IN the examination of Milton's poetical works I shall pay so 176 much regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his earlier pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable: what he has once written he resolves to preserve, and gives to the publick an unfinished poem, which he broke off because he was 'nothing satisfied with what he had done ',' supposing his readers less nice than himself. These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English 2. Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critick, but I have heard them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit 3. The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the elegies excell the Her youth laborious, and her blame less age; Her's the mild merits of domestic life, wife.' JOHNSON, Works, i. 116. The prologue was spoken by Garrick. See also Boswell's Johnson, i. 227, for Johnson's letter in The General Advertiser in support of the benefit. 'This subject [The Passion] the author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfi'd with what was begun, left it unfinisht.' Johnson (Letters, ii. 7) writing about the publication of Hawkesworth's papers, says :-'I am for letting none stand that are only relatively good, as they were written in youth. The Buyer has no better bargain when he pays for mean performances, by being told that the authour wrote them young.' See also ante, MILTON, II. 2 For Cowper's translation of the Italian and Latin poems see Southey's Cowper, x. 130-92. 3 Unhappily Italian poetry in the age of Milton was almost at its worst, and he imitated what he heard repeated or praised.' LANDOR, Imag. Conver. iv. 284. For the contempt felt by Italians for the Seicentisti-the Italian writers of the seventeenth century-see Masson's Milton, i. 762. See also ib. i. 826 n. for Saffi's criticism of these sonnets. While the metaphors,' he says, 'remind one of the false literary taste then prevalent in Italy, ... the measure of the verse is generally correct, nay, more than this, musical; and one feels, in perusing these poems, that the mind of the young aspiring poet had, from Petrarch to Tasso, listened attentively to the gentlest notes of the Italian Muse, though unable to reproduce them fully in a form of his own.' Baretti speaks of 'Milton's imperfect attempts to write Italian poetry.' An Account of the Manners, &c., of Italy, 1768, i. 108. 4You may find a few minute faults in Milton's Latin verses; but you will not persuade me that, if these poems had come to us as written in the age of Tiberius, we should not have considered them to be very beautiful.' COLERIDGE, Table Talk, 1884, p. 242. Milton's Latin verses are distinguished from most Neo-latin verse by being a vehicle of real emotion.' PATTISON, Milton, p. 41. 5 Milton speaks of 'the smooth elegiac poets whom both for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy, and most agreeable to nature's part in me,' &c. Works, i. 223. 177 odes, and some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason might have been spared 1. The English poems2, though they make no promises of Paradise Lost3, have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence: if they differ from verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be laboriously sought and violently applied*. 178 That in the early parts of his life he wrote with much care appears from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many of his smaller works are found as they were first written, with the subsequent corrections 5. Such reliques shew how excellence is acquired: what we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence". He wrote four epigrams In Proditionem Bombardicam, and a poem of 226 lines, in heroic verse, In Quintum Novembris. This poem,' wrote Landor,' which ends poorly, is a wonderful work for a boy of seventeen.' Imag. Conver. iv. 296. A century later, when Johnson entered Pembroke College, the fifth of November was kept with great solemnity, and exercises upon the subject of the day were required.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 60. 2 Ante, MILTON, 59, 152. 3 'In Comus may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost. Post, MILTON, 194. 4 'Milton had neither the ease of doing it [rhyming], nor the graces of it ; which is manifest in his Juvenilia, or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer, though not a poet.' DRYDEN, Works, xiii, The habits of correct writing may produce, without labour or design, the appearance of art and study.' GIBBON, Memoirs, p. 1. 'Do not let anybody persuade you that... an immortal style can be the growth of mere genius. Multa tulit fecitque" [HORACE, Ars Poet. l. 413] must be the motto of all those who are to last.' WORDSWORTH, R. P. Gillies's Memoirs, ii. 165. 'Milton talks of "pouring easy his unpremeditated verse" ['inspires easy my,' &c. Paradise Lost, ix. 23]. It would be harsh, untrue and odious to say there is anything like cant in this; but it is not true to the letter, and tends to mislead.' WORDSWORTH, Memoirs, ii. 256. : Ruskin wrote to Dante Rossetti in 1854 All beautiful work-singing, painting, dancing, speaking-is the easy result of long and painful Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes 179 force their own judgement into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. All that short compositions can commonly attain is neatness and elegance. Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of suavity and softness: he was a 'Lion' that had no skill 'in dandling the Kid'.' One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is 180 Lycidas; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of 'rough satyrs and fauns with cloven heel 3.' 'Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.' In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no 181 art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey that they studied together, it is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours and the partner of his discoveries 5; but what image of tenderness can be excited by these lines! practice.' Ruskin: Rossetti: Preraphaelitism, p. 29. 'The easier an actor makes his art appear, the greater must have been the pains it cost him.' MACREADY, Reminiscences, ii. 442. 'Sporting the lion ramp'd, and in his paw Dandl'd the kid.' Par. Lost, iv. 343. Hannah More 'expressed a wonder that the poet who had written Paradise Lost should write such poor sonnets. JOHNSON.-Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherrystones.' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 305. a Ante, MILTON, 22. 4 A writer in The Quarterly Review, No. 71, p. 46, quoting this line says: In general this may be true; in the case of Milton its truth may be doubted.... His mind was perfect fairy-land; and every thought which entered it, whether grave or gay, magnificent or mean, quickly partook of a fairy form. . . . There is no universal language of grief. It takes its complexion from the country, the age, the individual. In its paroxysms no man thinks of writing verses of any kind. We exclaim, as King David does, "My son! My son!' When the paroxysm is past, every man will write such verses (if he write them at all) as the ordinary turn of his mind dictates.' See post, LYTTELTON, 9 n. 5 'Say, for you saw us, ye immortal 182 'We drove a field, and both together heard What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn, Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night'.' We know that they never drove a field, and that they had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote that it is never sought because it cannot be known when it is found. Among the flocks and copses and flowers appear the heathen deities, Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Æolus, with a long train of mythological imagery, such as a College easily supplies. Nothing can less display knowledge or less exercise invention than to tell how a shepherd has lost his companion and must now feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his skill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour 2. How oft unweary'd have we spent But search of deep philosophy, I Lycidas, 1. 27. These ideas, writes T. Warton (Milton's Poems, p. 36), are not more unnatural 'than when Cowley says that the twin-stars of Leda, so famed for love, looked down upon the twin students with wonder from above.' 2 For Johnson's condemnation of pastoral poetry see ante, COWLEY, 7; MILTON, 34; post, CONGREVE, 13; FENTON, 22; GAY, 32; HAMMOND, 6; POPE, 313; A. PHILIPS, II; SHENSTONE, 25, and The Rambler, Nos. 36, 37. In the Life of Savage, written in 1744, he first shows his scorn of it for its want of nature and truth. Post, SAVAGE, 262. 'Johnson has passed sentence of condemnation upon Lycidas, and has taken occasion from that charming poem to expose to ridicule (what is indeed ridiculous enough) the childish prattlement of pastoral compositions, as if Lycidas was the prototype and pattern of them all. The liveliness of the description, the sweetness of the numbers, the classical spirit of antiquity that prevails in it, go for nothing.' CowPER, Southey's Cowper, iii. 314. 'I have been reading Comus and Lycidas with wonder and a sort of awe. Tennyson once said that Lycidas was a touchstone of poetic taste.' E. FITZGERALD, Letters to F. Kemble, p. 178. For Cervantes's ridicule of pastoral poetry see Don Quixote, Part ii. Bk. iv. chs. 15, 21. Swift writes in Apollo's Edict: 'Your tragic heroes shall not rant, Nor shepherds use poetic cant.' Works, xiv. 128. [Dr. Birkbeck Hill left an unfinished note in which he points out that Lycidas can be read without emotion, and that there is only one tender line in it-'Young Lycidas,' &c.; whereas he could not read Wordsworth's Brothers aloud or his Michael. Johnson had no contempt for Virgil's Eclogues. He learnt or relearnt them by heart in his old age (Bos well's Johnson, ii. 288, iv. 218); and yet they are quite as artificial as Lycida: -and beautiful as they are, the MILTON OF 165 SALIPDONY This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions 183 are mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be polluted with such irreverent combinations. The shepherd likewise is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always unskilful; but here they are indecent, and at least approach to impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been conscious 1. Such is the power of reputation justly acquired that its blaze 184 drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure had he not known its author. Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, I believe opinion 185 is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure33. The author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to shew how objects derived their colours from the mind, by representing the operation of the same things upon the gay and finest of them does not rise to its height.] Johnson points out that in The Hind and the Panther 'the name Pan is given to the Supreme Being.' Post, DRYDEN, 295. He might have objected to 'all-judging Jove' in Lycidas, 1. 82. Lycidas opens up a patriot passion so vehement and dangerous, that, like that which stirred the Hebrew prophet, it is compelled to veil itself from power, or from sympathy, in utterance made purposely enigmatical.' PATTISON, Milton, p. 29. 2 Pattison (ib. p. 23) says that the Italian word is not Penseroso but Pensieroso, and that it does not signify thoughtful, or contemplative, but anxious, full of cares.' Mr. W. H. David quotes in N. & Q. 7 S. viii. 326 from a French-Italian Dictionary, Geneva, 1644:-' Pensif, penseroso, che pensa.' Dr. Skeat writes:-' It is clear that Mark Pattison forgot the difference between modern Italian and that of an earlier period,' and refers to Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598. N. & 2. 7 S. viii. 394. See LANDOR, Imag. Conver. iv. 273. 3 Ante, MILTON, 59. Goldsmith says of the two poems: The intro duction to both in irregular measure Dr. Warton wrote in 1756:- Mrs. Delany heard them perform- 'I remember being so charmed with Milton's Allegro and Penseroso when I was a boy that I was never weary of them.' CowPER, Southey's Cowper, iv. 177. Horace Walpole wrote in 1791 :'I would not give this last week's fine weather for all the four Seasons in blank verse. There is more nature in six lines of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso than in all the laboured imitations of Milton. What is there in Thomson of original?' Letters, ix. 347. |