold the building. In reading,
+every word must be rendered clearly and articulately;
+to drop one out, or to slur it over, is to
+take a stone from an arch. Indeed, if Lamb and
+Hazlitt are right in thinking that Shakespeare's
+greatest plays cannot be acted, by the same token,
+Milton's greatest poems cannot be read aloud.
+For his most sonorous passages the human voice
+is felt to be too thin an instrument; the lightest
+word in the line demands some faint emphasis,
+so that the strongest could not be raised to its
+true value unless it were roared through some
+melodious megaphone.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_199">[199]</div>
+
+<p>The carefully jewelled mosaic style was
+practised very early by Milton. It occurs already
+in the hymn on the Nativity:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">See how from far upon the eastern road</div>
+<div class="t0">The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:</div>
+<div class="t0">O run, prevent them with thy humble ode</div>
+<div class="t0">And lay it lowly at his blessed feet.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The same deliberateness and gentle pause of words
+one after another rounding and falling like clear
+drops is found in the song of the Spirit in
+<i>Comus</i>:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Sabrina fair,</div>
+<div class="t">Listen where thou art sitting</div>
+<div class="t0">Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,</div>
+<div class="t">In twisted braids of lilies knitting</div>
+<div class="t0">The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This is the effect which Sir Henry Wotton,
+Milton's earliest critic, speaks of, in a letter to
+Milton, as "a certain Doric delicacy in your songs
+and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have
+seen yet nothing parallel in our language."</p>
+
+<p>There are poems, and good poems among the
+number, written on a more diffuse principle. If
+you miss one line you find the idea repeated or
+persisting in the next. It is quite possible to
+derive pleasure from the <i>Faerie Queene</i> by attending
+to the leading words, and, for the rest, floating
+onward on the melody. You can catch the drift
+with ease. The stream circles in so many eddies
+<span class="pb" id="pg_200">[200]</span>
+that to follow it laboriously throughout its course
+is felt to be hardly necessary: miss it once and
+you can often join it again at very near the same
+point. "But a reader of Milton," as an early
+critic of Milton remarks, "must be always upon
+duty; he is surrounded with sense; it rises in
+every line, every word is to the purpose. There
+are no lazy intervals: all has been considered, and
+demands and merits observation. Even in the
+best writers you sometimes find words and sentences
+which hang on so loosely, you may blow them off.
+Milton's are all substance and weight: fewer would
+not have served his turn, and more would have
+been superfluous. His silence has the same effect,
+not only that he leaves work for the imagination,
+when he has entertained it and furnished it with
+noble materials; but he expresses himself so concisely,
+employs words so sparingly, that whoever
+will possess his ideas must dig for them, and oftentimes
+pretty far below the surface."</p>
+
+<p>An illustration and contrast may serve to point
+the moral. Here is an example of Spenser's
+diffuser style, taken from the second book of the
+<i>Faerie Queene</i>. Guyon, escaped from the cave of
+Mammon, is guarded, during his swoon, by an
+angel:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Beside his head there satt a faire young man,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(This announces the theme, as in music.)</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_201">[201]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Of wondrous beauty and of freshest yeares,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(The fair young man was fair and young.)</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Whose tender bud to blossom new began,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(The fair young man was young.)</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">And florish faire above his equal peers.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>(The fair young man was fair, fairer even than his
+equals, who were also his peers.)</p>
+
+<p>In the remaining lines of the stanza the comparison
+of his hair to the rays of the sun is played
+with in the same way:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">His snowy front curled with golden heares,</div>
+<div class="t0">Like Ph&oelig;bus' face adorned with sunny rayes,</div>
+<div class="t0">Divinely shone; and two sharp winged sheares,</div>
+<div class="t0">Decked with diverse plumes, like painted Jayes,</div>
+<div class="t0">Were fixed at his back to cut his ayery wayes.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The whole stanza is beautiful, and musical with the
+music of redundance. Nothing could be less like
+Milton's mature style. His verse, "with frock of
+mail, Adamantean proof," advances proudly and
+irresistibly, gaining ground at every step. He
+brings a situation before us in two lines, every
+word contributing its share:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,</div>
+<div class="t0">Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>With as decisive a touch he sketches the story of Jacob--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_202">[202]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t9">In the field of Luz,</div>
+<div class="t0">Dreaming by night under the open sky,</div>
+<div class="t0">And waking cried, <i>This is the gate of Heaven</i>.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Or the descent of Raphael:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t9">Like Maia's son he stood,</div>
+<div class="t0">And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled</div>
+<div class="t0">The circuit wide.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The packed line introduced by Milton is of a
+greater density and conciseness than anything to
+be found in English literature before it. It is our
+nearest native counterpart to the force and reserve
+of the high Virgilian diction. In his <i>Discourse of
+the Original and Progress of Satire</i>, Dryden has
+called attention to the close-wrought quality of
+Virgil's work. "Virgil," he says, "could have
+written sharper satires than either Horace or
+Juvenal, if he would have employed his talent that
+way. I will produce a verse and a half of his, in
+one of his Eclogues, to justify my opinion; and
+with commas after every word, to show that he
+has given almost as many lashes as he has written
+syllables: it is against a bad poet, whose ill verses
+he describes:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t6"><i>non tu, in triviis, indocte, solebas</i></div>
+<div class="t0"><i>Stridenti, miserum, stipula, disperdere, carmen?</i>"</div>
+<div class="t0">[Wouldst thou not, blockhead, in the public ways,</div>
+<div class="t0">Squander, on scrannel pipe, thy sorry lays?]</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dryden appreciated the terrible force of this
+<span class="pb" id="pg_203">[203]</span>
+kind of writing for the purposes of satire. At its
+best, his own satire attains to something like it, as,
+for instance, in his description of Shaftesbury's
+early life:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Next this (how wildly will ambition steer),</div>
+<div class="t0">A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear,</div>
+<div class="t0">Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold,</div>
+<div class="t0">He cast himself into the saint-like mould;</div>
+<div class="t0">Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain,</div>
+<div class="t0">The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Except the first line, which is wholly idle, there is
+nothing that could be spared here. Pope, also,
+knew the value of condensation; but he works in
+antithetic phrases, so that his single words are less
+telling; and where Dryden's lines are swords
+edged with contempt, Pope's are stings, pointed
+with spite. Thus, of Lord Hervey:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Amphibious thing! that acting either part,</div>
+<div class="t0">The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,</div>
+<div class="t0">Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,</div>
+<div class="t0">Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.</div>
+<div class="t0">Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,</div>
+<div class="t0">A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;</div>
+<div class="t0">Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,</div>
+<div class="t0">Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The necessities of rhyme sometimes hamper both
+Dryden and Pope; and the nearest parallel to the
+manner of Virgil is to be sought in Milton. The
+famous line describing Samson--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_204">[204]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>is a good example; the sense of humiliation and
+abasement is intensified at every step. Or, to
+take a passage in a very different key of feeling,
+the same quality is seen in the description of the
+obedience of Eve:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t6">Required with gentle sway</div>
+<div class="t0">And by her yielded, by him best received,</div>
+<div class="t0">Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,</div>
+<div class="t0">And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The slight stress and pause needed after each
+word, to render the full meaning, produce, when
+the words are short as well as emphatic, a line of
+terrific weight and impact. What more heartbreaking
+effect of weariness and eternity of effort
+could be produced in a single line than this, descriptive
+of the dolorous march of the fallen angels?--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,</div>
+<div class="t0">Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It would be difficult to match this line. In <i>The
+Tears of Peace</i>, Chapman has a line (he repeats it
+in the <i>Tragedy of Biron</i>) which owes some of its
+strength to the same cause. He describes the body
+as--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">This glass of air, broken with less than breath,</div>
+<div class="t0">This slave, bound face to face to death till death.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The eight stresses give the line a passionate energy.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_205">[205]</div>
+
+<p>All superfluous graces are usually discarded by
+Milton. He steers right onward, and gives the
+reader no rest. A French critic of that age, who
+has already been mentioned as the author of <i>Clovis</i>,
+praises Malherbe and Voiture and the worthies of
+their time, at the expense of the ancients. He
+calls Homer, especially, "a tattler, who is incessantly
+repeating the same things in the same
+idle ridiculous epithets,--<i>the swift-footed Achilles,
+the ox-eyed Juno, far-darting Apollo</i>." Milton felt
+none of this contempt for Homer, but he discarded
+the practice. His epithets are chosen to
+perform one exploit, and are dismissed when it is
+accomplished. As with single epithets, so with
+lines and phrases; he does not employ conventional
+repetitions either for their lyrical value or
+for wafting the story on to the next point of
+interest. He seeks no effects such as Marlowe
+obtained by the lyrical repetition of the line:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">To entertain divine Zenocrate.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He arrests the attention at every word; and
+when the thing is once said, he has done with it.</p>
+
+<p>In his <i>Discourse of Satire</i> Dryden raises an
+interesting point. He makes mention of "the
+beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are
+as requisite in this, as in heroick poetry itself, of
+which the satire is undoubtedly a species." His
+attention, he says, was first called to these by Sir
+<span class="pb" id="pg_206">[206]</span>
+George Mackenzie, who repeated many of them
+from Waller and Denham. Thereupon he
+searched other authors, Cowley, Davenant, and
+Milton, to find further examples of them; but in
+vain. At last he had recourse to Spenser, "and
+there I met with that which I had been looking
+for so long in vain. Spenser had studied Virgil
+to as much advantage as Milton had done Homer;
+and amongst the rest of his excellencies had copied
+that."</p>
+
+<p>By the "turns of words and thoughts" Dryden
+here means the repetition of a word or phrase in
+slightly altered guise as the thought is turned over
+in the mind and presented in a new aspect. There
+is an almost epigrammatic neatness about some of
+the examples that he cites from Ovid and Catullus.
+It is not surprising that he failed to find these
+elegant turns in Milton, for they are few.
+Addison and Steele, writing in the <i>Tatler</i>, reproach
+him with having overlooked the speech of Eve in
+the Fourth Book of <i>Paradise Lost</i>:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet,</div>
+<div class="t0">With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun,</div>
+<div class="t0">When first on this delightful land he spreads</div>
+<div class="t0">His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,</div>
+<div class="t0">Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth</div>
+<div class="t0">After soft showers; and sweet the coming-on</div>
+<div class="t0">Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night,</div>
+<div class="t0">With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon,</div>
+<div class="t0">And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train:</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_207">[207]</span>
+<div class="t0">But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends</div>
+<div class="t0">With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun</div>
+<div class="t0">On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,</div>
+<div class="t0">Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers</div>
+<div class="t0">Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent Night,</div>
+<div class="t0">With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon,</div>
+<div class="t0">Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dryden remarks that the elegance he speaks of
+is common in Italian sonnets, which are usually
+written on the turn of the first thought; and
+certainly this speech of Eve might be truly compared,
+in all but the metrical structure, to an
+interspersed sonnet. There is another elaborate
+piece of repetition at the close of the Tenth Book,
+where the humble prostration of Adam and Eve
+is described in exactly the form of speech used by
+Adam to propose it. But the repetition in this
+case is too exact to suit Dryden's meaning; by a
+close verbal coincidence the ritual of penitence is
+emphasised in detail, and the book brought to a
+restful pause. Scattered here and there throughout
+Milton's longer poems Dryden might, nevertheless,
+have found the thing he sought. One instance
+that he gives is taken from the fourth Georgic of
+Virgil, where Orpheus, leading Eurydice up from
+Hell, suddenly turns to look on her:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0"><i>Cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem;</i></div>
+<div class="t0"><i>Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes.</i></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This turn--"deserving grace, if grace were known
+<span class="pb" id="pg_208">[208]</span>
+in Hell"--may easily be matched in Milton. In
+the Second Book of <i>Paradise Lost</i> is described
+how the damned</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">feel by turns the bitter change</div>
+<div class="t0">Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the Fifth Book, when Raphael arrives at the
+gate of Paradise, the angels</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">to his state</div>
+<div class="t0">And to his message high in honour rise,</div>
+<div class="t0">For on some message high they guessed him bound.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In <i>Samson Agonistes</i> it is noted that nations grown
+corrupt</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t5">love bondage more than liberty,</div>
+<div class="t0">Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet in the main Dryden is right, for even
+instances like these are not many, and the tricky
+neatness of Ovid is nowhere to be found in the
+English epic poet.</p>
+
+<p>Milton seldom allows his verse to play in
+eddies; he taxes every line to its fullest capacity,
+and wrings the last drop of value from each word.
+A signal characteristic of his diction has its origin
+in this hard dealing. He is often not satisfied
+with one meaning from a word, but will make it
+do double duty. Here the Latin element in our
+language gave him his opportunity. Words
+borrowed from the Latin always change their
+usage and value in English air. To the ordinary
+<span class="pb" id="pg_209">[209]</span>
+intelligence they convey one meaning; to a
+scholar's memory they suggest also another. It
+became the habit of Milton to make use of both
+values, to assess his words in both capacities. Any
+page of his work furnishes examples of his delicate
+care for the original meaning of Latin words, such
+as <i>intend</i>--"intend at home ... what best may
+ease the present misery"; <i>arrive</i>--"ere he arrive
+the happy Isle"; <i>obnoxious</i>--"obnoxious more to
+all the miseries of life"; <i>punctual</i>--"this opacous
+Earth, this punctual spot"; <i>sagacious</i>--"sagacious
+of his quarry from so far"; <i>explode</i>--"the
+applause they meant turned to exploding hiss";
+<i>retort</i>--"with retorted scorn his back he turned";
+<i>infest</i>--"find some occasion to infest our foes."
+The Speaker of the House of Commons had to
+determine, some years ago, whether it is in order
+to allude to the Members as "infesting" the
+House. Had Milton been called upon for such a
+decision he would doubtless have ruled that the
+word is applicable only to Members whose
+deliberate intention is to maim or destroy the
+constitution of Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>But he was not content to revive the exact
+classical meaning in place of the vague or weak
+English acceptation; he often kept both senses,
+and loaded the word with two meanings at once.
+When Samson speaks of Dalila as</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">That specious monster, my accomplished snare--</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_210">[210]</div>
+
+<p>something of this double sense resides in both
+epithets. In two words we are told that Dalila
+was both beautiful and deceitful, that she was
+skilled in the blandishments of art, and successful
+in the work of her husband's undoing. With a
+like double reference Samson calls the secret of his
+strength "my capital secret." Where light, again,
+is called the "prime work of God," or where we
+are told that Hell saw "Heaven ruining from
+Heaven," the original and derivative senses of the
+words "prime" and "ruin" are united in the
+conception. These words, and many others
+similarly employed, are of Latin origin; but
+Milton carried his practice over into the Saxon
+part of our vocabulary. The word "uncouth"
+is used in a double-barrelled sense in the Second
+Book of <i>Paradise Lost</i>--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t2">Who shall tempt with wandering feet</div>
+<div class="t0">The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss,</div>
+<div class="t0">And through the palpable obscure find out</div>
+<div class="t0">His uncouth way?</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And when Satan's eyes are called "baleful," the
+word, besides indicating the "huge affliction and
+dismay" that he feels, gives a hint of the woes
+that are in store for the victims on whom those
+eyes have not yet lit.</p>
+
+<p>It was this habit of "verbal curiosity" and
+condensation which seduced Milton into punning.
+Some of his puns are very bad. There is a
+<span class="pb" id="pg_211">[211]</span>
+modern idea that a pun is a thing to laugh at.
+Milton's puns, like Shakespeare's, give no smallest
+countenance to this theory. Sometimes he plays
+with what is merely a chance identity of sound, as
+where Satan, entering Paradise--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">At one slight bound high overleapt all bound.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But in most of these cases it seems likely that he
+believed in an etymological relation between the
+two words, and so fancied that he was drawing
+attention to an original unity of meaning. Some
+such hypothesis is needful to mitigate the atrocity
+of his worst pun, in <i>Paradise Regained</i>, where he
+describes</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t6">The ravens with their horny beaks</div>
+<div class="t0">Food to Elijah bringing even and morn--</div>
+<div class="t0">Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Milton was no philologist, and we may be permitted
+in charity to suppose that he derived
+"raven" and "ravenous" from the same root.</p>
+
+<p>Some of his puns are to be justified for
+another reason--that they are made the weapons
+of mockery. So when Satan rails against Abdiel
+he says--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">Thou shalt behold</div>
+<div class="t0">Whether by supplication we intend</div>
+<div class="t0">Address, and to begirt the Almighty Throne</div>
+<div class="t0">Beseeching or besieging.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The long punning-bout between Satan and Belial
+<span class="pb" id="pg_212">[212]</span>
+in the Sixth Book exemplifies the more usual form
+of the Miltonic pun. When he introduces the
+newly-invented artillery, Satan makes a speech,
+"scoffing in ambiguous words"--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t9">Ye, who appointed stand,</div>
+<div class="t0">Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch</div>
+<div class="t0">What we propound, and loud that all may hear.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And again, when it has taken effect, scattering the
+heavenly host in unseemly disorder, he says--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">If our proposals once again were heard,</div>
+<div class="t0">We should compel them to a quick result.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Belial, "in like gamesome mood," replies to the
+jests of his leader, until, by the providence of
+Heaven, his wit and his artillery are buried under
+a weight heavier than themselves. On this whole
+scene Landor remarks that "the first overt crime
+of the refractory angels was punning"; and adds,
+with true Miltonic conciseness, "they fell rapidly
+after that."</p>
+
+<p>Some minor flaws, which may be found in
+Milton by those who give a close examination to
+his works, are to be attributed to the same cause--his
+love of condensed statement. Mixture of
+metaphors in poetry is often caused merely by the
+speed of thought, which presents a subject in a
+new aspect without care taken to adjust or
+alter the figure. In these cases the obscurity or
+violence of expression arises not from defect, but
+<span class="pb" id="pg_213">[213]</span>
+from excess of thought. Some few instances occur
+in Milton, who, in <i>Lycidas</i>, writes thus--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">But now my oat proceeds,</div>
+<div class="t0">And listens to the Herald of the Sea.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The syntax of the thought is sufficiently lucid and
+orderly, but it is compressed into too few words.
+In the Fifth Book of <i>Paradise Lost</i> is described
+how--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t3">The Eternal Eye, whose sight discerns</div>
+<div class="t0">Abtrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount,</div>
+<div class="t0">And from within the golden lamps that burn</div>
+<div class="t0">Nightly before him, saw without their light</div>
+<div class="t0">Rebellion rising--saw in whom, how spread</div>
+<div class="t0">Among the Sons of Morn, what multitudes</div>
+<div class="t0">Were banded to oppose his high decree;</div>
+<div class="t0">And, smiling, to his only Son thus said.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here, it is true, "the Eternal Eye" smiles and
+speaks to his only Son. But Milton has really
+discarded the figure after the words "his high
+decree," which bring in a new order of thoughts.
+He trusts the reader to follow his thought without
+grammatical readjustment--to drop the symbol
+and remember only the thing symbolised. His
+trust was warranted, until Landor detected the
+solecism. The clearest case of mixed metaphor ever
+charged against Milton occurs in the Eleventh
+Book, where the lazar-house is described--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Sight so deform what heart of rock could long</div>
+<div class="t0">Dry-eyed behold?</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_214">[214]</div>
+
+<p>Rogers pointed this out to Coleridge, who told
+Wordsworth that he could not sleep all the next
+night for thinking of it. What months of
+insomnia must he not have suffered from the
+perusal of Shakespeare's works!</p>
+
+<p>The close-wrought style of Milton makes the
+reading of <i>Paradise Lost</i> a hard task in this sense,
+that it is a severe intellectual exercise, without
+relaxation. The attention that it demands, word
+by word, and line by line, could not profitably
+be given to most books; so that many readers,
+trained by a long course of novel-reading to
+nibble and browse through the pastures of
+literature, find that Milton yields little or no
+delight under their treatment, and abandon him
+in despair.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, with however great reluctance, it
+must be admitted that the close study and admiring
+imitation of Milton bring in their train
+some lesser evils. Meaning may be arranged too
+compactly in a sentence; for perfect and ready
+assimilation some bulk and distention are necessary
+in language as in diet. Now the study of
+Milton, if it teaches anything, teaches to discard
+and abhor all superfluity. He who models himself
+upon this master will never "go a-begging
+for some meaning, and labour to be delivered of
+the great burden of nothing." But he may easily
+fall into the opposite error of putting "riddles of
+<span class="pb" id="pg_215">[215]</span>
+wit, by being too scarce of words." He will be
+so intent upon the final and perfect expression of
+his thought, that his life may pass before he finds
+it, and even if, in the end, he should say a thing
+well, he is little likely to say it in due season.
+"Brevity is attained in matter," says a master of
+English prose, "by avoiding idle compliments,
+prefaces, protestations, parentheses, superfluous
+circuit of figures and digressions: in the composition,
+by omitting conjunctions--<i>not only ...
+but also, both the one and the other, whereby it cometh
+to pass</i>, and such like idle particles." Either
+sort of brevity may be learned from Milton. But
+any one who has been compelled to make efforts
+of unprompted eloquence, and to choose his expressions
+while he is on his feet, knows well
+how necessary is the function performed by these
+same prefaces, protestations, parentheses, and idle
+particles. Suavely uttered, they keep expectation
+alive in the audience, and give the orator time
+to think. Whether in speaking or in writing, no
+fluent and popular style can well be without them.
+<i>I should be inclined to say--If I may be permitted
+to use the expression--Speaking for myself and for
+those who agree with me--It is no great rashness to
+assert</i>-- a hundred phrases like these are an indispensable
+part of an easy writer's, as of an easy
+speaker's, equipment. To forego all these swollen
+and diluted forms of speech is to run the risk of
+<span class="pb" id="pg_216">[216]</span>
+the opposite danger, congestion of the thought and
+paralysis of the pen--the scholar's melancholy.
+To give long days and nights to the study of
+Milton is to cultivate the critical faculty to so high
+a pitch that it may possibly become tyrannical,
+and learn to distaste all free writing. Accustomed
+to control and punish wanton activity, it will
+anticipate its judicial duties, and, not content
+with inflicting death, will devote its malign energy
+to preventing birth.</p>
+
+<p>It is good, therefore, to remember that Milton
+himself took a holiday sometimes, and gave a
+loose to his pen and to his thought. Some parts
+of his prose writings run in a full torrent of unchastened
+eloquence. An open playground for
+exuberant activity is of the first importance for a
+writer. Johnson found such a playground in
+talk. There he could take the curb off his
+prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy,
+and better his expression as he talked. But where
+men must talk, as well as write, upon oath,
+paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little
+mincing societies addicted to intellectual and
+moral culture the creative zest is lost. The
+painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice,
+if it is never relaxed, cripples the activity of the
+mind. Those who can talk the best and most
+compact sense have often found irresponsible
+paradox and nonsense a useful and pleasant
+<span class="pb" id="pg_217">[217]</span>
+recreation ground. It was Milton's misfortune,
+not the least of those put upon him by the bad
+age in which he lived, that what Shakespeare
+found in the tavern he had to seek in the Church.
+Denied the wild wit-combats of the Mermaid, he
+disported himself in a pamphlet-war on bishops
+and divorce. But he found health and exercise
+for his faculties there; and the moral (for all
+things have a moral) is this: that when, in a
+mood of self-indulgence, we can write habitually
+with the gust, the licentious force, the flow, and
+the careless wealthy insolence of the <i>Animadversions
+upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus</i>,
+we need not then repine or be ill-content
+if we find that we can rise only occasionally to the
+chastity, the severity, and the girded majesty of
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_218">[218]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="c6">CHAPTER VI
+<br />THE STYLE OF MILTON; AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY</a></h2>
+
+<p>When Milton was born, Shakespeare, Jonson,
+Beaumont, Dekker, Chapman, Daniel, Drayton,
+and half a hundred other Elizabethan notables
+were yet alive. When he died, Addison, Swift,
+Steele, and Arbuthnot were already born. Thus
+his life bridges the gulf between the age of Elizabeth
+and the age of Anne; and this further
+examination of his style has for object to inquire
+what part he may claim in the change of temper,
+method, subject, and form which came over
+English poetry during that period.</p>
+
+<p>The answer usually given to this question is
+that he had no part at all. He lived and died
+alone. He imitated no one, and founded no
+school. There was none of his more distinguished
+contemporaries with whom he was on terms of
+intimacy; none whose ideals in poetry remotely
+resembled his. So that although he is to be
+<span class="pb" id="pg_219">[219]</span>
+ranged among the greatest of English poets, a
+place in the legitimate hereditary succession would,
+on these considerations, be denied to him. When
+Dryden succeeded to the dictatorship of Jonson,
+the continuity of literary history was resumed.
+The great processes of change which affected
+English letters during the seventeenth century are
+in no way associated with the name of Milton.
+Waller and Denham, Davenant and Dryden, "reformed"
+English verse; Hobbes, Cowley, Tillotson,
+Dryden and Sprat remodelled English prose.
+And in the meantime, if this account is to be
+accepted, while English verse and English prose
+were in the melting-pot, this splendid efflorescence
+was an accident, a by-product, without meaning
+or causal virtue in the chemical process that was
+going forward.</p>
+
+<p>Others will have it that Milton was a belated
+Elizabethan. But the difficulty of that theory is
+that he reversed rather than continued many of
+the practices of the Elizabethans, and introduced
+reforms of his own, no less striking than the
+reforms effected by Dryden. Shirley is a good
+example of a genuine late Elizabethan. But in
+Shirley's works there is nothing that is not an
+echo. In Milton's, on the other hand, after the
+volume of 1645, there is nothing that echoes any
+earlier English poet even faintly. He renayed
+his ancestry; and, if he left no descendants,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_220">[220]</span>
+he must needs be regarded as "a vast species
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>The Elizabethans, including even the author
+of <i>Sejanus</i> and the translator of Homer, were
+Romantics. The terms Romantic and Classic
+are perhaps something overworn; and, although
+they are useful to supply a reason, it may well be
+doubted whether they ever helped any one to an
+understanding. Yet here, if anywhere, they are in
+place; for Milton is, by common consent, not
+only a Classic poet, but the greatest exemplar of
+the style in the long bead-roll of English poets.
+The "Augustans" prided themselves on their
+resemblance to the poets of the great age of Rome.
+Was there nothing in common between them and
+Milton, and did they really borrow nothing and
+learn nothing from him?</p>
+
+<p>This much is agreed, that of all English styles
+Milton's is best entitled to the name of Classic.
+In his poems may be found every device that
+belongs to the Classic manner, as in Shakespeare's
+plays may be found every device that belongs
+distinctively to the Romantic. Perhaps the two
+manners are best compared by the juxtaposition of
+descriptive passages. In description it is impossible
+for literature to be exhaustive; a choice must be
+made, an aspect emphasised, and by far the greater
+part left to the imagination of the reader. A man,
+for instance, has stature, feature, bones, muscles,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_221">[221]</span>
+nerves, entrails; his eyes, hair, and skin are of
+certain colours; he stands in a particular attitude
+at a particular spot on the surface of the earth;
+he is agitated by certain passions and ideas; every
+movement that he makes is related to his constitution
+and his past history; he has affinity with
+other men by the ties of the family, the society,
+the State; he thinks and acts more in a minute
+than a hundred writers can describe and explain in
+a year; he is a laughing, weeping, money-making,
+clothes-wearing, lying, reasoning, worshipping,
+amorous, credulous, sceptical, imitative, combative,
+gregarious, prehensile, two-legged animal. He
+does not cease to be all this and more, merely
+because he happens to be at one of his thousand
+tricks, and you catch him in the act. How do
+you propose to describe him?</p>
+
+<p>Broadly speaking, there are two methods available.
+You may begin with the more general and
+comprehensive of the relations that fall in with
+your purpose, securing breadth of view and truth
+in the larger values, leaving the imagination to
+supply the more particular and personal details on
+the barest of hints from you: or you may fix your
+gaze exclusively on some vivid cluster of details,
+indicating their remoter relations and their place
+in a wider perspective by a few vague suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these ways is Milton's. He maps
+out his descriptions in bold outline, attending
+<span class="pb" id="pg_222">[222]</span>
+always to the unity of the picture and the truth
+of the larger relations. He is chary of detail, and
+what he adds is added for its own immediate importance
+rather than for its remoter power of
+suggestion. Adam and Eve when they are first
+introduced, are thus described:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,</div>
+<div class="t0">Godlike erect, with native honour clad</div>
+<div class="t0">In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,</div>
+<div class="t0">And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine</div>
+<div class="t0">The image of their glorious Maker shone,</div>
+<div class="t0">Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,--</div>
+<div class="t0">Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,</div>
+<div class="t0">Whence true authority in men.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>As pictorial description this is all but completely
+empty. It tells you only that they stood upright,
+that they were like their Maker, and that they
+were possessed of the virtues that their appearance
+would lead you to expect. Their physical delineation
+is to be accommodated by the imagination of
+the reader to this long catalogue of moral qualities,--nobility,
+honour, majesty, lordliness, worth,
+divinity, glory, brightness, truth, wisdom, sanctitude,
+severity, and purity. In the following lines
+the poet proceeds to distinguish the one figure
+from the other, adding a few details with regard
+to each. The epithets he chooses are still vague.
+Adam's forehead is "fair" and "large," his eye
+is "sublime," his locks are "hyacinthine," and (a
+<span class="pb" id="pg_223">[223]</span>
+detail that has escaped the notice of many illustrators
+of <i>Paradise Lost</i>) they fall in clusters as low
+as his shoulders. From beginning to end of the
+description the aim of the poet is to preserve the
+right key of large emotion, and the words that he
+chooses are chosen chiefly for their emotional
+value. The emotions are given; the portraiture
+is left to be filled in by the imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare commonly works in the reverse
+way. He does not, like Crabbe, describe "as if
+for the police"; he chooses his detail with consummate
+skill, but he makes use of it to suggest
+the emotions. It is impossible to set his description
+of persons over against Milton's; for the
+drama does not describe persons, it presents them
+in action; and a description, where it occurs, is
+often designed merely to throw light on the character
+and feelings of the speaker. "Her voice
+was ever soft, gentle, and low" is a description
+rather of Lear, as he hangs over the dead body of
+Cordelia, refusing to believe that she is dead, than
+of Cordelia herself. "An excellent thing in
+woman" is not a doctrine, but a last heartbreaking
+movement of defiance, as if to refute any stander-by
+who dares to think that there is something
+amiss, that a voice should not be so low as to be
+inaudible.</p>
+
+<p>The contrast of the methods may, therefore, be
+better noted in the description of scenes. There
+<span class="pb" id="pg_224">[224]</span>
+is no very close parallel obtainable; but the two
+passages compared by Lessing are not wholly dissimilar
+in theme, and serve well enough to illustrate
+the difference of the styles. The first, taken from
+the Seventh Book of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, tells how the
+King of Glory, from the verge of his heavenly
+domain, beholds the gulf of Chaos:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore</div>
+<div class="t0">They viewed the vast immeasurable Abyss,</div>
+<div class="t0">Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,</div>
+<div class="t0">Up from the bottom turned by furious winds</div>
+<div class="t0">And surging waves, as mountains to assault</div>
+<div class="t0">Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The other is the imaginary view from Dover Cliff,
+described by Edgar in <i>King Lear</i>:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">How fearful</div>
+<div class="t0">And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!</div>
+<div class="t0">The crows and choughs that wing the midway air</div>
+<div class="t0">Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down</div>
+<div class="t0">Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!</div>
+<div class="t0">Methinks he seems no bigger than his head;</div>
+<div class="t0">The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,</div>
+<div class="t0">Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,</div>
+<div class="t0">Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy</div>
+<div class="t0">Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge</div>
+<div class="t0">That on th' unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,</div>
+<div class="t0">Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more;</div>
+<div class="t0">Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight</div>
+<div class="t0">Topple down headlong.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Johnson objected to this description: "No,
+sir; it should be all precipice,--all vacuum.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_225">[225]</span>
+The crows impede your fall. The diminished
+appearance of the boats, and other circumstances,
+are all very good description, but do not impress
+the mind at once with the horrible idea of immense
+height. The impression is divided; you pass on,
+by computation, from one stage of the tremendous
+space to another."</p>
+
+<p>This criticism is, in effect, a plea for Milton's
+method, although by a freak of fate it was uttered
+in vindication of Congreve. Some years earlier,
+in his edition of Shakespeare, Johnson had remarked
+on the same passage, and had indicated
+the poetic method that he approved: "He that
+looks from a precipice finds himself assailed by
+one great and dreadful image of irresistible destruction."</p>
+
+<p>Johnson's critical opinions on poetry are deserving
+of the most careful consideration, and, where
+they fail to convince, of an undiminished respect.
+But not Johnson himself can raise a doubt as to
+which of the two passages quoted above is the
+greater masterpiece of description proper. Shakespeare
+sets a scene before your eyes, and by his
+happy choice of vivid impression makes you giddy.
+The crows help, rather than impede your fall; for
+to look into illimitable vacuum is to look at
+nothing, and therefore to be unmoved. But the
+classic manner is so careful for unity of emotional
+impression that it rejects these humble means for
+<span class="pb" id="pg_226">[226]</span>
+attaining even to so great an end. It refuses to
+work by mice and beetles, lest the sudden intrusion
+of trivial associations should mar the main impression.
+No sharp discords are allowed, even though
+they should be resolved the moment after. Every
+word and every image must help forward the main
+purpose. Thus, while the besetting sin of the
+Romantics is the employment of excessive, or irrelevant,
+or trivial or grotesque detail, the besetting
+sin of the Classics is so complete an omission of
+realistic detail that the description becomes inflated,
+windy and empty, and the strongest words in the
+language lose their vital force because they are set
+fluttering hither and thither in multitudes, with no
+substantial hold upon reality. There is nothing
+that dies sooner than an emotion when it is cut off
+from the stock on which it grows. The descriptive
+epithet or adjective, if only it be sparingly
+and skilfully employed, so that the substantive
+carry it easily, is the strongest word in a sentence.
+But when once it loses its hold upon concrete
+reality it becomes the weakest, and not all the
+protests of debility, superlative degrees, and rhetorical
+insistence, can save it from neglect.</p>
+
+<p>It is apparent, therefore, how necessary to
+Milton were the concrete epic realities with which
+his poem deals,--the topographical scheme of
+things, and the definite embodiment of all his
+spiritual essences. Keats' <i>Hyperion</i> fails largely
+<span class="pb" id="pg_227">[227]</span>
+for want of an exact physical system such as
+Milton devises. Keats works almost wholly with
+vague Romantic suggestion, and there is nothing
+for the poem to hang on by. Something is happening;
+but it is difficult to say what, for we see
+only dream-imagery, and hear only muffled echoes.
+Had Milton made unsparing use of abstraction
+and suggestion, his poem would have fallen into
+windy chaos. The "philosophical poems" of his
+age did so fall. Henry More's <i>Platonick Song
+of the Soul</i> (1642), wherein are treated the Life
+of the Soul, her Immortality, the Sleep of the
+Soul, the Unity of Souls, and Memory after
+Death, is a dust-storm of verbiage. Such words
+as "calefaction," "exility," "self-reduplication,"
+"tricentreity," "individuation," "circumvolution,"
+"presentifick circularity," struggle and
+sprawl within the narrow room of the Spenserian
+stanza. Milton keeps us in better company than
+this, even in Hell. He uses abstract terms magnificently,
+but almost always with a reference to
+concrete realities, not as the names of separate
+entities. By the substitution of abstract nouns for
+concrete he achieves a wonderful effect of majesty.
+He does not name, for instance, the particular
+form of wind instrument that the heralds blew in
+Hell:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">Four speedy Cherubim</div>
+<div class="t0">Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_228">[228]</div>
+
+<p>He avoids defining his creatures by names that
+lend themselves to definite picture: of Death he
+says--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">So spake the grisly Terror;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and he makes Raphael, at the call of Heaven's
+king, rise</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t5">from among</div>
+<div class="t0">Thousand celestial Ardours.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the Tenth Book, Death, snuffing the distant
+scent of mortality, becomes all nose--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">So scented the grim Feature, and upturned</div>
+<div class="t0">His nostril wide into the murky air.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>A superb example of this powerful use of
+abstract terms is contained in the First Book of
+<i>Paradise Regained</i>, where is described how Satan,
+disguised as an old man, took his leave of the Son
+of God, and</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">Bowing low</div>
+<div class="t0">His gray dissimulation, disappeared</div>
+<div class="t0">Into thin air diffused.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The word "dissimulation" expresses the fact
+of the gray hairs assumed, the purpose of deceit,
+the cringing attitude, and adds a vague effect of
+power. The same vagueness is habitually studied
+by Milton in such phrases as "the vast abrupt,"
+"the palpable obscure," "the void immense," "the
+wasteful deep," where, by the use of an adjective
+<span class="pb" id="pg_229">[229]</span>
+in place of a substantive, the danger of a definite
+and inadequate conception is avoided.</p>
+
+<p>Milton, therefore, describes the concrete, the
+specific, the individual, using general and abstract
+terms for the sake of the dignity and scope that
+they lend. The best of our Romantic poets follow
+the opposite course: they are much concerned with
+abstract conceptions and general truths, but they
+bring them home by the employment of concrete
+and specific terms, and figures so familiar that they
+cannot easily avoid grotesque associations. These
+grotesque associations, however trivial, are the
+delight of humour: Alexander's dust will stop
+a beer-barrel; divine ambition exposes</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t6">what is mortal and unsure</div>
+<div class="t0">To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,</div>
+<div class="t0">Even for an egg-shell.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The comments made by Johnson on a certain
+well-known passage in <i>Macbeth</i> are an excellent
+example of the objections urged against the
+Romantic method--a method whereby, says Johnson,
+poetry is "debased by mean expressions."
+He takes for text the invocation of Night by Lady
+Macbeth--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">Come, thick night,</div>
+<div class="t0">And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,</div>
+<div class="t0">That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,</div>
+<div class="t0">Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,</div>
+<div class="t0">To cry, "Hold, hold!"</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_230">[230]</div>
+
+<p>Johnson's criticisms, which take up a whole
+paper in <i>The Rambler</i>, may be conveniently stated
+in summary. The epithet <i>dun</i>, he says, is "an
+epithet now seldom heard but in the stable, and
+<i>dun</i> night may come and go without any other
+notice but contempt." A <i>knife</i>, again, is "an
+instrument used by butchers and cooks in the
+meanest employments; we do not immediately
+conceive that any crime of importance is to be
+committed with a <i>knife</i>." In the third place,
+although to wish to elude the eye of Providence
+is "the utmost extravagance of determined wickedness,"
+yet even this great conception is debased by
+two unfortunate words when the avengers of guilt
+are made to <i>peep</i> through a <i>blanket</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy, in this case at least, to defend
+Shakespeare. There is no need to make much
+of the fact that Johnson attributes the speech to
+Macbeth. The essence of the crime is that it is
+the treacherous and cowardly crime of an assassin,
+committed on a guest while he sleeps. Implements
+of war are out of place here; it is the very
+crime for a knife, and Lady Macbeth shows her
+sense of this when she uses the word. Again, the
+darkness that she invokes is not the solemn shadow
+of night, but the stifling, opaque smoke of Hell.
+The blanket was perhaps suggested to Shakespeare
+by the black canopy that hung over the Elizabethan
+stage to represent night; but, in any case,
+<span class="pb" id="pg_231">[231]</span>
+it gives the notion of an artificial privacy, shutting
+out light and shutting in sound, a smothered unnatural
+secrecy. The use of the word <i>blanket</i>, in
+fact, carries with it a new fantastic horror. Night
+herself, who has brought the fatal gift of sleep to
+Duncan, is represented as the cowardly accomplice
+of the murderers, performing the most dastardly
+office that can fall to the hireling of a bravo.</p>
+
+<p>The mean associations, therefore, in so far as
+they exist, help Shakespeare's purpose. Milton
+had no purpose that could be furthered by such
+help. The omissions in his descriptions cannot be
+supplied by an appeal to experience, for what he
+describes is outside the pale of human experience,
+and is, in that sense, unreal. His descriptions do
+not so much remind us of what we have seen as
+create for us what we are to see. He is bound,
+therefore, to avoid the slightest touch of unworthy
+association; the use of even a few domestic figures
+and homely phrases would bring his hanging palace
+about his ears. What dangers he escaped may be
+well seen in Cowley's <i>Davideis</i>, which fell into
+them all. This is how Cowley describes the
+attiring of his Gabriel, who is commissioned to
+bear a message to David--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,</div>
+<div class="t0">That e'er the midday Sun pierced through with light:</div>
+<div class="t0">Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spred;</div>
+<div class="t0">Washt from the morning beauties deepest red.</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_232">[232]</span>
+<div class="t0">An harmless flaming <i>Meteor</i> shone for haire,</div>
+<div class="t0">And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.</div>
+<div class="t0">He cuts out a silk <i>Mantle</i> from the skies,</div>
+<div class="t0">Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes.</div>
+<div class="t0">This he with starry vapours spangles all,</div>
+<div class="t0">Took in their prime ere they grow <i>ripe</i> and <i>fall</i>,--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>--and so on. The whole business suggests the
+arming of Pigwiggin; or the intricacies of Belinda's
+toilet in <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>. Such a Gabriel
+should add the last touch of adornment from a
+patch-box filled with sun-spots; and then is fit
+only to be--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Drawn with a team of little atomies</div>
+<div class="t0">Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Milton was not in the least likely to fall into
+this fantastic-familiar vein. But he was also debarred
+from dealing freely in realism; from carrying
+conviction by some sudden startling piece of
+fidelity to the mixed texture of human experience
+and human feeling. When the feast is spread in
+Eden he remarks, it is true,--"No fear lest dinner
+cool"; but a lapse like this is of the rarest. His
+success--and he knew it--depended on the untiring
+maintenance of a superhuman elevation.
+His choice of subject had therefore not a little to
+do with the nature of his diction; and, through
+the influence of his diction, as shall be shown
+hereafter, with the establishment of the poetic
+<span class="pb" id="pg_233">[233]</span>
+tradition that dominated Eighteenth Century
+poetry.</p>
+
+<p>The same motives and tendencies, the same
+consistent care for remoteness and loftiness, may
+be seen in the character of the similes that he most
+frequently employs. Almost all his figures and
+comparisons illustrate concrete objects by concrete
+objects, and occurrences in time by other occurrences
+later in time. The essentially Romantic
+sort of figure, scarcely used by Milton, illustrates
+subtle conceptual relations by parable--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,</div>
+<div class="t0">When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,</div>
+<div class="t0">And Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,</div>
+<div class="t0">And Innocence is closing up his eyes,--</div>
+<div class="t0">Now, if thou would'st, when all have given him over,</div>
+<div class="t0">From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sometimes, by a curious reversal, poets, especially
+the more sophisticated poets of the Romantic
+Revival, describe a perfectly definite outward object
+or scene by a figure drawn from the most complex
+abstract conceptions. So Shelley, with whom these
+inverted figures are habitual, compares the skylark
+to</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t3">A poet hidden</div>
+<div class="t0">In the light of thought;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and Byron, describing the rainbow over a waterfall,
+likens it to</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_234">[234]</div>
+
+<p>Both ways are foreign to the epic manner of
+Milton. His figures may be called historic
+parallels, whereby the names and incidents of
+human history are made to elucidate and ennoble
+the less familiar names and incidents of his prehistoric
+theme. Sometimes, following Homer, he
+borrows a figure from rustic life, as where, for
+instance, he compares the devils, crowding into
+Pandemonium, to a swarm of bees. But he perceived
+clearly enough that he could not, for the
+reasons already explained, afford to deal largely in
+this class of figure: he prefers to maintain dignity
+and distance by choosing comparisons from ancient
+history and mythology, or from those great and
+strange things in Nature which repel intimacy--the
+sun, the moon, the sea, planets in opposition,
+a shooting star, an evening mist, a will-o'-the-wisp,
+a vulture descending from the Himalayas, the ice-floes
+on the North-East passage, the sea-beast
+leviathan, Xerxes' Hellespontic bridge, the gryphon
+pursuing the Arimaspian, the madness of Alcides
+in Oeta, the rape of Proserpine, and a hundred
+more reminiscences of the ancient world.</p>
+
+<p>Even the great events of ancient history seemed
+to him at times too familiar, too little elevated and
+remote to furnish a resting-place for a song that
+intended "no middle flight." He transforms his
+proper names, both to make them more melodious,
+and to make them more unfamiliar to the ear.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_235">[235]</span>
+No praise is too high for his art and skill in this
+matter. An example may be found in those four
+lines--the earliest that have the full Miltonic
+resonance--describing the fate of Lycidas, carried
+by the tide southward to the Cornish coast:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,</div>
+<div class="t0">Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,</div>
+<div class="t0">Where the great Vision of the guarded mount</div>
+<div class="t0">Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Bellerus" seems to be a name of Milton's
+coinage. He had written "Corineus," and
+probably disliked the sound, for in this case it can
+hardly have been that the name was too familiar.
+Both reasons concurred in prompting the allusion
+to Pharaoh and his Egyptian squadrons as--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Busiris and his Memphian chivalry.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>One would think "Italy" a pleasant enough sound,
+and "Vulcan" a good enough name for poetry.
+Neither was musical enough for Milton; both
+perhaps had associations too numerous, familiar,
+and misleading. Vulcan is mentioned, by that
+name, in <i>Comus</i>; but in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, where the
+story of his fall from Heaven is told, and the
+architect of Pandemonium is identified with him,
+both names, "Italy" and "Vulcan," are heightened
+and improved:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t8">In Ausonian land</div>
+<div class="t0">Men called him Mulciber.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_236">[236]</div>
+
+<p>"Hephaistos," the name dear to moderns, could
+have found no place in Milton's works, unless it
+had been put in a description of the God's smithy,
+or, perhaps, in the sonnet where are pilloried those
+harsh-sounding Presbyterian names:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Collkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Milton's use of proper names is a measure of his
+poetic genius. He does not forego it even in the
+lyric. Was there ever so learned a lyric as that
+beginning "Sabrina fair"--with its rich stores of
+marine mythology? History, not philosophy, was
+the source that he drew on for his splendours; and
+history, according to Milton, had, since the Fall of
+Man, furnished nothing but fainter and weaker
+repetitions of those stupendous events which filled
+the early theatre of universal space.</p>
+
+<p>His epic catalogues, which are few in number,
+show the same predominant interest in history and
+geography. The story of the Creation gave him
+an excellent opportunity of enumerating the kinds
+and properties of birds, beasts, fishes, and reptiles,
+plants and trees, after the manner of Chaucer and
+Spenser. This opportunity he refuses, or, at any
+rate, turns to but small account. His general
+descriptions are highly picturesque, but he spends
+little time on enumeration and detail. Of vegetables,
+only the vine, the gourd, and the corn are
+mentioned by name; of the inhabitants of the sea
+<span class="pb" id="pg_237">[237]</span>
+only the seal, the dolphin, and the whale. Natural
+knowledge, although he made a fair place for it in
+his scheme of education, was not one of his dearer
+studies. It was enough for him, as for Raphael,
+that Adam knew the natures of the beasts, and
+gave them appropriate names. The mere mention,
+on the other hand, of historic and geographic
+names rouses all the poet in him. The splendid
+roll-call of the devils, in the First Book of
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, and the only less splendid enumeration,
+in the Eleventh Book, of the Kingdoms of
+the Earth, shown to Adam in vision, are a standing
+testimony to his powers. Compared with these,
+the list of human diseases and maladies in the
+Eleventh Book, suggested perhaps by Du Bartas,
+is rehearsed in a slighter and more perfunctory
+fashion.</p>
+
+<p>One last point in Milton's treatment must not
+be left unnoticed. Much adverse criticism has
+been spent on his allegorical figures of Sin and
+Death. There is good classical precedent for the
+introduction of such personified abstractions among
+the actors of a drama; and, seeing that the introduction
+of sin and death into the world was the
+chief effect of his main action, Milton no doubt
+felt that this too must be handled in right epic
+fashion, and must not be left to be added to the
+theme as a kind of embroidery of moral philosophy.
+In no other way could he have treated the topic
+<span class="pb" id="pg_238">[238]</span>
+half so effectively. There is enough of his
+philosophy in Milton's Heaven to damp our
+desire for more of it on his Earth or in his Hell.
+And when once we have given him license to deal
+only in persons, we are amply rewarded. His
+management of the poetic figure of personification
+is superb. It is a figure difficult to handle, and
+generally fails of effect through falling into one of
+two extremes. Either the quality, or the person,
+is forgotten. The figures in the <i>Romaunt of the
+Rose</i> are good examples of the one type, of the
+minute materialistic personifications of the Middle
+Ages, pictorial rather than literary in essence, like
+the illuminated figures in a psalter. The feeble
+abstractions that people Gray's Odes, where, as
+Coleridge remarked, the personification depends
+wholly on the use of an initial capital, are examples
+of the other. Neither has the art of combining the
+vastness and vagueness of the abstract with the
+precise and definite conception of a person, as is
+done in the great figure of Religion drawn by
+Lucretius, as is done also in those other figures--the
+only creations of English poetry which approach
+the Latin in grandeur--the horrible phantoms of
+Sin and Death.</p>
+
+<p>These, then, here outlined slightly and imperfectly,
+are some of the most noteworthy features
+of Milton's style. By the measured roll of his
+verse, and the artful distribution of stress and pause
+<span class="pb" id="pg_239">[239]</span>
+to avoid monotony and to lift the successive lines
+in a climax; by the deliberate and choice character
+of his diction, and his wealth of vaguely emotional
+epithets; by the intuition which taught him to use
+no figures that do not heighten the majesty, and
+no names that do not help the music of his poem;
+by the vivid outlines of the concrete imaginations
+that he imposes on us for real, and the cloudy
+brilliance that he weaves for them out of all great
+historical memories, and all far-reaching abstract
+conceptions, he attained to a finished style of
+perhaps a more consistent and unflagging elevation
+than is to be found elsewhere in literature. There
+is nothing to put beside him. "His natural port,"
+says Johnson, "is gigantick loftiness." And
+Landor: "After I have been reading the <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>, I can take up no other poet with satisfaction.
+I seem to have left the music of Handel for the
+music of the streets, or, at best, for drums and
+fifes." The secret of the style is lost; and no
+poet, since Milton's day, has recaptured the
+solemnity and beauty of the large utterance of
+Gabriel, or Belial, or Satan.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The success of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, when it was
+published in 1667, was immediate and startling.
+Some of the poet's biographers have shed tears
+over the ten pounds that was all Milton ever
+received for his greatest work; others, magnanimously
+<span class="pb" id="pg_240">[240]</span>
+renouncing the world on his behalf,
+have rejoiced in the smallness of the sum paid him
+for a priceless work. Lament and heroics are
+both out of place. London was a small town,
+and it may well be doubted whether any modern
+provincial town of the same size would buy up in
+eighteen months thirteen hundred copies of a
+poem so serious and difficult and novel as <i>Paradise
+Lost</i>. Moreover, before the close of the century,
+six editions had appeared, three of them in folio, and
+so--judged by the number of editions--Milton's
+epic had outrun Shakespeare's plays in popularity.
+The folio edition of 1695, with notes and elucidations
+by one Patrick Hume, a Scottish scholar,
+appeared fourteen years before Nicholas Rowe
+produced the first critical edition of Shakespeare.
+The literary world quickly came to the opinion
+expressed by Dryden in the year of Milton's
+death, that the <i>Paradise Lost</i> was "one of the
+greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems
+which either this age or nation has produced."
+Barely twenty years later the editors of the
+<i>Athenian Mercury</i> were asked to determine
+"Whether Milton and Waller were not the best
+English Poets; and which the better of the
+two?" Their verdict, reflecting, no doubt, the
+average opinion of the time, ran thus: "They
+were both excellent in their kind, and exceeded
+each other, and all besides. Milton was the
+<span class="pb" id="pg_241">[241]</span>
+fullest and loftiest; Waller the neatest and most
+correct poet we ever had." Long before Addison
+wrote the papers on <i>Paradise Lost</i> in the <i>Spectator</i>,
+Milton had received full recognition in the literary
+handbooks of that age. Langbaine, in his <i>Account
+of the English Dramatick Poets</i> (1691), takes notice
+of Dryden's debts to <i>Samson Agonistes</i>, and, with
+an effort to be just, remarks of Milton:--" Had
+his Principles been as good as his Parts, he had
+been an Excellent Person." Sir Thomas Pope
+Blount, in his <i>De Re Poetica</i> (1694), and Bysshe
+in his <i>Art of English Poetry</i> (1702), bear witness,
+in their several ways, to Milton's great and
+assured fame. Indeed, Thomas Rymer, of Gray's
+Inn, Esquire, who in 1677 had sneered at "that
+Paradise Lost of Milton's which some are pleased
+to call a Poem," and William Winstanley, who,
+in the <i>Lives of the Most Famous English Poets</i>
+(1687), had remarked of Milton that "his Fame
+is gone out like a Candle in a Snuff, and his
+Memory will always stink," were almost alone
+among the voices of their time. They were still
+under the influence of the old political prejudice,
+but they did battle for a doomed opinion, and,
+among judges not illiterate, they are the poet's
+last detractors.</p>
+
+<p>The singular thing to note is that the eighteenth
+century, which broke with almost every other
+seventeenth-century poet before Dryden, did not
+<span class="pb" id="pg_242">[242]</span>
+break with Milton. "Who now reads Cowley?"
+Pope asked: Cowley, whose works ran through so
+many editions that no modern reprint has been
+called for. If he had asked, "Who now reads
+Milton?" the answer must have been, "Every
+writer of English verse"; and so it has continued
+from the time of Milton's death to the present
+day. The choice of blank verse for <i>Paradise
+Lost</i> established that metre in formidable rivalry
+to the heroic couplet, so that it became the usual
+metre for long poems of a reflective or descriptive
+cast. Professed imitations of Milton's verse were
+many; among them, Addison's <i>Translation of a
+Story out of the Third Aeneid</i>, Broome's experiment
+in the translation of the Eleventh Odyssey,
+Fenton's fragments of two books of the <i>Iliad</i>,
+and Christopher Pitt's paraphrase of Psalm cxxxix.
+In the first year of the eighteenth century John
+Philips showed, in his <i>Splendid Shilling</i>, how the
+style of Milton might be applied, for the purposes
+of burlesque, to humble subjects, a lesson which
+he further illustrated, with no ostensible comic
+intent, in his later poems, <i>Cyder</i> and <i>Blenheim</i>.
+Gay, in <i>Wine, a Poem</i>, Somerville in <i>The Chase</i>,
+Armstrong in <i>The Oeconomy of Love</i> and <i>The Art
+of Preserving Health</i>, Christopher Smart in The
+Hop-Garden, Dyer in <i>The Fleece</i>, and Grainger in
+<i>The Sugar-Cane</i>, all followed where Philips' <i>Cyder</i>
+had led, and multiplied year by year what may
+<span class="pb" id="pg_243">[243]</span>
+be called the technical and industrial applications
+of Milton's style. Among the many other blank
+verse poems produced during the middle part of
+the century it is enough to name Thomson's
+<i>Seasons</i>; Blair's <i>Grave</i>; Glover's <i>Leonidas</i>; Shenstone's
+<i>Economy</i>, <i>The Ruined Abbey</i>, and <i>Love and
+Honour</i>; Young's <i>Night Thoughts</i>; Akenside's
+<i>Pleasures of the Imagination</i>; Thomas Warton's
+<i>Pleasures of Melancholy</i>; Mallet's <i>The Excursion</i>,
+and <i>Amyntor and Theodora</i>; Cooper's <i>The Power
+of Harmony</i>; and Lyttelton's <i>Blenheim</i>. The
+influence of Milton is not equally apparent in all
+of these, but in none is it wholly wanting; in most
+it is visible on every page. The mere invocation
+often tells a tale. Thus Akenside:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Thou chief, Poetic Spirit, from the banks</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Avon, whence thy holy fingers cull</div>
+<div class="t0">Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf</div>
+<div class="t0">Where Shakespeare lies, be present. And with thee</div>
+<div class="t0">Let Fiction come; on her a&euml;rial wings</div>
+<div class="t0">Wafting ten thousand colours.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The quotation need not be prolonged; even while
+he commemorates Shakespeare, Akenside goes to
+Milton for his material, and plays a feeble variation
+on the Miltonic phrase:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">In his right hand</div>
+<div class="t0">Grasping ten thousand thunders.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus Lyttelton:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_244">[244]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Minerva, thee to my adventurous lyre</div>
+<div class="t0">Assistant I invoke, that means to sing</div>
+<div class="t0">Blenheim, proud monument of British fame</div>
+<div class="t0">Thy glorious work!</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"The building, not the field, I sing," he might
+have added, for Philips had already chanted the
+battle of Blenheim in like Miltonic fashion.
+Thus, again, the worthy Grainger, flattest of
+agricultural bards:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Spirit of Inspiration, that did'st lead</div>
+<div class="t0">Th' Ascrean poet to the sacred mount,</div>
+<div class="t0">And taught'st him all the precepts of the swain;</div>
+<div class="t0">Descend from Heaven, and guide my trembling steps</div>
+<div class="t0">To Fame's eternal dome, where Maro reigns;</div>
+<div class="t0">Where pastoral Dyer, where Pomona's bard,</div>
+<div class="t0">And Smart and Somervile in varying strains,</div>
+<div class="t0">Their sylvan lore convey: O may I join</div>
+<div class="t0">This choral band, and from their precepts learn</div>
+<div class="t0">To deck my theme, which though to song unknown,</div>
+<div class="t0">Is most momentous to my country's weal!</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Grainger frequently echoes Milton; and in the
+passage where he addresses the Avon, at Bristol,
+he pays a more explicit tribute:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Though not to you, young Shakespeare, Fancy's child,</div>
+<div class="t0">All-rudely warbled his first woodland notes;</div>
+<div class="t0"><span class="gsw">*      *      *      *      *</span></div>
+<div class="t0">On you reclined, another tuned his pipe,</div>
+<div class="t0">Whom all the Muses emulously love,</div>
+<div class="t0">And in whose strains your praises shall endure</div>
+<div class="t0">While to Sabrina speeds your healing stream.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_245">[245]</div>
+
+<p>Better and more striking instances of the Miltonic
+spell laid on blank verse are easily to be found for
+the seeking. But since it is the omnipresence of
+this Miltonic influence that is asserted, passages
+like these, which catch the eye on any chance
+page of eighteenth-century blank verse, and are
+representative of hundreds more, suffice for the
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>There has been a tendency among recent historians
+of English literature to group together
+the poets who, like Dyer in <i>Grongar Hill</i>, and
+Thomas Warton in <i>The Pleasures of Melancholy</i>,
+echo the strains of Milton's early poems, and
+to name them "Miltonics," precursors of the
+Romantic Revival. No doubt there is a marked
+difference between Milton's earlier manner and
+his later; not a few of his lovers, if they were
+forced to choose, would readily give up the three
+major poems to save the five best of the minor.
+But it is going far to appropriate the name of
+"Miltonic" to imitators of the earlier poems.
+Perhaps the study of <i>L'Allegro</i> and <i>Il Penseroso</i>
+and <i>Comus</i> helped forward the Romantic Revival;
+but the chief influence of Milton on the development
+of English poetry was not this. It was
+natural enough that those who had been taught
+from childhood to read and admire <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+should find relief and novelty in the freer and more
+spontaneous music of these youthful poems. But
+<span class="pb" id="pg_246">[246]</span>
+the truth is that before ever he abetted the escape,
+he helped to forge the fetters; that Milton, as
+much as any other single writer, was responsible
+for the wide and potent sway of the classical
+convention.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, he may fairly be called the inventor
+and, by the irony of fate, the promulgator of that
+"poetic diction" which, in the time of its deformity
+and decay, Wordsworth sought to destroy.
+Johnson attributes the invention to Dryden.
+"There was therefore," he says, "before the time
+of Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words,
+at once refined from the grossness of domestick
+use, and free from the harshness of terms appropriated
+to particular arts. Words too familiar or
+too remote defeat the purpose of a poet."</p>
+
+<p>There is no need to quarrel with this account,
+if we are careful to understand exactly what
+Johnson means. Dryden, he says in effect, wrote
+plain, well-bred English; he eschewed technical
+terms, shunned the florid licenses of the Elizabethans,
+and yet, in his more studied verse, never
+dropped into the town-gallant vein of some of his
+contemporaries, the slang of Butler or Lestrange.
+Johnson, it should be remembered, thought the
+diction of <i>Lycidas</i> "harsh," and it is plain enough
+from many of his utterances that he ranged Milton
+with the poets who use words and phrases "too
+remote" from the language of natural intercourse.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_247">[247]</span>
+He was a devoted adherent of the school of
+Dryden and Pope; in the <i>Lives of the Poets</i> he
+loses no opportunity of expressing his contempt
+for blank verse; he was only too likely to exalt
+the influence of his masters on the poets of his
+own time, and to ignore the influence of Milton.
+Since handbooks of literature are commonly formed
+by a process of attrition from such works as
+Johnson's <i>Lives</i>, his opinions on a point like this
+persist in epidemic fashion; they are detached
+from their authority, and repeated so often that
+at last they become orthodox. But no ignoring
+of Milton can alter the fact that English verse
+went Milton-mad during the earlier half of the
+eighteenth century. Miltonic cadences became a
+kind of patter, and the diction that Milton had
+invented for the rendering of his colossal imaginations
+was applied indifferently to all subjects--to
+apple-growing, sugar-boiling, the drainage of the
+Bedford level, the breeding of negroes, and the
+distempers of sheep. Milton's shadowy grandeur,
+his avoidance of plain concrete terms, his manner
+of linking adjective with substantive, were all
+necessary to him for the describing of his strange
+world; but these habits became a mere vicious
+trick of absurd periphrasis and purposeless vagueness
+when they were carried by his imitators into
+the description of common and familiar objects.
+A reader making his first acquaintance with
+<span class="pb" id="pg_248">[248]</span>
+Thomson's <i>Seasons</i> might suppose that the poem
+was written for a wager, to prove that country life
+may be described, and nothing called by its name.
+The philosophic pride of the eighteenth century
+was tickled by the use of general terms in description;
+the chosen periphrases are always more
+comprehensive than the names that they replace.
+When Thomson, for instance, speaks of "the
+feathered nations" or of "the glossy kind," it is
+only by the context that we are saved from
+supposing him to allude, in the one case to Red
+Indians, in the other to moles. And these are
+but two of some dozen devices for escaping from
+the flat vulgarity of calling birds by that name.</p>
+
+<p>Milton himself, it must be admitted, is not
+wholly free from blame. The elevation and vagueness
+of his diction, which were a mere necessity to
+him in the treatment of large parts of his subject,
+are yet maintained by him in the description of
+things comparatively familiar. When Sin is described
+as "rolling her bestial train" towards the
+gates of Hell, the diction is faultless; when the
+serpent (as yet an innocent reptile in Paradise),</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine</div>
+<div class="t0">His braided train,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>it is impossible to cavil; but when Raphael, in
+conversation with Adam, describes the formation
+of the banks--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_249">[249]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t9">where rivers now</div>
+<div class="t0">Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>criticism is less at ease. We feel that we are
+drawing near to the "poetic diction" of the
+eighteenth century. Eve's tears are called</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t6">precious drops that ready stood</div>
+<div class="t0">Each in their crystal sluice,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>but the description is saved by the lines that
+immediately precede, where Milton says the word,
+and thereby shows that he is not seeking idle
+periphrasis:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">But silently a gentle tear let fall</div>
+<div class="t0">From either eye, and wiped them with her hair.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>His constant preference for words of Latin origin
+certainly brings Milton near at times to the poetic
+diction banned by Wordsworth. "Vernal bloom"
+for "spring flowers," "humid bow" for "rainbow,"
+the description of the brooks rolling--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">With mazy error under pendent shades,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>the use of phrases like "nitrous powder" or
+"smutty grain" for "gunpowder," and "optic
+glass" or "optic tube" for the telescope or "perspective,"
+are instances of the approximation. A
+certain number of these circuitous phrases are
+justified by considerations of dramatic propriety.
+When Raphael describes the artillery used in
+Heaven, he speaks of cannon balls as "iron globes"
+<span class="pb" id="pg_250">[250]</span>
+and "balls of missive ruin," and calls the linstock
+the "incentive reed pernicious," thereby perhaps
+drawing attention to the strange character of the
+new invention. No such reason can be invoked
+for his justification when he tells how the sun
+receives from earth</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t5">his alimental recompense</div>
+<div class="t0">In humid exhalations;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>still less when, speaking of food, with which he
+confesses himself to be familiar, he calls it "corporal
+nutriment."</p>
+
+<p>But the chief sinner is Adam. If the evil
+passions of the rebel Angels invented the pun, it
+was the pomposity of our father Adam that first
+brought "poetic diction" into vogue. When the
+curse has fallen in Eden he makes a long speech
+for the comfort of Eve, in the course of which he
+alludes to "the graceful locks of these fair spreading
+trees," speaks of the sun as "this diurnal
+star," and, studying protection against the newly
+experienced cold, advises--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">how we his gathered beams</div>
+<div class="t0">Reflected may with matter sere foment,</div>
+<div class="t0">Or by collision of two bodies grind</div>
+<div class="t0">The air attrite to fire;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>--for all the world as if he were a man of science
+lecturing to some Philosophic Institute on the
+customs of savages.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, the term "poetic diction" is to be
+<span class="pb" id="pg_251">[251]</span>
+used as Wordsworth used it, Johnson's account of
+its origin must be amended. There was little or
+no poetic diction, of the kind condemned by
+Wordsworth, before the time of Milton. In the
+Elizabethan age all diction was free to poetry, and
+was freely used. Drawing on his accumulated
+stores of literary reminiscence, and using them for
+his own special purpose, Milton invented "poetic
+diction," and bore a main part in the founding of
+the English school of poetry which is called
+"Classical." His diction is called "poetic,"
+because it was absolutely fitted to his purpose,
+which could have been conceived only by the
+loftiest poetic genius. His style was admired,
+misunderstood, and imitated for a century. The
+diction of his imitators is called "poetic," because,
+for the most part, they believed that dull nonsense
+and trading platitudes could be made into poetry
+by a borrowed system of diction.</p>
+
+<p>Even the best poets of the age are not freer
+than the rest from the baneful Miltonic infection.
+Coleridge found the source of "our pseudo-poetic
+diction" in Pope's <i>Homer</i>. But Pope was from
+boyhood a sedulous student of Milton, and a
+frequent borrower. The mock-heroics of the
+<i>Dunciad</i> are stilted on Miltonic phrases; and in
+the translation of Homer, above all, reminiscences
+of Milton abound. In most of them Milton's
+phraseology is weakened and misapplied. Two
+<span class="pb" id="pg_252">[252]</span>
+instances among many may serve. When Vulcan,
+in the First Iliad, warns Juno against rousing the
+anger of Jove, he adds:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,</div>
+<div class="t0">Hurled headlong downward from th' ethereal height.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The word "flaming" in Milton's splendid line
+did not suit Pope's purpose--so it disappears, and
+with it half the glory of the original. In place of
+it, to eke out the syllables, he inserts the idle, if
+not foolish, substitute "downward." This is the
+art of sinking in poetry. Again, Ulysses, narrating
+his adventures, in the Ninth Odyssey, remarks:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">In vain Calypso long constrained my stay,</div>
+<div class="t0">With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The whole line, so beautiful when it describes the
+modesty of Eve, in its new context becomes stark
+nonsense. It is Ulysses who is "reluctant," and
+Calypso who is "amorous." The misuse of
+Milton's line makes the situation comic.</p>
+
+<p>James Thomson (to take another example)
+with a genuine thin vein of originality, too often
+conceals it under Miltonic lendings. The trail of
+<i>Paradise Lost</i> runs all through <i>The Seasons</i>. In
+such a description as this of the Moon in Autumn
+there is a cluster of reminiscences:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">Meanwhile the Moon</div>
+<div class="t0">Full-orbed and breaking through the scattered clouds,</div>
+<span class="pb" id="pg_253">[253]</span>
+<div class="t0">Shows her broad visage in the crimsoned east.</div>
+<div class="t0">Turned to the Sun direct, her spotted disk,</div>
+<div class="t0">Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,</div>
+<div class="t0">And caverns deep, as optic tube descries,</div>
+<div class="t0">A smaller Earth, gives all his blaze again,</div>
+<div class="t0">Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thomson could not resist the attractions of
+Milton's stately Latin vocabulary. Where Milton
+describes how, in Paradise--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">the flowery lap</div>
+<div class="t0">Of some irriguous valley spread her store;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thomson follows with--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">See where the winding vale its lavish stores</div>
+<div class="t0">Irriguous spreads.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Where Milton describes how Satan, wounded by Michael--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t4">writhed him to and fro convolved,</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thomson follows with a description of the Spring meadows, where</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">the sportive lambs</div>
+<div class="t0">This way and that convolved, in friskful glee</div>
+<div class="t0">Their frolics play.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The lambs emulating Satan are a kind of epitome
+and emblem of those descriptive poets of the
+eighteenth century who took Milton for their
+model.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps the best example of all is Gray,
+whose work is full of Miltonic reminiscence. He
+<span class="pb" id="pg_254">[254]</span>
+frequently borrows; and, like Pope, almost always
+spoils in the borrowing. Thus what Milton
+writes of the nightingale--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">She all night long her amorous descant sung,--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>is echoed by Gray in the <i>Sonnet on the Death of
+Richard West</i>:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The birds in vain their amorous descant join.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now a "descant" is a variation imposed upon a
+plain-song. The word exactly describes the song
+of the nightingale; but the addition of the verb
+"join" robs it of all meaning. Again, the passage
+in the Second Book of <i>Paradise Lost</i> where Moloch
+describes the pains of Hell--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t7">when the scourge</div>
+<div class="t0">Inexorably, and the torturing hour</div>
+<div class="t0">Calls us to penance,--</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>lingered in Gray's memory when he addressed
+Adversity--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Whose iron scourge and torturing hour</div>
+<div class="t0">The bad affright, afflict the best.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The "torturing hour" in Gray's line becomes
+one of the chance possessions of Adversity, suspended
+from her belt with the rest of her trinkets.
+Observe how the word "hour" has been emptied of
+its meaning. It affrights one class of persons, and
+afflicts another, which anything that is "torturing"
+<span class="pb" id="pg_255">[255]</span>
+might easily do. In Milton the most awful
+property of Time is indicated; the hour "calls--inexorably."
+Here, then, in two cases, is plagiarism,
+which may be defined as unblest theft--the
+theft of what you do not want, and cannot use.</p>
+
+<p>In these and many other passages of eighteenth-century
+verse it may be seen how literary reminiscence
+sometimes strangles poetry; and how a
+great man suffers at the hands of his disciples and
+admirers. The thing has happened so often that
+it ceases to cause surprise; were not Lydgate and
+Occleve pupils (save the mark!) of Chaucer?
+And yet it remains a paradox that Milton's, of all
+styles in the world, unapproachable in its loftiness,
+invented by a temper of the most burning zeal
+and the profoundest gravity for the treatment of a
+subject wildly intractable by ordinary methods,
+should have been chosen by a generation of philosophical
+organ-grinders as the fittest pattern for
+their professional melodies; and that a system of
+diction employed by a blind man for the description
+of an imaginary world should have been
+borrowed by landscape-gardeners and travelling
+pedlars for the setting forth of their works and
+their wares.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_256">[256]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="c7">EPILOGUE</a></h2>
+
+<p>In the meantime, while Dryden and Milton both
+had their schools, most of our seventeenth-century
+poetry fell into an almost complete oblivion. Dryden's
+satiric, and Milton's epic strains engrossed
+attention, and shaped the verses of an age. But
+the seventeenth century was extraordinarily wealthy
+in poetic kinds quite distinct from these: in metaphysic,
+and mysticism, in devotional ecstasy, and
+love-lyric, and romance. The English genius
+in poetry is essentially metaphysical and romantic.
+Milton was neither. He could not have excelled
+in any of these kinds; nor have come near to
+Suckling, or Crashaw, or Vaughan, or Herrick, or
+Marvell, in their proper realms. It is a permissible
+indulgence, therefore, in taking leave of
+Milton, to turn from the <i>Paradise Lost</i> for a
+moment, and, escaping from the solid materialism
+of the heroic and epic strain, to find passion once
+more among the Court lyrists, and spiritual insight
+among the retired mystics, to find Religion and
+Love, and the humility that has access to both.
+<span class="pb" id="pg_257">[257]</span>
+A profound humility, impossible to Milton, inspired
+Vaughan when he wrote such a verse as
+this:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t3">There is in God, some say,</div>
+<div class="t0">A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here</div>
+<div class="t0">Say it is late and dusky, because they</div>
+<div class="t3">See not all clear.</div>
+<div class="t0">O for that night! where I in him</div>
+<div class="t0">Might live invisible and dim!</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a natural vision, and there is a spiritual
+vision; the spiritual belongs to Vaughan, not to
+Milton. If Milton persuades us to a willing
+suspension of disbelief for the moment, Vaughan
+thrills us with a sense of vivid reality. His <i>Ascension
+Day</i> is a thing seen, as if it were a memory of
+yesterday:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The day-star smiles, and light, with thee deceast,</div>
+<div class="t0">Now shines in all the chambers of the East.</div>
+<div class="t0">What stirs, what posting intercourse and mirth</div>
+<div class="t0">Of Saints and Angels glorifie the earth!</div>
+<div class="t0">What sighs, what whispers, busie stops and stays;</div>
+<div class="t0">Private and holy talk fill all the ways!</div>
+<div class="t0">They pass as at the last great day, and run</div>
+<div class="t0">In their white robes to seek the risen Sun;</div>
+<div class="t0">I see them, hear them, mark their haste, and move</div>
+<div class="t0">Amongst them, with them, wing'd with faith and love.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>To the intensity of his aspiration and hushed
+expectance the world seems only a turbulent
+passing pageant, or a hard wayfaring, suffered in
+a dream:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_258">[258]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t12">Who stays</div>
+<div class="t0">Here long must passe</div>
+<div class="t0">O'er dark hills, swift streames, and steep ways</div>
+<div class="t5">As smooth as glasse.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Or a brief sickness:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">So for this night I linger here,</div>
+<div class="t0">And, full of tossings to and fro,</div>
+<div class="t0">Expect still when thou wilt appear,</div>
+<div class="t0">That I may get me up and go.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>His eyes are fixed on the shining lights that beckon
+him; the world is full of voices, but its sights and
+sounds appeal to him in vain; the beauties that
+surround him are things of naught--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Glorious deceptions, gilded mists,</div>
+<div class="t0">False joyes, phantastick flights.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the distance before him there shines</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t5">An air of glory</div>
+<div class="t0">Whose light doth trample on my days;</div>
+<div class="t0">My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,</div>
+<div class="t5">Meer glimmering and decays;</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and he lifts up his voice in passionate desire for
+the ultimate deliverance:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Ah! what time will it come? When shall that crie</div>
+<div class="t0"><i>The Bridegroome's comming</i>! fill the sky?</div>
+<div class="t4">Shall it in the evening run,</div>
+<div class="t4">When our words and works are done?</div>
+<div class="t0">Or will thy all-surprising light</div>
+<div class="t4">Break at midnight?</div>
+</div>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_259">[259]</div>
+
+<p>He broods over it till nothing else is present to
+him in the night-watches:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">I saw Eternity the other night</div>
+<div class="t0">Like a great ring of calm and endless light.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The history of the struggles and corruption of
+mankind may close at any moment, in the twinkling
+of an eye, at a signal given:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">All's in deep sleep and night; thick darkness lyes</div>
+<div class="t2">And hatcheth o'er thy people--</div>
+<div class="t0">But hark! what trumpet's that, what angel cries</div>
+<div class="t2"><i>Arise! Thrust in thy sickle!</i></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here is a religious poet indeed, a visionary, a
+mystic, and a Christian; none of which names can
+be truly applied to Milton. And if we wish to
+find Love enjoying his just supremacy in poetry,
+we cannot do better than seek him among the
+lyrists of the Court of Charles II. Milton, self-sufficient
+and censorious, denies the name of love
+to these songs of the sons of Belial. Love, he
+says, reigns and revels in Eden, not</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t10">in court amours,</div>
+<div class="t0">Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,</div>
+<div class="t0">Or serenate, which the starved lover sings</div>
+<div class="t0">To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Yet for the quick and fresh spirit of love in
+the poetry of that time we must go to the sons
+of Belial. There is a pathetic passage in one of
+Milton's divorce pamphlets, where, speaking of
+<span class="pb" id="pg_260">[260]</span>
+the unhappy choices in marriage to which "soberest
+and best governed men" are liable, he remarks:--"It
+is not strange though many, who have spent
+their youth chastely, are in some things not so
+quick-sighted while they haste too eagerly to
+light the nuptial torch; nor is it therefore that for
+a modest error a man should forfeit so great a
+happiness, and no charitable means to release him,
+since they who have lived most loosely, by reason
+of their bold accustoming, prove most successful
+in their matches, because their wild affections,
+unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces
+to teach them experience."</p>
+
+<p>The wild affections, unsettling at will, wrote
+better love-songs than the steadfast principles of
+the sober and well-governed. Roystering libertines
+like Sir Charles Sedley were more edifying
+lovers than the austere husbands of Mary Powell
+and of Eve. Milton would have despised and detested
+the pleasure-seeking philosophy of Sedley:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Let us then ply those joys we have,</div>
+<div class="t0">'Tis vain to think beyond the grave;</div>
+<div class="t0">Out of our reach the Gods have laid</div>
+<div class="t2">Of Time to come th' event,</div>
+<div class="t0">And laugh to see the Fools afraid</div>
+<div class="t2">Of what the Knaves invent.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But the self-abandonment and the passion of two
+or three of Sedley's songs are out of Milton's
+reach:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_261">[261]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Not <i>Celia</i> that I juster am,</div>
+<div class="t">Or better than the rest,</div>
+<div class="t0">For I would change each hour like them,</div>
+<div class="t">Were not my heart at rest.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">But I am ty'd to very thee</div>
+<div class="t">By every thought I have,</div>
+<div class="t0">Thy face I only care to see,</div>
+<div class="t">Thy heart I only crave.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">All that in woman is ador'd</div>
+<div class="t">In thy dear self I find,</div>
+<div class="t0">For the whole sex can but afford</div>
+<div class="t">The handsome and the kind.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Why should I then seek further store,</div>
+<div class="t">And still make love anew;</div>
+<div class="t0">When change itself can give no more,</div>
+<div class="t">'Tis easie to be true.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is like a cup of cold water after the didactic endearments
+of Adam, and his repeated apostrophe:</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve--</div>
+<div class="t0">For such thou art, from sin and blame entire.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then there was John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.
+He was drunk for five years on end,--so his
+biographer, who had it from his own lips, alleges--and
+he died at the age of thirty-two. Like
+Sedley, he professes no virtues, and holds no far-reaching
+views. But what a delicate turn of
+personal affection he gives to the expression of his
+careless creed:--</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_262">[262]</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">The time that is to come is not,</div>
+<div class="t">How can it then be mine?</div>
+<div class="t0">The present moment's all my lot,</div>
+<div class="t0">And that, as fast as it is got,</div>
+<div class="t">Phyllis, is only thine.</div>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Then talk not of inconstancy,</div>
+<div class="t">False hearts, and broken vows</div>
+<div class="t0">If I by miracle can be</div>
+<div class="t0">This live-long minute true to thee,</div>
+<div class="t">'Tis all that Heaven allows.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Rochester's best love-poetry reaches the topmost
+pinnacle of achievement in that kind. None has
+ever been written more movingly beautiful than
+this:--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">When, wearied with a world of woe,</div>
+<div class="t">To thy safe bosom I retire,</div>
+<div class="t0">Where love and peace and truth does flow,</div>
+<div class="t">May I contented there expire!</div>
+</div>
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,</div>
+<div class="t">I fall on some base heart unblest--</div>
+<div class="t0">Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven--</div>
+<div class="t">And lose my everlasting rest!</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Or than that other piece (too beautiful and too
+intense to be cited as a sudden illustration of a
+thesis) beginning--</p>
+
+<div class="verse">
+<div class="t0">Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why</div>
+<div class="t0">Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny</div>
+<div class="t0">The sunshine of the Sun's enlivening eye?</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The wind bloweth where it listeth; the
+wandering fire of song touches the hearts and lips
+<span class="pb" id="pg_263">[263]</span>
+of whom it will. Milton built an altar in the
+name of the Lord, and he made a great trench
+about the altar, and he put the wood in order, and
+loaded the altar with rich exotic offerings, cassia
+and nard, odorous gums and balm, and fruit
+burnished with golden rind. But the fire from
+Heaven descended on the hastily piled altars of
+the sons of Belial, and left Milton's gorgeous altar
+cold.</p>
+
+<p>His fame is now old-established and settled, so
+there is no place left for the eloquence of the
+memorialist, or the studied praises of the pleader.
+I have tried to understand Milton; and have
+already praised him as well as I know how, with
+no stinted admiration, I trust, and certainly with
+no merely superstitious reverence. If I must
+round my discourse by repeating something that I
+have already said or suggested, it shall be this--that
+as he stands far aloof from his contemporaries,
+so in the succession of great figures that mark for
+us the centuries of our literature he is seen once
+more singular and a stranger. We bred Shakespeare
+in our Midlands; he was nourished from
+the soil that still grows our daily bread. But
+Milton was an alien conqueror. The crowd of
+native-born Puritans, who sometimes (not without
+many searchings of heart and sharp misgivings)
+attempt to claim him for their leader, have no
+title in him. It is a proof of his dominating
+<span class="pb" id="pg_264">[264]</span>
+power, and no credit to their intelligence, that
+they accept him as their representative. His
+influence on the destinies and history of our
+literature might be compared to the achievement
+of Napoleon while he was winning the victories
+that changed the map of Europe. He could not
+change the character of a people, nor perpetuate his
+dynasty. But nothing is as it would have been
+without him. Our literature is as hospitable as
+the Hindoo pantheon; the great revolutionary has
+won a place even in our creed. And the writer
+has this advantage, at least, over the conqueror
+and legislator, that he has bequeathed to us not
+maps, nor laws, but poems, whose beauty, like the
+World's unwithered countenance, is bright as at
+the day of their creation.</p>
+
+<div class="pb" id="pg_265">[265]</div>
+
+
+<h2><a id="cx">INDEX</a></h2>
+
+<p>[For the following Index I am indebted to the kindness of three of my pupils,
+Miss F. Marston, Miss E. L. Morice, and Miss D. E. Yates.]</p>
+
+<dl>
+<dt>Abdiel, <a href="#pg_72">72</a>, <a href="#pg_138">138</a>-39, <a href="#pg_156">156</a>, <a href="#pg_211">211</a></dt>
+<dt>Abstract terms, Milton's use of, <a href="#pg_227">227</a>-31</dt>
+<dt>Adam, <a href="#pg_32">32</a>, <a href="#pg_35">35</a>, <a href="#pg_54">54</a>, <a href="#pg_64">64</a>, <a href="#pg_82">82</a>-4, <a href="#pg_87">87</a>, <a href="#pg_92">92</a>, <a href="#pg_95">95</a>-6, <a href="#pg_105">105</a>, <a href="#pg_112">112</a>, <a href="#pg_115">115</a>, <a href="#pg_122">122</a>, <a href="#pg_141">141</a>-45, <a href="#pg_148">148</a>-50, <a href="#pg_154">154</a>-57, <a href="#pg_160">160</a>, <a href="#pg_207">207</a>, <a href="#pg_222">222</a>, <a href="#pg_237">237</a>, <a href="#pg_248">248</a>-50, <a href="#pg_261">261</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Adamo</i>, <a href="#pg_95">95</a></dt>
+<dt>Addison, Joseph, <a href="#pg_157">157</a>-58, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_218">218</a>, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt><i>&AElig;neid</i>, Virgil's, <a href="#pg_158">158</a></dt>
+<dt>Akenside, Mark, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Allegorical figures, Milton's, <a href="#pg_237">237</a>-38</dt>
+<dt><i>Amyntor and Theodora</i>, Mallet's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Andreini, <a href="#pg_95">95</a>-7, <a href="#pg_104">104</a>, <a href="#pg_106">106</a></dt>
+<dt>Angelo, Michael, <a href="#pg_88">88</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus</i>, <a href="#pg_217">217</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Apology for Smectymnuus</i>, <a href="#pg_16">16</a>, <a href="#pg_69">69</a>, <a href="#pg_71">71</a>, <a href="#pg_74">74</a></dt>
+<dt>Arbuthnot, John, <a href="#pg_218">218</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Areopagitica</i>, <a href="#pg_43">43</a>, <a href="#pg_46">46</a>, <a href="#pg_48">48</a>, <a href="#pg_49">49</a>, <a href="#pg_52">52</a>, <a href="#pg_56">56</a>-7, <a href="#pg_65">65</a>, <a href="#pg_76">76</a>, <a href="#pg_180">180</a></dt>
+<dt>Arianism, <a href="#pg_86">86</a></dt>
+<dt>Ariosto, <a href="#pg_171">171</a></dt>
+<dt>Armstrong, John, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Art of English Poetry</i>, Bysshe's, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Art of Preserving Health, The</i>, Armstrong's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Arthurian Legend, <a href="#pg_23">23</a>, <a href="#pg_60">60</a>, <a href="#pg_89">89</a>-90</dt>
+<dt><i>Ascension Day</i>, Vaughan's, <a href="#pg_257">257</a></dt>
+<dt>Athanasian Creed, <a href="#pg_86">86</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Athenian Mercury</i>, <a href="#pg_240">240</a></dt>
+<dt>Augustine, Saint, <a href="#pg_112">112</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Bacon, Francis, <a href="#pg_1">1</a>, <a href="#pg_198">198</a></dt>
+<dt>Barclay, John, <a href="#pg_57">57</a></dt>
+<dt>Baxter, Richard, <a href="#pg_20">20</a>-21</dt>
+<dt>Beaumont, Francis, <a href="#pg_218">218</a></dt>
+<dt>Beaumont, Joseph, <a href="#pg_176">176</a></dt>
+<dt>Beelzebub, <a href="#pg_140">140</a></dt>
+<dt>Belial, <a href="#pg_140">140</a>, <a href="#pg_211">211</a>-12, <a href="#pg_239">239</a>, <a href="#pg_259">259</a></dt>
+<dt>Bembo, Pietro, <a href="#pg_46">46</a></dt>
+<dt>Bentley, Richard, <a href="#pg_157">157</a>-58</dt>
+<dt><i>Biron, Tragedy of</i>, Chapman's, <a href="#pg_204">204</a></dt>
+<dt>Blair, Robert, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Blenheim</i>, Lyttelton's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Blenheim</i>, Philips's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Blount, Sir Thomas Pope, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt>Bodley, Sir Thomas, <a href="#pg_17">17</a></dt>
+<dt>Boileau, Nicolas, <a href="#pg_178">178</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Book of Sports</i>, <a href="#pg_25">25</a></dt>
+<dt>Bossu, Charles, <a href="#pg_158">158</a></dt>
+<dt>Boyd, Zachary, <a href="#pg_175">175</a></dt>
+<dt>Brice, Thomas, <a href="#pg_173">173</a></dt>
+<dt>Broome, William, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Bunyan, John, <a href="#pg_147">147</a>, <a href="#pg_155">155</a></dt>
+<dt>Burke, Edmund, <a href="#pg_40">40</a>, <a href="#pg_47">47</a>, <a href="#pg_77">77</a>, <a href="#pg_134">134</a></dt>
+<dt>Burnet, Dr. Thomas, <a href="#pg_84">84</a></dt>
+<dt>Butler, Samuel, <a href="#pg_44">44</a>, <a href="#pg_72">72</a>, <a href="#pg_246">246</a></dt>
+<dt>Byron, George Gordon, Lord, <a href="#pg_233">233</a></dt>
+<dt>Bysshe, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_266">[266]</div>
+<dl>
+<dt>C&aelig;dmon, <a href="#pg_106">106</a></dt>
+<dt>Cambridge, Milton at, <a href="#pg_13">13</a></dt>
+<dt>Camden, William, <a href="#pg_61">61</a></dt>
+<dt>Carew, Thomas, <a href="#pg_197">197</a></dt>
+<dt>Catalogues, Milton's Epic, <a href="#pg_236">236</a></dt>
+<dt>Catullus, <a href="#pg_206">206</a></dt>
+<dt>Chapman, George, <a href="#pg_204">204</a>, <a href="#pg_218">218</a></dt>
+<dt>Charlemagne, <a href="#pg_60">60</a></dt>
+<dt>Charles I., <a href="#pg_23">23</a></dt>
+<dt>Charles II., Court of, <a href="#pg_26">26</a>, <a href="#pg_259">259</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Chase, The</i>, Somerville's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Chaucer, Geoffrey, <a href="#pg_145">145</a>, <a href="#pg_236">236</a>, <a href="#pg_255">255</a></dt>
+<dt>Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#pg_133">133</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Christian Doctrine, Treatise of</i>, <a href="#pg_43">43</a>, <a href="#pg_113">113</a>, <a href="#pg_140">140</a></dt>
+<dt>Church of England, <a href="#pg_17">17</a>, <a href="#pg_19">19</a>-21, <a href="#pg_24">24</a>, <a href="#pg_34">34</a></dt>
+<dt><i>City Match, The</i>, Mayne's, <a href="#pg_189">189</a></dt>
+<dt>Classic School, <a href="#pg_220">220</a>, <a href="#pg_226">226</a></dt>
+<dt>Cleveland, John, <a href="#pg_72">72</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Clovis</i>, Saint-Sorlin's, <a href="#pg_178">178</a>-79, <a href="#pg_205">205</a></dt>
+<dt>Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, <a href="#pg_127">127</a>, <a href="#pg_151">151</a>, <a href="#pg_173">173</a>, <a href="#pg_214">214</a>, <a href="#pg_238">238</a>, <a href="#pg_251">251</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Comus</i>, <a href="#pg_28">28</a>, <a href="#pg_93">93</a>, <a href="#pg_162">162</a>-63, <a href="#pg_182">182</a>, <a href="#pg_184">184</a>, <a href="#pg_191">191</a>, <a href="#pg_199">199</a>, <a href="#pg_235">235</a>, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+<dt>Congreve, William, <a href="#pg_147">147</a>, <a href="#pg_225">225</a></dt>
+<dt>Cooper, John Gilbert, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Coriolanus</i>, Shakespeare's, <a href="#pg_122">122</a></dt>
+<dt>Court lyrists, <a href="#pg_259">259</a>-63</dt>
+<dt>Cowley, Abraham, <a href="#pg_72">72</a>, <a href="#pg_177">177</a>, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_219">219</a>, <a href="#pg_231">231</a>, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Crabbe, George, <a href="#pg_223">223</a></dt>
+<dt>Crashaw, Richard, <a href="#pg_106">106</a>, <a href="#pg_256">256</a></dt>
+<dt>Cromwell, Oliver, <a href="#pg_62">62</a>-3, <a href="#pg_65">65</a>, <a href="#pg_135">135</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Cyder</i>, Philips's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Cynthia, Hymn to</i>, Jonson's, <a href="#pg_185">185</a></dt>
+<dt>Dalila, <a href="#pg_51">51</a>, <a href="#pg_149">149</a>, <a href="#pg_209">209</a>-10</dt>
+<dt>Daniel, Samuel, <a href="#pg_218">218</a></dt>
+<dt>Davenant, William, <a href="#pg_177">177</a>, <a href="#pg_180">180</a>, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_219">219</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Davideis</i>, Cowley's, <a href="#pg_177">177</a>-78, <a href="#pg_231">231</a></dt>
+<dt><i>De Re Poetica</i>, Blount's, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Death of a Fair Infant, On the</i>, <a href="#pg_181">181</a>-82</dt>
+<dt><i>Defence of the People of England</i>, <a href="#pg_47">47</a>, <a href="#pg_74">74</a>, <a href="#pg_131">131</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Defence of the People of England, Second</i>, <a href="#pg_34">34</a>, <a href="#pg_47">47</a>, <a href="#pg_63">63</a></dt>
+<dt>Dekker, John, <a href="#pg_218">218</a></dt>
+<dt>Denham, John, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_219">219</a></dt>
+<dt>De Quincey, Thomas, <a href="#pg_82">82</a>, <a href="#pg_103">103</a>, <a href="#pg_120">120</a>, <a href="#pg_192">192</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure</i>, Marvell's, <a href="#pg_162">162</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Discourse of Satire</i>, Dryden's, <a href="#pg_202">202</a>, <a href="#pg_205">205</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Divine Institutes</i> of Lactantius, <a href="#pg_101">101</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Divine Weekes and Workes</i>, Du Bartas's, <a href="#pg_18">18</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Divorce Pamphlets</i>, <a href="#pg_16">16</a>, <a href="#pg_19">19</a>, <a href="#pg_48">48</a>, <a href="#pg_52">52</a>, <a href="#pg_54">54</a>, <a href="#pg_69">69</a>, <a href="#pg_75">75</a>, <a href="#pg_248">248</a>, <a href="#pg_259">259</a></dt>
+<dt>Donne, John, <a href="#pg_181">181</a>, <a href="#pg_183">183</a></dt>
+<dt>Dramatists, influence of, on Milton, <a href="#pg_15">15</a>-16, <a href="#pg_185">185</a>-87</dt>
+<dt>Drayton, Michael, <a href="#pg_27">27</a>, <a href="#pg_174">174</a>, <a href="#pg_218">218</a></dt>
+<dt>Dryden, John, <a href="#pg_10">10</a>, <a href="#pg_17">17</a>, <a href="#pg_133">133</a>, <a href="#pg_180">180</a>, <a href="#pg_202">202</a>, <a href="#pg_203">203</a>, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>-208, <a href="#pg_219">219</a>, <a href="#pg_240">240</a>-41, <a href="#pg_246">246</a>-47, <a href="#pg_256">256</a></dt>
+<dt>Du Bartas, Guillaume, <a href="#pg_18">18</a>, <a href="#pg_237">237</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Dunciad</i>, Pope's, <a href="#pg_251">251</a></dt>
+<dt>Dyer, John, <a href="#pg_242">242</a>, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Ecclesiastical Pamphlets</i>, <a href="#pg_49">49</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Ecclesiastical Polity</i>, Hooker's, <a href="#pg_103">103</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Economy</i>, Shenstone's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Economy of Love, The</i>, Armstrong's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Education, Of</i>, <a href="#pg_48">48</a>-9</dt>
+<dt>Eighteenth-century poetry, <a href="#pg_233">233</a>;</dt>
+<dd>influence of Milton on, <a href="#pg_241">241</a> <i>seq.</i></dd>
+<dt><i>Eikonoklastes</i>, <a href="#pg_16">16</a>, <a href="#pg_67">67</a></dt>
+<dt>Elizabethan Poetry, <a href="#pg_116">116</a>, <a href="#pg_173">173</a>-75, <a href="#pg_186">186</a>-87;</dt>
+<dd>Milton's relation to, <a href="#pg_15">15</a>, <a href="#pg_16">16</a>, <a href="#pg_218">218</a>-20</dd>
+<dt>Ellwood, Thomas, <a href="#pg_161">161</a>, <a href="#pg_163">163</a></dt>
+<dt><i>English Dramatick Poets, Account of the</i>, Langbaine's, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt>Epic catalogues, Milton's, <a href="#pg_236">236</a></dt>
+<dt>Etherege, George, <a href="#pg_190">190</a></dt>
+<dt>Eve, <a href="#pg_27">27</a>, <a href="#pg_54">54</a>, <a href="#pg_83">83</a>, <a href="#pg_87">87</a>, <a href="#pg_92">92</a>, <a href="#pg_96">96</a>, <a href="#pg_112">112</a>, <a href="#pg_121">121</a>-22, <a href="#pg_142">142</a>-50, <a href="#pg_154">154</a>-59, <a href="#pg_160">160</a>, <a href="#pg_204">204</a>, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>-207, <a href="#pg_222">222</a>, <a href="#pg_249">249</a>-50, <a href="#pg_260">260</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Excursion, The</i>, Mallet's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Faerie Queene</i>, Spenser's, <a href="#pg_199">199</a>-200</dt>
+<dt>Fenton, Elijah, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Fleece, The</i>, Dyer's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Fletcher, Giles, <a href="#pg_106">106</a></dt>
+<dt>Fletcher, Phineas, <a href="#pg_106">106</a></dt>
+<dt>Ford, John, <a href="#pg_117">117</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_267">[267]</div>
+<dl>
+<dt>Gabriel, <a href="#pg_72">72</a>, <a href="#pg_129">129</a>, <a href="#pg_135">135</a>, <a href="#pg_154">154</a>, <a href="#pg_239">239</a></dt>
+<dt>Galileo, <a href="#pg_100">100</a></dt>
+<dt>Gay, John, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Gibbon, Edward, <a href="#pg_138">138</a></dt>
+<dt>Glover, Richard, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Godwin, William, <a href="#pg_185">185</a></dt>
+<dt>Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, <a href="#pg_133">133</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Gondibert</i>, Davenant's, <a href="#pg_177">177</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Gorboduc</i>, Sackville's, <a href="#pg_196">196</a></dt>
+<dt>Grainger, James, <a href="#pg_242">242</a>, <a href="#pg_244">244</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Grave, The</i>, Blair's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Gray, Thomas, <a href="#pg_238">238</a>, <a href="#pg_253">253</a>-55</dt>
+<dt><i>Grongar Hill</i>, Dyer's, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Hall, John, <a href="#pg_71">71</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Hamlet</i>, Shakespeare's, <a href="#pg_142">142</a></dt>
+<dt>Hampton Court Conference, <a href="#pg_17">17</a></dt>
+<dt>Handel, <a href="#pg_239">239</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Harmonie of the Church</i>, Drayton's, <a href="#pg_174">174</a></dt>
+<dt>Hazlitt, William, <a href="#pg_198">198</a></dt>
+<dt>Herbert, George, <a href="#pg_174">174</a></dt>
+<dt>Herodotus, <a href="#pg_100">100</a></dt>
+<dt>Herrick, Robert, <a href="#pg_21">21</a>, <a href="#pg_256">256</a></dt>
+<dt>Hervey, Lord, <a href="#pg_203">203</a></dt>
+<dt><i>History of Britain</i>, <a href="#pg_60">60</a>, <a href="#pg_143">143</a></dt>
+<dt>Hobbes, Thomas, <a href="#pg_58">58</a>, <a href="#pg_219">219</a></dt>
+<dt>Homer, <a href="#pg_171">171</a>, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_220">220</a>, <a href="#pg_234">234</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Homer</i>, Pope's, <a href="#pg_251">251</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Hop Garden, The</i>, Smart's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Horace, <a href="#pg_202">202</a></dt>
+<dt>Horton, <a href="#pg_22">22</a></dt>
+<dt>Howard, Sir Robert, <a href="#pg_180">180</a></dt>
+<dt>Hume, Patrick, <a href="#pg_240">240</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Hyperion</i>, Keats's, <a href="#pg_227">227</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Idylls of the King</i>, Tennyson's, <a href="#pg_193">193</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Iliad, The</i>, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Il Penseroso</i>, <a href="#pg_22">22</a>, <a href="#pg_62">62</a>, <a href="#pg_184">184</a>-85, <a href="#pg_195">195</a>, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Johnson, Samuel, <a href="#pg_22">22</a>, <a href="#pg_31">31</a>, <a href="#pg_35">35</a>, <a href="#pg_57">57</a>-8, <a href="#pg_127">127</a>, <a href="#pg_149">149</a>, <a href="#pg_175">175</a>, <a href="#pg_216">216</a>, <a href="#pg_224">224</a>-25, <a href="#pg_229">229</a>-30, <a href="#pg_239">239</a>, <a href="#pg_246">246</a>-47, <a href="#pg_251">251</a></dt>
+<dt>Jonson, Ben, <a href="#pg_18">18</a>, <a href="#pg_27">27</a>, <a href="#pg_185">185</a>-86, <a href="#pg_198">198</a>, <a href="#pg_218">218</a>-19</dt>
+<dt>Juvenal, <a href="#pg_202">202</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Keats, John, <a href="#pg_227">227</a></dt>
+<dt>King, Edward, <a href="#pg_34">34</a></dt>
+<dt>Knox, John, <a href="#pg_142">142</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Lactantius, <a href="#pg_101">101</a>-102</dt>
+<dt><i>L'Allegro</i>, <a href="#pg_22">22</a>, <a href="#pg_24">24</a>-5, <a href="#pg_27">27</a>, <a href="#pg_195">195</a>, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+<dt>Lamb, Charles, <a href="#pg_198">198</a></dt>
+<dt>Landor, Walter Savage, <a href="#pg_137">137</a>, <a href="#pg_212">212</a>-13, <a href="#pg_239">239</a></dt>
+<dt>Langbaine, Gerard, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt>Latinisms, Milton's, <a href="#pg_208">208</a>-10</dt>
+<dt>Laud, Archbishop, <a href="#pg_21">21</a>, <a href="#pg_23">23</a></dt>
+<dt>Laudian movement, <a href="#pg_91">91</a></dt>
+<dt>Lawrence, Henry, <a href="#pg_8">8</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Lear, King</i>, Shakespeare's, <a href="#pg_223">223</a>-24</dt>
+<dt><i>Leonidas</i>, Glover's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, <a href="#pg_224">224</a></dt>
+<dt>Lestrange, Sir Roger, <a href="#pg_246">246</a></dt>
+<dt>Licensing Act, <a href="#pg_6">6</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Lives of the Most Famous English Poets</i>, Winstanley's, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Lives of the Poets</i>, Johnson's, <a href="#pg_247">247</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Love and Honour</i>, Shenstone's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Lucretius, <a href="#pg_238">238</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Lycidas</i>, <a href="#pg_23">23</a>-4, <a href="#pg_33">33</a>, <a href="#pg_57">57</a>, <a href="#pg_63">63</a>, <a href="#pg_213">213</a>, <a href="#pg_235">235</a>, <a href="#pg_246">246</a></dt>
+<dt>Lydgate, John, <a href="#pg_255">255</a></dt>
+<dt>Lyttelton, Lord, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Macbeth</i>, Shakespeare's, <a href="#pg_16">16</a>, <a href="#pg_118">118</a>, <a href="#pg_122">122</a>, <a href="#pg_229">229</a></dt>
+<dt>Mackenzie, Sir George, <a href="#pg_206">206</a></dt>
+<dt>Malherbe, Chr&eacute;tien Guillaume de, <a href="#pg_205">205</a></dt>
+<dt>Mallet, David, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Mammon, <a href="#pg_140">140</a>, <a href="#pg_172">172</a></dt>
+<dt>Manoa, <a href="#pg_51">51</a></dt>
+<dt>Manso, <a href="#pg_88">88</a></dt>
+<dt>Marlowe, Christopher, <a href="#pg_190">190</a></dt>
+<dt>Marot, Clement, <a href="#pg_173">173</a></dt>
+<dt>Marvell, Andrew, <a href="#pg_67">67</a>, <a href="#pg_73">73</a>, <a href="#pg_162">162</a>, <a href="#pg_256">256</a></dt>
+<dt>Masson, Professor David, <a href="#pg_133">133</a></dt>
+<dt>Meredith, George, <a href="#pg_118">118</a></dt>
+<dt>Metaphors, Milton's use of, <a href="#pg_13">13</a>-14, <a href="#pg_213">213</a>, <a href="#pg_234">234</a></dt>
+<dt>Michael, <a href="#pg_97">97</a>, <a href="#pg_129">129</a>, <a href="#pg_135">135</a>, <a href="#pg_156">156</a>-57, <a href="#pg_167">167</a>, <a href="#pg_253">253</a></dt>
+<dt>"Miltonics," the, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+<dt>Miracle plays, <a href="#pg_101">101</a></dt>
+<dt>Moloch, <a href="#pg_140">140</a>, <a href="#pg_254">254</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Monstrous Regiment of Women</i>, Knox's, <a href="#pg_142">142</a></dt>
+<dt>Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, <a href="#pg_57">57</a></dt>
+<dt>Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Br&egrave;de et de, <a href="#pg_62">62</a></dt>
+<dt>More, Henry, <a href="#pg_227">227</a></dt>
+<dt>More, Sir Thomas, <a href="#pg_57">57</a>, <a href="#pg_69">69</a></dt>
+<dt>Morus, Alexander, <a href="#pg_70">70</a></dt>
+<dt>Moryson, Fynes, <a href="#pg_15">15</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_268">[268]</div>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Nativity, Ode on the Morning of Christ's</i>, <a href="#pg_181">181</a>, <a href="#pg_199">199</a></dt>
+<dt>Nicodemus, Apocryphal Gospel of, <a href="#pg_164">164</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Night Thoughts</i>, Young's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Nightingale, Sonnet to the</i>, <a href="#pg_30">30</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Occleve, Thomas, <a href="#pg_255">255</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Odes</i>, Gray's, <a href="#pg_238">238</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Olaus Magnus</i>, <a href="#pg_100">100</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Old Wives' Tale</i>, Peele's, <a href="#pg_185">185</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Original Poems</i>, Dr. Joseph Beaumont's, <a href="#pg_176">176</a></dt>
+<dt>Ovid, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_208">208</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Paradise Lost</i>, <a href="#pg_28">28</a>, <a href="#pg_32">32</a>, <a href="#pg_45">45</a>, <a href="#pg_52">52</a>, <a href="#pg_58">58</a>, <a href="#pg_72">72</a>-3, <a href="#pg_79">79</a>, <a href="#pg_81">81</a> <i>seq.</i>, <a href="#pg_122">122</a>-24, <a href="#pg_127">127</a>, <a href="#pg_133">133</a>, <a href="#pg_140">140</a>, <a href="#pg_143">143</a>, <a href="#pg_150">150</a>, <a href="#pg_153">153</a>, <a href="#pg_158">158</a>-64, <a href="#pg_168">168</a>, <a href="#pg_176">176</a>, <a href="#pg_179">179</a>, <a href="#pg_188">188</a>, <a href="#pg_191">191</a>, <a href="#pg_195">195</a>, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_208">208</a>, <a href="#pg_210">210</a>, <a href="#pg_213">213</a>-14, <a href="#pg_217">217</a>, <a href="#pg_223">223</a>-24, <a href="#pg_235">235</a>, <a href="#pg_237">237</a>, <a href="#pg_239">239</a>-42, <a href="#pg_245">245</a>, <a href="#pg_252">252</a>, <a href="#pg_254">254</a>, <a href="#pg_256">256</a></dt>
+<dd>Characters of, <a href="#pg_132">132</a>-69</dd>
+<dd>Chronology of, <a href="#pg_110">110</a>-11</dd>
+<dd>Cosmography of, <a href="#pg_107">107</a>-10</dd>
+<dd>Criticisms of, by Addison, <a href="#pg_157">157</a>-58</dd>
+<dd>Bentley, <a href="#pg_157">157</a></dd>
+<dd>Coleridge, <a href="#pg_127">127</a>, <a href="#pg_151">151</a>, <a href="#pg_173">173</a></dd>
+<dd>De Quincey, <a href="#pg_82">82</a>, <a href="#pg_103">103</a>, <a href="#pg_120">120</a>, <a href="#pg_192">192</a></dd>
+<dd>Dryden, <a href="#pg_240">240</a></dd>
+<dd>Johnson, <a href="#pg_127">127</a>, <a href="#pg_149">149</a>, <a href="#pg_175">175</a></dd>
+<dd>Landor, <a href="#pg_137">137</a>, <a href="#pg_212">212</a>-13, <a href="#pg_239">239</a></dd>
+<dd>Pattison, <a href="#pg_83">83</a>, <a href="#pg_101">101</a></dd>
+<dd>Pope, <a href="#pg_141">141</a></dd>
+<dd>Voltaire, <a href="#pg_84">84</a></dd>
+<dd>Descriptive scenes in, <a href="#pg_120">120</a>-22, <a href="#pg_155">155</a>-58, <a href="#pg_225">225</a>-26</dd>
+<dd>Sources of, <a href="#pg_18">18</a>, <a href="#pg_95">95</a>, <a href="#pg_106">106</a></dd>
+<dd>Theme of, <a href="#pg_81">81</a>-9, <a href="#pg_91">91</a>-4, <a href="#pg_97">97</a>-106, <a href="#pg_127">127</a>-28</dd>
+<dd>Theology of, <a href="#pg_85">85</a>-7, <a href="#pg_126">126</a>-27, <a href="#pg_128">128</a>-32</dd>
+<dd>Verse of, <a href="#pg_179">179</a> <i>seq.</i>, <a href="#pg_191">191</a>-98</dd>
+<dt><i>Paradise Regained</i>, <a href="#pg_86">86</a>, <a href="#pg_120">120</a>, <a href="#pg_146">146</a>-47, <a href="#pg_158">158</a>-59, <a href="#pg_161">161</a>, <a href="#pg_163">163</a>, <a href="#pg_211">211</a>, <a href="#pg_228">228</a></dt>
+<dt>Parker, Samuel, <a href="#pg_67">67</a></dt>
+<dt>Parliament, the Long, <a href="#pg_56">56</a>, <a href="#pg_140">140</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Passion, The</i>, <a href="#pg_181">181</a></dt>
+<dt>Pattison, Mark, <a href="#pg_54">54</a>, <a href="#pg_83">83</a>, <a href="#pg_101">101</a></dt>
+<dt>Peele, George, <a href="#pg_185">185</a>, <a href="#pg_190">190</a></dt>
+<dt>Philips, John, <a href="#pg_242">242</a>, <a href="#pg_244">244</a></dt>
+<dt>Phillips, Edward, <a href="#pg_160">160</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Phillips, Lives of Edward and John</i>, Godwin's, <a href="#pg_185">185</a></dt>
+<dt>Philosophical poetry, <a href="#pg_227">227</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, Bunyan's, <a href="#pg_156">156</a></dt>
+<dt>Pitt, Christopher, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Platonick Song of the Soul</i>, More's, <a href="#pg_227">227</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Pleasures of the Imagination</i>, Akenside's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Pleasures of Melancholy, The</i>, Warton's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a>, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+<dt>Plutarch, <a href="#pg_59">59</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Poetics</i>, Boileau's, <a href="#pg_178">178</a></dt>
+<dt>Pope, Alexander, <a href="#pg_141">141</a>, <a href="#pg_203">203</a>, <a href="#pg_242">242</a>, <a href="#pg_247">247</a>, <a href="#pg_251">251</a>-52, <a href="#pg_254">254</a></dt>
+<dt>Powell, Mary, <a href="#pg_7">7</a>, <a href="#pg_54">54</a>, <a href="#pg_142">142</a>, <a href="#pg_260">260</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Power of Harmony, The</i>, Cooper's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Prelatical controversy, <a href="#pg_70">70</a></dt>
+<dt>Proper names, poetical use of, by Milton, <a href="#pg_235">235</a>-36</dt>
+<dt>Prynne, William, <a href="#pg_147">147</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Psyche</i>, Beaumont's, <a href="#pg_176">176</a></dt>
+<dt>Puns, Milton's, <a href="#pg_210">210</a>-12</dt>
+<dt>Puritanism, Milton's, <a href="#pg_28">28</a>-31, <a href="#pg_92">92</a>, <a href="#pg_145">145</a>, <a href="#pg_162">162</a>, <a href="#pg_263">263</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Quakerism, <a href="#pg_29">29</a>, <a href="#pg_61">61</a></dt>
+<dt>Quarles, Francis, <a href="#pg_147">147</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_269">[269]</div>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Rape of the Lock, The</i>, Pope's, <a href="#pg_232">232</a></dt>
+<dt>Raphael, <a href="#pg_97">97</a>, <a href="#pg_111">111</a>, <a href="#pg_115">115</a>, <a href="#pg_130">130</a>, <a href="#pg_144">144</a>, <a href="#pg_146">146</a>, <a href="#pg_202">202</a>, <a href="#pg_208">208</a>, <a href="#pg_228">228</a>, <a href="#pg_237">237</a>, <a href="#pg_248">248</a>-49</dt>
+<dt><i>Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty</i>, <a href="#pg_50">50</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Reformation in England, Of</i>, <a href="#pg_42">42</a>, <a href="#pg_62">62</a>, <a href="#pg_91">91</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Rehearsal Transposed, The</i>, Marvell's, <a href="#pg_67">67</a></dt>
+<dt>Religious poetry, <a href="#pg_173">173</a>-77</dt>
+<dt>Renaissance, the, <a href="#pg_19">19</a>, <a href="#pg_59">59</a>, <a href="#pg_74">74</a>, <a href="#pg_173">173</a></dt>
+<dt>Republicanism, <a href="#pg_66">66</a></dt>
+<dt>Restoration, the, <a href="#pg_26">26</a>, <a href="#pg_35">35</a>-8, <a href="#pg_68">68</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Richard II.</i>, Shakespeare's, <a href="#pg_187">187</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Richard III.</i>, Shakespeare's, <a href="#pg_16">16</a></dt>
+<dt>Rogers, Samuel, <a href="#pg_214">214</a></dt>
+<dt>Romanticism, <a href="#pg_55">55</a>, <a href="#pg_220">220</a>, <a href="#pg_226">226</a>, <a href="#pg_229">229</a>, <a href="#pg_233">233</a>, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Romaunt of the Rose</i>, <a href="#pg_238">238</a></dt>
+<dt>Rowe, Nicholas, <a href="#pg_240">240</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Ruined Abbey, The</i>, Shenstone's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Rymer, Thomas, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Salmasius, <a href="#pg_49">49</a>, <a href="#pg_69">69</a>, <a href="#pg_70">70</a>, <a href="#pg_71">71</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Samson Agonistes</i>, <a href="#pg_26">26</a>, <a href="#pg_29">29</a>, <a href="#pg_37">37</a>, <a href="#pg_50">50</a>-1, <a href="#pg_79">79</a>, <a href="#pg_143">143</a>, <a href="#pg_146">146</a>, <a href="#pg_158">158</a>-59, <a href="#pg_162">162</a>, <a href="#pg_167">167</a>, <a href="#pg_168">168</a>, <a href="#pg_195">195</a>-96, <a href="#pg_203">203</a>, <a href="#pg_208">208</a>-10, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt>Satan, <a href="#pg_28">28</a>, <a href="#pg_60">60</a>, <a href="#pg_72">72</a>, <a href="#pg_85">85</a>, <a href="#pg_94">94</a>, <a href="#pg_102">102</a>, <a href="#pg_105">105</a>, <a href="#pg_109">109</a>, <a href="#pg_110">110</a>-11, <a href="#pg_129">129</a>, <a href="#pg_130">130</a>, <a href="#pg_132">132</a>-39, <a href="#pg_146">146</a>, <a href="#pg_152">152</a>, <a href="#pg_158">158</a>, <a href="#pg_160">160</a>, <a href="#pg_167">167</a>, <a href="#pg_211">211</a>-12, <a href="#pg_228">228</a>, <a href="#pg_239">239</a>, <a href="#pg_253">253</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Seasons, The</i>, Thomson's, <a href="#pg_243">243</a>, <a href="#pg_248">248</a>, <a href="#pg_252">252</a></dt>
+<dt>Sedley, Sir Charles, <a href="#pg_260">260</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Sejanus</i>, Ben Jonson's, <a href="#pg_220">220</a></dt>
+<dt>Selden, Thomas, <a href="#pg_56">56</a></dt>
+<dt>Seneca, <a href="#pg_189">189</a></dt>
+<dt>Seventeenth-century poetry, <a href="#pg_175">175</a>-77, <a href="#pg_256">256</a>-62;</dt>
+<dd>Milton's relation to, <a href="#pg_218">218</a>-20</dd>
+<dt>Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, <a href="#pg_203">203</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Shakespeare, Lines on</i>, Milton's, <a href="#pg_182">182</a></dt>
+<dt>Shakespeare, William, <a href="#pg_3">3</a>, <a href="#pg_4">4</a>, <a href="#pg_5">5</a>, <a href="#pg_7">7</a>, <a href="#pg_15">15</a>, <a href="#pg_18">18</a>, <a href="#pg_19">19</a>, <a href="#pg_22">22</a>, <a href="#pg_25">25</a>, <a href="#pg_116">116</a>, <a href="#pg_118">118</a>, <a href="#pg_171">171</a>, <a href="#pg_175">175</a>, <a href="#pg_190">190</a>, <a href="#pg_198">198</a>, <a href="#pg_214">214</a>, <a href="#pg_217">217</a>, <a href="#pg_218">218</a>, <a href="#pg_220">220</a>, <a href="#pg_223">223</a>, <a href="#pg_225">225</a>, <a href="#pg_230">230</a>, <a href="#pg_231">231</a>, <a href="#pg_240">240</a>, <a href="#pg_243">243</a>, <a href="#pg_263">263</a></dt>
+<dt>Shelley, Percy Bysshe, <a href="#pg_233">233</a></dt>
+<dt>Shenstone, William, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+<dt>Shirley, James, <a href="#pg_219">219</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Short View of the Stage</i>, Collier's, <a href="#pg_147">147</a></dt>
+<dt>Sidney, Sir Philip, <a href="#pg_174">174</a></dt>
+<dt>Simile, Milton's use of, <a href="#pg_234">234</a></dt>
+<dt>Simmons, Samuel, <a href="#pg_180">180</a></dt>
+<dt>Smart, Christopher, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Somerville, William, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Sophocles, <a href="#pg_70">70</a></dt>
+<dt>Southwell, Robert, <a href="#pg_174">174</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Spectator, The</i>, Addison's, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt>Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#pg_17">17</a>, <a href="#pg_18">18</a>, <a href="#pg_106">106</a>, <a href="#pg_181">181</a>, <a href="#pg_200">200</a>, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_236">236</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Splendid Shilling, The</i>, Philips's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Spratt, Thomas, <a href="#pg_219">219</a></dt>
+<dt>Steele, Richard, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_218">218</a></dt>
+<dt>Sternhold, Thomas, <a href="#pg_173">173</a></dt>
+<dt>Stoicism, <a href="#pg_29">29</a>, <a href="#pg_145">145</a>, <a href="#pg_163">163</a></dt>
+<dt>Strafford, Earl of, <a href="#pg_23">23</a></dt>
+<dt>Suckling, Sir John, <a href="#pg_147">147</a>, <a href="#pg_188">188</a>, <a href="#pg_256">256</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Sugar Cane, The</i>, Grainger's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Swift, Jonathan, <a href="#pg_218">218</a></dt>
+<dt>Swinburne, Algernon Charles, <a href="#pg_93">93</a></dt>
+<dt>Sylvester, Thomas, <a href="#pg_18">18</a>, <a href="#pg_106">106</a></dt>
+<dt>Synod of Dort, <a href="#pg_17">17</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Tale of Two Swannes, A</i>, <a href="#pg_179">179</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Talmud, The</i>, <a href="#pg_87">87</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Tatler, The</i>, Steele's, <a href="#pg_206">206</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Tears of Peace</i>, Chapman's, <a href="#pg_204">204</a></dt>
+<dt>Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, <a href="#pg_193">193</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Tenure of Kings and Magistrates</i>, <a href="#pg_41">41</a></dt>
+<dt>Thomson, James, <a href="#pg_243">243</a>, <a href="#pg_248">248</a>, <a href="#pg_252">252</a>-53</dt>
+<dt>Tillotson, John, <a href="#pg_219">219</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Translation of the Eleventh Odyssey</i>, Broome's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Translation of a Story out of the Third &AElig;neid</i>, Addison's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Tudor state system, the, <a href="#pg_57">57</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt><i>Vacation Exercise, At a</i>, <a href="#pg_181">181</a></dt>
+<dt>Vaughan, Henry, <a href="#pg_256">256</a>-60</dt>
+<dt><i>Venus and Adonis</i>, Shakespeare's, <a href="#pg_148">148</a></dt>
+<dt>Virgil, <a href="#pg_171">171</a>, <a href="#pg_202">202</a>-203, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>-207</dt>
+<dt>Voiture, <a href="#pg_205">205</a></dt>
+<dt>Voltaire, <a href="#pg_84">84</a></dt>
+<dt>Vondel, Joost van den, <a href="#pg_106">106</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<div class="pb" id="pg_270">[270]</div>
+<dl>
+<dt>Waller, Edmund, <a href="#pg_206">206</a>, <a href="#pg_219">219</a>, <a href="#pg_240">240</a>-41</dt>
+<dt>Warton, Thomas, <a href="#pg_243">243</a>, <a href="#pg_245">245</a></dt>
+<dt><i>West, Sonnet on the Death of Richard</i>, Gray's, <a href="#pg_254">254</a></dt>
+<dt>Westminster Assembly of Divines, <a href="#pg_140">140</a></dt>
+<dt>Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester, <a href="#pg_261">261</a>-62</dt>
+<dt><i>Wine, a Poem</i>, Gay's, <a href="#pg_242">242</a></dt>
+<dt>Winstanley, William, <a href="#pg_241">241</a></dt>
+<dt><i>Winter's Tale</i>, Shakespeare's, <a href="#pg_25">25</a>, <a href="#pg_144">144</a></dt>
+<dt>Wither, George, <a href="#pg_195">195</a></dt>
+<dt>Wood, Anthony &agrave;, <a href="#pg_173">173</a></dt>
+<dt>Wordsworth, William, <a href="#pg_214">214</a>, <a href="#pg_246">246</a>, <a href="#pg_249">249</a>, <a href="#pg_251">251</a></dt>
+<dt>Wotton, Sir Henry, <a href="#pg_199">199</a></dt>
+</dl>
+<dl>
+<dt>Young, Thomas, <a href="#pg_12">12</a>, <a href="#pg_243">243</a></dt>
+</dl>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 21677-h.txt or 21677-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/6/7/21677">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/6/7/21677</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.</p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a>
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f001.png b/21677-page-images/f001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2107cb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f001.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f002.png b/21677-page-images/f002.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c80df4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f002.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f003.png b/21677-page-images/f003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..060eaf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f003.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f004.png b/21677-page-images/f004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fb149c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f004.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f005.png b/21677-page-images/f005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ecdb8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f005.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f006.png b/21677-page-images/f006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec6019
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f006.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f007.png b/21677-page-images/f007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cf4b83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f007.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f008.png b/21677-page-images/f008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c08c5c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f008.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f009.png b/21677-page-images/f009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d879ef4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f009.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f010.png b/21677-page-images/f010.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d73bb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f010.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f011.png b/21677-page-images/f011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45bab1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f011.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f012.png b/21677-page-images/f012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b79505
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f012.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f013.png b/21677-page-images/f013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f40878
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f013.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f014.png b/21677-page-images/f014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fcc13d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f014.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f015.png b/21677-page-images/f015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86bef53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f015.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f016.png b/21677-page-images/f016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..716cd35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f016.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/f017.png b/21677-page-images/f017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eef4661
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/f017.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p012.png b/21677-page-images/p012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c17d232
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p012.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p013.png b/21677-page-images/p013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2554e9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p013.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p014.png b/21677-page-images/p014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4210e90
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p014.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p015.png b/21677-page-images/p015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45502fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p015.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p016.png b/21677-page-images/p016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e714b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p016.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p017.png b/21677-page-images/p017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd5b2bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p017.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p018.png b/21677-page-images/p018.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0b9822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p018.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p019.png b/21677-page-images/p019.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc718d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p019.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p020.png b/21677-page-images/p020.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0108b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p020.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p021.png b/21677-page-images/p021.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e737e57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p021.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p022.png b/21677-page-images/p022.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..baa4829
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p022.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p023.png b/21677-page-images/p023.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..495c29a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p023.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p024.png b/21677-page-images/p024.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20921a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p024.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p025.png b/21677-page-images/p025.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f9957e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p025.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p026.png b/21677-page-images/p026.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a27c157
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p026.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p027.png b/21677-page-images/p027.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..33a4954
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p027.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p028.png b/21677-page-images/p028.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f69d04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p028.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p029.png b/21677-page-images/p029.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97ef0fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p029.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p030.png b/21677-page-images/p030.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..786b010
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p030.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p031.png b/21677-page-images/p031.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6326c38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p031.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p032.png b/21677-page-images/p032.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83fb8fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p032.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p033.png b/21677-page-images/p033.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..579cb84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p033.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p034.png b/21677-page-images/p034.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d1cafc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p034.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p035.png b/21677-page-images/p035.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04aab87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p035.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p036.png b/21677-page-images/p036.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2a7230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p036.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p037.png b/21677-page-images/p037.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3491378
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p037.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p038.png b/21677-page-images/p038.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af96636
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p038.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p039.png b/21677-page-images/p039.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28ca1f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p039.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p040.png b/21677-page-images/p040.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7aa3baf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p040.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p041.png b/21677-page-images/p041.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f7c361
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p041.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p042.png b/21677-page-images/p042.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e855e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p042.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p043.png b/21677-page-images/p043.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9683136
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p043.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p044.png b/21677-page-images/p044.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f6ee87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p044.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p045.png b/21677-page-images/p045.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3341bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p045.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p046.png b/21677-page-images/p046.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0753449
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p046.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p047.png b/21677-page-images/p047.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bde5997
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p047.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p048.png b/21677-page-images/p048.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52261b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p048.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p049.png b/21677-page-images/p049.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e094244
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p049.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p050.png b/21677-page-images/p050.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ee10a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p050.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p051.png b/21677-page-images/p051.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f38388b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p051.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p052.png b/21677-page-images/p052.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e748a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p052.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p053.png b/21677-page-images/p053.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e6b7c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p053.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p054.png b/21677-page-images/p054.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48fac3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p054.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p055.png b/21677-page-images/p055.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fda77c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p055.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p056.png b/21677-page-images/p056.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..133eee2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p056.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p057.png b/21677-page-images/p057.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6d667f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p057.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p058.png b/21677-page-images/p058.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..876ed5c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p058.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p059.png b/21677-page-images/p059.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4957f8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p059.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p060.png b/21677-page-images/p060.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7cf3936
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p060.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p061.png b/21677-page-images/p061.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6680e42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p061.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p062.png b/21677-page-images/p062.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..944e647
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p062.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p063.png b/21677-page-images/p063.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b465f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p063.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p064.png b/21677-page-images/p064.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b52cb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p064.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p065.png b/21677-page-images/p065.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad18e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p065.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p066.png b/21677-page-images/p066.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..439a55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p066.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p067.png b/21677-page-images/p067.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88c20d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p067.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p068.png b/21677-page-images/p068.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53c2817
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p068.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p069.png b/21677-page-images/p069.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6840af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p069.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p070.png b/21677-page-images/p070.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..756db67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p070.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p071.png b/21677-page-images/p071.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..293380d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p071.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p072.png b/21677-page-images/p072.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..742f018
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p072.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p073.png b/21677-page-images/p073.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2dc4fb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p073.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p074.png b/21677-page-images/p074.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d07eb02
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p074.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p075.png b/21677-page-images/p075.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..230e0f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p075.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p076.png b/21677-page-images/p076.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b4b466
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p076.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p077.png b/21677-page-images/p077.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e59321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p077.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p078.png b/21677-page-images/p078.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c63c0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p078.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p079.png b/21677-page-images/p079.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f372125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p079.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p080.png b/21677-page-images/p080.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bdb8bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p080.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p081.png b/21677-page-images/p081.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3bfbb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p081.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p082.png b/21677-page-images/p082.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..253eba7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p082.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p083.png b/21677-page-images/p083.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b4a70f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p083.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p084.png b/21677-page-images/p084.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b792cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p084.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p085.png b/21677-page-images/p085.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6be3e3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p085.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p086.png b/21677-page-images/p086.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..037cc22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p086.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p087.png b/21677-page-images/p087.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d4d8e54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p087.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p088.png b/21677-page-images/p088.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47853d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p088.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p089.png b/21677-page-images/p089.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48f0c38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p089.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p090.png b/21677-page-images/p090.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76a5fc8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p090.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p091.png b/21677-page-images/p091.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38ec06a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p091.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p092.png b/21677-page-images/p092.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62bb24d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p092.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p093.png b/21677-page-images/p093.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f1a5f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p093.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p094.png b/21677-page-images/p094.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a47d00a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p094.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p095.png b/21677-page-images/p095.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a89575
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p095.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p096.png b/21677-page-images/p096.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e839d74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p096.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p097.png b/21677-page-images/p097.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6da957
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p097.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p098.png b/21677-page-images/p098.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d663ddc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p098.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p099.png b/21677-page-images/p099.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..642b62f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p099.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p100.png b/21677-page-images/p100.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb34f98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p100.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p101.png b/21677-page-images/p101.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df20e30
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p101.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p102.png b/21677-page-images/p102.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f9e7a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p102.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p103.png b/21677-page-images/p103.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a84a13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p103.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p104.png b/21677-page-images/p104.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fc8a43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p104.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p105.png b/21677-page-images/p105.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b052d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p105.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p106.png b/21677-page-images/p106.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f1587e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p106.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p107.png b/21677-page-images/p107.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1e9c24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p107.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p108.png b/21677-page-images/p108.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ef37d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p108.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p109.png b/21677-page-images/p109.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a046c3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p109.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p110.png b/21677-page-images/p110.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63f5021
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p110.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p111.png b/21677-page-images/p111.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..496d331
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p111.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p112.png b/21677-page-images/p112.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a479d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p112.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p113.png b/21677-page-images/p113.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80d2750
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p113.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p114.png b/21677-page-images/p114.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84c6105
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p114.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p115.png b/21677-page-images/p115.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d579301
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p115.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p116.png b/21677-page-images/p116.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f71530
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p116.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p117.png b/21677-page-images/p117.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..50cd1e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p117.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p118.png b/21677-page-images/p118.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1d9d6c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p118.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p119.png b/21677-page-images/p119.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c4271d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p119.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p120.png b/21677-page-images/p120.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3013840
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p120.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p121.png b/21677-page-images/p121.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b3acc0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p121.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p122.png b/21677-page-images/p122.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7667c67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p122.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p123.png b/21677-page-images/p123.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cccea1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p123.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p124.png b/21677-page-images/p124.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d2f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p124.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p125.png b/21677-page-images/p125.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef78ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p125.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p126.png b/21677-page-images/p126.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6336576
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p126.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p127.png b/21677-page-images/p127.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c48952
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p127.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p128.png b/21677-page-images/p128.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3683d59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p128.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p129.png b/21677-page-images/p129.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2e66f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p129.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p130.png b/21677-page-images/p130.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37d6f5f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p130.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p131.png b/21677-page-images/p131.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..852d2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p131.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p132.png b/21677-page-images/p132.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6de1690
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p132.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p133.png b/21677-page-images/p133.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6f4f3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p133.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p134.png b/21677-page-images/p134.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb50423
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p134.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p135.png b/21677-page-images/p135.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca9b534
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p135.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p136.png b/21677-page-images/p136.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd904dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p136.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p137.png b/21677-page-images/p137.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b07d22a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p137.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p138.png b/21677-page-images/p138.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae604e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p138.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p139.png b/21677-page-images/p139.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9653cc5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p139.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p140.png b/21677-page-images/p140.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66ce795
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p140.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p141.png b/21677-page-images/p141.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7607909
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p141.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p142.png b/21677-page-images/p142.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd9e275
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p142.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p143.png b/21677-page-images/p143.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08dba62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p143.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p144.png b/21677-page-images/p144.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9be4f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p144.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p145.png b/21677-page-images/p145.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d49283
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p145.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p146.png b/21677-page-images/p146.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc76b7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p146.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p147.png b/21677-page-images/p147.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..736e073
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p147.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p148.png b/21677-page-images/p148.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..986a824
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p148.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p149.png b/21677-page-images/p149.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c3aabc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p149.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p150.png b/21677-page-images/p150.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0ead4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p150.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p151.png b/21677-page-images/p151.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1afdab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p151.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p152.png b/21677-page-images/p152.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a32dce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p152.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p153.png b/21677-page-images/p153.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d7f12b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p153.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p154.png b/21677-page-images/p154.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7840eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p154.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p155.png b/21677-page-images/p155.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3471926
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p155.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p156.png b/21677-page-images/p156.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76ee9ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p156.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p157.png b/21677-page-images/p157.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5ad19e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p157.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p158.png b/21677-page-images/p158.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..503a4c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p158.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p159.png b/21677-page-images/p159.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5863fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p159.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p160.png b/21677-page-images/p160.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..694cade
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p160.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p161.png b/21677-page-images/p161.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..136da02
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p161.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p162.png b/21677-page-images/p162.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d96fae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p162.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p163.png b/21677-page-images/p163.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ac6f62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p163.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p164.png b/21677-page-images/p164.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f57849
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p164.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p165.png b/21677-page-images/p165.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b40f40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p165.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p166.png b/21677-page-images/p166.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a3f8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p166.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p167.png b/21677-page-images/p167.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96ccf3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p167.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p168.png b/21677-page-images/p168.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6aca48e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p168.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p169.png b/21677-page-images/p169.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a573779
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p169.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p170.png b/21677-page-images/p170.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04af8b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p170.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p171.png b/21677-page-images/p171.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5382bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p171.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p172.png b/21677-page-images/p172.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f37edee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p172.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p173.png b/21677-page-images/p173.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68f3253
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p173.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p174.png b/21677-page-images/p174.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f61c779
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p174.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p175.png b/21677-page-images/p175.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..745cd3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p175.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p176.png b/21677-page-images/p176.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e20c9d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p176.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p177.png b/21677-page-images/p177.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb66c17
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p177.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p178.png b/21677-page-images/p178.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95e41ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p178.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p179.png b/21677-page-images/p179.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a0fd2d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p179.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p180.png b/21677-page-images/p180.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f14731
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p180.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p181.png b/21677-page-images/p181.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ee9b49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p181.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p182.png b/21677-page-images/p182.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fd24d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p182.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p183.png b/21677-page-images/p183.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d2feed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p183.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p184.png b/21677-page-images/p184.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad9867
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p184.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p185.png b/21677-page-images/p185.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a13937
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p185.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p186.png b/21677-page-images/p186.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5e3748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p186.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p187.png b/21677-page-images/p187.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0dc282
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p187.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p188.png b/21677-page-images/p188.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13853fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p188.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p189.png b/21677-page-images/p189.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b439ed9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p189.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p190.png b/21677-page-images/p190.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..564620a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p190.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p191.png b/21677-page-images/p191.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aefa1ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p191.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p192.png b/21677-page-images/p192.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfa15a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p192.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p193.png b/21677-page-images/p193.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e2ed78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p193.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p194.png b/21677-page-images/p194.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..613e4cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p194.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p195.png b/21677-page-images/p195.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e9ffb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p195.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p196.png b/21677-page-images/p196.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc79024
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p196.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p197.png b/21677-page-images/p197.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2880808
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p197.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p198.png b/21677-page-images/p198.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b255771
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p198.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p199.png b/21677-page-images/p199.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5dc595
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p199.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p200.png b/21677-page-images/p200.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abcf1aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p200.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p201.png b/21677-page-images/p201.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..176b659
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p201.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p202.png b/21677-page-images/p202.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..098ff59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p202.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p203.png b/21677-page-images/p203.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ac1cd5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p203.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p204.png b/21677-page-images/p204.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91c4e3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p204.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p205.png b/21677-page-images/p205.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4713364
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p205.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p206.png b/21677-page-images/p206.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8826101
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p206.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p207.png b/21677-page-images/p207.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e180159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p207.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p208.png b/21677-page-images/p208.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5484b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p208.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p209.png b/21677-page-images/p209.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86fe826
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p209.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p210.png b/21677-page-images/p210.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ea44cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p210.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p211.png b/21677-page-images/p211.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62a6b89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p211.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p212.png b/21677-page-images/p212.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e60a93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p212.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p213.png b/21677-page-images/p213.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ac280da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p213.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p214.png b/21677-page-images/p214.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8729cc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p214.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p215.png b/21677-page-images/p215.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abe5335
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p215.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p216.png b/21677-page-images/p216.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b73809
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p216.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p217.png b/21677-page-images/p217.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5cd397
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p217.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p218.png b/21677-page-images/p218.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a7f53d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p218.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p219.png b/21677-page-images/p219.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36f603c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p219.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p220.png b/21677-page-images/p220.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc20431
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p220.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p221.png b/21677-page-images/p221.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84a2bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p221.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p222.png b/21677-page-images/p222.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81d0524
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p222.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p223.png b/21677-page-images/p223.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d2710
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p223.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p224.png b/21677-page-images/p224.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6caccaf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p224.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p225.png b/21677-page-images/p225.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aafa658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p225.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p226.png b/21677-page-images/p226.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8de743f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p226.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p227.png b/21677-page-images/p227.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..648c259
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p227.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p228.png b/21677-page-images/p228.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..104ac81
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p228.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p229.png b/21677-page-images/p229.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..418ce78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p229.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p230.png b/21677-page-images/p230.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b49bbea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p230.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p231.png b/21677-page-images/p231.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c21c462
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p231.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p232.png b/21677-page-images/p232.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e3fe4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p232.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p233.png b/21677-page-images/p233.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c2b974
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p233.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p234.png b/21677-page-images/p234.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a12115
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p234.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p235.png b/21677-page-images/p235.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd838ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p235.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p236.png b/21677-page-images/p236.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..69ee171
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p236.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p237.png b/21677-page-images/p237.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5f27ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p237.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p238.png b/21677-page-images/p238.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e95dbcb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p238.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p239.png b/21677-page-images/p239.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b350e35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p239.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p240.png b/21677-page-images/p240.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b5243f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p240.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p241.png b/21677-page-images/p241.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d259a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p241.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p242.png b/21677-page-images/p242.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61b88ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p242.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p243.png b/21677-page-images/p243.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6701c21
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p243.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p244.png b/21677-page-images/p244.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35ae78b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p244.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p245.png b/21677-page-images/p245.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb1015c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p245.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p246.png b/21677-page-images/p246.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2e3b46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p246.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p247.png b/21677-page-images/p247.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55832f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p247.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p248.png b/21677-page-images/p248.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9996b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p248.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p249.png b/21677-page-images/p249.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa650e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p249.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p250.png b/21677-page-images/p250.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..50b33f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p250.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p251.png b/21677-page-images/p251.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6657025
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p251.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p252.png b/21677-page-images/p252.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c29b33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p252.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p253.png b/21677-page-images/p253.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5f923e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p253.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p254.png b/21677-page-images/p254.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52aa275
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p254.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p255.png b/21677-page-images/p255.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f308b8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p255.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p256.png b/21677-page-images/p256.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..649b6a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p256.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p257.png b/21677-page-images/p257.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a3d847
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p257.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p258.png b/21677-page-images/p258.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3442e20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p258.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p259.png b/21677-page-images/p259.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f87f19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p259.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p260.png b/21677-page-images/p260.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..496737c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p260.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p261.png b/21677-page-images/p261.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1717363
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p261.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p262.png b/21677-page-images/p262.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8103d66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p262.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p263.png b/21677-page-images/p263.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31a2f24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p263.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p264.png b/21677-page-images/p264.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24f09e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p264.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p265.png b/21677-page-images/p265.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3228e26
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p265.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p266.png b/21677-page-images/p266.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec015f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p266.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p267.png b/21677-page-images/p267.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..104967c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p267.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p268.png b/21677-page-images/p268.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b19d7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p268.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p269.png b/21677-page-images/p269.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5528b37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p269.png
diff --git a/21677-page-images/p270.png b/21677-page-images/p270.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb47be5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677-page-images/p270.png
diff --git a/21677.txt b/21677.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..022cbd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7197 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Milton, by Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Milton
+
+
+Author: Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 4, 2007  [eBook #21677]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+MILTON
+
+by
+
+SIR WALTER RALEIGH
+
+Author of
+'Style,' 'Wordsworth,' &c.
+
+Tenth Impression
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Edward Arnold
+41 & 43 Maddox Street, Bond Street, W.
+1915
+
+
+
+
+TO
+R. A. M. STEVENSON
+WHOSE RADIANT AND SOARING INTELLIGENCE
+ENLIGHTENED AND GUIDED ME
+DURING THE YEARS OF OUR LOST COMPANIONSHIP
+THIS UNAVAILING TRIBUTE OF
+MEMORY AND LOVE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+                                                                      PAGE
+
+"Sciences of conceit"; the difficulties and imperfections of literary
+    criticism; illustrated in the case of Shakespeare; and of Milton;
+    the character and temper of Milton; intensity, simplicity,
+    egotism; his estimate of himself                                  1
+
+CHAPTER I
+John Milton
+
+His birth, and death; his education; early life in London; ships and
+    shipping; adventurers and players; Milton and the Elizabethan
+    drama; the poetic masters of his youth; state of the Church of
+    England; Baxter's testimony; growing unrest; Milton's early
+    poems; the intrusion of politics; the farewell to mirth; the
+    Restoration, and Milton's attitude; the lost paradise of the
+    early poems; Milton's Puritanism; his melancholy; the political
+    and public preoccupations of the later poems; the drama of
+    Milton's life; his egotism explained; an illustration from
+    _Lycidas_; the lost cause; the ultimate triumph                   12
+
+CHAPTER II
+The Prose Works
+
+Poets and politics; practical aim of Milton's prose writings; the
+    reforms advocated by him, with one exception, unachieved;
+    critical mourners over Milton's political writings; the mourners
+    comforted; Milton's classification of his prose tracts; the
+    occasional nature of these tracts; allusions in the early prose
+    works to the story of Samson, and to the theme of _Paradise
+    Lost_; Milton's personal and public motives; his persuasive vein;
+    his political idealism; Johnson's account of his political
+    opinions; the citizen of an antique city; Milton's attitude
+    towards mediaeval romance, and towards the mediaeval Church; his
+    worship of liberty; and of greatness; his belief in human
+    capacity and virtue; Milton and Cromwell; Milton's clear logic;
+    his tenacity; his scurrility, and its excuse; his fierce and
+    fantastic wit; reappearance of these qualities in _Paradise
+    Lost_; the style of his prose works analysed and illustrated; his
+    rich vocabulary; his use of Saxon; the making of an epic poet     39
+
+CHAPTER III
+Paradise Lost: The Scheme
+
+Vastness of the theme; scenical opportunities; the poetry independent
+    of the creed; Milton's choice of subject; King Arthur; _Paradise
+    Lost_; attractions of the theme: primitive religion, natural
+    beauty, dramatic interest; difficulties of the theme, and
+    forbidden topics; how Milton overcomes these difficulties by his
+    episodes, his similes, and the tradition that he adopts
+    concerning the fallen angels; the cosmography of _Paradise Lost_;
+    its chronology; some difficulties and inconsistencies; Milton's
+    spiritual beings, their physical embodiment; the poem no treasury
+    of wisdom, but a world-drama; its inhumanity, and artificial
+    elevation; the effect of Milton's simpler figures drawn from
+    rural life; De Quincey's explanation of this effect; another
+    explanation; the homelessness of Eden; the enchanted palace and
+    its engineer; the tyranny of Milton's imagination; its effect on
+    his diction                                                       81
+
+CHAPTER IV
+Paradise Lost: The Actors. The Later Poems
+
+Milton's argumentative end; its bearing on the scenes in Heaven; his
+    political bias, and materialism; Milton's Deity; his Satan; the
+    minor devils; Adam; Eve; personal memories; Adam's eulogy of Eve,
+    criticised by Raphael; Milton's philosophy of love and beauty;
+    the opinions of Raphael, of Satan, and of Mrs. Millamant; the
+    comparative merits of Adam and Eve; Milton's great epic effects;
+    his unity and large decorum; morning and evening; architectural
+    effects; the close of _Paradise Lost_; Addison and Bentley;
+    _Paradise Regained;_ the choice of subject; Milton's favourite
+    theme--temptation; other possible subjects; the Harrying of Hell;
+    _Samson Agonistes;_ the riddle of life.                           126
+
+CHAPTER V
+The Style of Milton: Metre and Diction
+
+Difficulties of literary genealogy; the ledger school of criticism;
+    Milton's strength and originality; his choice of a sacred
+    subject; earlier attempts in England and France; Boileau's
+    opinion; Milton's choice of metre an innovation; the little
+    influence on Milton of Spenser, and of Donne; Milton a pupil of
+    the dramatists; the history of dramatic blank verse; Milton's
+    handling of the measure; the "elements of musical delight";
+    Tennyson's blank verse; Milton's metrical licenses; the Choruses
+    of _Samson Agonistes_; Milton's diction a close-wrought mosaic;
+    compared with the diffuser diction of Spenser; conciseness of
+    Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Milton; Homer's repetitions; repetitions
+    and "turns of words and thoughts" rare in Milton; double meanings
+    of words; Milton's puns; extenuating circumstances; his mixed
+    metaphors and violent syntax, due to compression; Milton's
+    poetical style a dangerous model; the spontaneity and license of
+    his prose                                                         170
+
+CHAPTER VI
+The Style of Milton; and its Influence on English Poetry
+
+The relation of Milton's work to the 17th-century "reforms" of verse
+    and prose; the Classicism of Milton, and of the Augustans;
+    Classic and Romantic schools contrasted in their descriptions;
+    Milton's Chaos, Shakespeare's Dover Cliff; Johnson's comments;
+    the besetting sins of the two schools; Milton's physical
+    machinery justified; his use of abstract terms; the splendid use
+    of mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidance of
+    mean associations, and of realism; nature of his similes and
+    figures; his use of proper names; his epic catalogues; his
+    personifications; loftiness of his perfected style; the
+    popularity of _Paradise Last_; imitations, adaptations, and
+    echoes of Milton's style during the 18th century; his enormous
+    influence; the origin of "poetic diction"; Milton's phraseology
+    stolen by Pope, Thomson, and Gray; the degradation of Milton's
+    style by his pupils and parodists                                 218
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+Milton's contemporaries; the poetry of Religion, and of Love; Henry
+    Vaughan; the Court lyrists; Milton's contempt for them; how they
+    surpass him; Sedley; Rochester; the prophet of the Lord and the
+    sons of Belial; unique position of Milton in the history of our
+    literature                                                        256
+
+Index                                                                 265
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Francis Bacon, in one of his prose fragments, draws a memorable
+distinction between "arts mechanical" and "sciences of conceit." "In arts
+mechanical," he says, "the first device comes shortest, and time addeth
+and perfecteth. But in sciences of conceit the first author goeth
+farthest, and time leeseth and corrupteth.... In the former, many wits
+and industries contributed in one. In the latter, many men's wits spent
+to deprave the wit of one."
+
+I fear that literary criticism of the kind that I propose to myself in
+these chapters on Milton must be classified with the "sciences of
+conceit." Indeed, Bacon puts it out of question that he himself would so
+have regarded it, for he goes on to explain how, after the deliverances
+of a master, "then begin men to aspire to the second prizes, to be a
+profound interpreter and commentor, to be a sharp champion and defender,
+to be a methodical compounder and abridger. And this is the unfortunate
+succession of wits which the world hath yet had, whereby the patrimony of
+all knowledge goeth not on husbanded and improved, but wasted and
+decayed."
+
+The blow is aimed at the scholastic philosophers, but it falls heavy on
+the critics of literature, on all who "aspire to the second prizes," or
+who think "that a borrowed light can increase the original light from
+whom it is taken." It is a searching arraignment of all who set
+themselves to expound in words the meaning and purpose of a master of
+verbal expression. Yet the very breadth of the indictment brings comfort
+and a means of escape. For the chief difficulties of an attempt to
+understand and judge Milton are difficulties inherent in the nature, not
+only of all criticism in the large sense, but also of all reading. In
+this association with great spirits which we call reading we receive but
+what we give, and take away only what we are fit to carry. Milton himself
+has stated the doctrine in its most absolute form, and has sought an
+enhanced authority for it by attributing it to the Christ--
+
+                      Who reads
+  Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
+  A spirit and judgment equal or superior
+  (And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
+  Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
+  Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,
+  Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
+  And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge,
+  As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
+
+Literally taken, this is the negation of all the higher functions of
+criticism, and the paralysis of all learning. Only his peers, it is
+argued, can read Shakespeare intelligently; and, as if that did not give
+him few enough readers, they are further told that they will be wasting
+their time! But love, unlike this proud Stoicism, is humble, and
+contented with a little. I would put my apology in the language of love
+rather than of philosophy. I know that in Shakespeare, or in Milton, or
+in any rare nature, as in Faire Virtue, the mistress of Philarete--
+
+  There is some concealed thing
+  So each gazer limiting,
+  He can see no more of merit
+  Than beseems his worth and spirit.
+
+The appreciation of a great author asks knowledge and industry before it
+may be attempted, but in the end it is the critic, not the author, who is
+judged by it, and, where his sympathies have been too narrow, or his
+sight too dim, condemned without reprieve, and buried without a
+tombstone.
+
+Imperfect sympathy, that eternal vice of criticism, is sometimes
+irremediable, sometimes caused by imperfect knowledge. It takes forms as
+various as the authors whom it misjudges. In the case of Shakespeare,
+when we attempt to estimate him, to gauge him, to see him from all sides,
+we become almost painfully conscious of his immensity. We can build no
+watch-tower high enough to give us a bird's-eye view of that "globe of
+miraculous continents." We are out of breath when we attempt to accompany
+him on his excursions, where he,
+
+          through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
+  With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
+  And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.
+
+He moves so easily and so familiarly among human passions and human
+emotions, is so completely at home in all societies and all companies,
+that he makes us feel hide-bound, prejudiced and ill-bred, by the side of
+him. We have to widen our conception of human nature in order to think of
+him as a man. How hard a thing it is to conceive of Shakespeare as of a
+human spirit, embodied and conditioned, whose affections, though higher
+mounted than ours, yet, when they stooped, stooped with the like wing, is
+witnessed by all biographies of Shakespeare, and by many thousands of the
+volumes of criticism and commentary that have been written on his works.
+One writer is content to botanise with him--to study plant-lore, that is,
+with a theatrical manager, in his hard-earned leisure, for teacher.
+Another must needs read the Bible with him, although, when all is said,
+Shakespeare's study was but little on the Bible. Others elect to keep him
+to music, astronomy, law, hunting, hawking, fishing. He is a good
+companion out of doors, and some would fain keep him there, to make a
+country gentleman of him. His incorrigible preoccupation with humanity,
+the ruling passion and employment of his life, is beyond the range of
+their complete sympathy; they like to catch him out of hours, to draw him
+aside and bespeak his interest, for a few careless minutes, in the trades
+and pastimes that bulk so largely and so seriously in their own
+perspective of life. They hardly know what to make of his "unvalued
+book"; but they know that he was a great man, and to have bought a
+wool-fell or a quarter of mutton from him, that would have been
+something! Only the poet-critics attempt to see life, however brokenly,
+through Shakespeare's eyes, to let their enjoyment keep attendance upon
+his. And from their grasp, too, he escapes by sheer excess.
+
+In the case of Milton the imperfection of our sympathy is due to other
+causes. In the first place, we know him as we do not know Shakespeare.
+The history of his life can be, and has been, minutely written. The
+affairs of his time, political and religious, have been recorded with
+enormous wealth of detail; and this wealth, falling into fit hands, has
+given us those learned modern historians to whom the seventeenth century
+means a period of five thousand two hundred and eighteen weeks. Milton's
+own attitude towards these affairs is in no way obscure; he has explained
+it with great fulness and candour in numerous publications, so that it
+would be easy to draw up a declaration of his chief tenets in politics
+and religion. The slanders of his adversaries he met again and again with
+lofty passages of self-revelation. "With me it fares now," he remarks in
+one of these, "as with him whose outward garment hath been injured and
+ill-bedighted; for having no other shift, what help but to turn the
+inside outwards, especially if the lining be of the same, or, as it is
+sometimes, much better." In his poetry, too, he delights to reveal
+himself, to take the knowing reader into his confidence, to honour the
+fit audience with a confession.
+
+But the difficulty is there none the less. Few critics have found Milton
+too wide or too large for them; many have found him too narrow, which is
+another form of imperfect sympathy. His lack of humour has alienated the
+interest of thousands. His ardent advocacy of toleration in the noblest
+of his prose treatises has been belittled by a generation which prides
+itself on that flaccid form of benevolence, and finds the mere repeal of
+the Licensing Act the smallest part of it. His pamphlets on divorce and
+on government have earned him the reputation of a theorist and dreamer.
+The shrewd practical man finds it easy to despise him. The genial
+tolerant man, whose geniality of demeanour towards others is a kind of
+quit-rent paid for his own moral laxity, regards him as a Pharisee. The
+ready humourist devises a pleasant and cheap entertainment by dressing
+Adam and Eve in modern garments and discussing their relations in the
+jargon of modish frivolity. Even the personal history of the poet has
+been made to contribute to the gaiety of nations, and the flight of Mary
+Powell, the first Mrs. Milton, from the house in Aldersgate Street, has
+become something of a stock comic episode in the history of English
+literature. So heavy is the tax paid, even by a poet, for deficiency in
+breadth and humour. Almost all men are less humorous than Shakespeare;
+but most men are more humorous than Milton, and these, it is to be
+feared, having suffered themselves to be dragooned by the critics into
+professing a distant admiration for _Paradise Lost_, have paid their last
+and utmost tribute to the genius of its author.
+
+It may be admitted without hesitation that his lonely greatness rather
+forces admiration on us than attracts us. That unrelenting intensity;
+that lucidity, as clear as air and as hard as agate; that passion which
+burns with a consuming heat or with a blinding light in all his writings,
+have endeared him to none. It is impossible to take one's ease with
+Milton, to induce him to forget his principles for a moment in the name
+of social pleasure. The most genial of his personal sonnets is addressed
+to Henry Lawrence, the son of the President of Cromwell's Council, and is
+an invitation to dinner. The repast promised is "light and choice"; the
+guest is apostrophised, somewhat formidably, as "Lawrence, of virtuous
+father, virtuous son," and is reminded, before he has dined, that
+
+  He who of these delights can judge, and spare
+  To interpose them oft, is not unwise.
+
+But the qualities that make Milton a poor boon-companion are precisely
+those which combine to raise his style to an unexampled loftiness, a
+dignity that bears itself easily in society greater than human. To attain
+to this height it was needful that there should be no aimless expatiation
+of the intellect, no facile diffusion of the sympathies over the wide
+field of human activity and human character. All the strength of mind and
+heart and will that was in Milton went into the process of raising
+himself. He is like some giant palm-tree; the foliage that sprang from it
+as it grew has long since withered, the stem rises gaunt and bare; but
+high up above, outlined against the sky, is a crown of perennial verdure.
+
+It is essential for the understanding of Milton that we should take
+account of the rare simplicity of his character. No subtleties; no tricks
+of the dramatic intellect, which dresses itself in a hundred masquerading
+costumes and peeps out of a thousand spy-holes; no development, one might
+almost say, only training, and that self-imposed. There is but one
+Milton, and he is throughout one and the same, in his life, in his prose,
+and in his verse; from those early days, when we find him, an uncouth
+swain,
+
+  With eager thought warbling his Doric lay,
+
+to the last days when, amid a swarm of disasters, he approved himself
+like Samson, and earned for himself the loftiest epitaph in the language,
+his own--
+
+  Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
+  Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
+  Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,
+  And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
+
+The world has not wholly misunderstood or failed to appreciate this
+extraordinary character, as one curious piece of evidence will serve to
+show. Milton is one of the most egotistic of poets. He makes no secret of
+the high value he sets upon his gifts--"gifts of God's imparting," as he
+calls them, "which I boast not, but thankfully acknowledge, and fear also
+lest at my certain account they be reckoned to me many rather than few."
+Before he has so much as begun his great poem he covenants with his
+reader "that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the
+payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from
+the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; ... nor to be obtained by the
+invocation of dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer
+to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
+and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch
+and purify the lips of whom he pleases; to this must be added industrious
+and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and
+generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at
+mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as
+many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges
+that I can give them." And when he came to redeem his pledge, in the very
+opening lines of his epic, trusting to the same inspiration, he
+challenges the supremacy of the ancients by his
+
+                  adventrous song
+  That with no middle flight intends to soar
+  Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
+  Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
+
+"This man cuts us all out, and the Ancients too," Dryden is reported to
+have said. But this man intended to do no less, and formally announced
+his intention. It is impossible to outface Milton, or to abash him with
+praise. His most enthusiastic eulogists are compelled merely to echo the
+remarks of his earliest and greatest critic, himself. Yet with all this,
+none of the later critics, not the most cavalier nor the dullest, has
+dared to call him vain. His estimate of himself, offered as simple fact,
+has been accepted in the same spirit, and one abyss of ineptitude still
+yawns for the heroic folly, or the clownish courage, of the New
+Criticism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+JOHN MILTON
+
+
+John Milton, the son of a middle-aged scrivener, was born on Friday,
+December the 9th, 1608, at his father's house in Bread Street, Cheapside;
+and died on Sunday, November the 8th, 1674, in a small house, with but
+one room on a floor, in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, London. Of his
+father the records that remain show him to have been a convinced member
+of the Puritan party in the Church, a man of liberal culture and
+intelligence, a lover of music (which taste Milton inherited), a wise and
+generous friend to the son who became a poet. We owe it to his wisdom
+rather than to his prosperity that Milton was allowed to live at home
+without any ostensible profession until he was thirty years of age and
+more.
+
+For the first sixteen years of his life Milton was educated partly at
+home, by a Presbyterian tutor called Thomas Young, partly at St. Paul's
+School, which he attended for some years as a day-scholar. From his
+twelfth year onward he was an omnivorous reader, and before he left
+school had written some boyish verses, void of merit. The next fourteen
+years of his life, after leaving school, were spent at Cambridge, in
+Buckinghamshire, and in foreign travel, so that he was thirty years old
+before he lived continuously in London again.
+
+We know pretty well how he spent his time at Cambridge and at Horton,
+sedulously turning over the Greek and Latin classics, dreaming of
+immortality. We know less about his early years in London, where there
+were wider and better opportunities of gaining an insight into "all
+seemly and generous arts and affairs." London was a great centre of
+traffic, a motley crowd of adventurers and traders even in those days,
+and the boy Milton must often have wandered down to the river below
+London Bridge to see the ships come in. His poems are singularly full of
+figures drawn from ships and shipping, some of them bookish in their
+origin, others which may have been suggested by the sight of ships. Now
+it is Satan, who, after his fateful journey through chaos, nears the
+world,
+
+  And like a weather-beaten vessel holds
+  Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn.
+
+Now it is Dalila, whom the Chorus behold approaching.
+
+  Like a stately ship
+  Of Tarsus, bound for the isles
+  Of Javan or Gadire,
+  With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
+  Sails filled, and streamers waving,
+  Courted by all the winds that hold them play.
+
+Or, again, it is Samson reproaching himself,
+
+  Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked
+  My vessel trusted to me from above,
+  Gloriously rigged.
+
+The bulk of Satan is compared to the great sea-beast Leviathan, beheld
+off the coast of Norway by
+
+  The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff.
+
+In his approach to the happy garden the Adversary is likened to
+
+                      them who sail
+  Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
+  Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
+  Sabaean odours from the spicy shore
+  Of Araby the Blest, with such delay
+  Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
+  Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles;
+  So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend.
+
+And when he draws near to Eve in the rose-thicket,
+
+                  sidelong he works his way,
+  As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought,
+  Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind
+  Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail.
+
+There is nothing here that is not within the reach of any inland reader,
+but Milton's choice of nautical similitudes may serve to remind us how
+much of the interest of Old London centred round its port. Here were to
+be heard those tales of far-sought adventure and peril which gave even to
+the boisterous life of Elizabethan London an air of triviality and
+security. Hereby came in "the variety of fashions and foreign stuffs,"
+which Fynes Moryson, writing in Milton's childhood, compares to the stars
+of heaven and the sands of the sea for number. All sorts of characters,
+nationalities, and costumes were daily to be seen in Paul's Walk,
+adjoining Milton's school. One sort interests us pre-eminently. "In the
+general pride of England," says Fynes Moryson, "there is no fit
+difference made of degrees; for very Bankrupts, Players, and Cutpurses go
+apparelled like gentlemen." Shakespeare was alive during the first seven
+years of Milton's life, and was no doubt sometimes a visitor to the
+Mermaid, a stone's throw from the scrivener's house. Perhaps his cloak
+brushed the child Milton in the street. Milton was born in the golden age
+of the drama, and a score of masterpieces were put upon the London stage
+while he was in his cradle. But the golden age passed rapidly; the
+quality of the drama degenerated and the opposition to it grew strong
+before he was of years to attend a play. Perhaps he never saw a play by
+the masters during his boyhood, and his visits
+
+          to the well-trod stage anon,
+  If Jonson's learned sock be on,
+  Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
+  Warble his native woodnotes wild,
+
+were either excursions of the imagination or belong to his later
+occasional sojourns in London. In his _Eikonoklastes_ he quotes certain
+lines from _Richard III._, and here and there in his prose, as well as in
+his verse, there are possibly some faint reminiscences of Shakespearian
+phrases. So, for instance, in _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_,
+he seems to echo a famous speech of Macbeth, while he claims that his
+remedy of free divorce "hath the virtue to soften and dispel rooted and
+knotty sorrows, and without enchantment." But these are doubtless the
+memories of reading. In the _Apology for Smectymnuus_, when he has to
+reply to the charge that he "haunted playhouses" during his college days,
+he retorts the charge, it is true, rather than denies it. Yet the retort
+bespeaks a certain severity and preciseness in judging of plays and their
+actors, which can hardly have found gratification in the licenses and
+exuberances of the contemporary drama. It was not difficult, he remarks,
+to see plays, "when in the Colleges so many of the young divines, and
+those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the
+stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and
+dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds." "If it be
+unlawful," he continues, "to sit and behold a mercenary comedian
+personating that which is least unseemly for a hireling to do, how much
+more blameful is it to endure the sight of as vile things acted by
+persons either entered, or presently to enter into the ministry; and how
+much more foul and ignominious for them to be the actors!"
+
+It was, at least, a happy chance that the first of Milton's verses to
+appear in print should have been _An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick
+Poet, W. Shakespeare_, contributed to the Second Folio in 1632. The main
+interests of the household at the Spread Eagle in Bread Street must have
+been far enough remote from the doings of the companies of players. John
+Milton the elder would probably have agreed with Sir Thomas Bodley, who
+called plays "riffe-raffes," and declared that they should never come
+into his library. The Hampton Court Conference, the Synod of Dort, the
+ever-widening divisions in the Church, between Arminian and Calvinist,
+between Prelatist and Puritan, were probably subjects of a nearer
+interest, even to the poet in his youth, than the production of new or
+old plays upon the stage. Milton's childhood was spent in the very
+twilight of the Elizabethan age; it was greatly fortunate for him, and
+for us, that he caught the after-glow of the sunset upon his face. He
+read Spenser while Spenser was still the dominant influence in English
+poetry. "He hath confessed to me," said Dryden, "that Spenser was his
+original,"--an incredible statement unless we understand "original" in
+the sense of his earliest admiration, his poetic godfather who first won
+him to poetry. He read Shakespeare and Jonson in the first editions. He
+read Sylvester's translation of _Du Bartas, His Divine Weekes and
+Workes_; and perhaps thence conceived the first vague idea of a poem on a
+kindred subject. It is necessary to insist on his English masters,
+because, although the greater part of his time and study was devoted to
+the classics, the instrument that he was to use was learned in a native
+school. His metre, his magnificent vocabulary, his unerring phraseology,
+took learning and practice. He attached a high value to his study of
+English poetry. When he spoke of "our sage and serious Spenser (whom I
+dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas)," he was
+conscious that he was maintaining what seemed a bold paradox in an age
+when scholasticism still controlled education. It is pleasant to think of
+Milton during these early years, whether in London or at Christ's
+College, in his "calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and
+confident thoughts," before ever he had a hint that he must perforce
+"embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from
+beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of
+delightful studies." From the first, we may be sure, he read the poets as
+one poet reads another, and apprenticed himself to them for their craft.
+He was never drawn out of the highroad of art by the minuter and more
+entangling allurements of scholarship. In one of his Divorce pamphlets he
+tells, with the inevitable touch of pride, how he never could delight in
+long citations, much less in whole traductions, "whether it be natural
+disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of
+what God made mine own, and not a translator."
+
+Milton was intended by his family, and by his own early resolves, for the
+service of the Church. The growing unrest, therefore, in matters
+ecclesiastical during the early part of the seventeenth century could not
+but affect him. The various parties and tendencies in the Church of
+England had never, since the Reformation, attained to a condition of
+stable equilibrium. But the settlement under Elizabeth was strengthened,
+and the parties bound together for thirty years, by the ever-present fear
+of Rome. When that fear was allayed, and the menace that hung over the
+very existence of the nation removed by the defeat of the Armada, the
+differences within the Church broke out afresh, and waxed fiercer every
+year. Shakespeare grew to manhood during the halcyon years between the
+Marian persecutions and the Marprelate pamphlets--a kind of magic oasis,
+which gave us our English Renaissance. Milton's youth breathed a very
+different air. The Church, as it was, pleased hardly any party. Much of
+the old temple had been hastily pulled down; the new government offices
+that were to replace it had as yet been but partially built, and
+commanded no general approval. Considered as a social organisation,
+moreover, the Church throughout large parts of the country had fallen
+into a state not unlike decay. Richard Baxter, whose testimony there is
+no sufficient reason to reject, tells of its state in Shropshire during
+the years of his youth, from 1615 onwards:--"We lived in a country that
+had but little preaching at all: In the Village where I was born there
+was four Readers successively in Six years time, ignorant Men, and two of
+them immoral in their lives; who were all my School-masters. In the
+Village where my Father lived, there was a Reader of about Eighty years
+of Age that never preached, and had two Churches about Twenty miles
+distant: His Eyesight failing him, he said Common-Prayer without Book;
+but for the Reading of the Psalms and Chapters he got a Common Thresher
+and Day-Labourer one year, and a Taylor another year: (for the Clerk
+could not read well): And at last he had a Kinsman of his own (the
+excellentest Stage-player in all the Country, and a good Gamester and
+good Fellow) that got Orders and supplied one of his Places.... After him
+another Neighbour's Son took Orders, when he had been a while an
+Attorney's Clerk, and a common Drunkard, and tipled himself into so great
+Poverty that he had no other way to live.... These were the
+School-masters of my Youth ... who read Common Prayer on Sundays and Holy
+Days, and taught School and tipled on the Weekdays, and whipt the Boys
+when they were drunk, so that we changed them very oft. Within a few
+miles about us were near a dozen more Ministers that were near Eighty
+years old apiece, and never preached; poor ignorant Readers, and most of
+them of Scandalous Lives." Some few there were, Baxter admits, who
+preached in the neighbourhood, but any one who went to hear them "was
+made the Derision of the Vulgar Rabble under the odious Name of a
+_Puritane_."
+
+In one of his Latin letters written from Cambridge, Milton himself speaks
+of the ignorance of those designed for the profession of divinity, how
+they knew little or nothing of literature and philosophy. The high
+prelacy and ritualism of Laud on the one hand, the Puritan movement on
+the other, each in some measure a protest against this state of things,
+were at fierce variance with each other, and Milton's ear, from his youth
+upward, was "pealed with noises loud and ruinous." The age of Shakespeare
+was irrecoverably past, and it was impossible for any but a few
+imperturbable Cyrenaics, like Herrick, to "fleet the time carelessly, as
+they did in the golden world." The large indifference of Shakespeare to
+current politics was impossible for Milton. "I had as lief be a Brownist
+as a politician," said the folly of Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the wisdom
+of Shakespeare. But now the Brownists and the politicians had it their
+own way; and Milton was something of both.
+
+His notable early poems, written at College and during his retreat in
+Buckinghamshire, have therefore a singular interest and pathos. He was
+not long for the world in which these poems move with so ineffable a
+native grace. They are the poems of his youth, instinct with the
+sensibility of youth, and of a delicate and richly nurtured imagination.
+But they are also the poems of an age that was closing, and they have a
+touch of the sadness of evening. "I know not," says Dr. Johnson, speaking
+of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, "whether the characters are kept
+sufficiently apart. No mirth can indeed be found in his melancholy, but I
+am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth." It is true;
+for both characters are Milton himself, who embodies in separate poems
+the cheerful and pensive elements of his own nature--and already his
+choice is made. There is something disinterested and detached about his
+sketches of the merriment which he takes part in only as a silent
+onlooker, compared with the profound sincerity of the lines--
+
+  And may at last my weary age
+  Find out the peaceful hermitage,
+  The hairy gown and mossy cell,
+  Where I may sit and rightly spell
+  Of every star that heaven doth shew,
+  And every herb that sips the dew,
+  Till old experience do attain
+  To something like prophetic strain.
+
+The rising tide of political passion submerged the solemn Arcadia of his
+early fancies. Like Lycidas, he was carried far from the flowers and the
+shepherds to visit "the bottom of the monstrous world." Hence there may
+be made a whole index of themes, touched on by Milton in his early poems,
+as if in promise, of which no fulfilment is to be found in the greater
+poems of his maturity. His political career under the Commonwealth is
+often treated, both by those who applaud and by those who lament it, as
+if it were the merest interlude between two poetic periods. It was not
+so; political passion dominates and informs all his later poems,
+dictating even their subjects. How was it possible for him to choose King
+Arthur and his Round Table for the subject of his epic, as he had
+intended in his youthful days; when chivalry and the spirit of chivalry
+had fought its last fight on English soil, full in the sight of all men,
+round the forlorn banner of King Charles? The policy of Laud and
+Stratford kept Milton out of the Church, and sent him into retirement at
+Horton; the same policy, it may be plausibly conjectured, had something
+to do with the change in the subject of his long-meditated epic. From the
+very beginning of the civil troubles contemporary events leave their mark
+on all his writings. The topical bias (so to call it) is very noticeable
+in many of the subjects tentatively jotted down by him on the paper that
+is now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The corrupted
+clergy, who make so splendid and, as some think, so irrelevant an
+appearance in _Lycidas_, figure frequently, either directly or by
+implication, in the long list of themes.
+
+Without misgiving or regret, when the time came, Milton shut the gate on
+the sequestered paradise of his youth, and hastened downward to join the
+fighters in the plain. Before we follow him we may well "interpose a
+little ease" by looking at some of the beauties proper to the earlier
+poems, and listening to some of the simple pastoral melodies that were
+drowned when the organ began to blow. _L'Allegro_ is full of them--
+
+  Sometimes, with secure delight,
+  The upland hamlets will invite,
+  When the merry bells ring round,
+  And the jocund rebecks sound
+  To many a youth and many a maid
+  Dancing in the chequered shade,
+  And young and old come forth to play
+  On a sunshine holiday.
+
+That is Merry England of Shakespeare's time. But already the controversy
+concerning the _Book of Sports_ had begun to darken the air. Already the
+Maypole, that "great stinking idol," as an Elizabethan Puritan called it,
+had been doomed to destruction. Some years before _L'Allegro_ was
+written, a bard, who hailed from Leeds, had lamented its downfall in the
+country of his nativity--
+
+  Happy the age, and harmelesse were the dayes,
+    (For then true love and amity was found)
+  When every village did a May-pole raise,
+    And Whitson Ales and May games did abound;
+  And all the lusty Yonkers in a rout
+  With merry Lasses danced the rod about;
+  Then friendship to their banquets bid the guests,
+  And poor men far'd the better for their feasts.
+
+The next verse recalls that scene in _The Winter's Tale_ where
+Shakespeare draws a vivid picture of Elizabethan country merrymaking--
+
+  The Lords of Castles, Manners, Townes, and Towers
+    Rejoyc'd when they beheld the Farmers flourish,
+  And would come down unto the Summer-Bowers
+    To see the Country gallants dance the Morrice,
+  And sometimes with his tenant's handsome daughter
+  Would fall in liking, and espouse her after
+  Unto his Serving-man, and for her portion
+  Bestow on him some farme, without extortion.
+
+  Alas poore Maypoles, what should be the cause
+    That you were almost banish't from the earth?
+  You never were rebellious to the lawes,
+    Your greatest crime was harmelesse honest mirth;
+  What fell malignant spirit was there found
+    To cast your tall _Piramides_ to ground?
+  *      *      *      *      *
+
+  And you my native towne, which was of old,
+    (When as thy Bon-fires burn'd and May-poles stood,
+  And when thy Wassell-cups were uncontrol'd)
+    The Summer Bower of Peace and neighbourhood,
+  Although since these went down, thou ly'st forlorn,
+  By factious schismes and humours over-borne,
+  Some able hand I hope thy rod will raise,
+  That thou maist see once more thy happy daies.
+
+The hopes of the bard of Leeds were fulfilled at the Restoration.
+Merriment, of a sort, came back to England; but it found no congenial
+acceptance from Milton. The Court roysterers, the Hectors, Nickers,
+Scourers, and Mohocks, among whom were numbered Sedley and Rochester, and
+others of the best poets of the day, are celebrated by him incidentally
+in those lines, unsurpassable for sombre magnificence, which he appends
+to his account of Belial--
+
+  In courts and palaces he also reigns,
+  And in luxurious cities, where the noise
+  Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
+  And injury and outrage; and, when night
+  Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
+  Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
+
+The public festivals of these later days are glanced at in _Samson
+Agonistes_--
+
+      Lords are lordliest in their wine;
+  And the well-feasted priest then soonest fired
+  With zeal, if aught religion seem concerned;
+  No less the people on their holy-days
+  Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable.
+
+There is no relaxation, no trace of innocent lightheartedness, in any of
+the later poems. Even the garden of Paradise, where some gentle mirth
+might perhaps be permissible, is tenanted by grave livers, majestic, but
+not sprightly. In _L' Allegro_ the morning song of the milk-maid is
+"blithe," and the music of the village dance is "jocund." But Eve is
+described as "jocund" and "blithe" only when she is intoxicated by the
+mortal fruit of the tree; and the note of gaiety that is heard faintly,
+like a distant echo, in the earlier poems, is never sounded again by
+Milton.
+
+So it is also with other things. The flowers scattered on the laureate
+hearse of Lycidas make a brighter, more various, and withal a homelier
+display than ever meets the eye in the Hesperian wildernesses of Eden. Or
+take the world of fairy lore that Milton inherited from the
+Elizabethans--a world to which not only Shakespeare, but also laborious
+and arrogant poet-scholars like Jonson and Drayton had free right of
+entry. Milton, too, could write of the fairies--in his youth--
+
+  With stories told of many a feat,
+  How Faery Mab the junkets eat.
+
+But even in _Comus_ the most exquisite passage of fairy description is
+put into the mouth of Comus himself, chief of the band of ugly-headed
+monsters in glistering apparel--
+
+  The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
+  Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
+  And on the tawny sands and shelves
+  Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
+  By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
+  The wood-nymphs decked with daisies trim,
+  Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
+  What hath night to do with sleep?
+
+The song and the dance are broken off, never to be resumed, when the
+staid footfall of the lady is heard approaching. Milton cannot draw
+ugliness; it turns into beauty or majesty on his hands. Satan has a large
+and enthusiastic party among readers of _Paradise Lost_. Comus, we are
+told, stands for a whole array of ugly vices--riot, intemperance,
+gluttony, and luxury. But what a delicate monster he is, and what a
+ravishing lyric strain he is master of! The pleasure that Milton forswore
+was a young god, the companion of Love and Youth, not an aged Silenus
+among the wine-skins. He viewed and described one whole realm of pagan
+loveliness, and then he turned his face the other way, and never looked
+back. Love is of the valley, and he lifted his eyes to the hills. His
+guiding star was not Christianity, which in its most characteristic and
+beautiful aspects had no fascination for him, but rather that severe and
+self-centred ideal of life and character which is called Puritanism. It
+is not a creed for weak natures; so that as the nominal religion of a
+whole populace it has inevitably fallen into some well-merited disrepute.
+Puritanism for him was not a body of law to be imposed outwardly on a
+gross and timid people, but an inspiration and a grace that falls from
+Heaven upon choice and rare natures--
+
+  Nor do I name of men the common rout,
+  That, wandering loose about,
+  Grow up and perish as the summer fly,
+  Heads without name, no more remember'd;
+
+so sings the Chorus in _Samson Agonistes_--
+
+  But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
+  With gifts and graces eminently adorned,
+  To some great work, thy glory,
+  And people's safety, which in part they effect.
+
+Under one form or another Puritanism is to be found in almost all
+religions, and in many systems of philosophy. Milton's Puritanism enabled
+him to combine his classical and Biblical studies, to reconcile his pagan
+and Christian admirations, Stoicism, and the Quakers. It was with no
+sense of incongruity that he gave to the Christ a speech in praise of--
+
+  Quintus, Fabricius, Curius, Regulus,...
+  Who could do mighty things, and could contemn
+  Riches, though offered from the hand of Kings.
+
+To reject common ambitions, to refuse common enticements, to rule
+passions, desires, and fears, "neither to change, nor falter, nor
+repent,"--this was the wisdom and this the virtue that he set before
+himself. There is no beatific vision to keep his eyes from wandering
+among the shows of earth. Milton's heaven is colder than his earth, the
+home of Titans, whose employ is political and martial. When his
+imagination deals with earthly realities, the noble melancholy of the
+Greeks lies upon it. His last word on human life might be translated into
+Greek with no straining and no loss of meaning--
+
+  His servants He, with new acquist
+  Of true experience from this great event,
+  With peace and consolation hath dismissed,
+  And calm of mind, all passion spent.
+
+He is therefore one of the few English poets (alone in this respect among
+the greatest) who have not sung of Love. His only English love-poem, the
+sonnet _To the Nightingale_, is his earliest and poorest sonnet. He
+elected in his later poems to sing of Marriage, its foundation in reason,
+its utility, its respectability and antiquity as an institution, and,
+above all, its amazing dangers. He has thus lost the devotion of the
+young, who, while they read poetry by the ear and eye for its sonorous
+suggestions, and its processions of vague shapes, love Milton; but when
+they come to read it for its matter and sentiment, leave him--in most
+cases never to return. The atmosphere of his later poems is that of some
+great public institution. Heaven is an Oriental despotism. Hell is a
+Secession parliament. In the happy garden itself there is no privacy, no
+individualism; it is the focus of the action, the central point of the
+attack and the defence; and a great part of the conversation of its
+inhabitants turns on the regulations under which they live. They never
+forget that they are all mankind, and when their psalm goes up in
+grateful adoration to their Creator, it is like the unanimous voice of
+all nations and kindreds and people and tongues.
+
+"The plan of _Paradise Lost_" says Johnson, "has this inconvenience, that
+it comprises neither human actions nor human manners. The man and woman
+who act and suffer are in a state which no other man and woman can ever
+know. The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds
+no condition in which he can by any effort of imagination place himself;
+he has, therefore, little natural curiosity and sympathy." Milton, he
+goes on to explain, "knew human nature only in the gross, and had never
+studied the shades of character, nor the combinations of concurring or
+the perplexity of contending passions."
+
+He knew human nature only in the gross. He treated nothing less momentous
+than the fortunes of the race. It is precisely from this cause that the
+incomparable grandeur of Milton's characters and situations springs. The
+conversations that he records are like international parleyings. Eve is
+the official Mother of mankind. Adam walks forth to meet the angel, in
+ambassadorial dignity, the accredited representative of the human race--
+
+          Without more train
+  Accompanied than with his own complete
+  Perfections; in himself was all his state,
+  More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
+  On princes, when their rich retinue long
+  Of horses led and grooms besmeared with gold
+  Dazzles the crowd and sets them all agape.
+
+And if the other characters of _Paradise Lost_ have this generic stamp,
+it is because the chief character of all has it--the character of the
+poet himself. It lends a strange dignity to the story of Milton's life
+that in all his doings he felt himself to be a "cause," an agent of
+mighty purposes. This it is that more than excuses, it glorifies, his
+repeated magniloquent allusions to himself throughout the prose works.
+Holding himself on trust or on commission, he must needs report himself,
+not only to his great Taskmaster, but also from time to time to men, his
+expectant and impatient beneficiaries. Even in _Lycidas_ he is thinking
+of himself as much as of his dead companion--
+
+  So may some gentle Muse
+  With lucky words favour _my_ destined urn,
+  And as he passes turn,
+  And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
+
+What if he die young himself? Are his dreams and hopes for his own future
+an illusion? He agonises with the question in the famous digression on
+poetry and poetic fame. But he consoles himself by appeal to a Court
+where the success and the fame of this world are as straw in the furnace;
+and then, having duly performed the obsequies of his friend, with
+reinvigorated heart he turns once more to the future--"To-morrow to fresh
+woods and pastures new." A singular ending, no doubt, to an elegy! But it
+is blind and hasty to conclude that therefore the precedent laments are
+"not to be considered as the effusion of real passion." A soldier's
+burial is not the less honoured because his comrades must turn from his
+grave to give their thought and strength and courage to the cause which
+was also his. The maimed rites, interrupted by the trumpet calling to
+action, are a loftier commemoration than the desolating laments of those
+who "weep the more because they weep in vain." And in this way Milton's
+fierce tirade against the Church hirelings, and his preoccupation with
+his own ambitions support and explain each other, and find a fit place in
+the poem. He is looking to his equipment, if perchance he may live to do
+that in poetry and politics, which Edward King had died leaving
+unaccomplished. When his own time came he desired to be lamented in no
+other way--
+
+  Come, come; no time for lamentation now,
+  Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself
+  Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished
+  A life heroic, on his enemies
+  Fully revenged.
+
+This overmastering sense of the cause breathes through all his numerous
+references to himself. He stands in the Forum,
+
+      Disturbed, yet comely, and in act
+  Raised, as of some great matter to begin;
+
+and addresses himself, as he boasts in _The Second Defence of the People
+of England_, to "the whole collective body of people, cities, states, and
+councils of the wise and eminent, through the wide expanse of anxious and
+listening Europe." Having sacrificed the use of his eyes to the service
+of the commonweal, he bates not a jot of heart or hope--
+
+          What supports me, dost thou ask?
+  The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
+  In Liberty's defence, my noble task,
+  Of which all Europe talks from side to side.
+
+And while thus his fighting years are filled with the exaltation of
+battle, as he plumes and lifts himself upon the cause that is going
+forward, the story of his closing years has in it much of the pathos of a
+lost cause. It was remarked by Johnson that there is in the _Paradise
+Lost_ little opportunity for the pathetic; only one passage, indeed, is
+allowed by him to be truly deserving of that name. But the description of
+the remorse and reconcilement of Adam and Eve, which Johnson doubtless
+intended, will not compare, for moving quality, with the matchless
+invocation to the Seventh Book--
+
+  More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
+  To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
+  On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,
+  In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
+  And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
+  Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn
+  Purples the East. Still govern thou my song,
+  Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
+
+Then the noise that he had heard, in imagination only, thirty years
+earlier, assails his bodily ears; as evening sets in, the wonted roar is
+up, not in the wild woods of fancy inhabited by the sensual magician and
+his crew, but in the unlighted streets of Restoration London, as a chorus
+of cup-shotten brawlers goes roaring by. The king is enjoying his own
+again; and the poet, hunted and harassed in his last retreat, raises his
+petition again to the Muse whom he had invoked at the beginning of his
+task,--not Clio nor her sisters, but the spirit of heavenly power and
+heavenly wisdom; his mind reverts to that story of Orpheus which had
+always had so singular and personal a fascination for him; of Orpheus,
+who, holding himself aloof from the mad amorists of Thrace, was by them
+torn to pieces during the orgy of the Dionysia, and sent rolling down the
+torrent of the Hebrus; and he prays to his goddess and guardian--
+
+  But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
+  Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
+  Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
+  In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
+  To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned
+  Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
+  Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores;
+  For thou art heavenly, she an empty dream.
+
+Disappointed of all his political hopes, living on neglected and poor for
+fourteen years after the Restoration, and dying a private citizen,
+passably obscure, Milton yet found and took a magnanimous revenge upon
+his enemies. They had crippled only his left hand in silencing the
+politician, but his right hand, which had hung useless by his side for so
+many years while he served the State, was his own still, and wielded a
+more Olympian weapon. In prose and politics he was a baffled man, but in
+poetry and vision he found his triumph. His ideas, which had gone
+a-begging among the politicians of his time, were stripped by him of the
+rags of circumstance, and cleansed of its dust, to be enthroned where
+they might secure a hearing for all time. The surprise that he prepared
+for the courtiers of the Restoration world was like Samson's revenge, in
+that it fell on them from above; and, as elsewhere in the poem of _Samson
+Agonistes_, Milton was thinking not very remotely of his own case when he
+wrote that jubilant semi-chorus, with the marvellous fugal succession of
+figures, wherein Samson, and by inference Milton himself, is compared to
+a smouldering fire revived, to a serpent attacking a hen-roost, to an
+eagle swooping on his helpless prey, and last, his enemies now silent for
+ever, to the phoenix, self-begotten and self-perpetuating. The Philistian
+nobility (or the Restoration notables) are described, with huge scorn, as
+ranged along the tiers of their theatre, like barnyard fowl blinking on
+their perch, watching, not without a flutter of apprehension, the vain
+attempts made on their safety by the reptile grovelling in the dust
+below--
+
+      But he, though blind of sight,
+  Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
+  With inward eyes illuminated,
+  His fiery virtue roused
+  From under ashes into sudden flame,
+  And as an evening dragon came,
+  Assailant on the perched roosts
+  And nests in order ranged
+  Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle
+  His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.
+  So Virtue, given for lost,
+  Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
+  Like that self-begotten bird
+  In the Arabian woods embost,
+  That no second knows nor third,
+  And lay erewhile a holocaust,
+  From out her ashy womb now teemed,
+  Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
+  When most unactive deemed;
+  And, though her body die, her fame survives.
+  A secular bird, ages of lives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE PROSE WORKS
+
+
+It is customary for the friends of Milton to approach his prose works
+with a sigh of apology. There is a deep-rooted prejudice among the
+English people against a poet who concerns himself intimately with
+politics. Whether this feeling has its origin in solicitude for the poet
+or for the politics is hard to determine; indeed it is pretty generally
+maintained that each is detrimental to the other. But seeing that for one
+man in the modern world who cares for poets there are at least ten who
+care for politics, it is safe to assume that the poets, when they are
+deprived of the franchise, are deprived rather to maintain the purity and
+efficiency of politics than for the good of their own souls. They have
+been compared to birds of Paradise, which were long believed to have no
+feet; and the common sense of the English people, with a touch of the
+municipal logic of Dogberry, has enacted that whereas they have no feet,
+and have moreover been proved to have no feet, it shall be forbidden
+them, under the strictest pains and penalties, to alight and walk. Their
+function is to beautify the distant landscape with the flash of wings.
+
+For most men common-sense is the standard, and immediate utility the end,
+whereby they judge political questions, great and small. Now common-sense
+judges only the questions that are brought home to it by instant example;
+and utility is appealed to for a verdict only amid the dense crowd of
+actual conflicting interests. Neither the one nor the other is
+far-sighted or imaginative. So it comes about that the political system,
+in England, at least, is built up piecemeal; it is founded on appetites
+and compromises, and mortared by immemorial habit. To explain this
+process, and to transfigure it in the pure light of imagination, was the
+work of the great poet-politician, Edmund Burke. But the poet usually
+goes a hastier way to work. Looking at the whole domiciliary structure
+from outside, he finds it shapeless and ugly, like an ant-heap; and
+volunteers to play the architect. His design treats the details of
+individual habit and happiness in strict subordination to the desired
+whole. What he wants is consistency, symmetry, dignity; and to achieve
+these he is willing to make a holocaust of human selfishnesses. He may be
+a deep scholar and thinker, but he is apt to forget one point of ancient
+wisdom,--that it is the wearer of the shoe, and not the cobbler, who best
+knows where the shoe wrings him.
+
+The speculations of the poet awaken no hostile resentment so long as they
+are admittedly abstract. He is at liberty to build his Republic, his City
+of the Sun, his Utopia, or his New Atlantis, amid the indifferent
+applause of mankind. But when his aim becomes practical and immediate,
+when he seeks to stir the heap by introducing into it the ruthless
+discomfort of an idea, a million littlenesses assail him with deadly
+enmity, and he is found sorrowfully protesting his amazement:--
+
+  I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs
+    By the known rules of ancient liberty,
+    When straight a barbarous noise environs me
+  Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs.
+
+So he is brought, with great reluctance, to the estimate of men which is
+expressed by Milton in _The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_; "being
+slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the
+public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule whereby they
+govern themselves. For indeed none can love freedom heartily but good
+men."
+
+Milton cannot claim the exemption from censure which is allowed to the
+theorists, the builders of ideal states somewhere in the clouds. On his
+own behalf he expressly disclaims any such intention. "To sequester out
+of the world," he says, "into Atlantic and Utopian politics, which never
+can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition; but to ordain wisely
+as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God has placed us
+unavoidably." Poetry might well have served him, if his object had been
+to add another to imaginary commonwealths. He took up with politics
+because he believed that in the disorder of the times his ideas might be
+made a "programme," and carried into effect.
+
+It was in 1641, when already "the vigour of the Parliament had begun to
+humble the pride of the bishops," that he first intervened. "I saw," he
+says, "that a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty; that
+the foundation was laying for the deliverance of mankind from the yoke of
+slavery and superstition.... I perceived that if I ever wished to be of
+use, I ought at least not to be wanting to my country, to the church, and
+to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of so much danger; I
+therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was
+engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to
+this one important object." So he wrote the treatise in two books, _Of
+Reformation in England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it._
+His later pamphlets are all similarly occasional in nature, written with
+a particular and definite object in view. In these he advocates as
+practicable and much-needed reforms, among other things, the
+establishment of a perpetual republic on the lines of an oligarchy; the
+abolition of bishops, religious ceremonials, liturgies, tithes, and,
+indeed, of all regular payment or salary given to ministers of religion;
+the supersession of universities and public schools by the erection of
+new academic institutions, combining the functions of both, "in every
+City throughout this Land"; the legalisation of free divorce; and the
+repeal of the ordinances compelling all books to be licensed. If he did
+not advocate, in any of the works put forth during his lifetime, the
+legal toleration of polygamy, it was probably only because he perceived
+that that, at least, did not fall within the scope of practical politics.
+He defends it in his posthumous treatise, _De Doctrina Christiana_.
+
+It will readily be seen that on almost all these questions Milton was not
+only--to use the foolish modern phrase--"in advance of his time," but
+also considerably in advance of ours. Twenty years after his death the
+Licensing Acts were abolished; for the rest, his reforms are yet to
+accomplish. It is an odd remark of one of his learned biographers that
+the _Areopagitica_ is the only one of all Milton's prose writings "whose
+topic is not obsolete." It is the only one of his prose writings whose
+thesis commands the general assent of modern readers, and is, therefore,
+from his own practical point of view, obsolete.
+
+The mere enumeration of his opinions suffices to show that Milton's is a
+sad case of the poet in politics. The labours of the twenty prime years
+of his manhood have been copiously bewailed. To have Pegasus in harness
+is bad enough; but when the waggon that he draws is immovably stuck in
+the mud, and he himself bespattered by his efforts, the spectacle is yet
+more pitiable. Many of his critics have expressed regret that he did not
+make for himself an artificial seclusion, and continue his purely
+poetical labours, with the classics for companions. The questions that
+drew him into politics were burning questions, it is true; but were there
+not others to deal with them, good, earnest, sensible, homely people?
+Samuel Butler has enumerated some of those who were dedicating their time
+and thought to politics at this important crisis:--
+
+  The oyster-women locked their fish up,
+  And trudged away to cry "No Bishop":
+  The mouse-trap men laid save-alls by,
+  And 'gainst ev'l counsellors did cry;
+  Botchers left old cloaths in the lurch,
+  And fell to turn and patch the Church;
+  Some cried the Covenant, instead
+  Of pudding-pies and ginger-bread,
+  And some for brooms, old boots and shoes,
+  Bawled out to purge the Common-house:
+  Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry
+  A gospel-preaching ministry;
+  And some for old shirts, coats or cloak,
+  No surplices nor service-book;
+  A strange harmonious inclination
+  Of all degrees to reformation.
+
+But what was Milton doing in this malodorous and noisy assembly? Might he
+not with all confidence have left the Church to the oyster-women, and the
+State to the mouse-trap men? The company that he kept with them ruined
+his manners; he had to speak loud in order to be heard, to speak broad in
+order to be respected; and so (bitterest thought of all!) he lost
+something of that sweet reasonableness which is a poet's proper grace.
+
+The answer to this strain of criticism is to be found in the study of
+Milton's works, poetry and prose--and perhaps best in the poetry. We
+could not have had anything at all like _Paradise Lost_ from a dainty,
+shy poet-scholar; nor anything half so great. The greatest men hold their
+power on this tenure, that they shall not husband it because the occasion
+that presents itself, although worthy of high effort, is not answerable
+to the refinement of their tastes. Milton, it is too often forgotten, was
+an Englishman. He held the privilege and the trust not cheap. When God
+intends some new and great epoch in human history, "what does he then,"
+this poet exultantly asks, "but reveal himself to his servants, and, as
+his manner is, first to his Englishmen?" To his chief work in poetry he
+was instigated by patriotic motives. "I applied myself," he says, "to
+that resolution which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo,
+to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my
+native tongue, not to make verbal curiosity the end (that were a toilsome
+vanity), but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest
+things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother
+dialect."
+
+There is plenty of "verbal curiosity" in Milton's poetry; he is in some
+respects the finest craftsman who ever handled the English speech: so
+that this declaration is the more timely to remind us by how wide a chasm
+he is separated from those modern greenhouse poets who move contentedly
+in an atmosphere of art ideals and art theories. He had his breeding from
+the ancient world, where AEschylus fought at Marathon, and he could not
+think of politics as of a separable part of human life.
+
+  To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
+  Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair,
+
+is a lyric ideal that may quite well consist with political indifference,
+but how should an epic inspiration be nourished where the prosperity of
+the State is lightly esteemed? Even had poetry lost by his political
+adventures, he would have been content that politics should gain. And
+politics did gain; for Milton's prose works raise every question they
+touch, even where they cannot truly be said to advance it. It is as
+unseemly for the politicians to complain of his choice, as it would be
+for the herdsmen of King Admetus to complain of the presence among them
+of a god. The large considerations and high passions imported into the
+treatment of practical questions by a Milton, or a Burke, have done much
+to keep even party politics at a high level in England, so that civil
+servants and journalists may join in the hymn of the herdsmen--
+
+  He has been our fellow, the morning of our days,
+  Us he chose for house-mates, and this way went.
+          God, of whom music
+          And song and blood are pure,
+          The day is never darkened
+          That had thee here obscure!
+
+In a long autobiographic passage in the _Second Defence of the People of
+England_ Milton makes a formal classification of his prose works written
+before that date. All of them, he says, were designed to promote Liberty.
+By the accidents of the time he was induced to treat first, in his
+anti-episcopal pamphlets, of religious liberty. Once that controversy was
+fairly ablaze, in the name of the same goddess he applied his incendiary
+torch to humbler piles. "I perceived," he says, "that there were three
+species of liberty which are essential to the happiness of social
+life--religious, domestic, and civil; and as I had already written
+concerning the first, and the magistrates were strenuously active in
+obtaining the third, I determined to turn my attention to the second, or
+the domestic species." He includes in this division of his work the
+Divorce pamphlets, the tractate _Of Education_, and the _Areopagitica_,
+as dealing with the "three material questions" (so he calls them) of
+domestic liberty, namely, "the conditions of the conjugal tie, the
+education of the children, and the free publication of the thoughts."
+
+It seems a strange conception of domestic liberty which makes it rest on
+a threefold support--divorce at will, an unrestrained printing-press, and
+the encyclopaedic education of polyglot children. But the truth is that
+Milton's classification is an after-thought. The pamphlets that he names
+were all written by him much about the same time, between 1643 and 1645;
+but the true history of their origin is more interesting and less
+symmetrical than the later invented scheme of classification. The Divorce
+pamphlets were written because Milton was unhappily married. The
+_Areopagitica_ was written because his heterodox views concerning
+marriage had brought him into collision with the Presbyterian censors of
+the press. His treatise on education was written because he had
+undertaken the education of his own nephews, and had become deeply
+interested in that question. In all three his own experience is the first
+motive; in all three that experience is concealed beneath a formidable
+array of general considerations, dogmatically propounded.
+
+The case is the same with regard to the pamphlets that treat of religious
+and civil liberty; they are not only occasional, but intensely personal,
+even in their origins. The earliest of them, the five ecclesiastical
+pamphlets of the year 1641, deal with a question which had been of
+intimate concern to Milton ever since the beginning of his Cambridge
+days. The celebrated controversy with Salmasius and his abettors,
+concerning the death of King Charles, is a gladiatorial combat from which
+every element save the personal is often absent. In these bouts offensive
+biography and defensive autobiography serve for sword and shield. This
+personal character of the prose writings, while it has repelled some
+readers interested mainly in the questions discussed, has attracted
+others who are interested chiefly in the writer. A rich harvest of
+personal allusion has been gathered from the controversial treatises, and
+perhaps, even now, the field has not been gleaned to the last ear. It is
+worthy of remark, for instance, how Milton's pre-occupation with the
+themes which he had already pondered, and turned this way and that in his
+mind, to test their fitness for a monumental work, shows itself in his
+choice of figure and allusion. Attention has often been called to the
+elaborate comparison, founded on the history of Samson, in _The Reason of
+Church Government urged against Prelaty_:--
+
+"I cannot better liken the state and person of a king than to that mighty
+Nazarite Samson; who being disciplined from his birth in the precepts and
+the practice of temperance and sobriety, without the strong drink of
+injurious and excessive desires, grows up to a noble strength and
+perfection with those his illustrious and sunny locks, the laws, waving
+and curling about his god-like shoulders. And while he keeps them about
+him undiminished and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an ass, that is,
+with the word of his meanest officer, suppress and put to confusion
+thousands of those that rise against his just power. But laying down his
+head among the strumpet flatteries of prelates, while he sleeps and
+thinks no harm, they, wickedly shaving off all those bright and weighty
+tresses of his law, and just prerogatives, which were his ornament and
+strength, deliver him over to indirect and violent counsels, which, as
+those Philistines, put out the fair and far-sighted eyes of his natural
+discerning, and make him grind in the prison-house of their sinister ends
+and practices upon him: till he, knowing this prelatical rasor to have
+bereft him of his wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair, the
+golden beams of law and right; and they, sternly shook, thunder with ruin
+upon the heads of those his evil counsellors, but not without great
+affliction to himself."
+
+This ingenious allegorical application naturally finds no place in the
+grave poem of Milton's latest years. And yet, in one passage at least,
+his earlier love for the high-figured style took him captive again. The
+strong drink from which the Samson of the play abstains is strong drink,
+not "injurious and excessive desires." There is no hint of prelatical
+conspiracy in the enticements of Dalila. But perhaps some faint
+reminiscence of his earlier fable concerning Samson's hair recurred to
+Milton's mind when he gave to Manoa a speech comparing the locks of the
+hero to the strength, not of the law, but of a nation in arms:--
+
+  And I persuade me God had not permitted
+  His strength again to grow up with his hair,
+  Garrisoned round about him like a camp
+  Of faithful soldiery, were not his purpose
+  To use him further yet in some great service.
+
+The theme of _Samson Agonistes_ had thus already taken possession of
+Milton's imagination when he wrote his first prose tractates. But the
+same writings furnish even stronger evidence of his early dallyings with
+the theme of _Paradise Lost_. "It was from out the rind of one apple
+tasted," he says in the _Areopagitica_, "that the knowledge of good and
+evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world." And
+again, in _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_:--"The academics and
+stoics ... knew not what a consummate and most adorned Pandora was
+bestowed upon Adam, to be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happiness
+and perseverance, I mean, his native innocence and perfection, which
+might have kept him from being our true Epimetheus." Some of these
+references show the imaginative scheme of the _Paradise Lost_ in the
+process of building. In one passage, for instance, of the last quoted
+treatise, Milton expounds the pagan belief that God punishes his enemies
+most when he throws them furthest from him:--"Which then they held he
+did, when he blinded, hardened, and stirred up his offenders, to finish
+and pile up their desperate work since they had undertaken it. To banish
+for ever into a local hell, whether in the air or in the centre, or in
+that uttermost and bottomless gulf of chaos, deeper from holy bliss than
+the world's diameter multiplied, they thought not a punishing so proper
+and proportionate for God to inflict as to punish sin with sin." It would
+seem as if the poet had not as yet fixed the situation of his local hell,
+but remained suspended between rival theories. The other idea, of the
+Divine permission and impulse given to hardened sinners, finds a
+conspicuous place in the poem. In one instance, at least, a figure drawn
+from the story of the Creation is violently handled to serve strange
+uses. The evolution of the four elements from the chaotic welter of hot,
+cold, moist, and dry, is adduced as a proof that the laws of God and of
+nature approve free divorce:--"By his divorcing command the world first
+rose out of chaos, nor can be renewed again out of confusion, but by the
+separating of unmeet consorts."
+
+Allusions of this kind occur most frequently in the earlier prose
+writings, while the studies that had been interrupted by controversy were
+yet fresh in Milton's memory. They would hardly be worth the quotation,
+were it not that they are another evidence of the transparency of his
+mind. In looking through his prose works you see traces of all that was
+engaging his imagination and thought at the time. Poetry is the highest
+of expressive arts; and poets are the worst dissemblers or economisers of
+truth in the world. Their knowledge, like their feeling, possesses them,
+and must find expression as argument, or illustration, or figure,
+whatever the immediate matter in hand. The prose works of Milton are
+thus, from first to last, an exposition of himself. The divorce
+pamphlets, especially, are hot with smothered personal feeling. Long
+years afterwards, when time and change had softened and blurred it in
+memory, his early misadventure was reflected in more than one passage of
+the later poems. The humble plaint of Eve, and the description of her
+reunion with her alienated lord, in the Tenth Book of _Paradise Lost_,
+doubtless contains, as has often been said, some reflection of what took
+place at a similar interview in 1645, when Mistress Mary Milton returned
+to her offended husband. That one principal cause of the rupture has been
+rightly divined, by Mr. Mark Pattison and others, is probable from
+certain remarkable lines in the Eighth Book, where Adam describes how he
+was presented with his bride:--
+
+                      On she came,
+  Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen,
+  And guided by his voice, nor uninformed
+  Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites.
+
+Even at so wide a remove of time, the poet's wounded pride finds
+expression in this singular theory--or, rather, in this more than dubious
+piece of self-justification.
+
+But although the hurt he had suffered, in his most susceptible feelings,
+gives eloquence and plangency to his divorce pamphlets, it was not merely
+to voice his sufferings that he wrote those pamphlets. Most men in
+Milton's position, married to "a nothing, a desertrice, an adversary,"
+would have recognised that theirs was one of those exceptional cases for
+which the law cannot provide, and would have sat down under their unhappy
+chance, to bear it or mitigate it as best they might. Some poets of the
+time of the Romantic Revival would have claimed the privilege of genius
+to be a law unto itself; the law of the State being designed for the
+common rout, whose lesser sensibilities and weaker individuality make
+them amenable to its discipline. Milton did neither the one thing nor the
+other. The modern idolatry of genius was as yet uninvented; he was a
+citizen first, a poet and an unhappy man afterwards. He directed his
+energies to proving, not that he should be exempted from the operation of
+the law, but that the law itself should be changed. He had entered into
+marriage, with full ceremonial ushering, by the main door; he would go
+out the same way, or not at all. Thus even in this most personal matter
+he pleads, not for himself, but for the commonweal. He cannot conceive of
+happiness as of a private possession, to be secretly enjoyed; it stands
+rooted, like justice, in the wise and equal ordinances of the State; and
+the only freedom that he values is freedom under the law.
+
+Like the citizen of some antique state, he discourses of marriage in the
+market-place. In his efforts to be persuasive, both here and in the
+_Areopagitica_, he humbles himself to management and the seasonings of
+flattery. It is a new trade for him, and suits oddly with his pride. But
+he hoped much, at this time, from the Parliament, that "select assembly,"
+containing so many "worthy senators" and "Christian reformers," "judges
+and lawgivers." In the enthusiasm of his hopes, he credits them with a
+desire "to imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece," with a wisdom
+greater than that of the Athenian Parliament, with a magnanimous
+willingness to repeal their own acts at the dictate of the voice of
+reason. And all this at a time when the Presbyterians were in the
+ascendant, intent upon establishing a discipline neither old, nor
+elegant, nor humane, so little acquainted with Greece, that it was one of
+Selden's amusements to confute their divines by citing a reading from the
+Greek Testament. Milton was destined to grievous disappointment, and his
+rage against the Presbyterians, in some of his later pamphlets, was the
+fiercer.
+
+But although his pamphlets are both occasional and personal, and even
+address themselves at times to conciliation and persuasion, the views
+that they advocate and the system of thought that underlies them were not
+the products of time and accident. Milton was an idealist, pure and
+simple, in politics. Had he lived under the Tudor sovereigns, he would
+have been reduced, with Sir Thomas More, Montaigne, and John Barclay, the
+author of _Argenis_, to express himself by way of romance and allegory.
+It was his fortune to live at a time when the Tudor state system was
+breaking up with appalling suddenness, and along with it the Tudor
+compromise in the affairs of the Church, imposed from above upon an
+unawakened people, was falling into wreckage. Here was an opportunity
+that has not often, in the world's history, come to a poet, of realising
+the dream that he had dreamed in his study, of setting up again, for the
+admiration and comfort of posterity, the model of an ancient Republic.
+
+The best of all Milton's critics has left us the worst account of his
+political opinions. Johnson's censure of _Lycidas_, much as it has been
+ridiculed and decried, is judicious and discerning compared with his
+explanation of Milton's political creed:--"Milton's republicanism was, I
+am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire
+of independence, in petulance impatient of control, and pride disdainful
+of superiority. He hated monarchs in the State, and prelates in the
+Church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be
+suspected that his predominant desire was to destroy, rather than
+establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance
+to authority." It may, at least, be credited to Johnson for moderation,
+that he requires only four of the Seven Deadly Sins, to wit, Pride, Envy,
+Anger, and Sloth, to explain Milton's political tenets. Had he permitted
+himself another sentence, an easy place might surely have been made for
+Gluttony, Luxury, and Covetousness, the three whose absence cannot fail
+to be remarked by any lover of thorough and detailed treatment in these
+intricate problems of human character.
+
+If, in our more modern fashion, we seek for the origin of Milton's ideas
+in his education, his habits of thought, and his admirations, we shall be
+obliged to admit that they are all rooted in his conception of the
+ancient City State. It was the wish of Thomas Hobbes to abolish the study
+of Greek and Latin in our schools and colleges, because this study
+fosters a love of freedom, and unfits men to be the subjects of an
+absolute monarch. His happiest illustration would have been the case of
+his contemporary, Milton. Yet in all Milton's writings there is no trace
+of the modern democratic doctrine of equality. A hearing is all that he
+claims. So far from hating greatness, he carries his admiration for it,
+for personal virtue and prowess, almost to excess. The poet who described
+the infernal conclave in the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_ was not
+likely to be insensible to the part played in politics by men of eminent
+and dominating personality. To think of free government as of an engine
+for depressing unusual merit was impossible for Milton. He lived in an
+age that had found in Plutarch's men its highest ideals of political
+character. Never, since their own day, had the "noble Grecians and
+Romans" exercised so irresistible a fascination on the minds of men, or
+so real an influence on the affairs of the State, as was theirs at the
+time of the Renaissance. The mist in which they had long been enveloped
+was swept away, and these colossal figures of soldiers, patriots, and
+counsellors loomed large and clear across the ages, their majesty
+enhanced by distance and by art, which conspire to efface all that is
+accidental, petty, and distracting. We cannot see these figures as they
+appeared to the Renaissance world. One of the chief results of modern
+historical labour and research has been that it has peopled the Middle
+Ages for us, and interposed a whole society of living men, our ancestors,
+between us and ancient Rome. But in Milton's time this process was only
+beginning; the collections and researches that made it possible were
+largely the work of his contemporaries,--and were despised by him. When
+he looked back on the world's history, from his own standpoint, he saw,
+near at hand and stretching away into the distance, a desert, from which
+a black mass of cloud had just been lifted; and, across the desert, lying
+fair under the broad sunshine, a city--
+
+  With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,
+  Turrets and terrasses, and glittering spires.
+
+It was towards this ancient civic life, with its arts and arms and long
+renown, that he reached forth passionate hands of yearning. The
+intervening tract, whither his younger feet had wandered, almost ceased
+to exist for him; the paladins and ladies of mediaeval story were the
+deceitful mirage of the desert; the true life of antiquity lay beyond. In
+all his allusions to the great themes of romance two things are
+noticeable: first, how deeply his imagination had been stirred by them,
+so that they are used as a last crown of decoration in some of the most
+exalted passages of his great poems; and next, how careful he is to stamp
+them as fiction. His studies for the early _History of Britain_ had
+cloyed him with legends conveyed from book to book. Once convinced that
+no certain historical ground could be found for the feet among the whole
+mass of these traditions, Milton ceased to regard them as eligible
+subjects for his greatest poem. But their beauty dwelt with him; the
+memory of the embattled chivalry of Arthur and Charlemagne recurs to him
+when he is seeking for the topmost reach of human power and splendour
+that he may belittle it by the side of Satan's rebel host; and the
+specious handmaidens who served the Tempter's phantom banquet in the
+desert are described as lovely beyond what has been
+
+                  Fabled since
+  Of fairy damsels met in forest wide
+  By Knights of Logres, or of Lyones,
+  Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore.
+
+If Milton's attitude to mediaeval romance is one of regretful suspicion,
+his attitude to the greatest of mediaeval institutions is one of bitter
+contempt. He inveighs even against the "antiquitarians," such as Camden,
+who, he says, "cannot but love bishops as well as old coins and his much
+lamented monasteries, for antiquity's sake." For near twelve hundred
+years these same bishops "have been in England to our souls a sad and
+doleful succession of illiterate and blind guides." It is needless to
+multiply extracts illustrative of Milton's opinions on the Church; behind
+the enormous wealth of rhetoric and invective poured forth in his
+pamphlets, the opinions that he holds are few and simple. When he had
+been disappointed by the Presbyterians, and had finally turned from them,
+his beliefs inclined more and more, in two points at least, to the tenets
+of the newly arisen sect of Quakers--to a pure spiritualism in religion,
+and the complete separation of Church and State. Their horror of war he
+never shared. The model of the Church he sought in the earliest records
+of Christianity, and less and less even there; the model of the State in
+the ancient republics. All subsequent experience and precedent was to him
+a hindrance and a mischief. So rapidly and easily does his mind leap from
+the ancient to the modern world, that even when he speaks of his love for
+the drama, as in his first Latin elegy or in _Il Penseroso_, it is
+sometimes difficult to say whether he is thinking of the Elizabethan or
+of the Attic dramatists.
+
+The lodestar of his hopes is liberty, his main end the establishment of
+"a free commonwealth." He knows as well as Montesquieu that democracy in
+its pristine dignity can be erected only on a wide foundation of public
+virtue. "To govern well," he declares in the treatise _Of Reformation in
+England_, "is to train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that
+which springs from thence, magnanimity (take heed of that), and that
+which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness to God,
+which in one word we call godliness;... other things follow as the shadow
+does the substance." In the same pamphlet this envious hater of greatness
+remarks that "to govern a nation piously and justly, which only is to say
+happily, is for a spirit of the greatest size, and divinest mettle." And
+men worthy of this description had, as it seemed to him, arisen in his
+own time. His praise of Cromwell and the leaders associated with him is
+almost extravagant in its enthusiasm. "While you, O Cromwell, are left
+among us, he hardly shows a proper confidence in the Supreme, who
+distrusts the security of England, when he sees that you are in so
+special a manner the favoured object of the Divine regard." His mind is
+full of the achievements of Cyrus, Epaminondas, and Scipio; he denies to
+the Protector no honour that may be drawn from these high comparisons.
+And then, as in _Lycidas_, so also in _The Second Defence of the People
+of England_, Milton concludes his celebration of another by a return to
+himself and his pride in a duty fulfilled. Opportunity, he declares, is
+offered for great achievements; if it be not seized, posterity will judge
+"that men only were wanting for the execution; while they were not
+wanting who could rightly counsel, exhort, inspire, and bind an unfading
+wreath of praise round the brows of the illustrious actors in so glorious
+a scene."
+
+In the measures that he recommends to Cromwell as necessary for the
+public welfare, his mistakes are the generous errors of an idealist. He
+writes as if all were either Cromwells or Miltons, and worthy of the
+fullest measure of liberty. "Now the time seems come," he exclaims,
+"wherein Moses, the great prophet, may sit in heaven rejoicing to see
+that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfilled, when not only our
+seventy elders, but all the Lord's people, are become prophets." His
+general propositions on the function of law are unimpeachable. "He who
+wisely would restrain the reasonable soul of man within due bounds, must
+first himself know perfectly how far the territory and dominion extends
+of just and honest liberty. As little must he offer to bind that which
+God hath loosened as to loosen that which He hath bound. The ignorance
+and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all the
+misery that hath been since Adam." But with the application to issues of
+the day it appears that the mistake has been all one way. "Laws are
+usually worse in proportion as they are more numerous." The free spirit
+of man can govern him without "a garrison upon his neck of empty and
+over-dignified precepts."
+
+Whether he treat of religion, of education, of divorce, or of civil
+government, the error is always the same, a confidence too absolute in
+the capacity and integrity of the reasonable soul of man. A liturgy, for
+example, is intolerable, because it is a slur upon the extemporary
+effusions of ministers of the Gospel. "Well may men of eminent gifts set
+forth as many forms and helps to prayer as they please; but to impose
+them on ministers lawfully called and sufficiently tried ... is a
+supercilious tyranny, impropriating the Spirit of God to themselves."
+Milton, we know, did not habitually attend public worship at any of the
+conventicles of the sectaries, or perhaps he might have found reason to
+modify this censure.
+
+Some of his impassioned pleadings were possibly not wholly without effect
+on the politics of the time. It is interesting, at any rate, to find
+Cromwell, in his letter written in 1650 to the Governor of Edinburgh
+Castle, adopting one of the main arguments of the _Areopagitica_, and
+enforcing it against the Presbyterians by a figure which may have been
+borrowed from that tract. "Your pretended fear," he writes, "lest error
+should step in, is like the man who would keep all wine out of the
+country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise
+jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition that
+he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge." But Cromwell never
+applied his logic to the removal of the restraint upon printing, which by
+this same argument Milton had judged to be "the greatest displeasure and
+indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be put upon him." He was
+too practical a statesman to be frightened into logic by a little paper
+shot.
+
+Logical Milton always was. He learned little or nothing from the
+political events of his time. He was throughout consistent with himself;
+prepared to take any risks that his advocacy might bring upon him, not
+prepared to forego or modify his opinions because of human incompetence
+or human imbecility. Between the consistent and unflinching Royalists on
+the one hand, and the consistent and unflinching Republicans on the
+other, the most of the population of England wavered and hung. But
+half-measures and half-heartedness were alike unintelligible to Milton.
+He fell upon the Presbyterians when they showed a disposition to palter
+with the logical consequences of their own action, and scourged them
+unmercifully. They had "banded and borne arms against their king,
+divested him, disanointed him, nay, cursed him all over in their pulpits,
+and their pamphlets." But when once the king was brought to trial, then
+"he who but erewhile in the pulpits was a cursed tyrant, an enemy to God
+and saints, laden with all the innocent blood spilt in three kingdoms,
+and so to be fought against, is now, though nothing penitent or altered
+from his first principles, a lawful magistrate, a sovereign lord, the
+Lord's anointed, not to be touched, though by themselves imprisoned." He
+prepares for them a similar dilemma, between the horns of which they have
+since been content to dwell, in his treatment of the question of divorce:
+"They dare not affirm that marriage is either a sacrament or a mystery
+... and yet they invest it with such an awful sanctity, and give it such
+adamantine chains to bind with, as if it were to be worshipped like some
+Indian deity, when it can confer no blessing upon us, but works more and
+more to our misery."
+
+Milton's astonishment and indignation in cases like these are a
+convincing evidence of his inability to understand average politics, and
+that world of convenience, precaution, and compromise which is their
+native place. His own tenacity and constancy have something grim about
+them. Andrew Marvell, in his tract called _The Rehearsal Transposed_,
+speaking of the intolerance of his adversary, Samuel Parker, says: "If
+you have a mind to die, or to be of his party (there are but these two
+conditions), you may perhaps be rendered capable of his charity." Neither
+of these two conditions was a certain title to the charity of Milton. In
+the _Eikonoklastes_ he pursues the dead king with jibe and taunt, and
+exults over the smallest advantage gained. The opening words of the tract
+show him conscious of the difficulty and delicacy of the part he acted in
+making war on one who had "paid his final debt to nature and his faults."
+But what then? If the king, being dead, could speak, the dead king must
+be answered, and his gauntlet taken up "in the behalf of liberty and the
+commonwealth."
+
+The manner in which he conducts this and other controversies has brought
+upon Milton's head universal reproach. He is intemperate and violent, he
+heaps up personal scurrilities against his adversaries, and triumphs in
+their misfortunes. There is nothing wherein our age more differs from his
+than in the accepted rules governing controversy, and he has lost
+estimation accordingly. Yet not a few critics, it may be suspected, have
+allowed their dislike of the thing he says to hurry them into an
+exaggerated censure on his manner of saying it. It is important, in the
+first place, to remember that his violences are not the violences of the
+hired rhetorician. He was prepared to stand by what he wrote, and he knew
+the risks that he ran in those shifting and uncertain times. His life was
+in danger at the Restoration, and was saved by some unknown piece of good
+fortune or clemency. He was not a coward reviler, a "tongue-doughty
+giant," whose ears are the most delicate part about him, but an open
+fighter, who got as good as he gave. And then it is sometimes forgotten
+that the most scurrilous of Milton's pamphlets were written in Latin, a
+language which has always enjoyed an excellent liberty in the matter of
+personal abuse; while even his English pamphlets, wherein at times he
+shows almost as pretty a talent in reviling, were written for an audience
+inured to the habitual amenities of Latin controversy. Sir Thomas More
+was famous for his knack of calling bad names in good Latin, yet his
+posterity rise up and call him blessed. Milton, like More, observed the
+rules of the game, which allowed practices condemned in the modern
+literary prize-ring. He calls Salmasius a poor grammarian, a pragmatical
+coxcomb, a silly little scholar, a mercenary advocate, a loggerhead, a
+hare-brained blunderbuss, a witless brawler, a mongrel cur; he reproaches
+him with the domestic tyranny put upon him by that barking she-wolf, his
+wife, and winds up with an elaborate comparison (not wholly unfamiliar to
+modern methods of controversy) between Salmasius and Judas. With his
+nameless opponent in the Divorce quarrel he deals--this time in
+English--no less contemptuously: "I mean not to dispute philosophy with
+this pork, who never read any." The creature is a conspicuous gull, an
+odious fool, a dolt, an idiot, a groom, a rank pettifogger, a
+presumptuous losel, a clown, a vice, a huckster-at-law, whose "jabberment
+is the flashiest and the fustiest that ever corrupted in such an
+unswilled hogshead." "What should a man say more to a snout in this
+pickle? What language can be low and degenerate enough?" In the _Apology_
+for Smectymnuus, Milton sets forth his own defence of his acrimony and
+violence: "There may be a sanctified bitterness," he remarks, "against
+the enemies of the truth;" and he dares to quote the casuistry of Electra
+in _Sophocles_:--
+
+  'Tis you that say it, not I. You do the deeds,
+  And your ungodly deeds find me the words.
+
+The exigencies of controversy revealed in Milton not only an
+inexhaustible store of coarse invective, but also, at times, the flash of
+real wit. "My fate," he says, with some sense of the incongruity of the
+thing, "extorts from me a talent of sport, which I had thought to hide in
+a napkin." We are privileged to hear Milton laugh. It is not mirthful nor
+gentle laughter, but rather the fierce, harsh, vehement laughter of the
+Hebrew Psalms, the laughter of scorn, the shooting out of the lips, the
+saying "Ha, ha." He speaks with his mouth, and swords are in his lips.
+Thus, of Alexander Morus, Professor of Sacred History at Amsterdam, whom
+he suspected to be the author of a tract in support of Salmasius, he
+says: "There is one More, part Frenchman and part Scot, so that one
+country or one people cannot be quite overwhelmed with the whole infamy
+of his extraction"; and he indulges himself in a debauch of punning on
+_Morus_, the Latin word for a mulberry. In the prelatical controversy,
+after discussing with his opponent the meaning of the word "angel," he
+continues: "It is not ordination nor jurisdiction that is angelical, but
+the heavenly message of the Gospel, which is the office of all ministers
+alike.... And if you will contend still for a superiority in one person,
+you must ground it better than from this metaphor, which you may now
+deplore as the axe-head that fell into the water, and say, 'Alas, master!
+for it was borrowed'; unless you have as good a faculty to make iron
+swim, as you had to make light froth sink." In the _Apology_ for
+Smectymnuus he heaps one grotesque comparison on another. His adversary,
+the son of Bishop Hall, is like "some empiric of false accusations to try
+his poisons upon me, whether they would work or not." The learning that
+was displayed by the champion of Episcopacy and the very typographical
+arrangement of his book incur an equal contempt: the margin of his
+treatise "is the sluice most commonly that feeds the drought of his
+text.... Nor yet content with the wonted room of his margin, but he must
+cut out large docks and creeks into his text, to unlade the foolish
+frigate of his unseasonable authorities." His best folios "are
+predestined to no better end than to make winding-sheets in Lent for
+pilchers." With this last stroke Milton is so well pleased that he
+repeats the same prediction in an elaborated form over the works of
+Salmasius, and even celebrates in numerous verse the forethought and
+bounty of one who has thus taken pity on the nakedness of fishes.
+
+The fantastic nature of these quips and taunts reminds us that Milton
+belonged to the age of the metaphysical poets and satirists, the age of
+Cowley, and Cleveland, and Butler. His prose works have been searched
+chiefly for passages that may be used to illustrate his poetry; and
+although the search has been rewarded with many natural coincidences of
+expression, not a few passages of lofty self-confidence, and some
+raptures of poetic metaphor, the result has been in the main a
+disappointment. His admirers, too jealous for the poetic dignity of their
+hero, have turned away sorrowfully from this memorial heap of odd-shaped
+missiles, hurled from his dire left hand for the confusion of his
+enemies. And yet, rightly judged, there is instruction, and an increased
+reverence for the poet, to be found in these also--in all that wild array
+of subjects and methods which he commands for the purposes of his prose,
+but dismisses from the service of his verse. It was a strict and rare
+selection that he made among the auxiliaries when he addressed himself to
+the more arduous attempt. Here and there, even in _Paradise Lost_, his
+education in the handling of satire and invective stood him in stead. The
+poem contains more than one "flyting"--to use the Scottish term--and the
+high war of words between Satan and Abdiel in heaven, or between Satan
+and Gabriel on earth, could not have been handled save by a master of all
+the weapons of verbal fence and all the devices of wounding invective. In
+the great close of the Fourth Book, especially, where the arch-fiend and
+the archangel retaliate defiance, and tower, in swift alternate flights,
+to higher and higher pitches of exultant scorn, Milton puts forth all his
+strength, and brings into action a whole armoury of sarcasm and insult
+whetted and polished from its earlier prosaic exercise. Even the
+grotesque element in his humour is not wholly excluded from the _Paradise
+Lost_; it has full scope, for once, in the episodical description of the
+Paradise of Fools--that barren continent, beaten on by the storms of
+chaos, dark save for some faint glimmerings from the wall of heaven, the
+inhabitants a disordered and depraved multitude of philosophers,
+crusaders, monks, and friars, blown like leaves into the air by the winds
+that sweep those desert tracts. Unlike the Paradise that was lost, this
+paradise is wholly of Milton's invention, and is the best extant monument
+to that spirit of mockery and savage triumph which is all the humour that
+he knows.
+
+The style of his prose works is a style formed upon oratorical models.
+The long winding sentence, propped on epithets and festooned with
+digressions, was the habitual vehicle of his meaning. The effect it
+produces at its best was well described by Marvell, who, in a letter to
+Milton thanking him for a copy of the _Defence of the People of England_,
+remarks: "When I consider how equally it turns and rises with so many
+figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding ascent we see
+embossed the several monuments of your learned victories." The clink of
+the rhyming couplet was not more displeasing to Milton's ear than the
+continued emphatic bark of a series of short sentences. Accustomed as he
+was to the heavy-armed processional manner of scholarly Renaissance
+prose, he felt it an indignity to "lie at the mercy of a coy, flirting
+style; to be girded with frumps and curtal jibes, by one who makes
+sentences by the statute, as if all above three inches long were
+confiscate." Later on in the _Apology_ he returns to this grievance, and
+describes how his adversary "sobs me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes,
+wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in
+which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of
+well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring posies."
+The men of the Renaissance despised the homely savour of the native
+English syntax with its rude rhetoric and abrupt logic and its lore of
+popular adages and maxims; they had learned to taste a subtler pleasure
+in the progressive undulations of a long mobile sentence, rising and
+falling alternately, reaching the limit of its height towards the middle,
+and at the close either dying away or breaking in a sudden crash of
+unexpected downward emphasis. This is the sentence preferred by Milton,
+and, where haste or zeal does not interfere with the leisurely ordering,
+handled by him with excellent skill. At its best and at its worst alike
+his prose is the prose of a poet. His sentences rarely conform to any
+strict periodic model; each idea, as it occurs to him, brings with it a
+train of variation and enrichment, which, by the time the sentence
+closes, is often found in sole possession. The architecture depends on
+melody rather than on logic. The emphasis and burden of the thought
+generally hangs on the epithets, descriptive terms, and phrases, which he
+strengthens by arranging them in pairs, after a fashion much practised by
+poets. Thus, to take a few examples from the Divorce pamphlets, a wife,
+who should be "an intimate and speaking help," "a ready and reviving
+associate," to comfort "the misinformed and wearied life of man" with "a
+sweet and gladsome society," is too often "a mute and spiritless mate,"
+united to her husband in "a disconsolate and unenjoined matrimony,"
+whereby the blessing that was expected with her is changed "into a
+familiar and coinhabiting mischief, at least into a drooping and
+disconsolate household captivity, without refuge or redemption." "The
+mystical and blessed union of marriage can be no way more unhallowed and
+profaned, than by the forcible uniting of such disunions and
+separations." "And it is a less breach of wedlock to part with wise and
+quiet consent betimes, than still to foil and profane that mystery of joy
+and union with a polluting sadness and perpetual distemper."
+
+The balance of epithet, the delicate music, the sentence that resembles a
+chain with link added to link rather than a hoop whose ends are welded
+together by the hammer--these are the characteristics of Milton's prose.
+They are illustrated in that short passage of the _Areopagitica_, well
+known to all readers of English: "I cannot praise a fugitive and
+cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and
+seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal
+garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." Or in the striking
+description of London during the Civil War: "Behold now this vast city, a
+city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded
+with his protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and
+hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed
+justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads
+there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new
+notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their
+fealty, the approaching reformation; others as fast reading, trying all
+things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement."
+
+This sonorous balance of phrase and epithet cannot always escape what
+Milton himself calls "the heathenish battology of multiplying words." It
+serves the uses of rhetoric rather than of logic, and by the fervour of
+its repetitions and enlargements unfits his prose for the plainer
+purposes of argument or exposition. His argument is sometimes destroyed
+or blemished by the fire that it kindles, his narrative overwhelmed in
+the tide of passions that it sways.
+
+His vocabulary is extraordinarily rich, and here again the contrast is
+great between his prose and his verse. A full-bodied and picturesque
+dictionary might be made of the words that occur only in the prose. Most
+of these words would be found to derive from the Saxon stock, which
+yields him almost all his store of invective and vituperation. The
+resources of his Latinised vocabulary enable him to rise by successive
+gyrations to a point of vantage above his prey, and then the downward
+rush that strikes the quarry is a Saxon monosyllable. In this cardinal
+point of art for those who have to do with the English speech he became
+the teacher of Burke, who, with a lesser wealth of Saxon at his command,
+employed it with a more telling parsimony.
+
+Milton avoids no word of humble origin, so it serve his purpose. His
+contempt finds voice in such expressions as to "huddle" prayers, and to
+"keck" at wholesome food. Gehazi "rooks" from Naaman; the bishops "prog
+and pander for fees," and are "the common stales to countenance every
+politic fetch that was then on foot." The Presbyterians were earnest
+enough "while pluralities greased them thick and deep"; the gentlemen who
+accompanied King Charles in his assault on the privileges of the House of
+Commons were "the spawn and shipwreck of taverns and dicing-houses." The
+people take their religion from their minister "by scraps and mammocks,
+as he dispenses it in his Sunday's dole"; and "the superstitious man by
+his good will is an atheist, but being scared from thence by the pangs
+and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in a pudder shuffles up to
+himself such a God and such a worship as is most agreeable to remedy his
+fear."
+
+There were few incidents in Milton's career, from his personal relations
+with his college tutor to his choice of blank verse for his epic, that he
+was not called upon at some time or other in his life to explain and
+defend. When his free use of homely figures and turns of speech was
+objected to him, his answer was ready: "Doth not Christ Himself teach the
+highest things by the similitude of old bottles and patched clothes? Doth
+He not illustrate best things by things most evil? His own coming to be
+as a thief in the night, and the righteous man's wisdom to that of an
+unjust steward?" But the defence is misleading, for the rules that
+governed Milton's usage are not what it would suggest. When he came to
+treat of the best and highest things his use of native English became
+more sparing and dainty, while the rank, strong words that smack of the
+home soil were all foregone.
+
+His prose works, therefore, help us to appreciate better the tribulations
+of the process whereby he became a classic poet. Eclecticism and the
+severe castigation of style are dangerous disciplines for any but a rich
+temperament; from others they produce only what is exquisite and thin and
+vapid. The "stylist" of the modern world is generally an interesting
+invalid; his complexion would lose all its transparency if it were
+exposed to the weather; his weak voice would never make itself heard in
+the hubbub of the bazaar. Sunbeams cannot be extracted from cucumbers,
+nor can the great manner in literature emanate from a chill self-culture.
+But Milton inherited the fulness and vigour of the Elizabethans, and so
+could afford to write an epic poem in a selection of the language really
+used by men. The grandeur of _Paradise Lost_ or _Samson Agonistes_ could
+never, by any conceivable device of chemistry or magic, be compounded
+from delicate sensibilities and a superfine ear for music. For the
+material of those palaces whole provinces were pillaged, and the waste
+might furnish forth a city.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+PARADISE LOST: THE SCHEME
+
+
+A prerogative place among the great epics of the world has sometimes been
+claimed for _Paradise Lost_, on the ground that the theme it handles is
+vaster and of a more universal human interest than any handled by
+Milton's predecessors. It concerns itself with the fortunes, not of a
+city or an empire, but of the whole human race, and with that particular
+event in the history of the race which has moulded all its destinies.
+Around this event, the plucking of an apple, are ranged, according to the
+strictest rules of the ancient epic, the histories of Heaven and Earth
+and Hell. The scene of the action is Universal Space. The time
+represented is Eternity. The characters are God and all his Creatures.
+And all these are exhibited in the clearest and most inevitable relation
+with the main event, so that there is not an incident, hardly a line of
+the poem, but leads backwards or forwards to those central lines in the
+Ninth Book:--
+
+    So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
+  Forth-reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat.
+  Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
+  Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
+  That all was lost.
+
+From this point radiates a plot so immense in scope, that the history of
+the world from the first preaching of the Gospel to the Millennium
+occupies only some fifty lines of Milton's epilogue. And if the plot be
+vast, the stage is large enough to set it forth. The size of Milton's
+theatre gives to his imagination those colossal scenical opportunities
+which are turned to such magnificent account. De Quincey enumerates some
+of them--"Heaven opening to eject her rebellious children; the
+unvoyageable depths of ancient Chaos, with its 'anarch old' and its
+eternal war of wrecks; these traversed by that great leading Angel that
+drew after him the third part of the heavenly host; earliest Paradise
+dawning upon the warrior-angel out of this far-distant 'sea without
+shore' of chaos; the dreadful phantoms of Sin and Death, prompted by
+secret sympathy and snuffing the distant scent of 'mortal change on
+earth,' chasing the steps of their great progenitor and sultan; finally
+the heart-freezing visions, shown and narrated to Adam, of human misery
+through vast successions of shadowy generations: all these scenical
+opportunities offered in the _Paradise Lost_ become in the hands of the
+mighty artist elements of undying grandeur not matched on earth."
+
+All these grandeurs and beauties are as real and living to-day as they
+were on the day when Milton conceived them. But the other advantage
+claimed for his epic, that it deals with matters of the dearest concern
+to all of us, has been sharply questioned. It was Mr. Pattison's
+complaint of _Paradise Lost_ that in it "Milton has taken a scheme of
+life for life itself," and that it requires a violent effort from the
+modern reader to accommodate his conceptions to the anthropomorphic
+theology of the poem. The world is now thickly peopled with men and women
+who, having bestowed their patronage on other ancestors, care little
+about Adam and Eve, and who therefore feel that Milton's poem is wanting
+in the note of actuality. Satan himself is not what he used to be; he is
+doubly fallen, in the esteem of his victims as well as of his Maker, and
+indeed
+
+  Comes to the place where he before had sat
+  Among the prime in splendour, now deposed,
+  Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned,
+  A spectacle of ruin.
+
+"He who aspires," says Mr. Pattison, "to be the poet of a nation is bound
+to adopt a hero who is already dear to that people." But how if the hero
+subsequently fall out of vogue, and his name lose its power with a fickle
+populace? Can even a poet save him?
+
+The drifting away of the popular belief from the tenets of Milton's
+theology doubtless does something to explain the lukewarm interest taken
+by most educated English readers in _Paradise Lost_. But it is a mistake
+to make much of this explanation. Certainly Milton held his own
+theological beliefs, as expounded in the poem, in perfect good faith and
+with great tenacity. But the generation after his own, which first gave
+him his great fame, was not seduced into admiration by any whole-hearted
+fellowship in belief. Dryden laments the presence in the poem of so many
+"machining persons,"--as he calls the supernatural characters of
+_Paradise Lost_. At almost the same date Dr. Thomas Burnet was causing a
+mild sensation in the theological world by expounding the earlier
+chapters of the Book of Genesis in an allegorical sense, and denying to
+them the significance of a literal history. Voltaire, while he praises
+Milton, remarks that the topic of _Paradise Lost_ has afforded nothing
+among the French but some lively lampoons, and that those who have the
+highest respect for the mysteries of the Christian religion cannot
+forbear now and then making free with the devil, the serpent, the frailty
+of our first parents, and the rib that was stolen from Adam. "I have
+often admired," he goes on, "how barren the subject appears, and how
+fruitful it grows under his hands."
+
+It seems likely that Milton himself, before he was fairly caught in the
+mesh of his own imagination, was well aware that his subject demanded
+something of the nature of a _tour de force_. He had to give physical,
+geometric embodiment to a far-reaching scheme of abstract speculation and
+thought,--parts of it very reluctant to such a treatment. The necessities
+of the epic form constrained him. When Satan, on the top of Mount
+Niphates, exclaims--
+
+  Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
+
+when Michael promises to Adam, after his expulsion from the garden--
+
+  A Paradise within thee; happier far;
+
+Milton must have known as well as any of his critics that this conception
+of Hell and of Paradise, if insisted on, would have shattered the fabric
+of his poem. His figures of Sin and Death were of his own invention, and
+we must not suppose him so obtuse as never to have realised the part that
+his shaping imagination bore in the presentment of other and greater
+figures in the poem. In some respects he tried rather to impose a scheme
+of thought and imagination upon his age than to express the ideas that he
+found current. His theology and his cosmical conceptions are equally
+tainted with his individual heresies. He flies in the face of the
+Athanasian Creed by representing the generation of the Son as an event
+occurring in time--"on such day as Heaven's great year brings forth." His
+later poem of _Paradise Regained_ and the posthumous treatise of
+Christian Doctrine show him an Arian; in the poem the Almighty is made to
+speak of
+
+  This perfect man, by merit called my Son.
+
+His account of the creation of the World as a mere ordering or
+re-arrangement of the wild welter of an uncreated material Chaos receives
+no countenance from the Fathers. In many points of theological teaching
+he is compelled to form definite and even visual conceptions where
+orthodoxy had cautiously confined itself to vague general propositions.
+So that the description of Sin and Death and of the causeway built by
+them between Hell-gates and the World, much as it has been objected to
+even by admirers of the poem, is only an extreme instance of the defining
+and hardening process that Milton found needful throughout for the
+concrete presentment of the high doings which are his theme. He congealed
+the mysteries of Time and Space, Love and Death, Sin and Forgiveness,
+into a material system; and in so doing, while paying the utmost
+deference to his authorities, he yet exercised many a choice with regard
+to matters indifferent or undefinable. Thus, for instance, he borrows
+from the Talmud the notion that Satan first learned the existence of a
+prohibited tree from overhearing a conversation between Adam and Eve. He
+was surely conscious of what he was doing, and would have been not
+ill-pleased to learn that the Universe, as he conceived of it, has since
+been called by his name. It is Milton's Paradise Lost, lost by Milton's
+Adam and Eve, who are tempted by Milton's Satan, and punished by Milton's
+God. The stamp of his clear hard imagination is on the whole fabric; and
+it is not much harder for us to coax ourselves into the belief that his
+is indeed the very world we inhabit than it was for the men of his own
+time. The senses and the intellect are older than modern science, and
+were employed to good effect before the invention of the spectroscope; it
+is they in their daily operation that make it difficult to leap the gulf
+which separates the amenities and trivialities of common life from the
+solemn theatre of the poet's imagination. The objection that the poem has
+lost much of its value because we are compelled to imagine where our
+elders believed is of little weight in a case like this, where our lack
+of belief is not brought home to us until insuperable difficulties are
+placed in the way of our imagination. Where Milton was freest, there we
+follow him most gladly; where he wrote in fetters, as notably in some of
+the scenes transacted in Heaven, our imagination, not our belief, is the
+first to rebel.
+
+We are deceived by names; the more closely _Paradise Lost_ is studied,
+the more does the hand of the author appear in every part. The epic poem,
+which in its natural form is a kind of cathedral for the ideas of a
+nation, is by him transformed into a chapel-of-ease for his own mind, a
+monument to his own genius and his own habits of thought. The _Paradise
+Lost_ is like the sculptured tombs of the Medici in Florence; it is not
+of Night and Morning, nor of Lorenzo and Giuliano, that we think as we
+look at them, but solely of the great creator, Michael Angelo. The same
+dull convention that calls the _Paradise Lost_ a religious poem might
+call these Christian statues. Each is primarily a great work of art in
+each the traditions of two eras are blended in a unity that is indicative
+of nothing but the character and powers of the artist. The _Paradise
+Lost_ is not the less an eternal monument because it is a monument to
+dead ideas.
+
+We do not know exactly when Milton made his choice of subject. His Latin
+verses addressed to Manso, Marquis of Villa, in January 1638-9, show that
+Arthur and the Round Table was at that time the uppermost theme in his
+mind, and that the warlike achievement of heroes was the aspect of it
+that most attracted him. After his return to England in 1639, it is
+mentioned once again in his elegy on Charles Diodati, and then we hear no
+more of it. In the tentative list of subjects, made in 1641, Arthur has
+disappeared, and the story of _Paradise Lost_ already occupies the most
+conspicuous place, with four separate drafts suggesting different
+treatments of the theme.
+
+It would be idle to speculate on what Milton might have made of the
+Arthur legends. One thing is certain; he would have set up the warrior
+king as a perfectly objective figure, hampered by no allegory, and with
+no inward and spiritual signification. The national cause, maintained
+heroically in a hundred battles, and overwhelmed at last by the brute
+violence of the foreign oppressor, was subject enough for him; he would
+never have marred his epic by sickly irresolution and the struggles of a
+divided will in the principal characters. Perhaps his mind reverted to
+his old dreams when he came to describe the pastimes wherewith the rebel
+angels beguile their time in Hell:--
+
+                  Others, more mild,
+  Retreated in a silent valley, sing
+  With notes angelical to many a harp
+  Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall
+  By doom of battle, and complain that Fate
+  Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.
+  Their song was partial; but the harmony
+  (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)
+  Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment
+  The thronging audience.
+
+This is only one of the very numerous places in _Paradise Lost_ where,
+before he is well aware of it, we catch Milton's sympathies dilating
+themselves upon the wrong side.
+
+His researches in British annals, begun at the time when he was still in
+quest of a theme, convinced him that the whole story of Arthur was
+"obscured and blemished with fables." He foraged among other British
+subjects, feeling that the great poem which was designed to raise England
+to the literary peerage and set her by the side of countries of older
+fame must deal with a theme of truly national import. Some of the
+subjects that he jotted down were obviously of too incidental and trivial
+a nature for his purpose, and a wise instinct confined him to the earlier
+history of the island, where his own freedom of treatment was less likely
+to be hampered by an excess of detail. And then, precisely how or when we
+do not know, the idea came to him that he would treat a subject still
+larger and of a more tremendous import,--the fortunes, not of the nation,
+but of the race:--
+
+  With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
+  Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.
+
+The attractions that this theme, once hit on, exercised on Milton's mind
+may easily be guessed. In the first place, it was a sacred subject: an
+opportunity for leading poetry back to its divine allegiance; and, by the
+creation of a new species of epic, an escape from a danger which must
+have been very present to his mind--the danger of too close an imitation
+of the ancients. More specific reasons concurred in recommending it. In
+the Garden of Eden he might present to an age which was overrun with a
+corrupt religion and governed by a decadent court the picture of a
+religion without a church, of life in its primitive simplicity, and of
+patriarchal worship without the noisome accretions of later ceremonial.
+His attitude to the Laudian movement is eloquently expressed, at this
+same time, in the treatise _Of Reformation in England_, where he
+describes how the religious teachers of his own and preceding ages "began
+to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea,
+the very shape of God himself into an exterior and bodily form, urgently
+pretending a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal
+reverence and worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it,
+they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but
+of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and
+mitres, gold, and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe or the
+flamen's vestry: then was the priest set to con his motions and his
+postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means of
+over-bodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing
+apace downward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and
+sensuous colleague, the body, in performance of religious duties, her
+pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of
+high soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and
+droiling carcase to plod on in the old road and drudging trade of outward
+conformity."
+
+But Adam and Eve, Milton is careful to explain, were not ritualists. They
+recite their evening hymn of praise as they stand at the entrance to
+their shady lodge:--
+
+  This said unanimous, and other rites
+  Observing none, but adoration pure
+  Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
+  Handed they went.
+
+The traits of Milton's Puritanism peep out at unexpected places in the
+poem. The happy Garden, Adam is told, will be destroyed after the Flood,
+for a reason that would have been approved by the image-breakers of the
+Commonwealth:--
+
+  To teach thee that God attributes to place
+  No sanctity, if none be thither brought
+  By men who there frequent, or therein dwell.
+
+The palace of Pandemonium is built by Satan's host in an hour, whence men
+may
+
+  Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
+  And strength, and art, are easily outdone
+  By spirits reprobate;
+
+--a perfectly sound moral, well illustrating Mr. Swinburne's remark that
+Puritanism has nothing to do with Art, and that the great Puritans and
+the great artists have never confused them.
+
+Milton must also have been drawn to the theme of _Paradise Lost_ by the
+scope it promised for scenes of quiet natural beauty:--
+
+          All that bowery loneliness,
+  The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring
+  And bloom profuse and cedar arches.
+
+His imagination was so susceptible to a touch of beauty that even in the
+bare sketch he has left for a drama dealing with the story of Lot and his
+escape from Sodom we see how likely he was, here also, to fall into the
+error of _Comus_. As Lot entertains the angels at supper, "the Gallantry
+of the town passe by in Procession, with musick and song, to the temple
+of Venus Urania." The opening Chorus is to relate the course of the city,
+"each evening every one with mistresse, or Ganymed, gitterning along the
+streets, or solacing on the banks of Jordan, or down the stream." But in
+the story of the Garden of Eden the beauty was, for once, on the side of
+the morality; innocence and purity might be depicted, not, as in a fallen
+world, clad in complete steel, but at ease in their native haunts,
+surrounded by all the inexhaustible bounty of an unsubdued and
+uncorrupted Nature.
+
+The chief dramatic interest of the poem, however, comes in with the great
+outcast angel, stirred up by his passions of envy and revenge to assault
+the new-created inhabitants of the Garden. It seems likely that Milton
+was drawn to this part of his theme by chains of interest and sympathy
+stronger than he confessed or knew. He was an epic poet, striving to
+describe great events worthily, but the dramatic situation betrayed him.
+He knew only that he could draw a rebel leader, noble in bearing,
+superbly outlined, a worthy adversary of the Most High. But it happened
+to him, as it has happened to others who have found themselves in a
+position where Satan could do them a service; before long, as if by some
+mediaeval compact, the relations are reversed, and the poet is in the
+service of the Devil. He can hardly have foreseen this chance; although
+there are not wanting signs in the poem itself that, before it was half
+completed, he became uneasily conscious of what was happening, and
+attempted, too late, to remedy it. When he chose his subject he doubtless
+intended that the centre of interest should be fixed in the Garden of
+Eden, and did not perceive how of necessity it must tend to sink lower,
+to that realm in the shadow of darkness, innumerably more populous,
+inhabited by beings of a nobler origin, of greater (and more human)
+passions, with a longer and more distinguished history, and with this
+further claim upon the sympathy of the reader, that they are doomed to an
+eternity of suffering.
+
+It is worth our while as critics to try to put ourselves in Milton's
+place at the time when he had made his choice, that we may realise not
+only the attractions but also the difficulties of the theme. An Italian
+poet of the early seventeenth century, Giovanni Battista Andreini, from
+whose drama, entitled _Adamo_, Milton is alleged to have borrowed some
+trifles, has made a very full and satisfactory statement of these
+difficulties in the preface to his play. He mentions, for instance, the
+unpromising monotony of Adam's life during the time spent in the earthly
+paradise, and the difficulty of giving verisimilitude to the conversation
+between the woman and the snake. But he waxes most eloquent on the last
+and greatest difficulty--"since the composition must remain deprived of
+those poetic ornaments so dear to the Muses; deprived of the power to
+draw comparisons from implements of art introduced in the course of
+years, since in the time of the first man there was no such thing;
+deprived also of naming (at least while Adam speaks or discourse is held
+with him), for example, bows, arrows, hatchets, urns, knives, swords,
+spears, trumpets, drums, trophies, banners, lists, hammers, torches,
+bellows, funeral piles, theatres, exchequers, infinite things of a like
+nature, introduced by the necessities of sin;... deprived moreover of
+introducing points of history, sacred or profane, of relating fictions of
+fabulous deities, of rehearsing loves, furies, sports of hunting or
+fishing, triumphs, shipwrecks, conflagrations, enchantments, and things
+of a like nature, that are in truth the ornament and the soul of poetry."
+
+All these difficulties for Andreini's drama were difficulties also for
+Milton's poem. Yet no reader of _Paradise Lost_ is found to complain that
+the poem is lacking in poetic ornament. Milton has successfully
+surmounted or evaded many of this formidable catalogue of limitations,
+without the sacrifice of dramatic propriety. It is true that in the
+course of their morning orisons, addressed to their Maker, Adam and Eve
+apostrophise the Mists and Exhalations--
+
+                          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 speak the 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 manoeuvring 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 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 from the
+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 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.
+
+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 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 from _Paradise Lost_, but they are introduced 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 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 the North 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 the
+_Divine Institutes_ of 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 increasing race 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 apocryphal _Book 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 bringing that 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's _Ecclesiastical 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 of _dii 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--
+
+                          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 of _Paradise Lost_ escapes 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 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 with some 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 quiet colouring of the inevitable epithet, and the solemn music of
+the cadence:--
+
+  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 Caedmon, 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 the figures 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 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 the purposes 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. The single 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, or _primum 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 only by 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 poet was 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 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 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 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 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 the _Treatise of
+Christian Doctrine_. He consigned the Fathers to 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--
+
+and bases himself upon Scripture. There he finds mention of seven chief
+angels, with some kind of pre-eminence enjoyed by Michael. In the poem he
+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 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 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 the _Paradise Lost_ in
+search of those 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
+Lost_ will 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 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 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 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 pastime of 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 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 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 in _Paradise
+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. There is 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 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 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 from a 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 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, in
+_Paradise Lost_, of a real human child, such as Shakespeare brings into
+_Coriolanus_ or _Macbeth_, would be like the bringing of a spark of fire
+into a powder magazine. None of these edifying speeches could be made in
+the presence 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 Lost_ will 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 the marvel, 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 of _Paradise Lost_
+does 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 that _Paradise Lost_ is 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 in
+effect, 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+PARADISE LOST: THE ACTORS. THE LATER POEMS
+
+
+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 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;
+
+--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 the _Paradise Lost_ which 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 the
+Son, the Filial Alterity, and in _those addresses_ slips 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 of power, and to test submission; as when Raphael
+is sent to keep the rebels confined in Hell, and explains subsequently to
+Adam:--
+
+  Not that they durst without his leave attempt;
+  But us he sends upon his high behests
+  For state, as sovran King, and to inure
+  Our prompt obedience.
+
+The particular event with which, according to Milton, the whole history
+begins is presented with a crudity that would have horrified the Fathers.
+The appointment of a Vicegerent to the Almighty, and the edict requiring
+homage to be done to him, are announced "on a day" to the host of Angels
+assembled by special summons for this purpose. During the night
+following, one of the chief Archangels, thereafter called Satan, draws
+off his forces to the north under pretext of preparing a welcome for the
+new Commander, who is to make a progress through his domain, promulgating
+more new laws. The purpose of the rebels is discerned by the All-Knowing,
+who makes this strange speech to the Son:--
+
+  Let us advise, and to this hazard draw
+  With speed what force is left, and all employ
+  In our defence, lest unawares we lose
+  This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill.
+
+It is unnecessary to quote more of the speeches in Heaven; they are
+tangles of Scriptural phrase, from which there can be extracted neither
+good divinity nor good humanity. "The glory of God," says the Wisdom of
+Solomon, "is to conceal a thing; the glory of the King is to find it
+out." But the glory of Milton's Deity is to explain a thing. The proud
+voluble candour of some of these speeches reminds us only of the author
+of _A Defence of the People of England_. In some of them there is even a
+flavour of uneasy boastfulness, as of one who is anxious not to be
+lessened in the estimation of the rebel adversary.
+
+It may be pleaded that the epical necessities of the poem imposed finite
+conceptions, of one sort or another, upon Milton; and that, when once he
+had begun to define and explain, he was carried further and further along
+that perilous way without being fully conscious of whither he was
+tending. Yet his persistent accumulation of harsh and dread traits seems
+wilful in its nature; he bases his description, no doubt, on hints from
+Scripture, but he pays no attention to any that do not fall in with his
+own narrow and gloomy conception. Satan is permitted to rise from the
+burning lake--
+
+  That with reiterated crimes he might
+  Heap on himself damnation.
+
+When he arrives at the foot of the stairway that joins Heaven and the
+World--
+
+  The stairs were then let down, whether to dare
+  The Fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate
+  His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss.
+
+Astronomy, it is suggested by "the affable Archangel," has perhaps been
+made a difficult subject in order to produce the droll fallacies of
+astronomers:
+
+                He his fabric of the Heavens
+  Hath left to their disputes--perhaps to move
+  His laughter at their quaint opinions wide.
+
+And this conjecture is borne out by what happened when the builders of
+the tower of Babel were frustrated, for then--
+
+                Great laughter was in Heaven,
+  And looking down to see the hubbub strange
+  And hear the din.
+
+Milton, in short, has hardened the heart of the God that hardened
+Pharaoh's heart, and has narrowed his love and his power.
+
+Some kind of internal blindness must have visited him if he did not
+perceive what must inevitably be the effect of all this on the sympathies
+and interest of the reader. And the irony of the thing is that his own
+sympathies were not proof against the trial that he had devised for them.
+He lavished all his power, all his skill, and, in spite of himself, the
+greater part of his sympathy, on the splendid figure of Satan. He avoids
+calling _Paradise Lost_ "an heroic poem"; when it was printed, in 1667,
+the title-page ran merely--_Paradise Lost, A Poem in Ten Books_. Had he
+inserted the word "heroic," the question as to who is the hero would have
+been broached at once. And to that question, if it be fairly faced, only
+one answer can be given,--the answer that has already been given by
+Dryden and Goethe, by Lord Chesterfield and Professor Masson. It was not
+for nothing that Milton stultified the professed moral of his poem, and
+emptied it of all spiritual content. He was not fully conscious, it
+seems, of what he was doing; but he builded better than he knew. A
+profound poetic instinct taught him to preserve epic truth at all costs.
+And the epic value of _Paradise Lost_ is centred in the character and
+achievements of Satan.
+
+Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus, and although there are
+essential differences, we are not made to feel them essential. His very
+situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a
+fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him
+a fool. The nobility and greatness of his bearing are brought home to us
+in some half-dozen of the finest poetic passages in the world. The most
+stupendous of the poet's imaginative creations are made the foil for a
+greater than themselves. Was ever terror more magnificently embodied than
+in the phantom figure of Death?--
+
+                      The other Shape--
+  If shape it might be called that shape had none
+  Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
+  Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
+  For each seemed either--black it stood as Night,
+  Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
+  And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head
+  The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
+  Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
+  The monster moving onward came as fast
+  With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.
+
+This is the passage that drew from Burke a rapture of praise. But as it
+stands in the poem its elevation is a scaffolding merely, whence we may
+view the greatness of Satan:--
+
+  The undaunted Fiend what this might be admired--
+  Admired, not feared (God and his Son except,
+  Created thing naught valued he nor shunned).
+
+The same magnificent effect of suggestion is wrought even more subtly in
+the scene where Satan approaches
+
+                          the throne
+  Of _Chaos_, and his dark pavilion spread
+  Wide on the wasteful Deep.
+
+Courteously and fearlessly Satan addresses himself to the monarch of the
+nethermost abyss. His speech contains no threats; he asks guidance in his
+quest; and, with politic forethought, promises that that quest, if
+successful, shall restore an outlying lost province to Chaos. There is
+nothing in his words to cause consternation; but the King is afraid:--
+
+                      Him thus the anarch old,
+  With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
+  Answered:--"I know thee, stranger, who thou art--
+  That mighty leading Angel, who of late
+  Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown."
+
+In the war on the plains of Heaven Satan ranges up and down the fighting
+line, like Cromwell; he fortifies his comrades to endurance, and
+encourages them to attack. In Hell he stands like a tower:--
+
+                His form had yet not lost
+  All her original brightness, nor appeared
+  Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess
+  Of glory obscured.
+
+In his contests with Michael in Heaven and with Gabriel on Earth he never
+falls below himself:--
+
+                  "If I must contend," said he,
+  "Best with the best--the sender, not the sent;
+  Or all at once."
+
+But his motive passions, it is objected, were envy, ambition, and hate,
+and his end was a crime. To which objection a modern poet has replied
+that a crime will serve as a measure for the spirit. Certainly to Satan
+there could never be imputed the sin of "the unlit lamp and the ungirt
+loin." And Milton has not left him devoid of the gentlest passion, the
+passion of pity:--
+
+                        Cruel his eye, but cast
+  Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
+  The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
+  (Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned
+  For ever now to have their lot in pain--
+  Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced
+  Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung
+  For his revolt--yet faithful how they stood,
+  Their glory withered.
+
+Thrice he attempts to address them, and thrice--
+
+                in spite of scorn
+  Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth.
+
+His followers are devotedly attached to him; they admire him "that for
+the general safety he despised his own"; and the only scene of rejoicing
+recorded in the annals of Hell, before the Fall of Man, is at the
+dissolution of the Stygian Council, when the devils come forth "rejoicing
+in their matchless Chief."
+
+As if of set purpose to raise Satan high above the heads of the other
+Archangels, Milton devises a pair of similar scenes, in Heaven and in
+Hell. In the one Satan takes upon himself the unknown dangers of the
+enterprise that has been approved by the assembly. In the other, which
+occurs in the very next book, the Heavenly Powers are addressed from the
+Throne, and asked--
+
+  "Which of ye will be mortal, to redeem
+  Man's mortal crime, and just, the unjust to save?
+  Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear?"
+    He asked, but all the Heavenly Quire stood mute,
+  And silence was in Heaven: on Man's behalf
+  Patron or intercessor none appeared--
+  Much less that durst upon his own head draw
+  The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.
+
+No wonder that Landor--although in another place he declares that Adam is
+the hero of _Paradise Lost_, and that "there is neither truth nor wit" in
+giving that name to Satan--is nevertheless startled by this passage into
+the comment, "I know not what interest Milton could have had in making
+Satan so august a creature, and so ready to share the dangers and sorrows
+of the angels he had seduced. I know not, on the other hand, what could
+have urged him to make the better ones so dastardly that even at the
+voice of their Creator not one among them offered his service to rescue
+from eternal perdition the last and weakest of intellectual beings."
+
+When Satan first comes in sight of Paradisal bliss and the new-created
+pair, here surely was a chance for attributing to him the foul passions
+of envy and hate unalloyed? On the contrary, he is struck with admiration
+for their grace and infused divinity. He could love and pity them--so he
+muses--though himself unpitied. He seeks alliance with them, and is
+prepared to give them a share in all he has--which, it must be allowed,
+is the spirit of true hospitality. He feels it beneath him to attack
+innocence and helplessness, but public reasons compel him to do what
+otherwise he would abhor:--
+
+  So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
+  The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.
+
+But no imputation is cast on the sincerity of the plea, and we are left
+to conceive of Satan as of a lover of beauty reluctantly compelled to
+shatter it in the pursuit of his high political aims. In the same way,
+when he finds Eve alone, on the morning of the temptation, he is disarmed
+by her beauty and innocence, and, for a spell, is struck "stupidly good."
+Truly, Adam might boast, with Gibbon, that he fell by a noble hand.
+
+It is possible that by the time he had completed the Fourth Book, Milton
+became uneasy as to the effect he was producing. Up to that point
+magnanimity and courage had been almost the monopoly of Satan. He had
+been the Great Dissenter, the undaunted and considerate leader of an
+outcast minority. But now, in the description of the war in Heaven, there
+came a chance of doing something to right the balance. Milton makes the
+most of the episode of Abdiel, who has been led away with the rest of
+Satan's followers, upon false pretences, and who, when he discovers the
+true purpose of the expedition, makes a lonely stand for the right:--
+
+  Among the faithless faithful only he; ...
+  Nor number nor example with him wrought
+  To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
+  Though single.
+
+And Abdiel, when he meets Satan again after the outbreak of the war,
+glories in his nonconformity, and hisses out defiance:--
+
+                          Thou seest
+  All are not of thy train; there be who faith
+  Prefer, and piety to God, though then
+  To thee not visible when I alone
+  Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent
+  From all: my Sect thou seest; now learn too late
+  How few sometimes may know when thousands err.
+
+In this way Milton attempted to allay his scruples, and to divide the
+honours of dissent. Later on, after the Fall, when Satan returns to Hell
+with tidings of his exploit, the change of all the devils to serpents,
+and of their applause to "a dismal universal hiss" was perhaps devised to
+cast a slur upon the success of his mission. Some critics have professed
+to discern a certain progressive degradation and shrinkage in Satan as
+the poem proceeds. But his original creation lived on in the imagination
+and memory of Milton, and was revived, with an added pathos, in _Paradise
+Regained_. The most moving of all Satan's speeches is perhaps the long
+pleading there made in answer to the challenge of Christ, and its tone of
+unutterable despair is deepened by the terrible severity of the speech
+made in answer.
+
+The other leaders of the rebel troops take little part in the action
+outside the scene of the Infernal Council. In his memories of the Long
+Parliament Milton could easily find examples of the types he has embodied
+under the names of Belial, Mammon, Moloch, and Beelzebub. Nor has he
+forgotten the Westminster Assembly of divines. The precise employments of
+that historic body are described by him as the recreation of the lost
+spirits:--
+
+  Others apart sat on a hill retired,
+  In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
+  Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--
+  Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--
+  And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
+
+It ill became Milton to cast contempt on these reasonings, seeing that a
+whole system of them was necessary for the argument of his poem. He is so
+little of a philosopher that he seems hardly to be conscious of the
+difficulties of his own theory. Both in _Paradise Lost_ and in the
+_Treatise of Christian Doctrine_ he enlarges with much dogmatism and some
+arrogance on the difference between foreknowledge and foreordination. He
+rejects predestination decisively, but he not only does not answer, he
+does not even so much as mention, the difficulty that arises in
+attempting to distinguish between what is foreordained by Omniscience and
+what is foreknown by Omnipotence. Pope compared some of the speeches
+delivered in Heaven to the arguments of a "School-divine." The comparison
+does injustice to the scholastic philosophers. There was never one of
+them who could have walked into a metaphysical bramble-bush with the
+blind recklessness that Milton displays.
+
+It is time to return to Eden and its inhabitants. They have little to do
+but "to lop and prune and prop and bind," to adore their Maker, and to
+avoid the prohibited tree. It would perhaps have been impossible for a
+poet with more dramatic genius than Milton to make these favourites of
+Heaven interesting in their happy state, while yet the key that was to
+admit them to our world of adventure and experience, of suffering and
+achievement, hung untouched on a tree. And Adam, from the wealth of his
+inexperience, is lavishly sententious; when anything is to do, even if it
+is only to go to sleep, he does it in a high style, and makes a speech.
+Milton plainly saw the danger of arousing a sense of incongruity and
+ludicrous disproportion from the contest between these harmless tame
+creatures and the great forces of Satan's empire. So he makes man strong
+in innocence, and, unlike the fallen angels, exempt from all physical
+pain or wound. He even goes so far as to make Satan afraid of Adam, of
+his heroic build and intellectual power. This last, it might be said, is
+a fear not explained by anything that we are privileged to hear from the
+lips of Adam himself; but perhaps, in the case of our great ancestor, we
+shall do well to remember Hamlet's advice to the players, "Follow that
+lord, and look you mock him not."
+
+There remains a more important person--Eve. And with Eve, since the
+beginning of Milton criticism, there enter all those questions concerning
+the comparative worthiness and the relative authority of husband and wife
+which critics of Milton so often and so gladly step aside to discuss.
+Every one knows the line:--
+
+  He for God only, she for God in him.
+
+Almost every one knows the lines:--
+
+          Nothing lovelier can be found
+  In woman than to study household good,
+  And good works in her husband to promote.
+
+Milton certainly shared the views of Knox concerning the "Monstrous
+Regiment of Women." It is unnecessary to meet him on his own ground, or
+to attempt a theory that shall explain or control Eve, Cleopatra, Joan of
+Arc, Catherine of the Medici, Mary Powell, and others of their sex. Such
+theories prove only that man is a generalising and rationalising animal.
+The poet brought his fate on himself, for since Eve was the mother of
+mankind, he thought fit to make her the embodiment of a doctrine. But he
+also (a thing of far deeper interest) coloured his account by the
+introduction of personal memories and feelings. Of Eve, at least, he
+never writes indifferently. When he came to write _Samson Agonistes_, the
+intensity of his feelings concerning Dalila caused him to deviate from
+the best Greek tradition and to assign inappropriate matter to the
+Chorus. And even in his matter-of-fact _History of Britain_, the name of
+Boadicea awakens him to a fit of indignation with the Britons who upheld
+her rule. There is full scope in _Paradise Lost_ for similar expressions
+of indignation. Adam, after the Fall, speaks of his wife as
+
+  Not to be trusted--longing to be seen
+  Though by the Devil himself.
+
+In the Eleventh Book the daughters of men are described as bred only
+
+                          to sing, to dance,
+  To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye.
+
+But Milton, it is sometimes forgotten, was also the author of that
+beautiful eulogy of Eve in the Eighth Book:--
+
+                          When I approach
+  Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
+  And in herself complete, so well to know
+  Her own, that what she wills to do or say
+  Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.
+  All higher Knowledge in her presence falls
+  Degraded; Wisdom in discourse with her
+  Loses, discountenanced, and like Folly shows;
+  Authority and Reason on her wait,
+  As one intended first, not after made
+  Occasionally; and, to consummate all,
+  Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
+  Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
+  About her, as a guard angelic placed.
+
+It is an exact parallel to Florizel's praise of Perdita in _The Winter's
+Tale_:--
+
+                          When you speak, sweet,
+  I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
+  I'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
+  Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
+  To sing them too; when you do dance, I wish you
+  A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
+  Nothing but that; move still, still so,
+  And own no other function: each your doing,
+  So singular in each particular,
+  Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
+  That all your acts are queens.
+
+But Florizel addresses his praise to the lady herself; while Adam, who
+had never been young, confides it in private to Raphael, after dinner,
+and studies a more instructive and authoritative strain in his
+conversations with Eve. And now comes a point worthy of remark. The
+Angel, to whom, it cannot be doubted, Milton committed the exposition of
+his own views, after hearing this confession, frowns, and administers a
+tart reproof. He describes Eve, somewhat grudgingly, as "an
+outside--fair, no doubt," and peremptorily teaches Adam the duties of
+self-appreciation and self-assertion:--
+
+                      Oft-times nothing profits more
+  Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
+  Well managed. Of that skill the more thou know'st,
+  The more she will acknowledge thee her head,
+  And to realities yield all her shows.
+
+And in the sequel, Adam bitterly laments that he had failed to profit by
+this advice. He might have been comforted by the wisdom of Chaucer's
+Franklin:--
+
+  When maistrie cometh, the god of love anon
+  Beteth his wynges and, farewel, he is gon!
+
+The explanation of all this is clear to see. Milton was not, as he has
+sometimes been described, a callous and morose Puritan. He was
+extraordinarily susceptible to the attractions of feminine beauty and
+grace. Adam's confession is his own. But the ideal of character that he
+had put before himself caused him passionately to resent this
+susceptibility. It was the joint in his harness, the main breach in his
+Stoicism, the great anomaly in a life regulated as for his Task-master.
+He felt that beauty was a power not himself, unbalancing and disturbing
+the rational self-centred poise of his soul. There have been poets whose
+service of Venus Verticordia was whole-hearted. But to Milton the power
+of Beauty was a magnetism to be distrusted for its very strength. He felt
+something of what he makes Satan express, that there is terror in love
+and beauty "not approached by stronger hate." The Chorus in _Samson
+Agonistes_ makes a similar observation:--
+
+  Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power
+  After offence returning, to regain
+  Love once possessed.
+
+To escape from the dominion of the tyrant is the duty of a wise man. When
+Raphael remarked that "Love ... hath his seat in Reason, and is
+judicious," he committed himself to a statement which a longer experience
+of the world would have enabled him to correct. But Milton wished it
+true; and perhaps even lured himself into a belief of its truth. At any
+rate, when Satan, in _Paradise Regained_, expounds his opinion on the
+matter, it is found, for once, to be in substantial agreement with
+Raphael's:--
+
+                          Beauty stands
+  In the admiration only of weak minds
+  Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes
+  Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy,
+  At every sudden slighting quite abashed.
+
+It is a great loss to literature that Mrs. Millamant, the delightful
+heroine of Congreve's comedy, was no reader of Milton. Her favourite
+author was Suckling:--
+
+  I prithee spare me, gentle boy,
+  Press me no more for that slight toy,
+  That foolish trifle of a heart.
+
+If she had a copy of the _Paradise Regained_, doubtless it stood in some
+conspicuous place, and was never opened,--like Mrs. Wishfort's "books
+over the chimney--Quarles and Prynne, and 'The Short View of the Stage,'
+with Bunyan's works, to entertain you." But all unawares she has answered
+the contention of Satan:--"O the vanity of these men!--Fainall, d'ye hear
+him? If they did not commend us, we were not handsome! Now you must know
+that they could not commend one, if one was not handsome. Beauty the
+lover's gift!--Lord, what is a lover, that it can give? ... One no more
+owes one's beauty to a lover than one's wit to an echo."
+
+Like most men of an impressionable temperament and a strong will, Milton
+was not sympathetic, nor curious to place himself where he might see the
+world from a point of view other than his own. Besieged by their
+sensations and impressions, concerned above all things with maintaining
+their opinions and enforcing their beliefs on others, such men find
+enough to do within the citadel of their own personality. To judge from
+some passages of his works, one half of the human race was to Milton an
+illusion to which the other half was subject. One who is in love with his
+own ideas cannot but be disappointed alike with existing institutions and
+with the tissue of surprises that is a person. Milton's disappointment,
+which had inspired the early Divorce pamphlets, finds renewed expression
+in Adam's prophecy of unhappy marriages--a notable parallel to the
+similar prophecy in _Venus and Adonis_--
+
+                          For either
+  He never shall find out fit mate, but such
+  As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;
+  Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,
+  Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained
+  By a far worse; or, if she love, withheld
+  By parents; or his happiest choice too late
+  Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound
+  To a fell adversary, his hate or shame.
+
+But, with all this, of our two grand parents Eve is the better drawn and
+the more human. Milton did not intend that it should be so, but he could
+not help it. One consequence of the doctrine--
+
+  He for God only, she for God in him--
+
+is that Adam's single impulse of unselfishness, whereby he elects to
+share the offence and punishment of Eve, is a vice in him, a "bad
+compliance." Self-abnegation, the duty of Eve, is hardly within the right
+of Adam; and Dr. Johnson expressed a half-truth in violently paradoxical
+terms when he said that Milton "thought woman made only for obedience and
+man only for rebellion." It would be truer, and weaker, to say that
+Milton thought woman made for the exercise of private, and man for the
+exercise of public, virtues. Hence in their mutual relations Eve carries
+off all the honours, for her duty towards Adam coincides with her
+inclination, while in his case the two are at variance. There is no
+speech of Adam's to be matched with the pleading intensity of Eve's
+appeal, beginning--"Forsake me not thus, Adam!"--and to her Milton
+commits the last and best speech spoken in Paradise:--
+
+                          But now lead on;
+  In me is no delay; with thee to go
+  Is to stay here; without thee here to stay
+  Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me
+  Art all things under Heaven, all places thou,
+  Who for my wilful crime art banished hence.
+
+She is generous and loving; her only reproach addressed to Adam is that
+he acceded to her request, and permitted her, on that fateful morning, to
+do her gardening alone, among the roses and myrtles. She is a fair
+companion picture to set over against Dalila, and is utterly incapable of
+Dalila's hypocrisy in justifying private treachery by reasons of public
+policy. There is even a certain dramatic development in her character;
+after she has eaten of the fruit, audacity and deceit appear in her
+reflections; she meditates withholding from Adam the advantages of the
+tree, in order that she may become--
+
+          More equal, and perhaps--
+  A thing not undesirable--sometimes
+  Superior.
+
+It is easy to understand how tired Eve might well become (even before the
+fallacious fruit was tasted) of Adam's carefully maintained superiority.
+On thinking, however, of the judgment that she may have to suffer, and of
+her own death, she resolves to draw him in, her motive being not fear,
+but a sudden movement of jealousy at the thought of--
+
+  Adam wedded to another Eve.
+
+This is as near an approach to drama in the handling of a human situation
+as is to be found in all _Paradise Lost_.
+
+But enough of this vein of criticism, which is justified only by the
+pleasure of detecting Milton too imperfectly concealed behind his
+handiwork. To treat the scenes he portrays as if analysis of character
+were his aim, and truth of psychology his touchstone, is to do a wrong to
+the artist. He is an epic, not a dramatic, poet; to find him at his best
+we must look at those passages of unsurpassed magnificence wherein he
+describes some noble or striking attitude, some strong or majestic
+action, in its outward physical aspect.
+
+In this, the loftiest part of his task, his other defects, as if by some
+hidden law of compensation, are splendidly redeemed. While he deals with
+abstract thought or moral truth his handling is tight, pedantic, and
+disagreeably hard. But when he comes to describe his epic personages and
+his embodied visions, all is power, and vagueness, and grandeur. His
+imagination, escaped from the narrow prison of his thought, rises like a
+vapour, and, taking shape before his eyes, proclaims itself his master.
+
+No other poet has known so well how to portray, in a few strokes, effects
+of multitude and vastness. Now it is the sacred congregation in Heaven:--
+
+  About him all the Sanctities of Heaven
+  Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received
+  Beatitude past utterance.
+
+Now the warrior host of Hell:--
+
+  He spake; and, to confirm his words, outflew
+  Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
+  Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze
+  Far round illumined Hell.
+
+In these, as in other like scenes, he preserves epic unity by throwing
+the whole into the distance. So after the approach of the Messiah to
+battle, "the poet," says Coleridge, "by one touch from himself--'far off
+their coming shone!'--makes the whole one image." He describes at a
+greater range of vision than any other poet: the frame-work of his single
+scenes is often not less than a third of universal space. When he has
+added figure to figure in the endeavour to picture the multitudinous
+disarray of the fallen Angels on the lake, one line suffices to reduce
+the whole spectacle to its due dimensions beneath that cavernous tent of
+darkness:--
+
+  He called so loud that all the hollow deep
+  Of Hell resounded.
+
+The same effect of number and vastness, diminished and unified by the
+same reference to a larger setting, wherein all is seen at a glance, may
+be noted in the description of the raising of Satan's standard in Hell:--
+
+  The imperial ensign, which, full high advanced,
+  Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,
+  With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed,
+  Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while
+  Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds:
+  At which the universal host up-sent
+  A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond
+  Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
+  All in a moment through the gloom were seen
+  Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
+  With orient colours waving: with them rose
+  A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
+  Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
+  Of depth immeasureable.
+
+Sometimes a line or two gives him scope enough for the rendering of one
+of these epic scenes, immense and vivid. The ruin and prostration of the
+rebels is made visible in two lines:--
+
+  Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
+  With scattered arms and ensigns.
+
+And the picture of the East rises at a touch:--
+
+  Dusk faces with white silken turbants wreathed.
+
+In the drawing of single attitudes Milton studies the same large decorum
+and majesty. He is never tempted into detail in the describing of gesture
+or action; never loses the whole in the part. The bulk of _Paradise Lost_
+was written between the sixth and the thirteenth years of his blindness.
+Since the veil had fallen he had lived with the luminous shapes that he
+could picture against the dark. The human face had lost, in his
+recollection of it, something of its minuter delineation, but nothing of
+its radiance. On the other hand, the human figure, in its most
+significant gestures and larger movements, haunted his visions. His
+description of the appearance of the wife whom he had never seen is an
+early model of many of his later drawings. She comes to his bedside and
+leans over him, stretching forth her arms:
+
+  Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
+  Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
+  So clear as in no face with more delight.
+
+Adam and Eve, as they are first seen in Paradise, have the same shining
+quality, the same vagueness of beauty expressing itself in purely
+emotional terms. Satan standing on the top of Mount Niphates, looking
+down on Eden spread out at his feet, and then with fierce gesticulation
+addressing himself to the sun at the zenith, is one of the dim solitary
+figures that dwell in the mind's eye. No less impressive and no less
+indefinite are those two monumental descriptions of the rebel leader; the
+first, of his going forth to war in Heaven:--
+
+  High in the midst, exalted as a God,
+  The Apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat,
+  Idol of majesty divine, enclosed
+  With flaming Cherubim and golden shields.
+
+and the other, of his encounter with Gabriel:--
+
+                      Satan, alarmed,
+  Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
+  Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:
+  His stature reached the sky, and on his crest
+  Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp
+  What seemed both spear and shield.
+
+In these, and in a hundred other notable passages, the images are as
+simple and broad as the emotional effects that they produce,--the sun,
+flame, gold, a mountain, the sky.
+
+Some of the scenes and situations delineated by Milton are of a gentler
+and more elusive virtue than these terrors and sublimities. His
+descriptions of morning and evening are always charged with emotion--the
+quiet coming-on of night in Eden; or the break of day in the wilderness
+of the Temptation, with a sense of joy and relief "after a night of storm
+so ruinous." His feeling for the imaginative effects of architecture in a
+landscape is extraordinarily subtle. One, at least, of these effects is
+hardly to be experienced among the hedgerows and farmsteads and placid
+rambling towns of England. Travellers in Italy, or in the East, are
+better able to understand the transfiguration of a landscape by the
+distant view of a small compact array of walls and towers perched on a
+vantage-ground among the hills of the horizon. The lawlessness of Nature,
+the homelessness of the surface of the earth, and the fears that haunt
+uninhabited places, are all accentuated by the distrust that frowns from
+the battlements of such a stronghold of militant civility. For this
+reason, perhaps, the architectural features in certain pictures and
+drawings have an indescribable power of suggestion. The city,
+self-contained and fortified, overlooking a wide expanse of country,
+stands for safety and society; the little group of figures, parleying at
+the gate, or moving down into the plain, awakens in the mind a sense of
+far-off things,--the moving accidents of the great outer world, and the
+dangers and chances of the unknown. Bunyan, whose imagination was
+nourished on the Eastern scenery and sentiment of the Bible, shows
+himself powerfully affected by situations of this kind, as where, in the
+beginning of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, he describes the man with his face
+from his own home, running from the City of Destruction, and the group of
+his kindred calling after him to return:--"but the man put his fingers in
+his ears, and ran on crying, Life, Life, Eternal Life: so he looked not
+behind him, but fled towards the middle of the plain."
+
+Such another figure is Milton's Abdiel, who escaped from the rebel
+citadel--
+
+  And with retorted scorn his back he turned
+  On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed.
+
+The perils of his flight are vaguely indicated by a few admirable touches
+in the opening of the next Book:--
+
+  All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued,
+  Through Heaven's wide champaign held his way, till Morn
+  Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand
+  Unbarred the gates of Light.
+
+A more signal instance of the same poetic effect is to be found in the
+wonderful close of _Paradise Lost_, where Adam and Eve are led down from
+the garden by the archangel Michael, and are left standing in the vast
+plain below:--
+
+  They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
+  Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
+  Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
+  With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
+  Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
+  The world was all before them, where to choose
+  Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
+  They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
+  Through Eden took their solitary way.
+
+Criticism might exhaust itself in the effort to do justice to the beauty
+of this close. Of Adam and Eve it may be truly said that none of all
+their doings in the garden became them like the leaving of it. Yet
+Addison and Bentley, the ornaments of a polite and learned age, are at
+one in their depreciation of the last two lines. Addison, after a formal
+apology for "the smallest Alteration in this divine Work," boldly
+recommends amputation; while Bentley, with the caution of a more
+experienced surgeon, offers to crutch the lines on certain wooden
+contrivances of his own. The three epithets, "wandering," "slow," and
+"solitary," are all censured by him. Our first parents, he remarks, were
+guided by Providence, and therefore needed not to wander; they were
+reassured by Michael's predictions, and so might well display an engaging
+briskness; while as for "their solitary way," they were no more solitary
+than in Paradise, "there being no Body besides Them Two, both here and
+there." He therefore suggests a distich more agreeable to the general
+scheme:--
+
+  Then hand in hand with social steps their way
+  Through Eden took, with Heav'nly Comfort cheer'd
+
+It is impossible to answer such criticism; the organs of human speech are
+too frail. Let Bentley be left to contemplate with delight the hideous
+gash that his chopper has inflicted on the Miltonic rhythm of the last
+line. If Addison, for his part, had been less concerned with the opinions
+of M. Bossu, and the enumeration of the books of the _AEneid_, he might
+have found leisure to notice that the two later poems, _Paradise
+Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_, are each brought to a close which
+exactly resembles the close of _Paradise Lost_. After the splendours in
+the last book of _Paradise Regained_--the fall of Satan, "smitten with
+amazement," from the pinnacle of the Temple, the elaborate classical
+comparisons of Antaeus and the Sphinx, and the triumphal chorus of Angels
+who bear the Son of God aloft with anthems of victory--the poem ends with
+the same exquisite lull:--
+
+                  He, unobserved,
+  Home to his mother's house private returned.
+
+And _Samson Agonistes_ brings as glorious a triumph to no less peaceful a
+close:--
+
+  And calm of mind, all passion spent.
+
+The dying fall is the same in all three, and is the form of ending
+preferred by the musical and poetic genius of Milton.
+
+Passages of a crowded and ostentatious magnificence are more frequent in
+_Paradise Lost_ than in either of the two later poems. In _Paradise
+Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ the enhanced severity of a style which
+rejects almost all ornament was due in part, no doubt, to a gradual
+change in Milton's temper and attitude. It is not so much that his power
+of imagination waned, as that his interest veered, turning more to
+thought and reflection, less to action and picture. In these two poems,
+at the last, he celebrated that
+
+                better fortitude
+  Of patience and heroic martyrdom
+
+which he had professed to sing in _Paradise Lost_. We are told by his
+nephew that he "could not bear with patience any such thing related to
+him" as that _Paradise Regained_ was inferior to _Paradise Lost_. He was
+right; its merits and beauties are of a different and more sombre kind,
+yet of a kind perhaps further out of the reach of any other poet than
+even the constellated glories of _Paradise Lost_ itself. It should be
+remembered that _Paradise Lost_, although it was written by Milton
+between the fiftieth and the fifty-seventh years of his age, was
+conceived by him, in its main outlines, not later than his thirty-fourth
+year. Two of the passages noticed above, where Satan addresses himself to
+the Sun and where the Angel leads Adam and Eve out of Paradise, embody
+situations which had appealed to his younger imagination. Some of the
+very words of Satan's address were written, we learn from Phillips, about
+1642. And the expulsion of Adam and Eve seems to contain a reminiscence
+of the time when Milton was considering the history of Lot as a possible
+subject for an epic. The lines--
+
+  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 of _Paradise Lost_ would 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.
+In _Paradise Lost_ Milton at last delivered himself 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 of _Paradise 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, "of
+_Paradise Lost_; but what hast thou to say of _Paradise 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 of
+_Paradise Lost_, and already very fully in the Third Book, he had treated
+of _Paradise Found_ as 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
+stupidity is the kind that discovers something "unfinished" in a great
+work of art, and suggests desirable trimmings and additions. Milton knew
+that _Paradise Lost_ was 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, from _L' Allegro_ to
+_Samson Agonistes_--all are parts of _A 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. In _Comus_ is shown how the temptations
+of created pleasure may be resisted by the chastity of the "resolved
+soul." In _Paradise 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 in _Paradise Regained_ exhibited at
+length, with every variety of form and argument, the spectacle of--
+
+      one man's firm obedience fully tried
+  Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled
+  In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed
+
+The subject of _Comus_ is 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 in
+_Paradise Regained_ the 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 to
+_Paradise Lost_, those critics are doubtless right who think his chosen
+subject not 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 of _Paradise 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 in _Paradise 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: 'That light
+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 and said, '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 in _Samson 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 God
+  And justifiable to men--
+
+finding an echo in Samson's declaration--
+
+  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 of _Paradise Lost_. The academic proof of God's justice,
+contained in the earlier poem, if it were introduced into _Samson
+Agonistes_ could 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE STYLE OF MILTON: METRE AND DICTION
+
+
+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 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 of _Paradise 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 a 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?
+
+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's _Harmonie of the Church_ was 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.
+
+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 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 their devotional 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 be expected, 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 called _Psyche, 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 as _Paradise 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's _Original Poems_ in 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 full and 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 entitled _Davideis_. In the exordium of the
+First Book he proclaims his mission:--
+
+  Too long the _Muses-Lands_ have _Heathen_ bin
+  Their _Gods_ too long were _Devils_, and _Vertues Sin_;
+  But _Thou, Eternal World_, hast call'd forth _Me_,
+  Th' _Apostle_, to convert that _World_ to _Thee_:
+  T' unbind the charms that in slight _Fables_ lie,
+  And teach that _Truth_ is _truest Poesie_.
+
+But it was not to be. His "polisht _Pillars_ of strong _Verse_" 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 his _Gondibert_ shows 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's _Davideis_, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin brought out
+his sacred poem of _Clovis_, 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 his _Poetic_, settled the
+question for the nonce, and fixed the opinion of the succeeding
+generation of critics. He casts an equal ridicule upon _Clovis_ and upon
+the theory which it was designed to illustrate:--
+
+  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 damned crew,
+  When, proud to assail your Hero's matchless might,
+  With God himself they wage a doubtful fight.
+
+So the burial of _Clovis_ was hastened by ridicule. Yet every one of the
+arguments brought against that poem by Boileau holds equally good against
+_Paradise 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 to _Clovis_ in 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, called
+_A Tale of Two Swannes_. While Milton was writing _Paradise Lost_ the
+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 of _Paradise Lost_, Dryden delivered his judgment, that the
+rhymed couplet was 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 follow his 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 poem _On
+the Death of a Fair Infant_, written in his seventeenth year:--
+
+  Or wert thou of the golden-winged 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 on _The Passion_, written in the same metre, are perhaps
+the last in which Milton echoes Spenser, however faintly. Meanwhile, in
+the hymn _On 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 written _At a Vacation Exercise_, he expressly sets aside
+
+  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 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 of _Comus_, 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 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 of the 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 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.
+
+And again:--
+
+  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 of _Il Penseroso_, which might be quoted against
+this statement, is susceptible of an easier explanation:--
+
+  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 in _Comus_ are these:--
+
+                  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 of _Comus_ from the _Old Wives' Tale_ of
+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 his _Lives 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 in _Il Penseroso_:--
+
+  Come, but keep thy wonted state
+
+and two lines of Jonson's _Hymn to Cynthia_:--
+
+  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 the _Areopagitica_. 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.
+
+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 in _Richard 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 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 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 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, in _Paradise
+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 impossible even 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 of _The 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 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
+injury done 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 in _Comus_, does not occur in _Paradise
+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 caesura 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 the _Idylls of the King_. Here is one:--
+
+  So all the ways were safe from shore to shore,
+  But in the heart of Arthur pain was lord.
+
+The elements of musical delight here are almost barbarous in their
+simplicity. There is a surfeit of assonance--_all, shore, shore, lord_;
+_heart, Arthur_; _ways, safe, pain_. The alliteration is without
+complexity,--a dreary procession of sibilants. Worst of all are the
+monotonous incidence of the stress, and the unrelieved, undistinguished,
+crowded poverty of the Saxon monosyllables.
+
+No two such consecutive lines were ever written by Milton. His verse,
+even in its least admirable passages, does not sing, nor trip with
+regular alternate stress; its movement suggests neither dance nor song,
+but rather the advancing march of a body of troops skilfully handled,
+with incessant changes in their disposition as they pass over broken
+ground. He can furnish them with wings when it so pleases him. No
+analysis of his prosody can explain the wonders of his workmanship. But
+it is not idle to ask for a close attention to the scansion of lines like
+these, wherein he describes the upward progress of the Son of God and his
+escort after the Creation:--
+
+  The heavens and all the constellations rung,
+  The planets in their station listening stood,
+  While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
+
+In the last line the first four words marshal the great procession in
+solid array; the last two lift it high into the empyrean. Let any one
+attempt to get the same upward effect with a stress, however light, laid
+on the last syllable of the line, or with words of fewer than three
+syllables apiece, and he will have to confess that, however abstruse the
+rules of its working may be, there is virtue in metrical cunning. The
+passage in the Seventh Book from which these lines are quoted would
+justify an entire treatise. The five regular alternate stresses first
+occur in a line describing the progress over the wide plain of Heaven:--
+
+                  He through Heaven,
+  That opened wide her blazing portals, led
+  To God's eternal house direct the way.
+
+But, indeed, the examination of the music of Milton involves so minute a
+survey of technical detail as to be tedious to all but a few lovers of
+theory. The laws of music in verse are very subtle, and, it must be
+added, very imperfectly ascertained; so that those who dogmatise on them
+generally end by slipping into fantasy or pedantry. How carefully and
+incessantly Milton adjusted the sound to the sense is known to every
+reader of _Paradise Lost_. The dullest ear is caught by the contrast
+between the opening of the gates of Heaven--
+
+                  Heaven opened wide
+  Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
+  On golden hinges moving--
+
+and the opening of those other gates--
+
+                On a sudden open fly,
+  With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
+  The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
+  Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
+  Of Erebus.
+
+But there are many more delicate instances than these. In the choruses of
+_Samson Agonistes_, where he reaches the top of his skill, Milton varies
+even the length of the line. So he has hardly a rule left, save the
+iambic pattern, which he treats merely as a point of departure or
+reference, a background or framework to carry the variations imposed upon
+it by the luxuriance of a perfectly controlled art. The great charm of
+the metre of Wither, which Charles Lamb admired and imitated, lies in its
+facile combination of what, for the sake of brevity, may be called the
+iambic and trochaic movements. In _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ Milton
+had proved his mastery of both its resources. The gaiety of these lines--
+
+  Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
+  Jest, and youthful Jollity--
+
+passes easily into the solemnity of these--
+
+  But let my due feet never fail
+  To walk the studious cloister's pale.
+
+In _Samson Agonistes_ he sought to extend something of the same liberty
+to the movement of blank verse. He freely intermixes the falling with the
+rising stress, shifting the weights from place to place, and often
+compensating a light patter of syllables in the one half of the line by
+the introduction of two or three consecutive strong stresses in the other
+half. Under this treatment the metre of _Gorboduc_ breaks into blossom
+and song:--
+
+  O, how comely it is, and how reviving
+  To the spirits of just men long oppressed,
+  When God into the hands of their deliverer
+  Puts invincible might.
+
+To try to explain this marvel of beauty is to beat the air.
+
+By his deliberate attention to the elements of verbal melody Milton gave
+a new character to English blank verse. But this is not all. Quite as
+important is the alteration that he made in the character of English
+poetic diction.
+
+The essence of the lyric is that it is made up of phrases, not of words.
+The lines run easily because they run on tracks chosen for their ease by
+the instinct of generations and worn smooth by use. The lyrical phrase,
+when the first two or three words of it have been pronounced, finishes
+itself. From Carew's "Ask me no more," with its long train of imitations,
+to the latest banality of the music-halls, the songs that catch the ear
+catch it by the same device. The lyric, that is to say, is almost always
+dependent for its music on easy idiomatic turns of speech. The surprising
+word occurs rarely; with all the greater effect inasmuch as it is
+embedded in phrases that slip from the tongue without a trace of thought
+or effort. These phrases naturally allow of little diversity of
+intonation; they have the unity of a single word, a single accepted
+emphasis, and a run of lightly-stressed syllables more or less musical in
+sequence.
+
+All this Milton changed. He chooses his every word. You cannot guess the
+adjective from the substantive, nor the end of the phrase from its
+beginning. He is much given to inverting the natural English order of
+epithet and noun, that he may gain a greater emphasis for the epithet.
+His style is not a simple loose-flowing garment, which takes its outline
+from its natural fall over the figure, but a satin brocade, stiff with
+gold, exactly fitted to the body. There is substance for it to clothe;
+but, as his imitators quickly discovered, it can stand alone. He packs
+his meaning into the fewest possible words, and studies economy in every
+trifle. In his later poetry there are no gliding connectives; no
+polysyllabic conjunctive clauses, which fill the mouth while the brain
+prepares itself for the next word of value; no otiose epithets, and very
+few that court neglect by their familiarity. His poetry is like the
+eloquence of the Lord Chancellor Bacon, as described by Ben Jonson:--"No
+man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered
+less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech
+but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look
+aside from him, without loss." It is this quality of Milton's verse that
+makes the exercise of reading it aloud a delight and a trial. Every word
+is of value. There is no mortar between the stones, each is held in place
+by the weight of the others, and helps to uphold the building. In
+reading, every word must be rendered clearly and articulately; to drop
+one out, or to slur it over, is to take a stone from an arch. Indeed, if
+Lamb and Hazlitt are right in thinking that Shakespeare's greatest plays
+cannot be acted, by the same token, Milton's greatest poems cannot be
+read aloud. For his most sonorous passages the human voice is felt to be
+too thin an instrument; the lightest word in the line demands some faint
+emphasis, so that the strongest could not be raised to its true value
+unless it were roared through some melodious megaphone.
+
+The carefully jewelled mosaic style was practised very early by Milton.
+It occurs already in the hymn on the Nativity:--
+
+  See how from far upon the eastern road
+  The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
+  O run, prevent them with thy humble ode
+  And lay it lowly at his blessed feet.
+
+The same deliberateness and gentle pause of words one after another
+rounding and falling like clear drops is found in the song of the Spirit
+in _Comus_:--
+
+  Sabrina fair,
+    Listen where thou art sitting
+  Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
+    In twisted braids of lilies knitting
+  The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.
+
+This is the effect which Sir Henry Wotton, Milton's earliest critic,
+speaks of, in a letter to Milton, as "a certain Doric delicacy in your
+songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing
+parallel in our language."
+
+There are poems, and good poems among the number, written on a more
+diffuse principle. If you miss one line you find the idea repeated or
+persisting in the next. It is quite possible to derive pleasure from the
+_Faerie Queene_ by attending to the leading words, and, for the rest,
+floating onward on the melody. You can catch the drift with ease. The
+stream circles in so many eddies that to follow it laboriously throughout
+its course is felt to be hardly necessary: miss it once and you can often
+join it again at very near the same point. "But a reader of Milton," as
+an early critic of Milton remarks, "must be always upon duty; he is
+surrounded with sense; it rises in every line, every word is to the
+purpose. There are no lazy intervals: all has been considered, and
+demands and merits observation. Even in the best writers you sometimes
+find words and sentences which hang on so loosely, you may blow them off.
+Milton's are all substance and weight: fewer would not have served his
+turn, and more would have been superfluous. His silence has the same
+effect, not only that he leaves work for the imagination, when he has
+entertained it and furnished it with noble materials; but he expresses
+himself so concisely, employs words so sparingly, that whoever will
+possess his ideas must dig for them, and oftentimes pretty far below the
+surface."
+
+An illustration and contrast may serve to point the moral. Here is an
+example of Spenser's diffuser style, taken from the second book of the
+_Faerie Queene_. Guyon, escaped from the cave of Mammon, is guarded,
+during his swoon, by an angel:--
+
+  Beside his head there satt a faire young man,
+
+(This announces the theme, as in music.)
+
+  Of wondrous beauty and of freshest yeares,
+
+(The fair young man was fair and young.)
+
+  Whose tender bud to blossom new began,
+
+(The fair young man was young.)
+
+  And florish faire above his equal peers.
+
+(The fair young man was fair, fairer even than his equals, who were also
+his peers.)
+
+In the remaining lines of the stanza the comparison of his hair to the
+rays of the sun is played with in the same way:--
+
+  His snowy front curled with golden heares,
+  Like Phoebus' face adorned with sunny rayes,
+  Divinely shone; and two sharp winged sheares,
+  Decked with diverse plumes, like painted Jayes,
+  Were fixed at his back to cut his ayery wayes.
+
+The whole stanza is beautiful, and musical with the music of redundance.
+Nothing could be less like Milton's mature style. His verse, "with frock
+of mail, Adamantean proof," advances proudly and irresistibly, gaining
+ground at every step. He brings a situation before us in two lines, every
+word contributing its share:--
+
+  Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,
+  Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night.
+
+With as decisive a touch he sketches the story of Jacob--
+
+                    In the field of Luz,
+  Dreaming by night under the open sky,
+  And waking cried, _This is the gate of Heaven_.
+
+Or the descent of Raphael:--
+
+                    Like Maia's son he stood,
+  And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled
+  The circuit wide.
+
+The packed line introduced by Milton is of a greater density and
+conciseness than anything to be found in English literature before it. It
+is our nearest native counterpart to the force and reserve of the high
+Virgilian diction. In his _Discourse of the Original and Progress of
+Satire_, Dryden has called attention to the close-wrought quality of
+Virgil's work. "Virgil," he says, "could have written sharper satires
+than either Horace or Juvenal, if he would have employed his talent that
+way. I will produce a verse and a half of his, in one of his Eclogues, to
+justify my opinion; and with commas after every word, to show that he has
+given almost as many lashes as he has written syllables: it is against a
+bad poet, whose ill verses he describes:--
+
+              _non tu, in triviis, indocte, solebas_
+  _Stridenti, miserum, stipula, disperdere, carmen?_"
+  [Wouldst thou not, blockhead, in the public ways,
+  Squander, on scrannel pipe, thy sorry lays?]
+
+Dryden appreciated the terrible force of this kind of writing for the
+purposes of satire. At its best, his own satire attains to something like
+it, as, for instance, in his description of Shaftesbury's early life:--
+
+  Next this (how wildly will ambition steer),
+  A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear,
+  Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold,
+  He cast himself into the saint-like mould;
+  Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain,
+  The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train.
+
+Except the first line, which is wholly idle, there is nothing that could
+be spared here. Pope, also, knew the value of condensation; but he works
+in antithetic phrases, so that his single words are less telling; and
+where Dryden's lines are swords edged with contempt, Pope's are stings,
+pointed with spite. Thus, of Lord Hervey:--
+
+  Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
+  The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
+  Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
+  Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
+  Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
+  A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
+  Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
+  Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
+
+The necessities of rhyme sometimes hamper both Dryden and Pope; and the
+nearest parallel to the manner of Virgil is to be sought in Milton. The
+famous line describing Samson--
+
+  Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves--
+
+is a good example; the sense of humiliation and abasement is intensified
+at every step. Or, to take a passage in a very different key of feeling,
+the same quality is seen in the description of the obedience of Eve:--
+
+              Required with gentle sway
+  And by her yielded, by him best received,
+  Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
+  And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
+
+The slight stress and pause needed after each word, to render the full
+meaning, produce, when the words are short as well as emphatic, a line of
+terrific weight and impact. What more heartbreaking effect of weariness
+and eternity of effort could be produced in a single line than this,
+descriptive of the dolorous march of the fallen angels?--
+
+  O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
+  Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.
+
+It would be difficult to match this line. In _The Tears of Peace_,
+Chapman has a line (he repeats it in the _Tragedy of Biron_) which owes
+some of its strength to the same cause. He describes the body as--
+
+  This glass of air, broken with less than breath,
+  This slave, bound face to face to death till death.
+
+The eight stresses give the line a passionate energy.
+
+All superfluous graces are usually discarded by Milton. He steers right
+onward, and gives the reader no rest. A French critic of that age, who
+has already been mentioned as the author of _Clovis_, praises Malherbe
+and Voiture and the worthies of their time, at the expense of the
+ancients. He calls Homer, especially, "a tattler, who is incessantly
+repeating the same things in the same idle ridiculous epithets,--_the
+swift-footed Achilles, the ox-eyed Juno, far-darting Apollo_." Milton
+felt none of this contempt for Homer, but he discarded the practice. His
+epithets are chosen to perform one exploit, and are dismissed when it is
+accomplished. As with single epithets, so with lines and phrases; he does
+not employ conventional repetitions either for their lyrical value or for
+wafting the story on to the next point of interest. He seeks no effects
+such as Marlowe obtained by the lyrical repetition of the line:--
+
+  To entertain divine Zenocrate.
+
+He arrests the attention at every word; and when the thing is once said,
+he has done with it.
+
+In his _Discourse of Satire_ Dryden raises an interesting point. He makes
+mention of "the beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are as
+requisite in this, as in heroick poetry itself, of which the satire is
+undoubtedly a species." His attention, he says, was first called to these
+by Sir George Mackenzie, who repeated many of them from Waller and
+Denham. Thereupon he searched other authors, Cowley, Davenant, and
+Milton, to find further examples of them; but in vain. At last he had
+recourse to Spenser, "and there I met with that which I had been looking
+for so long in vain. Spenser had studied Virgil to as much advantage as
+Milton had done Homer; and amongst the rest of his excellencies had
+copied that."
+
+By the "turns of words and thoughts" Dryden here means the repetition of
+a word or phrase in slightly altered guise as the thought is turned over
+in the mind and presented in a new aspect. There is an almost
+epigrammatic neatness about some of the examples that he cites from Ovid
+and Catullus. It is not surprising that he failed to find these elegant
+turns in Milton, for they are few. Addison and Steele, writing in the
+_Tatler_, reproach him with having overlooked the speech of Eve in the
+Fourth Book of _Paradise Lost_:--
+
+  Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet,
+  With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun,
+  When first on this delightful land he spreads
+  His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
+  Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth
+  After soft showers; and sweet the coming-on
+  Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night,
+  With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon,
+  And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train:
+  But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends
+  With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun
+  On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
+  Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers
+  Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent Night,
+  With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon,
+  Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet.
+
+Dryden remarks that the elegance he speaks of is common in Italian
+sonnets, which are usually written on the turn of the first thought; and
+certainly this speech of Eve might be truly compared, in all but the
+metrical structure, to an interspersed sonnet. There is another elaborate
+piece of repetition at the close of the Tenth Book, where the humble
+prostration of Adam and Eve is described in exactly the form of speech
+used by Adam to propose it. But the repetition in this case is too exact
+to suit Dryden's meaning; by a close verbal coincidence the ritual of
+penitence is emphasised in detail, and the book brought to a restful
+pause. Scattered here and there throughout Milton's longer poems Dryden
+might, nevertheless, have found the thing he sought. One instance that he
+gives is taken from the fourth Georgic of Virgil, where Orpheus, leading
+Eurydice up from Hell, suddenly turns to look on her:--
+
+  _Cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem;_
+  _Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes._
+
+This turn--"deserving grace, if grace were known in Hell"--may easily be
+matched in Milton. In the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_ is described how
+the damned
+
+                feel by turns the bitter change
+  Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.
+
+In the Fifth Book, when Raphael arrives at the gate of Paradise, the
+angels
+
+                          to his state
+  And to his message high in honour rise,
+  For on some message high they guessed him bound.
+
+In _Samson Agonistes_ it is noted that nations grown corrupt
+
+            love bondage more than liberty,
+  Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
+
+Yet in the main Dryden is right, for even instances like these are not
+many, and the tricky neatness of Ovid is nowhere to be found in the
+English epic poet.
+
+Milton seldom allows his verse to play in eddies; he taxes every line to
+its fullest capacity, and wrings the last drop of value from each word. A
+signal characteristic of his diction has its origin in this hard dealing.
+He is often not satisfied with one meaning from a word, but will make it
+do double duty. Here the Latin element in our language gave him his
+opportunity. Words borrowed from the Latin always change their usage and
+value in English air. To the ordinary intelligence they convey one
+meaning; to a scholar's memory they suggest also another. It became the
+habit of Milton to make use of both values, to assess his words in both
+capacities. Any page of his work furnishes examples of his delicate care
+for the original meaning of Latin words, such as _intend_--"intend at
+home ... what best may ease the present misery"; _arrive_--"ere he arrive
+the happy Isle"; _obnoxious_--"obnoxious more to all the miseries of
+life"; _punctual_--"this opacous Earth, this punctual spot";
+_sagacious_--"sagacious of his quarry from so far"; _explode_--"the
+applause they meant turned to exploding hiss"; _retort_--"with retorted
+scorn his back he turned"; _infest_--"find some occasion to infest our
+foes." The Speaker of the House of Commons had to determine, some years
+ago, whether it is in order to allude to the Members as "infesting" the
+House. Had Milton been called upon for such a decision he would doubtless
+have ruled that the word is applicable only to Members whose deliberate
+intention is to maim or destroy the constitution of Parliament.
+
+But he was not content to revive the exact classical meaning in place of
+the vague or weak English acceptation; he often kept both senses, and
+loaded the word with two meanings at once. When Samson speaks of Dalila
+as
+
+  That specious monster, my accomplished snare--
+
+something of this double sense resides in both epithets. In two words we
+are told that Dalila was both beautiful and deceitful, that she was
+skilled in the blandishments of art, and successful in the work of her
+husband's undoing. With a like double reference Samson calls the secret
+of his strength "my capital secret." Where light, again, is called the
+"prime work of God," or where we are told that Hell saw "Heaven ruining
+from Heaven," the original and derivative senses of the words "prime" and
+"ruin" are united in the conception. These words, and many others
+similarly employed, are of Latin origin; but Milton carried his practice
+over into the Saxon part of our vocabulary. The word "uncouth" is used in
+a double-barrelled sense in the Second Book of _Paradise Lost_--
+
+      Who shall tempt with wandering feet
+  The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss,
+  And through the palpable obscure find out
+  His uncouth way?
+
+And when Satan's eyes are called "baleful," the word, besides indicating
+the "huge affliction and dismay" that he feels, gives a hint of the woes
+that are in store for the victims on whom those eyes have not yet lit.
+
+It was this habit of "verbal curiosity" and condensation which seduced
+Milton into punning. Some of his puns are very bad. There is a modern
+idea that a pun is a thing to laugh at. Milton's puns, like
+Shakespeare's, give no smallest countenance to this theory. Sometimes he
+plays with what is merely a chance identity of sound, as where Satan,
+entering Paradise--
+
+  At one slight bound high overleapt all bound.
+
+But in most of these cases it seems likely that he believed in an
+etymological relation between the two words, and so fancied that he was
+drawing attention to an original unity of meaning. Some such hypothesis
+is needful to mitigate the atrocity of his worst pun, in _Paradise
+Regained_, where he describes
+
+              The ravens with their horny beaks
+  Food to Elijah bringing even and morn--
+  Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought.
+
+Milton was no philologist, and we may be permitted in charity to suppose
+that he derived "raven" and "ravenous" from the same root.
+
+Some of his puns are to be justified for another reason--that they are
+made the weapons of mockery. So when Satan rails against Abdiel he says--
+
+                      Thou shalt behold
+  Whether by supplication we intend
+  Address, and to begirt the Almighty Throne
+  Beseeching or besieging.
+
+The long punning-bout between Satan and Belial in the Sixth Book
+exemplifies the more usual form of the Miltonic pun. When he introduces
+the newly-invented artillery, Satan makes a speech, "scoffing in
+ambiguous words"--
+
+                    Ye, who appointed stand,
+  Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch
+  What we propound, and loud that all may hear.
+
+And again, when it has taken effect, scattering the heavenly host in
+unseemly disorder, he says--
+
+  If our proposals once again were heard,
+  We should compel them to a quick result.
+
+Belial, "in like gamesome mood," replies to the jests of his leader,
+until, by the providence of Heaven, his wit and his artillery are buried
+under a weight heavier than themselves. On this whole scene Landor
+remarks that "the first overt crime of the refractory angels was
+punning"; and adds, with true Miltonic conciseness, "they fell rapidly
+after that."
+
+Some minor flaws, which may be found in Milton by those who give a close
+examination to his works, are to be attributed to the same cause--his
+love of condensed statement. Mixture of metaphors in poetry is often
+caused merely by the speed of thought, which presents a subject in a new
+aspect without care taken to adjust or alter the figure. In these cases
+the obscurity or violence of expression arises not from defect, but from
+excess of thought. Some few instances occur in Milton, who, in _Lycidas_,
+writes thus--
+
+  But now my oat proceeds,
+  And listens to the Herald of the Sea.
+
+The syntax of the thought is sufficiently lucid and orderly, but it is
+compressed into too few words. In the Fifth Book of _Paradise Lost_ is
+described how--
+
+        The Eternal Eye, whose sight discerns
+  Abtrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount,
+  And from within the golden lamps that burn
+  Nightly before him, saw without their light
+  Rebellion rising--saw in whom, how spread
+  Among the Sons of Morn, what multitudes
+  Were banded to oppose his high decree;
+  And, smiling, to his only Son thus said.
+
+Here, it is true, "the Eternal Eye" smiles and speaks to his only Son.
+But Milton has really discarded the figure after the words "his high
+decree," which bring in a new order of thoughts. He trusts the reader to
+follow his thought without grammatical readjustment--to drop the symbol
+and remember only the thing symbolised. His trust was warranted, until
+Landor detected the solecism. The clearest case of mixed metaphor ever
+charged against Milton occurs in the Eleventh Book, where the lazar-house
+is described--
+
+  Sight so deform what heart of rock could long
+  Dry-eyed behold?
+
+Rogers pointed this out to Coleridge, who told Wordsworth that he could
+not sleep all the next night for thinking of it. What months of insomnia
+must he not have suffered from the perusal of Shakespeare's works!
+
+The close-wrought style of Milton makes the reading of _Paradise Lost_ a
+hard task in this sense, that it is a severe intellectual exercise,
+without relaxation. The attention that it demands, word by word, and line
+by line, could not profitably be given to most books; so that many
+readers, trained by a long course of novel-reading to nibble and browse
+through the pastures of literature, find that Milton yields little or no
+delight under their treatment, and abandon him in despair.
+
+And yet, with however great reluctance, it must be admitted that the
+close study and admiring imitation of Milton bring in their train some
+lesser evils. Meaning may be arranged too compactly in a sentence; for
+perfect and ready assimilation some bulk and distention are necessary in
+language as in diet. Now the study of Milton, if it teaches anything,
+teaches to discard and abhor all superfluity. He who models himself upon
+this master will never "go a-begging for some meaning, and labour to be
+delivered of the great burden of nothing." But he may easily fall into
+the opposite error of putting "riddles of wit, by being too scarce of
+words." He will be so intent upon the final and perfect expression of his
+thought, that his life may pass before he finds it, and even if, in the
+end, he should say a thing well, he is little likely to say it in due
+season. "Brevity is attained in matter," says a master of English prose,
+"by avoiding idle compliments, prefaces, protestations, parentheses,
+superfluous circuit of figures and digressions: in the composition, by
+omitting conjunctions--_not only ... but also, both the one and the
+other, whereby it cometh to pass_, and such like idle particles." Either
+sort of brevity may be learned from Milton. But any one who has been
+compelled to make efforts of unprompted eloquence, and to choose his
+expressions while he is on his feet, knows well how necessary is the
+function performed by these same prefaces, protestations, parentheses,
+and idle particles. Suavely uttered, they keep expectation alive in the
+audience, and give the orator time to think. Whether in speaking or in
+writing, no fluent and popular style can well be without them. _I should
+be inclined to say--If I may be permitted to use the expression--Speaking
+for myself and for those who agree with me--It is no great rashness to
+assert_-- a hundred phrases like these are an indispensable part of an
+easy writer's, as of an easy speaker's, equipment. To forego all these
+swollen and diluted forms of speech is to run the risk of the opposite
+danger, congestion of the thought and paralysis of the pen--the scholar's
+melancholy. To give long days and nights to the study of Milton is to
+cultivate the critical faculty to so high a pitch that it may possibly
+become tyrannical, and learn to distaste all free writing. Accustomed to
+control and punish wanton activity, it will anticipate its judicial
+duties, and, not content with inflicting death, will devote its malign
+energy to preventing birth.
+
+It is good, therefore, to remember that Milton himself took a holiday
+sometimes, and gave a loose to his pen and to his thought. Some parts of
+his prose writings run in a full torrent of unchastened eloquence. An
+open playground for exuberant activity is of the first importance for a
+writer. Johnson found such a playground in talk. There he could take the
+curb off his prejudices, give the rein to his whimsical fancy, and better
+his expression as he talked. But where men must talk, as well as write,
+upon oath, paralysis is not easily avoided. In the little mincing
+societies addicted to intellectual and moral culture the creative zest is
+lost. The painful inhibition of a continual rigorous choice, if it is
+never relaxed, cripples the activity of the mind. Those who can talk the
+best and most compact sense have often found irresponsible paradox and
+nonsense a useful and pleasant recreation ground. It was Milton's
+misfortune, not the least of those put upon him by the bad age in which
+he lived, that what Shakespeare found in the tavern he had to seek in the
+Church. Denied the wild wit-combats of the Mermaid, he disported himself
+in a pamphlet-war on bishops and divorce. But he found health and
+exercise for his faculties there; and the moral (for all things have a
+moral) is this: that when, in a mood of self-indulgence, we can write
+habitually with the gust, the licentious force, the flow, and the
+careless wealthy insolence of the _Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's
+Defence against Smectymnuus_, we need not then repine or be ill-content
+if we find that we can rise only occasionally to the chastity, the
+severity, and the girded majesty of _Paradise Lost_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE STYLE OF MILTON; AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH POETRY
+
+
+When Milton was born, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Dekker, Chapman,
+Daniel, Drayton, and half a hundred other Elizabethan notables were yet
+alive. When he died, Addison, Swift, Steele, and Arbuthnot were already
+born. Thus his life bridges the gulf between the age of Elizabeth and the
+age of Anne; and this further examination of his style has for object to
+inquire what part he may claim in the change of temper, method, subject,
+and form which came over English poetry during that period.
+
+The answer usually given to this question is that he had no part at all.
+He lived and died alone. He imitated no one, and founded no school. There
+was none of his more distinguished contemporaries with whom he was on
+terms of intimacy; none whose ideals in poetry remotely resembled his. So
+that although he is to be ranged among the greatest of English poets, a
+place in the legitimate hereditary succession would, on these
+considerations, be denied to him. When Dryden succeeded to the
+dictatorship of Jonson, the continuity of literary history was resumed.
+The great processes of change which affected English letters during the
+seventeenth century are in no way associated with the name of Milton.
+Waller and Denham, Davenant and Dryden, "reformed" English verse; Hobbes,
+Cowley, Tillotson, Dryden and Sprat remodelled English prose. And in the
+meantime, if this account is to be accepted, while English verse and
+English prose were in the melting-pot, this splendid efflorescence was an
+accident, a by-product, without meaning or causal virtue in the chemical
+process that was going forward.
+
+Others will have it that Milton was a belated Elizabethan. But the
+difficulty of that theory is that he reversed rather than continued many
+of the practices of the Elizabethans, and introduced reforms of his own,
+no less striking than the reforms effected by Dryden. Shirley is a good
+example of a genuine late Elizabethan. But in Shirley's works there is
+nothing that is not an echo. In Milton's, on the other hand, after the
+volume of 1645, there is nothing that echoes any earlier English poet
+even faintly. He renayed his ancestry; and, if he left no descendants, he
+must needs be regarded as "a vast species alone."
+
+The Elizabethans, including even the author of _Sejanus_ and the
+translator of Homer, were Romantics. The terms Romantic and Classic are
+perhaps something overworn; and, although they are useful to supply a
+reason, it may well be doubted whether they ever helped any one to an
+understanding. Yet here, if anywhere, they are in place; for Milton is,
+by common consent, not only a Classic poet, but the greatest exemplar of
+the style in the long bead-roll of English poets. The "Augustans" prided
+themselves on their resemblance to the poets of the great age of Rome.
+Was there nothing in common between them and Milton, and did they really
+borrow nothing and learn nothing from him?
+
+This much is agreed, that of all English styles Milton's is best entitled
+to the name of Classic. In his poems may be found every device that
+belongs to the Classic manner, as in Shakespeare's plays may be found
+every device that belongs distinctively to the Romantic. Perhaps the two
+manners are best compared by the juxtaposition of descriptive passages.
+In description it is impossible for literature to be exhaustive; a choice
+must be made, an aspect emphasised, and by far the greater part left to
+the imagination of the reader. A man, for instance, has stature, feature,
+bones, muscles, nerves, entrails; his eyes, hair, and skin are of certain
+colours; he stands in a particular attitude at a particular spot on the
+surface of the earth; he is agitated by certain passions and ideas; every
+movement that he makes is related to his constitution and his past
+history; he has affinity with other men by the ties of the family, the
+society, the State; he thinks and acts more in a minute than a hundred
+writers can describe and explain in a year; he is a laughing, weeping,
+money-making, clothes-wearing, lying, reasoning, worshipping, amorous,
+credulous, sceptical, imitative, combative, gregarious, prehensile,
+two-legged animal. He does not cease to be all this and more, merely
+because he happens to be at one of his thousand tricks, and you catch him
+in the act. How do you propose to describe him?
+
+Broadly speaking, there are two methods available. You may begin with the
+more general and comprehensive of the relations that fall in with your
+purpose, securing breadth of view and truth in the larger values, leaving
+the imagination to supply the more particular and personal details on the
+barest of hints from you: or you may fix your gaze exclusively on some
+vivid cluster of details, indicating their remoter relations and their
+place in a wider perspective by a few vague suggestions.
+
+The first of these ways is Milton's. He maps out his descriptions in bold
+outline, attending always to the unity of the picture and the truth of
+the larger relations. He is chary of detail, and what he adds is added
+for its own immediate importance rather than for its remoter power of
+suggestion. Adam and Eve when they are first introduced, are thus
+described:--
+
+  Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
+  Godlike erect, with native honour clad
+  In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,
+  And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
+  The image of their glorious Maker shone,
+  Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,--
+  Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,
+  Whence true authority in men.
+
+As pictorial description this is all but completely empty. It tells you
+only that they stood upright, that they were like their Maker, and that
+they were possessed of the virtues that their appearance would lead you
+to expect. Their physical delineation is to be accommodated by the
+imagination of the reader to this long catalogue of moral
+qualities,--nobility, honour, majesty, lordliness, worth, divinity,
+glory, brightness, truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severity, and purity. In
+the following lines the poet proceeds to distinguish the one figure from
+the other, adding a few details with regard to each. The epithets he
+chooses are still vague. Adam's forehead is "fair" and "large," his eye
+is "sublime," his locks are "hyacinthine," and (a detail that has escaped
+the notice of many illustrators of _Paradise Lost_) they fall in clusters
+as low as his shoulders. From beginning to end of the description the aim
+of the poet is to preserve the right key of large emotion, and the words
+that he chooses are chosen chiefly for their emotional value. The
+emotions are given; the portraiture is left to be filled in by the
+imagination.
+
+Shakespeare commonly works in the reverse way. He does not, like Crabbe,
+describe "as if for the police"; he chooses his detail with consummate
+skill, but he makes use of it to suggest the emotions. It is impossible
+to set his description of persons over against Milton's; for the drama
+does not describe persons, it presents them in action; and a description,
+where it occurs, is often designed merely to throw light on the character
+and feelings of the speaker. "Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low"
+is a description rather of Lear, as he hangs over the dead body of
+Cordelia, refusing to believe that she is dead, than of Cordelia herself.
+"An excellent thing in woman" is not a doctrine, but a last heartbreaking
+movement of defiance, as if to refute any stander-by who dares to think
+that there is something amiss, that a voice should not be so low as to be
+inaudible.
+
+The contrast of the methods may, therefore, be better noted in the
+description of scenes. There is no very close parallel obtainable; but
+the two passages compared by Lessing are not wholly dissimilar in theme,
+and serve well enough to illustrate the difference of the styles. The
+first, taken from the Seventh Book of _Paradise Lost_, tells how the King
+of Glory, from the verge of his heavenly domain, beholds the gulf of
+Chaos:--
+
+  On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore
+  They viewed the vast immeasurable Abyss,
+  Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
+  Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
+  And surging waves, as mountains to assault
+  Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole.
+
+The other is the imaginary view from Dover Cliff, described by Edgar in
+_King Lear_:--
+
+                      How fearful
+  And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!
+  The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
+  Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
+  Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
+  Methinks he seems no bigger than his head;
+  The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
+  Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
+  Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy
+  Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge
+  That on th' unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
+  Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more;
+  Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight
+  Topple down headlong.
+
+Johnson objected to this description: "No, sir; it should be all
+precipice,--all vacuum. The crows impede your fall. The diminished
+appearance of the boats, and other circumstances, are all very good
+description, but do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea
+of immense height. The impression is divided; you pass on, by
+computation, from one stage of the tremendous space to another."
+
+This criticism is, in effect, a plea for Milton's method, although by a
+freak of fate it was uttered in vindication of Congreve. Some years
+earlier, in his edition of Shakespeare, Johnson had remarked on the same
+passage, and had indicated the poetic method that he approved: "He that
+looks from a precipice finds himself assailed by one great and dreadful
+image of irresistible destruction."
+
+Johnson's critical opinions on poetry are deserving of the most careful
+consideration, and, where they fail to convince, of an undiminished
+respect. But not Johnson himself can raise a doubt as to which of the two
+passages quoted above is the greater masterpiece of description proper.
+Shakespeare sets a scene before your eyes, and by his happy choice of
+vivid impression makes you giddy. The crows help, rather than impede your
+fall; for to look into illimitable vacuum is to look at nothing, and
+therefore to be unmoved. But the classic manner is so careful for unity
+of emotional impression that it rejects these humble means for attaining
+even to so great an end. It refuses to work by mice and beetles, lest the
+sudden intrusion of trivial associations should mar the main impression.
+No sharp discords are allowed, even though they should be resolved the
+moment after. Every word and every image must help forward the main
+purpose. Thus, while the besetting sin of the Romantics is the employment
+of excessive, or irrelevant, or trivial or grotesque detail, the
+besetting sin of the Classics is so complete an omission of realistic
+detail that the description becomes inflated, windy and empty, and the
+strongest words in the language lose their vital force because they are
+set fluttering hither and thither in multitudes, with no substantial hold
+upon reality. There is nothing that dies sooner than an emotion when it
+is cut off from the stock on which it grows. The descriptive epithet or
+adjective, if only it be sparingly and skilfully employed, so that the
+substantive carry it easily, is the strongest word in a sentence. But
+when once it loses its hold upon concrete reality it becomes the weakest,
+and not all the protests of debility, superlative degrees, and rhetorical
+insistence, can save it from neglect.
+
+It is apparent, therefore, how necessary to Milton were the concrete epic
+realities with which his poem deals,--the topographical scheme of things,
+and the definite embodiment of all his spiritual essences. Keats'
+_Hyperion_ fails largely for want of an exact physical system such as
+Milton devises. Keats works almost wholly with vague Romantic suggestion,
+and there is nothing for the poem to hang on by. Something is happening;
+but it is difficult to say what, for we see only dream-imagery, and hear
+only muffled echoes. Had Milton made unsparing use of abstraction and
+suggestion, his poem would have fallen into windy chaos. The
+"philosophical poems" of his age did so fall. Henry More's _Platonick
+Song of the Soul_ (1642), wherein are treated the Life of the Soul, her
+Immortality, the Sleep of the Soul, the Unity of Souls, and Memory after
+Death, is a dust-storm of verbiage. Such words as "calefaction,"
+"exility," "self-reduplication," "tricentreity," "individuation,"
+"circumvolution," "presentifick circularity," struggle and sprawl within
+the narrow room of the Spenserian stanza. Milton keeps us in better
+company than this, even in Hell. He uses abstract terms magnificently,
+but almost always with a reference to concrete realities, not as the
+names of separate entities. By the substitution of abstract nouns for
+concrete he achieves a wonderful effect of majesty. He does not name, for
+instance, the particular form of wind instrument that the heralds blew in
+Hell:--
+
+                  Four speedy Cherubim
+  Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy.
+
+He avoids defining his creatures by names that lend themselves to
+definite picture: of Death he says--
+
+  So spake the grisly Terror;
+
+and he makes Raphael, at the call of Heaven's king, rise
+
+            from among
+  Thousand celestial Ardours.
+
+In the Tenth Book, Death, snuffing the distant scent of mortality,
+becomes all nose--
+
+  So scented the grim Feature, and upturned
+  His nostril wide into the murky air.
+
+A superb example of this powerful use of abstract terms is contained in
+the First Book of _Paradise Regained_, where is described how Satan,
+disguised as an old man, took his leave of the Son of God, and
+
+                  Bowing low
+  His gray dissimulation, disappeared
+  Into thin air diffused.
+
+The word "dissimulation" expresses the fact of the gray hairs assumed,
+the purpose of deceit, the cringing attitude, and adds a vague effect of
+power. The same vagueness is habitually studied by Milton in such phrases
+as "the vast abrupt," "the palpable obscure," "the void immense," "the
+wasteful deep," where, by the use of an adjective in place of a
+substantive, the danger of a definite and inadequate conception is
+avoided.
+
+Milton, therefore, describes the concrete, the specific, the individual,
+using general and abstract terms for the sake of the dignity and scope
+that they lend. The best of our Romantic poets follow the opposite
+course: they are much concerned with abstract conceptions and general
+truths, but they bring them home by the employment of concrete and
+specific terms, and figures so familiar that they cannot easily avoid
+grotesque associations. These grotesque associations, however trivial,
+are the delight of humour: Alexander's dust will stop a beer-barrel;
+divine ambition exposes
+
+              what is mortal and unsure
+  To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
+  Even for an egg-shell.
+
+The comments made by Johnson on a certain well-known passage in _Macbeth_
+are an excellent example of the objections urged against the Romantic
+method--a method whereby, says Johnson, poetry is "debased by mean
+expressions." He takes for text the invocation of Night by Lady Macbeth--
+
+                  Come, thick night,
+  And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
+  That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
+  Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
+  To cry, "Hold, hold!"
+
+Johnson's criticisms, which take up a whole paper in _The Rambler_, may
+be conveniently stated in summary. The epithet _dun_, he says, is "an
+epithet now seldom heard but in the stable, and _dun_ night may come and
+go without any other notice but contempt." A _knife_, again, is "an
+instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments; we do
+not immediately conceive that any crime of importance is to be committed
+with a _knife_." In the third place, although to wish to elude the eye of
+Providence is "the utmost extravagance of determined wickedness," yet
+even this great conception is debased by two unfortunate words when the
+avengers of guilt are made to _peep_ through a _blanket_.
+
+It is easy, in this case at least, to defend Shakespeare. There is no
+need to make much of the fact that Johnson attributes the speech to
+Macbeth. The essence of the crime is that it is the treacherous and
+cowardly crime of an assassin, committed on a guest while he sleeps.
+Implements of war are out of place here; it is the very crime for a
+knife, and Lady Macbeth shows her sense of this when she uses the word.
+Again, the darkness that she invokes is not the solemn shadow of night,
+but the stifling, opaque smoke of Hell. The blanket was perhaps suggested
+to Shakespeare by the black canopy that hung over the Elizabethan stage
+to represent night; but, in any case, it gives the notion of an
+artificial privacy, shutting out light and shutting in sound, a smothered
+unnatural secrecy. The use of the word _blanket_, in fact, carries with
+it a new fantastic horror. Night herself, who has brought the fatal gift
+of sleep to Duncan, is represented as the cowardly accomplice of the
+murderers, performing the most dastardly office that can fall to the
+hireling of a bravo.
+
+The mean associations, therefore, in so far as they exist, help
+Shakespeare's purpose. Milton had no purpose that could be furthered by
+such help. The omissions in his descriptions cannot be supplied by an
+appeal to experience, for what he describes is outside the pale of human
+experience, and is, in that sense, unreal. His descriptions do not so
+much remind us of what we have seen as create for us what we are to see.
+He is bound, therefore, to avoid the slightest touch of unworthy
+association; the use of even a few domestic figures and homely phrases
+would bring his hanging palace about his ears. What dangers he escaped
+may be well seen in Cowley's _Davideis_, which fell into them all. This
+is how Cowley describes the attiring of his Gabriel, who is commissioned
+to bear a message to David--
+
+  He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
+  That e'er the midday Sun pierced through with light:
+  Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spred;
+  Washt from the morning beauties deepest red.
+  An harmless flaming _Meteor_ shone for haire,
+  And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.
+  He cuts out a silk _Mantle_ from the skies,
+  Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes.
+  This he with starry vapours spangles all,
+  Took in their prime ere they grow _ripe_ and _fall_,--
+
+--and so on. The whole business suggests the arming of Pigwiggin; or the
+intricacies of Belinda's toilet in _The Rape of the Lock_. Such a Gabriel
+should add the last touch of adornment from a patch-box filled with
+sun-spots; and then is fit only to be--
+
+  Drawn with a team of little atomies
+  Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep.
+
+Milton was not in the least likely to fall into this fantastic-familiar
+vein. But he was also debarred from dealing freely in realism; from
+carrying conviction by some sudden startling piece of fidelity to the
+mixed texture of human experience and human feeling. When the feast is
+spread in Eden he remarks, it is true,--"No fear lest dinner cool"; but a
+lapse like this is of the rarest. His success--and he knew it--depended
+on the untiring maintenance of a superhuman elevation. His choice of
+subject had therefore not a little to do with the nature of his diction;
+and, through the influence of his diction, as shall be shown hereafter,
+with the establishment of the poetic tradition that dominated Eighteenth
+Century poetry.
+
+The same motives and tendencies, the same consistent care for remoteness
+and loftiness, may be seen in the character of the similes that he most
+frequently employs. Almost all his figures and comparisons illustrate
+concrete objects by concrete objects, and occurrences in time by other
+occurrences later in time. The essentially Romantic sort of figure,
+scarcely used by Milton, illustrates subtle conceptual relations by
+parable--
+
+  Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
+  When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
+  And Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
+  And Innocence is closing up his eyes,--
+  Now, if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
+  From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
+
+Sometimes, by a curious reversal, poets, especially the more
+sophisticated poets of the Romantic Revival, describe a perfectly
+definite outward object or scene by a figure drawn from the most complex
+abstract conceptions. So Shelley, with whom these inverted figures are
+habitual, compares the skylark to
+
+        A poet hidden
+  In the light of thought;
+
+and Byron, describing the rainbow over a waterfall, likens it to
+
+  Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
+
+Both ways are foreign to the epic manner of Milton. His figures may be
+called historic parallels, whereby the names and incidents of human
+history are made to elucidate and ennoble the less familiar names and
+incidents of his prehistoric theme. Sometimes, following Homer, he
+borrows a figure from rustic life, as where, for instance, he compares
+the devils, crowding into Pandemonium, to a swarm of bees. But he
+perceived clearly enough that he could not, for the reasons already
+explained, afford to deal largely in this class of figure: he prefers to
+maintain dignity and distance by choosing comparisons from ancient
+history and mythology, or from those great and strange things in Nature
+which repel intimacy--the sun, the moon, the sea, planets in opposition,
+a shooting star, an evening mist, a will-o'-the-wisp, a vulture
+descending from the Himalayas, the ice-floes on the North-East passage,
+the sea-beast leviathan, Xerxes' Hellespontic bridge, the gryphon
+pursuing the Arimaspian, the madness of Alcides in Oeta, the rape of
+Proserpine, and a hundred more reminiscences of the ancient world.
+
+Even the great events of ancient history seemed to him at times too
+familiar, too little elevated and remote to furnish a resting-place for a
+song that intended "no middle flight." He transforms his proper names,
+both to make them more melodious, and to make them more unfamiliar to the
+ear. No praise is too high for his art and skill in this matter. An
+example may be found in those four lines--the earliest that have the full
+Miltonic resonance--describing the fate of Lycidas, carried by the tide
+southward to the Cornish coast:--
+
+  Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
+  Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
+  Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
+  Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.
+
+"Bellerus" seems to be a name of Milton's coinage. He had written
+"Corineus," and probably disliked the sound, for in this case it can
+hardly have been that the name was too familiar. Both reasons concurred
+in prompting the allusion to Pharaoh and his Egyptian squadrons as--
+
+  Busiris and his Memphian chivalry.
+
+One would think "Italy" a pleasant enough sound, and "Vulcan" a good
+enough name for poetry. Neither was musical enough for Milton; both
+perhaps had associations too numerous, familiar, and misleading. Vulcan
+is mentioned, by that name, in _Comus_; but in _Paradise Lost_, where the
+story of his fall from Heaven is told, and the architect of Pandemonium
+is identified with him, both names, "Italy" and "Vulcan," are heightened
+and improved:--
+
+                  In Ausonian land
+  Men called him Mulciber.
+
+"Hephaistos," the name dear to moderns, could have found no place in
+Milton's works, unless it had been put in a description of the God's
+smithy, or, perhaps, in the sonnet where are pilloried those
+harsh-sounding Presbyterian names:--
+
+  Collkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp.
+
+Milton's use of proper names is a measure of his poetic genius. He does
+not forego it even in the lyric. Was there ever so learned a lyric as
+that beginning "Sabrina fair"--with its rich stores of marine mythology?
+History, not philosophy, was the source that he drew on for his
+splendours; and history, according to Milton, had, since the Fall of Man,
+furnished nothing but fainter and weaker repetitions of those stupendous
+events which filled the early theatre of universal space.
+
+His epic catalogues, which are few in number, show the same predominant
+interest in history and geography. The story of the Creation gave him an
+excellent opportunity of enumerating the kinds and properties of birds,
+beasts, fishes, and reptiles, plants and trees, after the manner of
+Chaucer and Spenser. This opportunity he refuses, or, at any rate, turns
+to but small account. His general descriptions are highly picturesque,
+but he spends little time on enumeration and detail. Of vegetables, only
+the vine, the gourd, and the corn are mentioned by name; of the
+inhabitants of the sea only the seal, the dolphin, and the whale. Natural
+knowledge, although he made a fair place for it in his scheme of
+education, was not one of his dearer studies. It was enough for him, as
+for Raphael, that Adam knew the natures of the beasts, and gave them
+appropriate names. The mere mention, on the other hand, of historic and
+geographic names rouses all the poet in him. The splendid roll-call of
+the devils, in the First Book of _Paradise Lost_, and the only less
+splendid enumeration, in the Eleventh Book, of the Kingdoms of the Earth,
+shown to Adam in vision, are a standing testimony to his powers. Compared
+with these, the list of human diseases and maladies in the Eleventh Book,
+suggested perhaps by Du Bartas, is rehearsed in a slighter and more
+perfunctory fashion.
+
+One last point in Milton's treatment must not be left unnoticed. Much
+adverse criticism has been spent on his allegorical figures of Sin and
+Death. There is good classical precedent for the introduction of such
+personified abstractions among the actors of a drama; and, seeing that
+the introduction of sin and death into the world was the chief effect of
+his main action, Milton no doubt felt that this too must be handled in
+right epic fashion, and must not be left to be added to the theme as a
+kind of embroidery of moral philosophy. In no other way could he have
+treated the topic half so effectively. There is enough of his philosophy
+in Milton's Heaven to damp our desire for more of it on his Earth or in
+his Hell. And when once we have given him license to deal only in
+persons, we are amply rewarded. His management of the poetic figure of
+personification is superb. It is a figure difficult to handle, and
+generally fails of effect through falling into one of two extremes.
+Either the quality, or the person, is forgotten. The figures in the
+_Romaunt of the Rose_ are good examples of the one type, of the minute
+materialistic personifications of the Middle Ages, pictorial rather than
+literary in essence, like the illuminated figures in a psalter. The
+feeble abstractions that people Gray's Odes, where, as Coleridge
+remarked, the personification depends wholly on the use of an initial
+capital, are examples of the other. Neither has the art of combining the
+vastness and vagueness of the abstract with the precise and definite
+conception of a person, as is done in the great figure of Religion drawn
+by Lucretius, as is done also in those other figures--the only creations
+of English poetry which approach the Latin in grandeur--the horrible
+phantoms of Sin and Death.
+
+These, then, here outlined slightly and imperfectly, are some of the most
+noteworthy features of Milton's style. By the measured roll of his verse,
+and the artful distribution of stress and pause to avoid monotony and to
+lift the successive lines in a climax; by the deliberate and choice
+character of his diction, and his wealth of vaguely emotional epithets;
+by the intuition which taught him to use no figures that do not heighten
+the majesty, and no names that do not help the music of his poem; by the
+vivid outlines of the concrete imaginations that he imposes on us for
+real, and the cloudy brilliance that he weaves for them out of all great
+historical memories, and all far-reaching abstract conceptions, he
+attained to a finished style of perhaps a more consistent and unflagging
+elevation than is to be found elsewhere in literature. There is nothing
+to put beside him. "His natural port," says Johnson, "is gigantick
+loftiness." And Landor: "After I have been reading the _Paradise Lost_, I
+can take up no other poet with satisfaction. I seem to have left the
+music of Handel for the music of the streets, or, at best, for drums and
+fifes." The secret of the style is lost; and no poet, since Milton's day,
+has recaptured the solemnity and beauty of the large utterance of
+Gabriel, or Belial, or Satan.
+
+
+The success of _Paradise Lost_, when it was published in 1667, was
+immediate and startling. Some of the poet's biographers have shed tears
+over the ten pounds that was all Milton ever received for his greatest
+work; others, magnanimously renouncing the world on his behalf, have
+rejoiced in the smallness of the sum paid him for a priceless work.
+Lament and heroics are both out of place. London was a small town, and it
+may well be doubted whether any modern provincial town of the same size
+would buy up in eighteen months thirteen hundred copies of a poem so
+serious and difficult and novel as _Paradise Lost_. Moreover, before the
+close of the century, six editions had appeared, three of them in folio,
+and so--judged by the number of editions--Milton's epic had outrun
+Shakespeare's plays in popularity. The folio edition of 1695, with notes
+and elucidations by one Patrick Hume, a Scottish scholar, appeared
+fourteen years before Nicholas Rowe produced the first critical edition
+of Shakespeare. The literary world quickly came to the opinion expressed
+by Dryden in the year of Milton's death, that the _Paradise Lost_ was
+"one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either
+this age or nation has produced." Barely twenty years later the editors
+of the _Athenian Mercury_ were asked to determine "Whether Milton and
+Waller were not the best English Poets; and which the better of the two?"
+Their verdict, reflecting, no doubt, the average opinion of the time, ran
+thus: "They were both excellent in their kind, and exceeded each other,
+and all besides. Milton was the fullest and loftiest; Waller the neatest
+and most correct poet we ever had." Long before Addison wrote the papers
+on _Paradise Lost_ in the _Spectator_, Milton had received full
+recognition in the literary handbooks of that age. Langbaine, in his
+_Account of the English Dramatick Poets_ (1691), takes notice of Dryden's
+debts to _Samson Agonistes_, and, with an effort to be just, remarks of
+Milton:--" Had his Principles been as good as his Parts, he had been an
+Excellent Person." Sir Thomas Pope Blount, in his _De Re Poetica_ (1694),
+and Bysshe in his _Art of English Poetry_ (1702), bear witness, in their
+several ways, to Milton's great and assured fame. Indeed, Thomas Rymer,
+of Gray's Inn, Esquire, who in 1677 had sneered at "that Paradise Lost of
+Milton's which some are pleased to call a Poem," and William Winstanley,
+who, in the _Lives of the Most Famous English Poets_ (1687), had remarked
+of Milton that "his Fame is gone out like a Candle in a Snuff, and his
+Memory will always stink," were almost alone among the voices of their
+time. They were still under the influence of the old political prejudice,
+but they did battle for a doomed opinion, and, among judges not
+illiterate, they are the poet's last detractors.
+
+The singular thing to note is that the eighteenth century, which broke
+with almost every other seventeenth-century poet before Dryden, did not
+break with Milton. "Who now reads Cowley?" Pope asked: Cowley, whose works
+ran through so many editions that no modern reprint has been called for.
+If he had asked, "Who now reads Milton?" the answer must have been,
+"Every writer of English verse"; and so it has continued from the time of
+Milton's death to the present day. The choice of blank verse for
+_Paradise Lost_ established that metre in formidable rivalry to the
+heroic couplet, so that it became the usual metre for long poems of a
+reflective or descriptive cast. Professed imitations of Milton's verse
+were many; among them, Addison's _Translation of a Story out of the Third
+Aeneid_, Broome's experiment in the translation of the Eleventh Odyssey,
+Fenton's fragments of two books of the _Iliad_, and Christopher Pitt's
+paraphrase of Psalm cxxxix. In the first year of the eighteenth century
+John Philips showed, in his _Splendid Shilling_, how the style of Milton
+might be applied, for the purposes of burlesque, to humble subjects, a
+lesson which he further illustrated, with no ostensible comic intent, in
+his later poems, _Cyder_ and _Blenheim_. Gay, in _Wine, a Poem_,
+Somerville in _The Chase_, Armstrong in _The Oeconomy of Love_ and _The
+Art of Preserving Health_, Christopher Smart in The Hop-Garden, Dyer in
+_The Fleece_, and Grainger in _The Sugar-Cane_, all followed where
+Philips' _Cyder_ had led, and multiplied year by year what may be called
+the technical and industrial applications of Milton's style. Among the
+many other blank verse poems produced during the middle part of the
+century it is enough to name Thomson's _Seasons_; Blair's _Grave_;
+Glover's _Leonidas_; Shenstone's _Economy_, _The Ruined Abbey_, and _Love
+and Honour_; Young's _Night Thoughts_; Akenside's _Pleasures of the
+Imagination_; Thomas Warton's _Pleasures of Melancholy_; Mallet's _The
+Excursion_, and _Amyntor and Theodora_; Cooper's _The Power of Harmony_;
+and Lyttelton's _Blenheim_. The influence of Milton is not equally
+apparent in all of these, but in none is it wholly wanting; in most it is
+visible on every page. The mere invocation often tells a tale. Thus
+Akenside:--
+
+  Thou chief, Poetic Spirit, from the banks
+  Of Avon, whence thy holy fingers cull
+  Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
+  Where Shakespeare lies, be present. And with thee
+  Let Fiction come; on her aerial wings
+  Wafting ten thousand colours.
+
+The quotation need not be prolonged; even while he commemorates
+Shakespeare, Akenside goes to Milton for his material, and plays a feeble
+variation on the Miltonic phrase:--
+
+                In his right hand
+  Grasping ten thousand thunders.
+
+Thus Lyttelton:--
+
+  Minerva, thee to my adventurous lyre
+  Assistant I invoke, that means to sing
+  Blenheim, proud monument of British fame
+  Thy glorious work!
+
+"The building, not the field, I sing," he might have added, for Philips
+had already chanted the battle of Blenheim in like Miltonic fashion.
+Thus, again, the worthy Grainger, flattest of agricultural bards:--
+
+  Spirit of Inspiration, that did'st lead
+  Th' Ascrean poet to the sacred mount,
+  And taught'st him all the precepts of the swain;
+  Descend from Heaven, and guide my trembling steps
+  To Fame's eternal dome, where Maro reigns;
+  Where pastoral Dyer, where Pomona's bard,
+  And Smart and Somervile in varying strains,
+  Their sylvan lore convey: O may I join
+  This choral band, and from their precepts learn
+  To deck my theme, which though to song unknown,
+  Is most momentous to my country's weal!
+
+Grainger frequently echoes Milton; and in the passage where he addresses
+the Avon, at Bristol, he pays a more explicit tribute:--
+
+  Though not to you, young Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
+  All-rudely warbled his first woodland notes;
+  *      *      *      *      *
+  On you reclined, another tuned his pipe,
+  Whom all the Muses emulously love,
+  And in whose strains your praises shall endure
+  While to Sabrina speeds your healing stream.
+
+Better and more striking instances of the Miltonic spell laid on blank
+verse are easily to be found for the seeking. But since it is the
+omnipresence of this Miltonic influence that is asserted, passages like
+these, which catch the eye on any chance page of eighteenth-century blank
+verse, and are representative of hundreds more, suffice for the purpose.
+
+There has been a tendency among recent historians of English literature
+to group together the poets who, like Dyer in _Grongar Hill_, and Thomas
+Warton in _The Pleasures of Melancholy_, echo the strains of Milton's
+early poems, and to name them "Miltonics," precursors of the Romantic
+Revival. No doubt there is a marked difference between Milton's earlier
+manner and his later; not a few of his lovers, if they were forced to
+choose, would readily give up the three major poems to save the five best
+of the minor. But it is going far to appropriate the name of "Miltonic"
+to imitators of the earlier poems. Perhaps the study of _L'Allegro_ and
+_Il Penseroso_ and _Comus_ helped forward the Romantic Revival; but the
+chief influence of Milton on the development of English poetry was not
+this. It was natural enough that those who had been taught from childhood
+to read and admire _Paradise Lost_ should find relief and novelty in the
+freer and more spontaneous music of these youthful poems. But the truth
+is that before ever he abetted the escape, he helped to forge the
+fetters; that Milton, as much as any other single writer, was responsible
+for the wide and potent sway of the classical convention.
+
+Above all, he may fairly be called the inventor and, by the irony of
+fate, the promulgator of that "poetic diction" which, in the time of its
+deformity and decay, Wordsworth sought to destroy. Johnson attributes the
+invention to Dryden. "There was therefore," he says, "before the time of
+Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words, at once refined from the
+grossness of domestick use, and free from the harshness of terms
+appropriated to particular arts. Words too familiar or too remote defeat
+the purpose of a poet."
+
+There is no need to quarrel with this account, if we are careful to
+understand exactly what Johnson means. Dryden, he says in effect, wrote
+plain, well-bred English; he eschewed technical terms, shunned the florid
+licenses of the Elizabethans, and yet, in his more studied verse, never
+dropped into the town-gallant vein of some of his contemporaries, the
+slang of Butler or Lestrange. Johnson, it should be remembered, thought
+the diction of _Lycidas_ "harsh," and it is plain enough from many of his
+utterances that he ranged Milton with the poets who use words and phrases
+"too remote" from the language of natural intercourse. He was a devoted
+adherent of the school of Dryden and Pope; in the _Lives of the Poets_ he
+loses no opportunity of expressing his contempt for blank verse; he was
+only too likely to exalt the influence of his masters on the poets of his
+own time, and to ignore the influence of Milton. Since handbooks of
+literature are commonly formed by a process of attrition from such works
+as Johnson's _Lives_, his opinions on a point like this persist in
+epidemic fashion; they are detached from their authority, and repeated so
+often that at last they become orthodox. But no ignoring of Milton can
+alter the fact that English verse went Milton-mad during the earlier half
+of the eighteenth century. Miltonic cadences became a kind of patter, and
+the diction that Milton had invented for the rendering of his colossal
+imaginations was applied indifferently to all subjects--to apple-growing,
+sugar-boiling, the drainage of the Bedford level, the breeding of
+negroes, and the distempers of sheep. Milton's shadowy grandeur, his
+avoidance of plain concrete terms, his manner of linking adjective with
+substantive, were all necessary to him for the describing of his strange
+world; but these habits became a mere vicious trick of absurd periphrasis
+and purposeless vagueness when they were carried by his imitators into
+the description of common and familiar objects. A reader making his first
+acquaintance with Thomson's _Seasons_ might suppose that the poem was
+written for a wager, to prove that country life may be described, and
+nothing called by its name. The philosophic pride of the eighteenth
+century was tickled by the use of general terms in description; the
+chosen periphrases are always more comprehensive than the names that they
+replace. When Thomson, for instance, speaks of "the feathered nations" or
+of "the glossy kind," it is only by the context that we are saved from
+supposing him to allude, in the one case to Red Indians, in the other to
+moles. And these are but two of some dozen devices for escaping from the
+flat vulgarity of calling birds by that name.
+
+Milton himself, it must be admitted, is not wholly free from blame. The
+elevation and vagueness of his diction, which were a mere necessity to
+him in the treatment of large parts of his subject, are yet maintained by
+him in the description of things comparatively familiar. When Sin is
+described as "rolling her bestial train" towards the gates of Hell, the
+diction is faultless; when the serpent (as yet an innocent reptile in
+Paradise),
+
+  Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine
+  His braided train,
+
+it is impossible to cavil; but when Raphael, in conversation with Adam,
+describes the formation of the banks--
+
+                    where rivers now
+  Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train,
+
+criticism is less at ease. We feel that we are drawing near to the
+"poetic diction" of the eighteenth century. Eve's tears are called
+
+              precious drops that ready stood
+  Each in their crystal sluice,
+
+but the description is saved by the lines that immediately precede, where
+Milton says the word, and thereby shows that he is not seeking idle
+periphrasis:--
+
+  But silently a gentle tear let fall
+  From either eye, and wiped them with her hair.
+
+His constant preference for words of Latin origin certainly brings Milton
+near at times to the poetic diction banned by Wordsworth. "Vernal bloom"
+for "spring flowers," "humid bow" for "rainbow," the description of the
+brooks rolling--
+
+  With mazy error under pendent shades,
+
+the use of phrases like "nitrous powder" or "smutty grain" for
+"gunpowder," and "optic glass" or "optic tube" for the telescope or
+"perspective," are instances of the approximation. A certain number of
+these circuitous phrases are justified by considerations of dramatic
+propriety. When Raphael describes the artillery used in Heaven, he speaks
+of cannon balls as "iron globes" and "balls of missive ruin," and calls
+the linstock the "incentive reed pernicious," thereby perhaps drawing
+attention to the strange character of the new invention. No such reason
+can be invoked for his justification when he tells how the sun receives
+from earth
+
+            his alimental recompense
+  In humid exhalations;
+
+still less when, speaking of food, with which he confesses himself to be
+familiar, he calls it "corporal nutriment."
+
+But the chief sinner is Adam. If the evil passions of the rebel Angels
+invented the pun, it was the pomposity of our father Adam that first
+brought "poetic diction" into vogue. When the curse has fallen in Eden he
+makes a long speech for the comfort of Eve, in the course of which he
+alludes to "the graceful locks of these fair spreading trees," speaks of
+the sun as "this diurnal star," and, studying protection against the
+newly experienced cold, advises--
+
+          how we his gathered beams
+  Reflected may with matter sere foment,
+  Or by collision of two bodies grind
+  The air attrite to fire;
+
+--for all the world as if he were a man of science lecturing to some
+Philosophic Institute on the customs of savages.
+
+If, then, the term "poetic diction" is to be used as Wordsworth used it,
+Johnson's account of its origin must be amended. There was little or no
+poetic diction, of the kind condemned by Wordsworth, before the time of
+Milton. In the Elizabethan age all diction was free to poetry, and was
+freely used. Drawing on his accumulated stores of literary reminiscence,
+and using them for his own special purpose, Milton invented "poetic
+diction," and bore a main part in the founding of the English school of
+poetry which is called "Classical." His diction is called "poetic,"
+because it was absolutely fitted to his purpose, which could have been
+conceived only by the loftiest poetic genius. His style was admired,
+misunderstood, and imitated for a century. The diction of his imitators
+is called "poetic," because, for the most part, they believed that dull
+nonsense and trading platitudes could be made into poetry by a borrowed
+system of diction.
+
+Even the best poets of the age are not freer than the rest from the
+baneful Miltonic infection. Coleridge found the source of "our
+pseudo-poetic diction" in Pope's _Homer_. But Pope was from boyhood a
+sedulous student of Milton, and a frequent borrower. The mock-heroics of
+the _Dunciad_ are stilted on Miltonic phrases; and in the translation of
+Homer, above all, reminiscences of Milton abound. In most of them
+Milton's phraseology is weakened and misapplied. Two instances among many
+may serve. When Vulcan, in the First Iliad, warns Juno against rousing
+the anger of Jove, he adds:--
+
+  Once in your cause I felt his matchless might,
+  Hurled headlong downward from th' ethereal height.
+
+The word "flaming" in Milton's splendid line did not suit Pope's
+purpose--so it disappears, and with it half the glory of the original. In
+place of it, to eke out the syllables, he inserts the idle, if not
+foolish, substitute "downward." This is the art of sinking in poetry.
+Again, Ulysses, narrating his adventures, in the Ninth Odyssey,
+remarks:--
+
+  In vain Calypso long constrained my stay,
+  With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
+
+The whole line, so beautiful when it describes the modesty of Eve, in its
+new context becomes stark nonsense. It is Ulysses who is "reluctant," and
+Calypso who is "amorous." The misuse of Milton's line makes the situation
+comic.
+
+James Thomson (to take another example) with a genuine thin vein of
+originality, too often conceals it under Miltonic lendings. The trail of
+_Paradise Lost_ runs all through _The Seasons_. In such a description as
+this of the Moon in Autumn there is a cluster of reminiscences:--
+
+                          Meanwhile the Moon
+  Full-orbed and breaking through the scattered clouds,
+  Shows her broad visage in the crimsoned east.
+  Turned to the Sun direct, her spotted disk,
+  Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend,
+  And caverns deep, as optic tube descries,
+  A smaller Earth, gives all his blaze again,
+  Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day.
+
+Thomson could not resist the attractions of Milton's stately Latin
+vocabulary. Where Milton describes how, in Paradise--
+
+                      the flowery lap
+  Of some irriguous valley spread her store;
+
+Thomson follows with--
+
+  See where the winding vale its lavish stores
+  Irriguous spreads.
+
+Where Milton describes how Satan, wounded by Michael--
+
+          writhed him to and fro convolved,
+
+Thomson follows with a description of the Spring meadows, where
+
+                      the sportive lambs
+  This way and that convolved, in friskful glee
+  Their frolics play.
+
+The lambs emulating Satan are a kind of epitome and emblem of those
+descriptive poets of the eighteenth century who took Milton for their
+model.
+
+But perhaps the best example of all is Gray, whose work is full of
+Miltonic reminiscence. He frequently borrows; and, like Pope, almost
+always spoils in the borrowing. Thus what Milton writes of the
+nightingale--
+
+  She all night long her amorous descant sung,--
+
+is echoed by Gray in the _Sonnet on the Death of Richard West_:--
+
+  The birds in vain their amorous descant join.
+
+Now a "descant" is a variation imposed upon a plain-song. The word
+exactly describes the song of the nightingale; but the addition of the
+verb "join" robs it of all meaning. Again, the passage in the Second Book
+of _Paradise Lost_ where Moloch describes the pains of Hell--
+
+                when the scourge
+  Inexorably, and the torturing hour
+  Calls us to penance,--
+
+lingered in Gray's memory when he addressed Adversity--
+
+  Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
+  The bad affright, afflict the best.
+
+The "torturing hour" in Gray's line becomes one of the chance possessions
+of Adversity, suspended from her belt with the rest of her trinkets.
+Observe how the word "hour" has been emptied of its meaning. It affrights
+one class of persons, and afflicts another, which anything that is
+"torturing" might easily do. In Milton the most awful property of Time is
+indicated; the hour "calls--inexorably." Here, then, in two cases, is
+plagiarism, which may be defined as unblest theft--the theft of what you
+do not want, and cannot use.
+
+In these and many other passages of eighteenth-century verse it may be
+seen how literary reminiscence sometimes strangles poetry; and how a
+great man suffers at the hands of his disciples and admirers. The thing
+has happened so often that it ceases to cause surprise; were not Lydgate
+and Occleve pupils (save the mark!) of Chaucer? And yet it remains a
+paradox that Milton's, of all styles in the world, unapproachable in its
+loftiness, invented by a temper of the most burning zeal and the
+profoundest gravity for the treatment of a subject wildly intractable by
+ordinary methods, should have been chosen by a generation of
+philosophical organ-grinders as the fittest pattern for their
+professional melodies; and that a system of diction employed by a blind
+man for the description of an imaginary world should have been borrowed
+by landscape-gardeners and travelling pedlars for the setting forth of
+their works and their wares.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+In the meantime, while Dryden and Milton both had their schools, most of
+our seventeenth-century poetry fell into an almost complete oblivion.
+Dryden's satiric, and Milton's epic strains engrossed attention, and
+shaped the verses of an age. But the seventeenth century was
+extraordinarily wealthy in poetic kinds quite distinct from these: in
+metaphysic, and mysticism, in devotional ecstasy, and love-lyric, and
+romance. The English genius in poetry is essentially metaphysical and
+romantic. Milton was neither. He could not have excelled in any of these
+kinds; nor have come near to Suckling, or Crashaw, or Vaughan, or
+Herrick, or Marvell, in their proper realms. It is a permissible
+indulgence, therefore, in taking leave of Milton, to turn from the
+_Paradise Lost_ for a moment, and, escaping from the solid materialism of
+the heroic and epic strain, to find passion once more among the Court
+lyrists, and spiritual insight among the retired mystics, to find
+Religion and Love, and the humility that has access to both. A profound
+humility, impossible to Milton, inspired Vaughan when he wrote such a
+verse as this:--
+
+        There is in God, some say,
+  A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here
+  Say it is late and dusky, because they
+        See not all clear.
+  O for that night! where I in him
+  Might live invisible and dim!
+
+There is a natural vision, and there is a spiritual vision; the spiritual
+belongs to Vaughan, not to Milton. If Milton persuades us to a willing
+suspension of disbelief for the moment, Vaughan thrills us with a sense
+of vivid reality. His _Ascension Day_ is a thing seen, as if it were a
+memory of yesterday:--
+
+  The day-star smiles, and light, with thee deceast,
+  Now shines in all the chambers of the East.
+  What stirs, what posting intercourse and mirth
+  Of Saints and Angels glorifie the earth!
+  What sighs, what whispers, busie stops and stays;
+  Private and holy talk fill all the ways!
+  They pass as at the last great day, and run
+  In their white robes to seek the risen Sun;
+  I see them, hear them, mark their haste, and move
+  Amongst them, with them, wing'd with faith and love.
+
+To the intensity of his aspiration and hushed expectance the world seems
+only a turbulent passing pageant, or a hard wayfaring, suffered in a
+dream:--
+
+                          Who stays
+  Here long must passe
+  O'er dark hills, swift streames, and steep ways
+            As smooth as glasse.
+
+Or a brief sickness:--
+
+  So for this night I linger here,
+  And, full of tossings to and fro,
+  Expect still when thou wilt appear,
+  That I may get me up and go.
+
+His eyes are fixed on the shining lights that beckon him; the world is
+full of voices, but its sights and sounds appeal to him in vain; the
+beauties that surround him are things of naught--
+
+  Glorious deceptions, gilded mists,
+  False joyes, phantastick flights.
+
+In the distance before him there shines
+
+            An air of glory
+  Whose light doth trample on my days;
+  My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
+            Meer glimmering and decays;
+
+and he lifts up his voice in passionate desire for the ultimate
+deliverance:--
+
+  Ah! what time will it come? When shall that crie
+  _The Bridegroome's comming_! fill the sky?
+          Shall it in the evening run,
+          When our words and works are done?
+  Or will thy all-surprising light
+          Break at midnight?
+
+He broods over it till nothing else is present to him in the
+night-watches:--
+
+  I saw Eternity the other night
+  Like a great ring of calm and endless light.
+
+The history of the struggles and corruption of mankind may close at any
+moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at a signal given:--
+
+  All's in deep sleep and night; thick darkness lyes
+      And hatcheth o'er thy people--
+  But hark! what trumpet's that, what angel cries
+      _Arise! Thrust in thy sickle!_
+
+Here is a religious poet indeed, a visionary, a mystic, and a Christian;
+none of which names can be truly applied to Milton. And if we wish to
+find Love enjoying his just supremacy in poetry, we cannot do better than
+seek him among the lyrists of the Court of Charles II. Milton,
+self-sufficient and censorious, denies the name of love to these songs of
+the sons of Belial. Love, he says, reigns and revels in Eden, not
+
+                      in court amours,
+  Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
+  Or serenate, which the starved lover sings
+  To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
+
+Yet for the quick and fresh spirit of love in the poetry of that time we
+must go to the sons of Belial. There is a pathetic passage in one of
+Milton's divorce pamphlets, where, speaking of the unhappy choices in
+marriage to which "soberest and best governed men" are liable, he
+remarks:--"It is not strange though many, who have spent their youth
+chastely, are in some things not so quick-sighted while they haste too
+eagerly to light the nuptial torch; nor is it therefore that for a modest
+error a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means
+to release him, since they who have lived most loosely, by reason of
+their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because
+their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces
+to teach them experience."
+
+The wild affections, unsettling at will, wrote better love-songs than the
+steadfast principles of the sober and well-governed. Roystering
+libertines like Sir Charles Sedley were more edifying lovers than the
+austere husbands of Mary Powell and of Eve. Milton would have despised
+and detested the pleasure-seeking philosophy of Sedley:--
+
+  Let us then ply those joys we have,
+  'Tis vain to think beyond the grave;
+  Out of our reach the Gods have laid
+      Of Time to come th' event,
+  And laugh to see the Fools afraid
+      Of what the Knaves invent.
+
+But the self-abandonment and the passion of two or three of Sedley's
+songs are out of Milton's reach:--
+
+  Not _Celia_ that I juster am,
+    Or better than the rest,
+  For I would change each hour like them,
+    Were not my heart at rest.
+
+  But I am ty'd to very thee
+    By every thought I have,
+  Thy face I only care to see,
+    Thy heart I only crave.
+
+  All that in woman is ador'd
+    In thy dear self I find,
+  For the whole sex can but afford
+    The handsome and the kind.
+
+  Why should I then seek further store,
+    And still make love anew;
+  When change itself can give no more,
+    'Tis easie to be true.
+
+It is like a cup of cold water after the didactic endearments of Adam,
+and his repeated apostrophe:
+
+  Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve--
+  For such thou art, from sin and blame entire.
+
+Then there was John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He was drunk for five
+years on end,--so his biographer, who had it from his own lips,
+alleges--and he died at the age of thirty-two. Like Sedley, he professes
+no virtues, and holds no far-reaching views. But what a delicate turn of
+personal affection he gives to the expression of his careless creed:--
+
+  The time that is to come is not,
+    How can it then be mine?
+  The present moment's all my lot,
+  And that, as fast as it is got,
+    Phyllis, is only thine.
+
+  Then talk not of inconstancy,
+    False hearts, and broken vows
+  If I by miracle can be
+  This live-long minute true to thee,
+    'Tis all that Heaven allows.
+
+Rochester's best love-poetry reaches the topmost pinnacle of achievement
+in that kind. None has ever been written more movingly beautiful than
+this:--
+
+  When, wearied with a world of woe,
+    To thy safe bosom I retire,
+  Where love and peace and truth does flow,
+    May I contented there expire!
+
+  Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,
+    I fall on some base heart unblest--
+  Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven--
+    And lose my everlasting rest!
+
+Or than that other piece (too beautiful and too intense to be cited as a
+sudden illustration of a thesis) beginning--
+
+  Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why
+  Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny
+  The sunshine of the Sun's enlivening eye?
+
+The wind bloweth where it listeth; the wandering fire of song touches the
+hearts and lips of whom it will. Milton built an altar in the name of the
+Lord, and he made a great trench about the altar, and he put the wood in
+order, and loaded the altar with rich exotic offerings, cassia and nard,
+odorous gums and balm, and fruit burnished with golden rind. But the fire
+from Heaven descended on the hastily piled altars of the sons of Belial,
+and left Milton's gorgeous altar cold.
+
+His fame is now old-established and settled, so there is no place left
+for the eloquence of the memorialist, or the studied praises of the
+pleader. I have tried to understand Milton; and have already praised him
+as well as I know how, with no stinted admiration, I trust, and certainly
+with no merely superstitious reverence. If I must round my discourse by
+repeating something that I have already said or suggested, it shall be
+this--that as he stands far aloof from his contemporaries, so in the
+succession of great figures that mark for us the centuries of our
+literature he is seen once more singular and a stranger. We bred
+Shakespeare in our Midlands; he was nourished from the soil that still
+grows our daily bread. But Milton was an alien conqueror. The crowd of
+native-born Puritans, who sometimes (not without many searchings of heart
+and sharp misgivings) attempt to claim him for their leader, have no
+title in him. It is a proof of his dominating power, and no credit to
+their intelligence, that they accept him as their representative. His
+influence on the destinies and history of our literature might be
+compared to the achievement of Napoleon while he was winning the
+victories that changed the map of Europe. He could not change the
+character of a people, nor perpetuate his dynasty. But nothing is as it
+would have been without him. Our literature is as hospitable as the
+Hindoo pantheon; the great revolutionary has won a place even in our
+creed. And the writer has this advantage, at least, over the conqueror
+and legislator, that he has bequeathed to us not maps, nor laws, but
+poems, whose beauty, like the World's unwithered countenance, is bright
+as at the day of their creation.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+[For the following Index I am indebted to the kindness of three of my
+pupils, Miss F. Marston, Miss E. L. Morice, and Miss D. E. Yates.]
+
+Abdiel, 72, 138-39, 156, 211
+Abstract terms, Milton's use of, 227-31
+Adam, 32, 35, 54, 64, 82-4, 87, 92, 95-6, 105, 112, 115, 122, 141-45,
+    148-50, 154-57, 160, 207, 222, 237, 248-50, 261
+_Adamo_, 95
+Addison, Joseph, 157-58, 206, 218, 242
+_AEneid_, Virgil's, 158
+Akenside, Mark, 243
+Allegorical figures, Milton's, 237-38
+_Amyntor and Theodora_, Mallet's, 243
+Andreini, 95-7, 104, 106
+Angelo, Michael, 88
+_Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus_, 217
+_Apology for Smectymnuus_, 16, 69, 71, 74
+Arbuthnot, John, 218
+_Areopagitica_, 43, 46, 48, 49, 52, 56-7, 65, 76, 180
+Arianism, 86
+Ariosto, 171
+Armstrong, John, 242
+_Art of English Poetry_, Bysshe's, 241
+_Art of Preserving Health, The_, Armstrong's, 242
+Arthurian Legend, 23, 60, 89-90
+_Ascension Day_, Vaughan's, 257
+Athanasian Creed, 86
+_Athenian Mercury_, 240
+Augustine, Saint, 112
+
+Bacon, Francis, 1, 198
+Barclay, John, 57
+Baxter, Richard, 20-21
+Beaumont, Francis, 218
+Beaumont, Joseph, 176
+Beelzebub, 140
+Belial, 140, 211-12, 239, 259
+Bembo, Pietro, 46
+Bentley, Richard, 157-58
+_Biron, Tragedy of_, Chapman's, 204
+Blair, Robert, 243
+_Blenheim_, Lyttelton's, 243
+_Blenheim_, Philips's, 242
+Blount, Sir Thomas Pope, 241
+Bodley, Sir Thomas, 17
+Boileau, Nicolas, 178
+_Book of Sports_, 25
+Bossu, Charles, 158
+Boyd, Zachary, 175
+Brice, Thomas, 173
+Broome, William, 242
+Bunyan, John, 147, 155
+Burke, Edmund, 40, 47, 77, 134
+Burnet, Dr. Thomas, 84
+Butler, Samuel, 44, 72, 246
+Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 233
+Bysshe, 241
+
+Caedmon, 106
+Cambridge, Milton at, 13
+Camden, William, 61
+Carew, Thomas, 197
+Catalogues, Milton's Epic, 236
+Catullus, 206
+Chapman, George, 204, 218
+Charlemagne, 60
+Charles I., 23
+Charles II., Court of, 26, 259
+_Chase, The_, Somerville's, 242
+Chaucer, Geoffrey, 145, 236, 255
+Chesterfield, Lord, 133
+_Christian Doctrine, Treatise of_, 43, 113, 140
+Church of England, 17, 19-21, 24, 34
+_City Match, The_, Mayne's, 189
+Classic School, 220, 226
+Cleveland, John, 72
+_Clovis_, Saint-Sorlin's, 178-79, 205
+Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 127, 151, 173, 214, 238, 251
+_Comus_, 28, 93, 162-63, 182, 184, 191, 199, 235, 245
+Congreve, William, 147, 225
+Cooper, John Gilbert, 243
+_Coriolanus_, Shakespeare's, 122
+Court lyrists, 259-63
+Cowley, Abraham, 72, 177, 206, 219, 231, 242
+Crabbe, George, 223
+Crashaw, Richard, 106, 256
+Cromwell, Oliver, 62-3, 65, 135
+_Cyder_, Philips's, 242
+_Cynthia, Hymn to_, Jonson's, 185
+Dalila, 51, 149, 209-10
+Daniel, Samuel, 218
+Davenant, William, 177, 180, 206, 219
+_Davideis_, Cowley's, 177-78, 231
+_De Re Poetica_, Blount's, 241
+_Death of a Fair Infant, On the_, 181-82
+_Defence of the People of England_, 47, 74, 131
+_Defence of the People of England, Second_, 34, 47, 63
+Dekker, John, 218
+Denham, John, 206, 219
+De Quincey, Thomas, 82, 103, 120, 192
+_Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure_, Marvell's, 162
+_Discourse of Satire_, Dryden's, 202, 205
+_Divine Institutes_ of Lactantius, 101
+_Divine Weekes and Workes_, Du Bartas's, 18
+_Divorce Pamphlets_, 16, 19, 48, 52, 54, 69, 75, 248, 259
+Donne, John, 181, 183
+Dramatists, influence of, on Milton, 15-16, 185-87
+Drayton, Michael, 27, 174, 218
+Dryden, John, 10, 17, 133, 180, 202, 203, 206-208, 219, 240-41, 246-47,
+    256
+Du Bartas, Guillaume, 18, 237
+_Dunciad_, Pope's, 251
+Dyer, John, 242, 245
+
+_Ecclesiastical Pamphlets_, 49
+_Ecclesiastical Polity_, Hooker's, 103
+_Economy_, Shenstone's, 243
+_Economy of Love, The_, Armstrong's, 242
+_Education, Of_, 48-9
+Eighteenth-century poetry, 233;
+  influence of Milton on, 241 _seq._
+_Eikonoklastes_, 16, 67
+Elizabethan Poetry, 116, 173-75, 186-87;
+  Milton's relation to, 15, 16, 218-20
+Ellwood, Thomas, 161, 163
+_English Dramatick Poets, Account of the_, Langbaine's, 241
+Epic catalogues, Milton's, 236
+Etherege, George, 190
+Eve,27, 54, 83, 87, 92, 96, 112, 121-22, 142-50, 154-59, 160, 204,
+    206-207, 222, 249-50, 260
+_Excursion, The_, Mallet's, 243
+
+_Faerie Queene_, Spenser's, 199-200
+Fenton, Elijah, 242
+_Fleece, The_, Dyer's, 242
+Fletcher, Giles, 106
+Fletcher, Phineas, 106
+Ford, John, 117
+
+Gabriel, 72, 129, 135, 154, 239
+Galileo, 100
+Gay, John, 242
+Gibbon, Edward, 138
+Glover, Richard, 243
+Godwin, William, 185
+Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 133
+_Gondibert_, Davenant's, 177
+_Gorboduc_, Sackville's, 196
+Grainger, James, 242, 244
+_Grave, The_, Blair's, 243
+Gray, Thomas, 238, 253-55
+_Grongar Hill_, Dyer's, 245
+
+Hall, John, 71
+_Hamlet_, Shakespeare's, 142
+Hampton Court Conference, 17
+Handel, 239
+_Harmonie of the Church_, Drayton's, 174
+Hazlitt, William, 198
+Herbert, George, 174
+Herodotus, 100
+Herrick, Robert, 21, 256
+Hervey, Lord, 203
+_History of Britain_, 60, 143
+Hobbes, Thomas, 58, 219
+Homer, 171, 206, 220, 234
+_Homer_, Pope's, 251
+_Hop Garden, The_, Smart's, 242
+Horace, 202
+Horton, 22
+Howard, Sir Robert, 180
+Hume, Patrick, 240
+_Hyperion_, Keats's, 227
+
+_Idylls of the King_, Tennyson's, 193
+_Iliad, The_, 242
+_Il Penseroso_, 22, 62, 184-85, 195, 245
+
+Johnson, Samuel, 22, 31, 35, 57-8, 127, 149, 175, 216, 224-25, 229-30,
+    239, 246-47, 251
+Jonson, Ben, 18, 27, 185-86, 198, 218-19
+Juvenal, 202
+
+Keats, John, 227
+King, Edward, 34
+Knox, John, 142
+
+Lactantius, 101-102
+_L'Allegro_, 22, 24-5, 27, 195, 245
+Lamb, Charles, 198
+Landor, Walter Savage, 137, 212-13, 239
+Langbaine, Gerard, 241
+Latinisms, Milton's, 208-10
+Laud, Archbishop, 21, 23
+Laudian movement, 91
+Lawrence, Henry, 8
+_Lear, King_, Shakespeare's, 223-24
+_Leonidas_, Glover's, 243
+Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 224
+Lestrange, Sir Roger, 246
+Licensing Act, 6
+_Lives of the Most Famous English Poets_, Winstanley's, 241
+_Lives of the Poets_, Johnson's, 247
+_Love and Honour_, Shenstone's, 243
+Lucretius, 238
+_Lycidas_, 23-4, 33, 57, 63, 213, 235, 246
+Lydgate, John, 255
+Lyttelton, Lord, 243
+
+_Macbeth_, Shakespeare's, 16, 118, 122, 229
+Mackenzie, Sir George, 206
+Malherbe, Chretien Guillaume de, 205
+Mallet, David, 243
+Mammon, 140, 172
+Manoa, 51
+Manso, 88
+Marlowe, Christopher, 190
+Marot, Clement, 173
+Marvell, Andrew, 67, 73, 162, 256
+Masson, Professor David, 133
+Meredith, George, 118
+Metaphors, Milton's use of, 13-14, 213, 234
+Michael, 97, 129, 135, 156-57, 167, 253
+"Miltonics," the, 245
+Miracle plays, 101
+Moloch, 140, 254
+_Monstrous Regiment of Women_, Knox's, 142
+Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 57
+Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de, 62
+More, Henry, 227
+More, Sir Thomas, 57, 69
+Morus, Alexander, 70
+Moryson, Fynes, 15
+
+_Nativity, Ode on the Morning of Christ's_, 181, 199
+Nicodemus, Apocryphal Gospel of, 164
+_Night Thoughts_, Young's, 243
+_Nightingale, Sonnet to the_, 30
+
+Occleve, Thomas, 255
+_Odes_, Gray's, 238
+_Olaus Magnus_, 100
+_Old Wives' Tale_, Peele's, 185
+_Original Poems_, Dr. Joseph Beaumont's, 176
+Ovid, 206, 208
+
+_Paradise Lost_, 28, 32, 45, 52, 58, 72-3, 79, 81 _seq._, 122-24, 127,
+    133, 140, 143, 150, 153, 158-64, 168, 176, 179, 188, 191, 195, 206,
+    208, 210, 213-14, 217, 223-24, 235, 237, 239-42, 245, 252, 254, 256
+  Characters of, 132-69
+  Chronology of, 110-11
+  Cosmography of, 107-10
+  Criticisms of, by Addison, 157-58
+  Bentley, 157
+  Coleridge, 127, 151, 173
+  De Quincey, 82, 103, 120, 192
+  Dryden, 240
+  Johnson, 127, 149, 175
+  Landor, 137, 212-13, 239
+  Pattison, 83, 101
+  Pope, 141
+  Voltaire, 84
+  Descriptive scenes in, 120-22, 155-58, 225-26
+  Sources of, 18, 95, 106
+  Theme of, 81-9, 91-4, 97-106, 127-28
+  Theology of, 85-7, 126-27, 128-32
+  Verse of, 179 _seq._, 191-98
+_Paradise Regained_, 86, 120, 146-47, 158-59, 161, 163, 211, 228
+Parker, Samuel, 67
+Parliament, the Long, 56, 140
+_Passion, The_, 181
+Pattison, Mark, 54, 83, 101
+Peele, George, 185, 190
+Philips, John, 242, 244
+Phillips, Edward, 160
+_Phillips, Lives of Edward and John_, Godwin's, 185
+Philosophical poetry, 227
+_Pilgrim's Progress_, Bunyan's, 156
+Pitt, Christopher, 242
+_Platonick Song of the Soul_, More's, 227
+_Pleasures of the Imagination_, Akenside's, 243
+_Pleasures of Melancholy, The_, Warton's, 243, 245
+Plutarch, 59
+_Poetics_, Boileau's, 178
+Pope, Alexander, 141, 203, 242, 247, 251-52, 254
+Powell, Mary, 7, 54, 142, 260
+_Power of Harmony, The_, Cooper's, 243
+Prelatical controversy, 70
+Proper names, poetical use of, by Milton, 235-36
+Prynne, William, 147
+_Psyche_, Beaumont's, 176
+Puns, Milton's, 210-12
+Puritanism, Milton's, 28-31, 92, 145, 162, 263
+
+Quakerism, 29, 61
+Quarles, Francis, 147
+
+_Rape of the Lock, The_, Pope's, 232
+Raphael, 97, 111, 115, 130, 144, 146, 202, 208, 228, 237, 248-49
+_Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty_, 50
+_Reformation in England, Of_, 42, 62, 91
+_Rehearsal Transposed, The_, Marvell's, 67
+Religious poetry, 173-77
+Renaissance, the, 19, 59, 74, 173
+Republicanism, 66
+Restoration, the, 26, 35-8, 68
+_Richard II._, Shakespeare's, 187
+_Richard III._, Shakespeare's, 16
+Rogers, Samuel, 214
+Romanticism, 55, 220, 226, 229, 233, 245
+_Romaunt of the Rose_, 238
+Rowe, Nicholas, 240
+_Ruined Abbey, The_, Shenstone's, 243
+Rymer, Thomas, 241
+
+Salmasius, 49, 69, 70, 71
+_Samson Agonistes_, 26, 29, 37, 50-1, 79, 143, 146, 158-59, 162, 167,
+    168, 195-96, 203, 208-10, 241
+Satan, 28, 60, 72, 85, 94, 102, 105, 109, 110-11, 129, 130, 132-39, 146,
+    152, 158, 160, 167, 211-12, 228, 239, 253
+_Seasons, The_, Thomson's, 243, 248, 252
+Sedley, Sir Charles, 260
+_Sejanus_, Ben Jonson's, 220
+Selden, Thomas, 56
+Seneca, 189
+Seventeenth-century poetry, 175-77, 256-62;
+  Milton's relation to, 218-20
+Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 203
+_Shakespeare, Lines on_, Milton's, 182
+Shakespeare, William, 3, 4, 5, 7, 15, 18, 19, 22, 25, 116, 118, 171, 175,
+    190, 198, 214, 217, 218, 220, 223, 225, 230, 231, 240, 243, 263
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 233
+Shenstone, William, 243
+Shirley, James, 219
+_Short View of the Stage_, Collier's, 147
+Sidney, Sir Philip, 174
+Simile, Milton's use of, 234
+Simmons, Samuel, 180
+Smart, Christopher, 242
+Somerville, William, 242
+Sophocles, 70
+Southwell, Robert, 174
+_Spectator, The_, Addison's, 241
+Spenser, Edmund, 17, 18, 106, 181, 200, 206, 236
+_Splendid Shilling, The_, Philips's, 242
+Spratt, Thomas, 219
+Steele, Richard, 206, 218
+Sternhold, Thomas, 173
+Stoicism, 29, 145, 163
+Strafford, Earl of, 23
+Suckling, Sir John, 147, 188, 256
+_Sugar Cane, The_, Grainger's, 242
+Swift, Jonathan, 218
+Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 93
+Sylvester, Thomas, 18, 106
+Synod of Dort, 17
+
+_Tale of Two Swannes, A_, 179
+_Talmud, The_, 87
+_Tatler, The_, Steele's, 206
+_Tears of Peace_, Chapman's, 204
+Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 193
+_Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, 41
+Thomson, James, 243, 248, 252-53
+Tillotson, John, 219
+_Translation of the Eleventh Odyssey_, Broome's, 242
+_Translation of a Story out of the Third AEneid_, Addison's, 242
+Tudor state system, the, 57
+
+_Vacation Exercise, At a_, 181
+Vaughan, Henry, 256-60
+_Venus and Adonis_, Shakespeare's, 148
+Virgil, 171, 202-203, 206-207
+Voiture, 205
+Voltaire, 84
+Vondel, Joost van den, 106
+
+Waller, Edmund, 206, 219, 240-41
+Warton, Thomas, 243, 245
+_West, Sonnet on the Death of Richard_, Gray's, 254
+Westminster Assembly of Divines, 140
+Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester, 261-62
+_Wine, a Poem_, Gay's, 242
+Winstanley, William, 241
+_Winter's Tale_, Shakespeare's, 25, 144
+Wither, George, 195
+Wood, Anthony a, 173
+Wordsworth, William, 214, 246, 249, 251
+Wotton, Sir Henry, 199
+
+Young, Thomas, 12, 243
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILTON***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 21677.txt or 21677.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/6/7/21677
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/21677.zip b/21677.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98808ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/21677.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec55ae3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #21677 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21677)