Fenton paraphrased part of a chapter of Isaiah in blank verse, wrote a life of Milton, and 'amended the punctuation' of his principal work.1 Another classicist who had a hand in editing the epic was Thomas Tickell, the poet who was the cause of the memorable quarrel between Addison and Pope; 2 while still another of Milton's commentators, Jonathan Richardson, whose extravagant praise of his favorite poet we have already listened to, was for twenty-two years a friend and correspondent of Pope. Not a little of our knowledge of the bard of Twickenham and his circle comes from Spence's Anecdotes; yet intimacy with Pope did not prevent the author, Joseph Spence, professor of poetry and later regius professor of modern history at Oxford, from writing two pieces of blank verse that are clearly Miltonic. An earlier occupant of the chair of poetry—an easy-chair in those days -was Joseph Trapp, a man so classical in his tastes that he published his lectures in Latin and found little to admire in poetry written since Roman days. Paradise Lost, however, seemed to him a marked exception, for he said of it: "Si Poëma Heroicum proprie dictum non scripsit Miltonus; certe Poëma optimum scripsit; omni laude dignus, dicam? imo major: Homeri, & Virgilii, non servus Imitator, viam aperuit prorsus novam, & suam; Inventionis foecunditate, Ingenii sublimitate, Rerum Vocumque fulgore ac pondere, Judicii denique maturitate, nec Homero forsan, nec Virgilio, secundus." This is, however, the least of the tributes that Trapp paid to the poet, for he translated all of Virgil into Miltonic blank verse and all of Milton into Virgilian Latin. One cannot read far in the literature or the history of the early eighteenth century without encountering Bishop Atterbury, the best preacher of the age and according to Addison one of its greatest geniuses, who narrowly escaped execution for his Jacobite activities. 1 See Bibl. I, 1712, 1717, 1727. The 1725 Paradise Lost was supervised by Fenton, whose life of Milton was reprinted in many later editions. * Tickell assisted on the 1720 edition. As early as 1707 he had said of John Philips, "Unfetter'd, in great Milton's strain he writes" (Oxford, 1707, in Works, 1854, p. 171). * See Bibl. I, 1761, 1762. • Praelectiones Poetica (1711), 3d ed., 1736, ii. 317–18. In the translation entitled Lectures on Poetry (1742, p. 351) the passage quoted is rendered thus: "If Milton did not write an Heroic Poem, properly so call'd, yet he certainly wrote an excellent one, such as deserves, or rather is above all Commendation. He is no slavish imitator of Homer and Virgil, he opens a Way entirely new, and entirely his own: In Fruitfulness of Invention, Sublimity of Genius, in the Weight and Lustre of his Thoughts and Words, and, lastly, in the Perfection of his Judgment, he is, perhaps, equal to either of them." Swift, Prior, Gay, and Addison knew Atterbury well, and Pope proved one of his few faithful friends. "Milton remained to the end of his life his favourite poet," writes his biographer,1 and from one of the bishop's own letters to Pope we may well believe it. "I protest to you," he wrote, "this last perusal of him [Milton] has given me such new degrees, I will not say of pleasure, but of admiration and astonishment, that I look upon the sublimity of Homer, and the majesty of Virgil, with somewhat less reverence than I used to do. I challenge you, with all your partiality, to show me in the first of these any thing equal to the Allegory of Sin and Death, either as to the greatness and justness of the invention, or the height and beauty of the colouring. What I looked upon as a rant of Barrow's, I now begin to think a serious truth, and could almost venture to set my hand to it." Another of the Anglican clergymen whom Pope, a Catholic, numbered among his intimate friends was Bishop William Warburton, who became his literary executor. Besides writing a commentary on Paradise Lost (which he thought superior to the epics of Homer and Virgil), Warburton translated "in imitation of Milton's style" a Latin poem of Addison's, and lauded the minor poems, the Of Education, and the Areopagitica, a famous sentence from which he appropriated for the conclusion of one of his pamphlets.3 2 Perhaps John Hughes ought not to be included among the Augustans, though he contributed to the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian and persuaded Addison to put Cato on the stage. He was, at any rate, a great admirer of Milton's chief poem and an imitator of his octosyllabics. Young, too, is thought of as romantically inclined because the Night Thoughts is in blank verse, but this work did not 1 H. C. Beeching, Francis Atterbury (1909), 227. 2 Nov. 8, 1717, Pope's Works (Elwin-Courthope ed.), ix. 9-10. Barrow's "rant" is translated on page 21 below. Atterbury did not care for Shakespeare (Beeching's Atterbury, 225). In his inscription on John Philips's tomb in Westminster (see ib. 226), and in his preface to the Second Part of Mr. Waller's Poems (1690), he praised Milton and blank verse. For his plan that Pope should arrange Samson Agonistes for presentation, see p. 117 below. 3 For the commentary, see Works of the Learned, April, 1740, pp. 273-80, and Newton's preface to his edition of the epic (1749, etc.). The poem, Battle of the Cranes and Pigmies (1724), and the pamphlet, A Critical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies (1727), are reprinted in Samuel Parr's Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian (1789), 56-62, 71-140. For his commendation of Milton, see Nichols's Illustrations, ii. 77-82, 177 and n.; and pp. 21, 432, below. See his edition of Spenser (1715), vol. i, pp. xxvii, xxx, xxxvii, xxxix, xli, lxviii, lxxxiii, etc., and his Poems (1735), i. 250, ii. 91, 317-18, 333-4; also the praise of Milton quoted above (page 12) from the Lay-Monastery, of which Hughes was one of the editors. For his imitations, see pp. 442-3 below. begin to appear until its author had by his satires and his Two Epistles to Mr. Pope won recognition as a thorough-going classicist. Even in these heroic couplets he used many phrases from Milton, and in his greatest work the style and diction are derived from the epic, which he greatly admired and frequently quoted from. The author of The Seasons is another writer who is commonly ranked among the romanticists; yet he certainly thought highly of the poetry of his Twickenham neighbor, with whose circle he was intimate. Thomson's appreciation and imitation of Paradise Lost will receive extended treatment later, but it may be noted here that on a single page of his Winter he praises Pope and declares Milton to be equal to Homer. Another instance of how the Puritan lion and the Augustan lamb (as the venomous bard would have liked to be thought) lay down. together occurs in the work of an intimate friend of Thomson and Pope, Lord Lyttelton. In one of his "Dialogues of the Dead" (1760) Lyttelton sets Pope and Boileau the interesting task of discussing Milton. "Longinus," the French critic is made to declare, "perhaps would prefer him to all other Writers: for he excells even Homer in the Sublime. But other Critics . . . who can endure no Absurdities, no extravagant Fictions, would place him far below Virgil." To which Pope replies, "His Genius was indeed so vast and sublime, that his Work seems beyond the Limits of Criticism. . . . The bright and excessive Blaze of poetical Fire, which shines in so many Parts of his Poem, will hardly permit one to see its Faults." Lyttelton's intimacy with Pope enabled him to know what that poet thought of Milton, but we cannot be sure that Boileau held the opinions which he is here made to express. A far greater French writer, however, speaks with an enthusiasm that makes the praise attributed to his countryman seem cold. Writing of "the noblest Work, which human Imagination hath ever attempted," he says (the book is in English): "What Milton so boldly undertook, he perform'd with a superior Strength of Judgement, and with an Imagination productive of Beauties not dream'd of before him. . . . The Paradise Lost is the only Poem wherein are to be found in a perfect Degree that Uniformity which satisfies the Mind and that Variety which pleases the Imagination. . . . But he hath especially an indisputable Claim to the unanimous Admiration of Mankind, when he descends from those high Flights to the natural Description of 1 Dialogues of the Dead (3d ed., 1760), 122–3. Lyttelton wrote three pieces in Miltonic blank verse and modelled his best poem upon Lycidas (see Bibl. I, 1728, 1762, c. 1763, and p. 552 below). human Things." Voltaire is the last person from whom we should expect this praise, yet it is in his Essay upon Epick Poetry (1727) that the words occur.1 True, as he later took back most of his commendation,2 he may never have meant it; but since he did say it, and may have said something of the kind often while he was in England, there is no escaping the significance or the influence of such a tribute from an eminent foreign poet and critic. Voltaire's opinion tallied so closely with that of the leading Englishmen of the time that he might well have said to them in the significant words which Lyttelton gave to Boileau, "The Taste of your Countrymen is very much changed since the days of Charles the Second, when Dryden was thought a greater Poet than Milton!" 3 Clearly, then, the maligned Augustans gave Milton his due. They did more, they joined with other writers of the century in classing him with the great poets of antiquity. If a critic of our time says that Paradise Lost is equal to the Iliad or the Aeneid, the comment indicates little more than enthusiasm; but if a contemporary of Dryden or Johnson made the same remark it meant that the English epic had stood the test of being measured by the highest possible standard, indeed, by the only standard for great poetry. Few persons to-day care particularly whether or not Paradise Lost is in accord with Longinus on the sublime; but in Pope's day they cared very much, so much, in fact, that they allowed scarcely any author to be of the first rank who did not in the main conform to the practice of the classical writers and the laws laid down by the classical critics.4 That Milton stood this test and was ranked with, if not above, Homer and Virgil, no one can doubt who has read a tithe of the evidence that can be brought forward. It will be recalled that as early as 1688 no less eminent an authority than Dryden had said of the epic poets, Homer, Virgil, and Milton, The force of Nature could no farther go; To make a third, she join'd the former two. One doubts whether Dryden really meant this, although he is said to have exclaimed on first reading Paradise Lost, "This man cuts us 1 The quotations are from Miss F. D. White's valuable reprint of the Essay (Albany, 1915), 131-3. 2 See ib. 68-70, 164-5. 3 Dialogues of the Dead, 123. This helps explain the indifference or the hostility of many to Shakespeare and Spenser, as well as the reason why long and serious poems like The Seasons and Night Thoughts, which were liked by almost every one, were not regarded as great. all out, and the ancients too." But there is no question that Cowper, one of the most devoted students of Homer, was sincere when he repeated Dryden's lines with slight changes a hundred years later. We have also seen that Atterbury wrote to Pope that he could almost agree with Barrow's verses, Romans and Grecians yield the bays, Yield, all ye bards of old or modern days! Homer sung frogs, and Virgil gnats alone.3 It is to be presumed, too, that the learned Bishop Warburton had weighed his words before he wrote: "Milton . . . found Homer possessed of the province of MORALITY; Virgil of POLITICS; and nothing left for him, but that of RELIGION. This he seized . . . and by means of the superior dignity of his subject, hath gotten to the head of that Triumvirate, which took so many ages in forming." We are told that Henry Grove, one of the contributors to the Spectator, thought that "for Beauty, Variety, and Grandeur of Descriptions, as well as true Sublime in Sentiments," Milton was "greatly preferrable" to Homer; "and tho' he allowed Homer the Praise of a very great Genius, he thought the Iliad would no more bear a Comparison with Paradise lost, than the Pagan Scheme of Theology with the Christian." Another writer declared, "It is no Compliment, but a bare Piece of Justice done to Milton, when we not only compare him to Homer and Virgil, but even prefer him to both those great Poets; because his Genius evidently appears to have been superior to theirs, by the frequent Proofs he gives us of that Power which constitutes a sublime Genius and . . . is more conspicuous 5 1 Richardson's Explanatory Notes (1734), pp. cxix-cxx. * See pp. 162-3 below, where it will be observed that Cowper on several occasions expressed his belief in the superiority of Milton to Homer and Virgil. * The Latin original was prefixed to the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674); this translation is from the Gentleman's Magazine, xxx. 291 (cf. also below, p. 26, n. 5). Thomas Stratford used almost the same words - probably referring to these lines - in the preface to his First Book of Fontenoy (1784?, see Mo. Rev., lxxi. 95). Sneyd Davies wrote in 1740 (Rhapsody to Milton, in Whaley's Collection, 1745, p. 182), Such Thought, such Language, that all other Verse Seems trifling (not excepting Greece and Rome) So lofty and so sweet, beyond compare, Is thine. Thomas Green remarked in 1800 that the allegory of Sin and Death "renders the grandest passages in Homer and Virgil comparatively feeble and dwarfish” (Diary of a Lover of Literature, Ipswich, 1810, p. 192). * Divine Legation of Moses (1738), in Works, ed. R. Hurd, 1811, ii. 95. Works of the Learned, June, 1741, p. 441. |
