REMARKS ON BOOK I. THIS Book on the whole is so perfect from beginning to end, that it Would be difficult to find a single superfluous passage. Milton's poetical style is more serried than any other: rhymed metre leads to empty words, involutions, and circumlocutions; but it is in the thought, still mo than in the language, that this closeness is apparent. The matter, the illustrations, and the allusions, are historically, naturally, or philosophically The learning is of every extent and diversity;-recondite, classieal, scientific, antiquarian. But the most surprising thing is how he vivifies every topic he touches by poetry: he gives life and picturesqueBess to the driest catalogue of buried names, personal or geographical. They who bring no learning, yet feel themselves charmed by sounds and epithets which give a vague pleasure to the mind, and stir up the imagination into an indistinct emotion. true. Notwithstanding all that bas been said so copiously about poetical imagination by critics, ancient and modern, I still think that the generality of authors and readers have a very confused idea of it. It is the power, not only of conceiving, but creating embodied illustrations of abstract truths, which are sublime, or pathetic, or beautiful. But those ideas, which Milton has embodied, no imagination would have dared to attempt but his own: none else would have risen "to the highth of this great argument." Every one else would have fallen short of it, and degraded it. Among the miraculous acquirements of Milton, was his deep and familiar intimacy with all classical and all chivalrous literature,-the amalgamation in his mind of all the philosophy and all the sublime and ornamental literature of the ancients, and all the abstruse, the laborious, the immature learning of those who again drew off the mantle of Time from the ancient treasures of genius, and mingled with them their own crude conceptions and fantastic theories. He extracted from this mine all that would aid the imagination without shocking the reason. He never rejected philosophy;-but where it was fabulous, only offered it as ornament. It will not be too much to say, that of all uninspired writings, (if these be uninspired,) Milton's are the most worthy of profound study by all minds which would know the creativeness, the splendour, the learning, the eloquence, the wisdom, to which the human intellect can reach. Milton's force and sublimity of fable is especially attested by his frequent concurrence with the hints and language of the Scriptures, and his filling up those dark and mysterious intimations which escaped less illuminated minds. Here, then, imagination took its grandest and most oracular form. But they, who have degraded and depraved their taste by vulgar poetry, not only do not rise to the delight of this tone, but have no conception of it. They deem the bard's work to be a concentration of petty spangles of words, like false jewels made of paste by an adroit artisan. Every thing is technical, and they judge only by skill in decoration. In Milton's language, though there is internal force and splendour, there is outward plainness. Common readers think that it sounds and looks like prose: this is one of its attractions; while all which is stilted, and decorated, and affected, soon fatigues and satiates. To delight the ear and the eye is a mere sensual indulgence;-true poetry strikes at the soul. After all which has been said of Milton by so many learned and able critics, these remarks may seem superfluous; but I persuade myself that some of the topics of praise here urged have not been duly noticed before. I must here also repeat my conviction, that of all critics, Addison is the most beautiful, eloquent, and just: he enters deep into the fable, the imagery, and the sentiment: most of the other commentators merely busy themselves with the explanation or illustration of the learning. We are bound to study in what way Milton has exercised his mighty powers of invention and imagination, and what ought to be their purposes, their qualities, and their merits. If any one thinks the imagination to be an idle and empty power, he is as hard and dull as he is ignorant and blind. In the "Paradise Lost" we have demonstrated what a grand and holy imagination can do. SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. "THE VERSE." [The following is from the hand of the poet himself: as it is short, I have given his own orthography,* peculiar in some points.--ED.] "THE measure is English Heroic Verse, without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint, to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause, therefore, some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note, have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also, long since, our best English Tragedies; as a thing of itself, to all judicious eares, triveal and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rime, so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to Heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing." *From Milton's own edition, as edited by Rev. J. Mitford, and reprinted most accurately and beautifully by Pickering, in eight volumes, 8vo., London, 1851. PARADISE LOST. BOOK I. THE ARGUMENT. This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was placed. Then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of heaven with all his crew into the great deep. Which action passed over, the Poem hastes into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into hell, described here, not in the centre, for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed; but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos: Here Satan, with his Angels lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him: they confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded: they rise; their numbers, array of battel, their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining heaven, but tells them lastly of a new world and a new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in heaven: for that Angels were long before this visible creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandæmonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the deep: the infernal Peers there sit in council. Or Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 1. Of man's first disobedience. The poet here lays before the reader the subject of the following work-the disobedience of our ancestors to the command of God -the effects of that disobedience which lost them Paradise; and the hope we are allowed to entertain, through the Divine Goodness, of being restored to the like blissful state. Such are the great events our poet proposes to celebrate. The means by which they are brought about are to be unfolded by degrees, whilst here he offers to the reader's imagination only such ideas as are most capable to inspire him with reverence and attention. The poem begins with the origin of evil in our world, and the disobedience of our ancestors to God-the cause of all our WO.-CALLANDER. 4. Till one greater Man. Rom. v. 19. 20 PARADISE LOST. Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, 10 is about three miles long, is Mount Sinai proper, now called by the monks Jebel Musa, or Moses' Mount. But, though it has this traditionary name, its character and topography do not apply so well to 15. Above the Aonian mount. In Boothe description given in Exodus as do Milton, therethose of the northern summit, Horeb. The name Sinai, however, is sometimes applied to the whole ridge, and hence Milton's phrase "of Horeb OR of Sinai." fore, means to say that he intends to tia, anciently called Aonia, was Mount Helicon, so famed in antiquity as the 16. Rhyme, from the Latin rythmus, seat of Apollo and the Muses, and sung by poets of every age. 7. Of Oreb, or of Sinai. The mountain "soar above" other poets, who have sung from which the law was given is called of mere earthly scenes and interests. Horeb in Deut. i. 6; iv. 10, 15; v. 2; xviii. 16; but in other places in the Penta- (Gr. puuos,) here means verse. "Blank 17. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit. In the teuch it is called Sinai. These names verse is apt to be loose, thin, and more are now applied to two opposite summits full of words than thought: the blank of an isolated, oblong, and central moun- verse of Milton is compressed, closetain in the midst of a confused group woven, and weighty in matter."-SIR E. of grand and rugged mountain-heights BRYDGES. at the southern extremity of the peninsula, at the head of the Red Sea. Horeb beginning of his second book of "The is the steep, awful cliff, frowning over Reason of Church Government," speakthe plain Rahab, where the people of ing of his design of writing a poem Israel were doubtless assembled. This in the English language, he says, "It plain, says Dr. Robinson, is about two was not to be obtained by the invoca miles long, and from one-third to two- tion of Dame Memory and her Siren thirds of a mile wide. "Our conviction daughters, but by devout prayer to was strengthened that here was the spot that eternal Spirit who can enrich with where the Lord 'descended in fire, and all utterance and knowledge, and sends proclaimed the law. Here lay the plain out his Seraphim with the hallow'd fire 24. That to the highth of this great arguwhere the whole congregation might be of his Altar to touch and purify the assembled; here was the mount that, lips of whom he pleases." See Pickerrising perpendicularly in frowning ma-ing's edition, London, 1851, vol. ii. p. 149, jesty, could be approached, if not for or "Compendium of English Literature," bidden; and here the mountain-brow, p. 265, where alone the lightnings and the thick cloud would be visible." At the south-ment. "The highth of the argument is ern extremity of this central ridge, which precisely what distinguishes this poem I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. Say first, for heaven hides nothing from thy view, Nine times the space that measures day and night Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes, That witness'd huge affliction and dismay Mix'd with obdurate pride and stedfast hate. At once, as far as angels ken, he views The dismal situation waste and wild: A dungeon horrible on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace of Milton from all others. In other 60 65 illumines the bright, and enlarges the great: he expands his wings, and sails with supreme dominion' up to the hea vens, parts the clouds, and communes with angels and unembodied spirits."— SIR E. BRYDGES. 40. He trusted, &c. Isa. xiv. 13. 63. Darkness visible. Not absolute darkness, for that is invisible; but gloom, which shows that there are objects, though they cannot be distinctly seen. |