Volume I Part 25 (1/2)
If we divide the period from the accession of Elizabeth to the Protectorate of Cromwell into two unequal portions, the first ending with the death of James I. the other comprehending the reign of Charles and the brief glories of the Republic, we are forcibly struck with a difference in the character of the ill.u.s.trious actors, by whom each period is rendered severally memorable. Or rather, the difference in the characters of the great men in each period, leads us to make this division.
Eminent as the intellectual powers were that were displayed in both; yet in the number of great men, in the various sorts of excellence, and not merely in the variety but almost diversity of talents united in the same individual, the age of Charles falls short of its predecessor; and the stars of the Parliament, keen as their radiance was, in fulness and richness of l.u.s.tre, yield to the constellation at the court of Elizabeth;--which can only be paralleled by Greece in her brightest moment, when the t.i.tles of the poet, the philosopher, the historian, the statesman and the general not seldom formed a garland round the same head, as in the instances of our Sidneys and Raleighs. But then, on the other hand, there was a vehemence of will, an enthusiasm of principle, a depth and an earnestness of spirit, which the charms of individual fame and personal aggrandis.e.m.e.nt could not pacify,--an aspiration after reality, permanence, and general good,--in short, a moral grandeur in the latter period, with which the low intrigues, Machiavellic maxims, and selfish and servile ambition of the former, stand in painful contrast.
The causes of this it belongs not to the present occasion to detail at length; but a mere allusion to the quick succession of revolutions in religion, breeding a political indifference in the ma.s.s of men to religion itself, the enormous increase of the royal power in consequence of the humiliation of the n.o.bility and the clergy--the transference of the papal authority to the crown,--the unfixed state of Elizabeth's own opinions, whose inclinations were as popish as her interests were protestant--the controversial extravagance and practical imbecility of her successor--will help to explain the former period; and the persecutions that had given a life and soul-interest to the disputes so imprudently fostered by James,--the ardour of a conscious increase of power in the commons, and the greater austerity of manners and maxims, the natural product and most formidable weapon of religious disputation, not merely in conjunction, but in closest combination, with newly awakened political and republican zeal, these perhaps account for the character of the latter aera.
In the close of the former period, and during the bloom of the latter, the poet Milton was educated and formed; and he survived the latter, and all the fond hopes and aspirations which had been its life; and so in evil days, standing as the representative of the combined excellence of both periods, he produced the 'Paradise Lost as by an after-throe of nature. ”There are some persons (observes a divine, a contemporary of Milton's) of whom the grace of G.o.d takes early hold, and the good spirit inhabiting them, carries them on in an even constancy through innocence into virtue, their Christianity bearing equal date with their manhood, and reason and religion, like warp and woof, running together, make up one web of a wise and exemplary life. This (he adds) is a most happy case, wherever it happens; for, besides that there is no sweeter or more lovely thing on earth than the early buds of piety, which drew from our Saviour signal affection to the beloved disciple, it is better to have no wound than to experience the most sovereign balsam, which, if it work a cure, yet usually leaves a scar behind.” Although it was and is my intention to defer the consideration of Milton's own character to the conclusion of this Lecture, yet I could not prevail on myself to approach the Paradise Lost without impressing on your minds the conditions under which such a work was in fact producible at all, the original genius having been a.s.sumed as the immediate agent and efficient cause; and these conditions I find in the character of the times and in his own character. The age in which the foundations of his mind were laid, was congenial to it as one golden era of profound erudition and individual genius;--that in which the superstructure was carried up, was no less favourable to it by a sternness of discipline and a show of self-control, highly flattering to the imaginative dignity of an heir of fame, and which won Milton over from the dear-loved delights of academic groves and cathedral aisles to the anti-prelatic party. It acted on him, too, no doubt, and modified his studies by a characteristic controversial spirit, (his presentation of G.o.d is tinted with it)--a spirit not less busy indeed in political than in theological and ecclesiastical dispute, but carrying on the former almost always, more or less, in the guise of the latter. And so far as Pope's censure [1] of our poet,--that he makes G.o.d the Father a school divine--is just, we must attribute it to the character of his age, from which the men of genius, who escaped, escaped by a worse disease, the licentious indifference of a Frenchified court.
Such was the 'nidus' or soil, which const.i.tuted, in the strict sense of the word, the circ.u.mstances of Milton's mind. In his mind itself there were purity and piety absolute; an imagination to which neither the past nor the present were interesting, except as far as they called forth and enlivened the great ideal, in which and for which he lived; a keen love of truth, which, after many weary pursuits, found a harbour in a sublime listening to the still voice in his own spirit, and as keen a love of his country, which, after a disappointment still more depressive, expanded and soared into a love of man as a probationer of immortality.
These were, these alone could be, the conditions under which such a work as the Paradise Lost could be conceived and accomplished. By a life-long study Milton had known--
What was of use to know, What best to say could say, to do had done.
His actions to his words agreed, his words To his large heart gave utterance due, his heart Contain'd of good, wise, fair, the perfect shape;
and he left the imperishable total, as a bequest to the ages coming, in the 'Paradise Lost'. [2]
Difficult as I shall find it to turn over these leaves without catching some pa.s.sage, which would tempt me to stop, I propose to consider, 1st, the general plan and arrangement of the work; 2ndly, the subject with its difficulties and advantages; 3rdly, the poet's object, the spirit in the letter, the [Greek (transliterated): enthumion en muthps], the true school-divinity; and lastly, the characteristic excellencies of the poem, in what they consist, and by what means they were produced.
1. As to the plan and ordonnance of the Poem.
Compare it with the 'Iliad', many of the books of which might change places without any injury to the thread of the story. Indeed, I doubt the original existence of the 'Iliad' as one poem; it seems more probable that it was put together about the time of the Pisistratidae. The 'Iliad'--and, more or less, all epic poems, the subjects of which are taken from history--have no rounded conclusion; they remain, after all, but single chapters from the volume of history, although they are ornamental chapters. Consider the exquisite simplicity of the Paradise Lost. It and it alone really possesses a beginning, a middle, and an end; it has the totality of the poem as distinguished from the 'ab ovo' birth and parentage, or straight line, of history.
2. As to the subject.
In Homer, the supposed importance of the subject, as the first effort of confederated Greece, is an after-thought of the critics; and the interest, such as it is, derived from the events themselves, as distinguished from the manner of representing them, is very languid to all but Greeks. It is a Greek poem. The superiority of the 'Paradise Lost'
is obvious in this respect, that the interest transcends the limits of a nation. But we do not generally dwell on this excellence of the 'Paradise Lost', because it seems attributable to Christianity itself;--yet in fact the interest is wider than Christendom, and comprehends the Jewish and Mohammedan worlds;--nay, still further, inasmuch as it represents the origin of evil, and the combat of evil and good, it contains matter of deep interest to all mankind, as forming the basis of all religion, and the true occasion of all philosophy whatsoever.
The FALL of Man is the subject; Satan is the cause; man's blissful state the immediate object of his enmity and attack; man is warned by an angel who gives him an account of all that was requisite to be known, to make the warning at once intelligible and awful; then the temptation ensues, and the Fall; then the immediate sensible consequence; then the consolation, wherein an angel presents a vision of the history of men with the ultimate triumph of the Redeemer. Nothing is touched in this vision but what is of general interest in religion; any thing else would have been improper.
The inferiority of Klopstock's 'Messiah' is inexpressible. I admit the prerogative of poetic feeling, and poetic faith; but I cannot suspend the judgment even for a moment. A poem may in one sense be a dream, but it must be a waking dream. In Milton you have a religious faith combined with the moral nature; it is an efflux; you go along with it. In Klopstock there is a wilfulness; he makes things so and so. The feigned speeches and events in the 'Messiah' shock us like falsehoods; but nothing of that sort is felt in the 'Paradise Lost', in which no particulars, at least very few indeed, are touched which can come into collision or juxta-position with recorded matter.
But notwithstanding the advantages in Milton's subject, there were concomitant insuperable difficulties, and Milton has exhibited marvellous skill in keeping most of them out of sight. High poetry is the translation of reality into the ideal under the predicament of succession of time only. The poet is an historian, upon condition of moral power being the only force in the universe. The very grandeur of his subject ministered a difficulty to Milton. The statement of a being of high intellect, warring against the supreme Being, seems to contradict the idea of a supreme Being. Milton precludes our feeling this, as much as possible, by keeping the peculiar attributes of divinity less in sight, making them to a certain extent allegorical only. Again, poetry implies the language of excitement; yet how to reconcile such language with G.o.d? Hence Milton confines the poetic pa.s.sion in G.o.d's speeches to the language of scripture; and once only allows the 'pa.s.sio vera', or 'quasi-humana' to appear, in the pa.s.sage, where the Father contemplates his own likeness in the Son before the battle:--
Go then, thou Mightiest, in thy Father's might, Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels That shake Heaven's basis, bring forth all my war, My bow and thunder; my almighty arms Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh; Pursue these sons of darkness, drive them out From all Heaven's bounds into the utter deep: There let them learn, as likes them, to despise G.o.d and Messiah his anointed king.
(B. VI. v. 710.)
3. As to Milton's object:--
It was to justify the ways of G.o.d to man! The controversial spirit observable in many parts of the poem, especially in G.o.d's speeches, is immediately attributable to the great controversy of that age, the origination of evil. The Arminians considered it a mere calamity. The Calvinists took away all human will. Milton a.s.serted the will, but declared for the enslavement of the will out of an act of the will itself. There are three powers in us, which distinguish us from the beasts that perish;--1, reason; 2, the power of viewing universal truth; and 3, the power of contracting universal truth into particulars.
Religion is the will in the reason, and love in the will.
The character of Satan is pride and sensual indulgence, finding in self the sole motive of action. It is the character so often seen 'in little' on the political stage. It exhibits all the restlessness, temerity, and cunning which have marked the mighty hunters of mankind from Nimrod to Napoleon. The common fascination of men is, that these great men, as they are called, must act from some great motive. Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in h.e.l.l than serve in heaven. To place this l.u.s.t of self in opposition to denial of self or duty, and to show what exertions it would make, and what pains endure to accomplish its end, is Milton's particular object in the character of Satan. But around this character he has thrown a singularity of daring, a grandeur of sufferance, and a ruined splendour, which const.i.tute the very height of poetic sublimity.
Lastly, as to the execution:--
The language and versification of the 'Paradise Lost' are peculiar in being so much more necessarily correspondent to each than those in any other poem or poet. The connexion of the sentences and the position of the words are exquisitely artificial; but the position is rather according to the logic of pa.s.sion or universal logic, than to the logic of grammar. Milton attempted to make the English language obey the logic of pa.s.sion as perfectly as the Greek and Latin. Hence the occasional harshness in the construction.