ACT V. (continued 2)

Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of copiousness and variety; he was master of his language in its full extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that from his book alone the art of English poetry might be learned.

After his diction, something must be said of his versification. The "measure," he says, "is the English heroick verse without rhyme." Of this mode he had many examples among the Italians, and some in his own country. The earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil's books without rhyme[62]; and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had appeared in blank verse, particularly one tending to reconcile the nation to Raleigh's wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh himself. These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much influenced Milton, who, more probably took his hint from Trissino's Italia Liberata; and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous of persuading himself that it is better.

"Rhyme," he says, and says truly, "is no necessary adjunct of true poetry." But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or musick is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by the musick of metre that poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in languages melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is necessary. The musick of the English heroick lines strikes the ear so faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every line cooperate together; this cooperation can be only obtained by the preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. "Blank verse," said an ingenious critick, "seems to be verse only to the eye." Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and, therefore, tires by long continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence, has been confuted by the ear.

But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.

The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said to have contrived the structure of an epick poem, and, therefore, owes reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations must be indebted for the, art of poetical narration, for the texture of the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the borrowers from Homer, Milton is, perhaps, the least indebted. He was naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of support. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems, only because it is not the first.

[Footnote 26: In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following extract from the college register: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii Paulini praefecto, admissus est Pensionarius Minor, Feb. 12o, 1624, sub M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr. 0l. 10s. 0d." R.]

[Footnote 27: Published 1632. R.]

[Footnote 28: On this subject, see Dr. Symons's Life of Milton, 71, 72. ED.]

[Footnote 29: By the mention of this name, he evidently refers to Albumazar, acted at Cambridge, in 1614. Ignoramus, and other plays were performed at the same time. The practice was then very frequent. The last dramatick performance at either university, was the Grateful Fair, written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke college, Cambridge, about 1747. R.]

[Footnote 30: It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The earl of Bridgewater, being president of Wales, in the year 1634, had his residence at Ludlow castle, in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefordshire, were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident, being related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night: the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the representation.

The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury, who, at his seat called Golden grove, in Caermarthenshire, harboured Dr. Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert, of Cherbury.

Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's assertion, that the fiction is derived from Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the Comus of Erycius Puteanus, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published at Louvain, in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford, in 1634, the very year in which Milton's Comus was written. H. Milton evidently was indebted to the Old Wives' Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R.]

[Footnote 31: This is inaccurately expressed: Philips, and Dr. Newton, after him, say a garden-house, i.e. a house situated in a garden, and of which there were, especially in the north suburbs of London, very many, if not few else. The term is technical, and frequently occurs in the Athen. and Fast. Oxon. The meaning thereof may be collected from the article, Thomas Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster, of whom the author says, that he taught in Goldsmith's rents, in Cripplegate parish, behind Redcross street, where were large gardens and handsome houses. Milton's house in Jewin street was also a garden-house, as were, indeed, most of his dwellings after his settlement in London. H.]

[Footnote 32: Johnson did not here allude to Philips's Theatrum Poetarum, as has been ignorantly supposed, but, as he himself informed Mr. Malone, to another work by the same author, entitled, Tractatulus de carmine dramatico poetarum veterum praesertim in choris tragicis et veteris comoediae. Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum (saltern quorum fama maxima enituit) qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc aetatem claruerunt, etc. J. B.]

[Footnote 33: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, William Spurstow. R.]

[Footnote 34: It was animadverted upon, but without any mention of Milton's name, by bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience, Decade 4, Case 2. J.B.]

[Footnote 35: He terms the author of it a shallow-brained puppy; and thus refers to it in his index: "Of a noddy who wrote a book about wiving." J.B.]

[Footnote 36: This charge, as far as regards Milton, is examined by Dr. Symons with more moderation than usually characterizes his high-sounding and wordy panegyrics. See Life of Milton. ED.]

[Footnote 37: The work here referred to is Selectarum de Lingua Latina Observationum Libri duo. Ductu et cura Joannis Ker, 1719. Ker observes, that vapulandum is pinguis solaecismus. J.B.]

[Footnote 38: It may be doubted whether gloriosissimus be here used with Milton's boasted purity. Res gloriosa is an illustrious thing; but vir gloriosus is commonly a braggart, as in miles gloriosus. Dr. J.]

[Footnote 39: The Cambridge dictionary, published in 4to. 1693, is no other than a copy, with some small additions, of that of Dr. Adam Littleton in 1686, by sundry persons, of whom though their names are concealed, there is great reason to conjecture that Milton's nephew, Edward Philips, is one: for it is expressly said by Wood, Fasti, vol. i. p. 266, that Milton's Thesaurus came to his hands; and it is asserted in the preface thereto, that the editors thereof had the use of three large folios in manuscript, collected and digested into alphabetical order by Mr. John Milton. It has been remarked, that the additions, together with the preface above mentioned, and a large part of the title of the Cambridge dictionary, have been incorporated and printed with the subsequent editions of Littleton's dictionary, till that of 1735. Vid. Biogr. Brit. 2985, in not. So that, for aught that appears to the contrary, Philips was the last possessor of Milton's manuscripts. H.]

[Footnote 40: Id est, to be the subject of an heroick poem, written by sir Richard Blackmore. H.]

[Footnote 41: Trinity college. R.]

[Footnote 42: The dramas in which Justice, Mercy, Faith, &c. were introduced, were moralities, not mysteries. MALONE.]

[Footnote 43: Philips says expressly, that Milton was excepted and disqualified from bearing any office; but Toland says he was not excepted at all, and consequently included in the general pardon, or act of indemnity, passed the 29th of August, 1660. Toland is right, for I find Goodwin and Ph. Nye, the minister, excepted in the act, but Milton not named. However, he obtained a special pardon in December, 1660, which passed the privy seal, but not the great seal. MALONE.]

[Footnote 44: It was told before by A. Wood in Ath. Oxon. vol. ii. p. 412. second edition.]

[Footnote 45: That Milton saved Davenant, is attested by Aubrey, and by Wood, from him; but none of them say that Davenant saved Milton: this is Richardson's assertion merely. MALONE.]

[Footnote 46: A different account of the means by which Milton secured himself, is given by an historian lately brought to light: "Milton, Latin secretary to Cromwell, distinguished by his writings in favour of the rights and liberties of the people, pretended to be dead, and had a publick funeral procession. The king applauded his policy in escaping the punishment of death, by a seasonable show of dying." Cunningham's History of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 14. R.]

[Footnote 47: Gildon, in his continuation of Langbaine's account of the dramatick poets, 8vo. 1693, says, that he had been told that Milton, after the restoration, kept a school at or near Greenwich. The publication of an Accidence at that period gives some countenance to this tradition. MALONE]

[Footnote 48: It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader, that this relation of Voltaire's was perfectly true, as far as relates to the existence of the play which he speaks of, namely, the Adamo of Andreini; but it is still a question whether Milton ever saw it. J.B.]

[Footnote 49: This opinion is, with great learning and ingenuity, refuted in a book now very little known, an Apology or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, by Dr. George Hakewill, London, folio, 1635. The first who ventured to propagate it in this country was Dr. Gabriel Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, a man of a versatile temper, and the author of a book entitled, the Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature proved by Natural Reason. Lond. 1616, and 1624. quarto. He was plundered in the usurpation, turned Roman catholick, and died in obscurity. See Athen, Oxon. vol. i. p. 727. H.]

[Footnote 50: —Unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years damp my intended wing. Par. Lost. b. ix. l. 44.]

[Footnote 51: Johnson has, in many places of his Rambler and Idler, ridiculed the notion of a dependance of our mental powers on the variations of atmosphere. In Boswell's life, however, there are some recorded instances of his own subjection to this common infirmity. We cannot refrain from denouncing, as unfeeling and ungenerous, Johnson's sarcasms at Milton's distempered imagination, when old age, disease, and darkness had come upon him. Dr. Symons runs into the diametrically opposite extreme. ED.]

[Footnote 52: "Statura fateor non sum procera: seel quae mediocri tamen quam parvae propior sit: sed quid si parva, qua et summi saepe tum pace tum bello viri fuere, quanquam parva cur dicitur, quae ad virtutem satis magna est." Defensio Secunda. ED.]

[Footnote 53: Both these persons were living at Holloway, about the year 1734, and, at that time, possessed such a degree of health and strength, as enabled them, on Sundays and prayer-days, to walk a mile up a steep hill to Highgate chapel. One of them was ninety-two at the time of her death. Their parentage was known to few, and their names were corrupted into Melton. By the crown-office, mentioned in the two last paragraphs, we are to understand the crown-office of the court of Chancery. H.]

[Footnote 54: Printed in the first volume of this collection.]

[Footnote 55: With the exception of Comus, in which, Dr. J. afterwards says, may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost. C.]

[Footnote 56: Here, as Warton justly observes, "Johnson has confounded two descriptions!"

The melancholy man does not go out while it rains, but waits, till——the sun begins to fling His flaring beams. J. B.]

[Footnote 57: Mr. Warton intimates, and there can be little doubt of the truth of his conjecture, that Milton borrowed many of the images in these two fine poems from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a book published in 1621, and, at sundry times since, abounding in learning, curious information, and pleasantry. Mr. Warton says, that Milton appears to have been an attentive reader thereof; and to this assertion I add, of my own knowledge, that it was a book that Dr. Johnson frequently resorted to, as many others have done, for amusement after the fatigue of study. H.—Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Johnson said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. Boswell's Life, ii. 120.]

[Footnote 58: Surely there are precedents enough for the practice, though pessimi exempli, in Milton's favourite tragedian Euripides. ED.]

[Footnote 59: Author of the Essay on Study.]

[Footnote 60: Algarotti terms it, "gigantesca sublimita Miltoniana." Dr.J.]

[Footnote 61: But, says Dr. Warton, it has, throughout, a reference to human life and actions. C.]

[Footnote 62: The earl of Surrey translated two books of Virgil without rhyme; the second and the fourth. J.B.]