Now on the verge they stood of a broad sea The reader will probably agree with the Eclectic Review that Drummond's style "is obviously formed upon the model of the Paradise Lost"; and if he turns to the work itself he may add with the critic, "We are better pleased, however, with the general resemblance to Milton, which his [Drummond's] learning and classical taste enable him to keep up, in erudite allusion, and richness of ornament, than with his close imitation of particular passages." It is doubtful whether, so late as 1817, any large part of the public shared the critic's pleasure in a style "obviously formed upon the model of the Paradise Lost." At any rate, though Drummond was a diplomat and scholar of repute, and though he had the first four books of his epic sumptuously printed, they found so little favor that he pub 1 Page 103. This extract gives far too favorable an impression of the poem, which is monotonous and devoid of poetic power. Much of it reads as if each line were composed without reference to any other. * New series, viii. 87. Among these "close imitations" are the speeches at the council (pp. 60-72, cf. P. L., ii. 1-467); the reference to "the King of shades... With sin and death, his Hell-born offspring" (p. 111, cf. P. L., ii. 746–89); the list of heathen deities (pp. 111-12, cf. P. L., i. 376–522); the phrases "clad with vines" (p. 123, from P. L., i. 410, of a valley in each case), "sea-girt isles" (p. 131, from Comus, 21), "Nature, best instructress" (p. 135, cf. Comus, 377), "sky-tinctured plumage" (p. 160, cf. P. L., v. 285, of wings in each case); and the following passages: For now the rebel Satraps hemm'd him round; (p. 59, cf. P. L., i. 547–8, ii. 511-13, iv. 979-80); Distinct he shone in radiant panoply, (p. 59, see also p. 160, and cf. P. L., vi. 526–7, 760–61); When purple to the sea her fountains ran (p. 73, cf. P. L., i. 450-52); Knit with Spring and Autumn, hand in hand, (p. 116, cf. P. L., iv. 267-8, v. 394-5); The blear illusions of her magic spells (p. 150, cf. Comus, 154-5). As for diction, Drummond has words like "mortiferous," "refulgent," "relucent," "panoply," "colorific," "insentient," "darkling," "hirsute," "tauriform," "malefic,” ""monarchal" (the last seven are on two pages, 83 and 112). lished no more. By most readers and critics this tiresome first part was ignored; but the Eclectic Review, which could spare only five pages of the same number to condemn Manfred as "scarcely worth being transmitted from the Continent" and as not likely to "raise Lord Byron's reputation," gave Odin thirteen pages of commendation! 1 Teutonic mythology is also employed to some extent in H. H. Milman's Samor, Lord of the Bright City (1818), which contains a scene with the Valkyrie and a human sacrifice but which as a whole is far from suggesting the strangeness or the terse vigor of the Old Norse. Instead, it reminds one of Southey, particularly of his Madoc, since its hero wanders about England in the days of Vortigern rousing the British against the Saxon invaders. Milman termed his piece "an heroic poem," but the dominant note is not epic, for we hear more of Samor's piety, his sufferings, his feelings for his murdered family, than of his heroism; furthermore, several lovestories are introduced as episodes and there are frequent moralizings and descriptions of nature. Although begun when its author was a schoolboy of eighteen and practically finished during his undergraduate years at Oxford, the poem has none of the fire or abandon of youth, but is rather what might be expected from the mature Milman who won merited laurels as the historian of the Jews and of Latin Christianity, as the editor of Gibbon, and as the dean of St. Paul's. It is dignified without being bombastic, often impressive, generally pleasing, and it reveals a love of the quieter aspects of nature; but it lacks freshness and life, is too long, contains too much talk and too little action, and such action as it has is episodic rather than progressive. To Southey it was "a work of great power," but charged with "a perpetual stretch and strain of feeling. . With less poetry," he declared, "Samor would have been a better poem.' ... " 2 Although within a year of its publication it not only reached a second edition but was reprinted in America, and though it is undoubtedly better than most of its predecessors, more natural, less pompous and rhetorical, yet it has a curious stiltedness and conventionality of expression that give it an academic air. Later Milman made some attempt to correct these faults, which he attributed in part to "the ambition of creating that which . . . the language still 1 New series, viii. 66, 90. ... 2 Letter to C. H. Townshend, April 12, 1818; see also his letter to Scott, March 11, 1819. Samor was harshly criticized in the North American Review, ix. 26-35, and the Quarterly Review, xix. 328-47. Milman later became so frequent a contributor to the Quarterly that Byron, who said "The fellow has poesy in him" (letter to J. Murray, Sept. 12, 1821), mentioned him in the squib "Who killed John Keats?" wants narrative blank verse. The Miltonic versification," he goes on to say, "is the triumph of poetic art; but . . . it is too solemn, stately, and august for subjects of less grave interest."1 Inasmuch as considerable blank verse less "solemn, stately, and august" and better adapted to narration than that of Samor had been written before 1818, this is a somewhat singular defense. How Miltonic the poem often is will appear from these lines: Him delighted more Helvellyn's cloud-wrapt brow to climb, and share Of whirlwinds and dire lightnings, huge he stood, One of the most striking instances of the persistence in the nineteenth century of the tastes and methods of the eighteenth is to be found in Christ Crucified, "an epic poem in twelve books," by W. E. Wall. There is nothing about this ponderous work, whether in style, diction, plan, or contents, to indicate that its five hundred and fifteen pages were written later than Glover's Leonidas (1737); yet it appeared in 1833 and stands in the Harvard Library next to In Memoriam! Like many eighteenth-century epics, it employs the "machinery" of Paradise Lost,-Satan and the fallen angels, councils in hell at which various evil spirits propose plans, a Miltonic Deity justifying himself in Miltonic but unchristian speeches to a host of angels who chant his praises, etc., etc. Innumerable details and phrases are also taken from Milton, as are the turgid style and the absurd diction. But let the poem speak for itself: Beneath, upon a throne of awful height, (As 'twere to emulate the Heaven of God,) Resplendent! In the realms Ethereal, above th' empyrean high, Thron'd in sun-dazzling glory, compass'd bright (From his high optic hill of Providence Foreseeing secrets deep of hoary time,) His Son belov'd advancing to his death. Immediate from heav'n's argent clouds proceeds 1 Works (1839), vol. ii, p. xii. These "introductory observations" are contradictory, confused, and confusing, and imply a much more thorough revision of the poem than ކ The Miltonic garb in which Wall clothed his poem seems even stranger when it appears in the far better work, Attila, King of the Huns, which the distinguished dean of Manchester, William Herbert, published as late as 1838.1 Herbert was a scholar of wide reading in several literatures; he wrote considerable Latin, besides some Greek, Italian, and Norwegian verse, made translations from the Greek, Spanish, German, and Icelandic,2 and was an eminent naturalist. With his epic he published a long "historical treatise" on the same subject, which, together with his numerous notes, indicates that he could have quoted chapter and verse for every detail in the poem. As a result of the years of close but varied study that had preceded it, Attila is stiffened throughout with learned allusions and with names famed in history or romance, features which give it much of its Miltonic character. Yet, just as he took over the character of Satan, Herbert must have deliberately adopted the manner of Paradise Lost in order to gain the grandeur and impressiveness for which he strove. He could be simple when he wished, but for his epic his models were not Wordsworth or Tennyson, since his ear was "cloy'd Unto satiety" with the "honied strains" and "meretricious gauds of modern song." He "walk'd" rather with "Melesigenes and Maro," and with "British Milton," who drew from his "vocal shell" Numbers sonorous, fraught with science deep; It was undoubtedly from "British Milton" that he learned to use such words as "besprent," "darkling," "meteorous," "panoply," "adamant," "irascent," "ingulph'd," "glebe," "confusive," "egression," "battailous," "piation," "minaciously," "Riphaean," "Vul 1 In his Works (1842) the title is Attila, or the Triumph of Christianity. 2 Interest in the myths and customs of the early Teutonic peoples influenced Herbert, as it had Cottle, Thelwall, Pennie, Carysfort, and Drummond, in choosing the subject of his epic; but his knowledge of the field was far more profound that theirs. His Select Icelandic Poetry, translated, with notes (1804-06), is said to contain "the first adequate illustration of ancient Scandinavian literature which had appeared in England" (Dict. Nat. Biog.), and his Hedin, Helga (which shows the influence of Scott and Byron), Brynhilda, and Sir Ebba are all based on the Old Norse. Farewell (appended to Attila), 93-4, 117. A Farewell, 119-20; Written in Somersetshire (1801), 81-4. It seems to have been his admiration for Milton that led him to make Satan show Attila a vision of the world similar to that with which, in Paradise Regained, he tempted Christ (Attila, ii. 285–696, P. R., iii. 267-346); to introduce Sin as she is pictured in Paradise Lost (ii. 245-7, cf. P. L., ii. 648-54, 746-67); to refer to one of Milton's Latin poems (in a note to ii. 315); and to borrow the phrases "arrowy sleet" (i. 236, cf. P. R., iii. 324), "odours... From blest Arabia" (ii. 62–3, cf. “Sabaean sweets," iii. 457, and P. L., iv. 162–3), “hurl'd headlong from the etherial cope" (ii. 242, cf. P. L., i. 45, of Satan in each case), “no canian," "Cimmerian," "Erecthean," and expressions like "empyreal concave," "celestial fulgor radiated." How much the style owes to Paradise Lost may be judged from the account of Attila's tomb: Nigh that marmorean dwelling of the dead, Entomb'd with Cheva and Balamber old, In Druid Gaul.1 It should be apparent from this extract that Herbert is no ordinary versifier. Although his epic was 'wafted' far sooner than he dreamed To that Lethean pool, where earthly toils Sink unregarded in forgetfulness,' it is by no means lacking in imaginative and poetic power. Original or inspired it is not, for Herbert's strength lay in the direction of translation and imitation; and in this instance the imitation is too palpable. Yet Attila is dignified, restrained, always in good taste, and usually both rich and impressive. It has too little story, and that little moves too slowly; but for a heroic work in the grand style it is both readable and enjoyable, and must be regarded as one of the best, as it is one of the last, blank-verse epics in English.3 other deem Than" (ii. 257-8, cf. P. R., iv., 44-5), "self-balanced spheres" (ii. 345, cf. P. L., vii. 242), "high advanced" (iv. 35, cf. P. L., i. 536, v. 588, of a banner in each case), "that Sirbonian swamp" (iv. 175, cf. P. L., ii. 592), "flew diverse" (iv. 315, cf. P. L., x. 284)," "smit with love Of" (v. 203-4, cf. P. L., iii. 29), "barbaric silks and gold" (x. 90, cf. P. L., ii. 4), “panoply of gold" (xii. 356, cf. P. L., vi. 527, 760–61), "umbrage never sere" (Farewell, 118, cf. Lycidas, 2), and the lines, O for the voice of him, Who drew the curtain of apocalypse (i. 269–70, cf. P. L., iv. 1-2), Distance seem'd Annihilate, and each minutest shape As view'd thro' optic lens. So angels see (ii. 293-5, cf. P. L., i. 288, 59). 1 xii. 314-26. The Miltonic use of proper names in this passage is a favorite device with Herbert. 2 Farewell, 132-4. 3 Herbert wrote six shorter pieces of blank verse (see Bibl. I, 1801 w., 1804 w.,1822, 1838 w., 1846), which, with the exception of The Christian (1846), are less Miltonic than Attila. |
