From Chaucer to Tennyson
assert eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men,
or, in other words, to embody his theological system in verse. This
gives a doctrinal rigidity and even dryness to parts of the _Paradise
Lost_, which injure its effect as a poem. His "God the father turns a
school divine:" his Christ, as has been wittily said, is "God's good
boy:" the discourses of Raphael to Adam are scholastic lectures: Adam
himself is too sophisticated for the state of innocence, and Eve is
somewhat insipid. The real protagonist of the poem is Satan, upon whose
mighty figure Milton unconsciously bestowed something of his own nature,
and whose words of defiance might almost have come from some Republican
leader when the Good Old Cause went down.
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
But when all has been said that can be said in disparagement or
qualification, _Paradise Lost_ remains the foremost of English poems and
the sublimest of all epics. Even in those parts where theology
encroaches most upon poetry, the diction, though often heavy, is never
languid. Milton's blank verse in itself is enough to bear up the most
prosaic theme, and so is his epic English, a style more massive and
splendid than Shakspere's, and comparable, like Tertullian's Latin, to a
river of molten gold. Of the countless single beauties that sow his page
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Valombrosa,
there is no room to speak, nor of the astonishing fullness of substance
and multitude of thoughts which have caused the _Paradise Lost_ to be
called the book of universal knowledge. "The heat of Milton's mind,"
said Dr. Johnson, "might be said to sublimate his learning and throw off
into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts."
The truth of this remark is clearly seen upon a comparison of Milton's
description of the creation, for example, with corresponding passages in
Sylvester's _Divine Weeks and Works_ (translated from the Huguenot
poet, Du Bartas), which was, in some sense, his original. But the most
heroic thing in Milton's heroic poem is Milton. There are no strains in
_Paradise Lost_ so absorbing as those in which the poet breaks the
strict epic bounds and speaks directly of himself, as in the majestic
lament over his own blindness, and in the invocation to Urania, which
open the third and seventh books. Every-where, too, one reads between
the lines. We think of the dissolute cavaliers, as Milton himself
undoubtedly was thinking of them, when we read of "the sons of Belial
flown with insolence and wine," or when the Puritan turns among the
sweet landscapes of Eden, to denounce
court amours
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenade which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
And we think of Milton among the triumphant royalists when we read of
the Seraph Abdiel "faithful found among the faithless."
Nor number nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained
Superior, nor of violence feared aught:
And with retorted scorn his back he turned
On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.
_Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_ were published in 1671. The
first of these treated in four books Christ's temptation in the
wilderness, a subject that had already been handled in the Spenserian
allegorical manner by Giles Fletcher, a brother of the Purple Islander,
in his _Christ's Victory and Triumph_, 1610. The superiority of
_Paradise Lost_ to its sequel is not without significance. The Puritans
were Old Testament men. Their God was the Hebrew Jehovah, whose single
divinity the Catholic mythology had overlaid with the figures of the
Son, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. They identified themselves in
thought with his chosen people, with the militant theocracy of the Jews.
Their sword was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. "To your tents, O
Israel," was the cry of the London mob when the bishops were committed
to the Tower. And when the fog lifted, on the morning of the battle of
Dunbar, Cromwell exclaimed, "Let God arise and let his enemies be
scattered: like as the sun riseth, so shalt thou drive them away."
_Samson Agonistes_, though Hebrew in theme and spirit, was in form a
Greek tragedy. It has chorus and semi-chorus, and preserved the
so-called dramatic unities; that is, the scene was unchanged, and there
were no intervals of time between the acts. In accordance with the rules
of the Greek theater, but two speakers appeared upon the stage at once,
and there was no violent action. The death of Samson is related by a
messenger. Milton's reason for the choice of this subject is obvious. He
himself was Samson, shorn of his strength, blind, and alone among
enemies; given over
to the unjust tribunals, under change of times,
And condemnation of the ungrateful multitude.
As Milton grew older he discarded more and more the graces of poetry,
and relied purely upon the structure and the thought. In _Paradise
Lost_, although there is little resemblance to Elizabethan work--such as
one notices in _Comus_ and the Christmas hymn--yet the style is rich,
especially in the earlier books. But in _Paradise Regained_ it is severe
to bareness, and in _Samson_, even to ruggedness. Like Michelangelo,
with whose genius he had much in common, Milton became impatient of
finish or of mere beauty. He blocked out his work in masses, left rough
places and surfaces not filled in, and inclined to express his meaning
by a symbol, rather than work it out in detail. It was a part of his
austerity, his increasing preference for structural over decorative
methods, to give up rime for blank verse. His latest poem, _Samson
Agonistes_, is a metrical study of the highest interest.
Milton was not quite alone among the poets of his time in espousing the
popular cause. Andrew Marvell, who was his assistant in the Latin
secretaryship and sat in Parliament for Hull, after the Restoration, was
a good Republican, and wrote a fine _Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return
from Ireland_. There is also a rare imaginative quality in his _Song of
the Exiles in Bermuda_, _Thoughts in a Garden_, and _The Girl Describes
her Fawn_. George Wither, who was imprisoned for his satires, also took
the side of the Parliament, but there is little that is distinctively
Puritan in his poetry.
* * * * *
1. Milton's Poetical Works. Edited by David Masson.
London: Macmillan & Co., 1882. 3 vols.
2. Selections from Milton's Prose. Edited by F.D. Myers.
New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1883. (Parchment Series.)
3. England's Antiphon. By George Macdonald. London:
Macmillan & Co., 1868.
4. Robert Herrick's Hesperides. London: George Routledge
& Sons, 1885. (Morley's Universal Library).
5. Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici and Hydriotaphia.
Edited by Willis Bund. Sampson Low & Co., 1873.
6. Thomas Fuller's Good Thoughts in Bad Times. Boston:
Ticknor & Fields, 1863.
7. Walton's Complete Angler. Edited by Sir Harris
Nicolas. London: Chatto & Windus, 1875.
CHAPTER V.
FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE DEATH OF POPE.
1660-1744.
The Stuart Restoration was a period of descent from poetry to prose,
from passion and imagination to wit and the understanding. The serious,
exalted mood of the civil war and Commonwealth had spent itself and
issued in disillusion. There followed a generation of wits, logical,
skeptical, and prosaic, without earnestness, as without principle. The
characteristic literature of such a time is criticism, satire, and
burlesque, and such, indeed, continued to be the course of English
literary history for a century after the return of the Stuarts. The age
was not a stupid one, but one of active inquiry. The Royal Society, for
the cultivation of the natural sciences, was founded in 1662. There were
able divines in the pulpit and at the universities--Barrow, Tillotson,
Stillingfleet, South, and others: scholars, like Bentley; historians,
like Clarendon and Burnet; scientists, like Boyle and Newton;
philosophers, like Hobbes and Locke. But of poetry, in any high sense of
the word, there was little between the time of Milton and the time of
Goldsmith and Gray.
The English writers of this period were strongly influenced by the
contemporary literature of France, by the comedies of Moliere, the
tragedies of Corneille and Racine, and the satires, epistles, and
versified essays of Boileau. Many of the Restoration writers--Waller,
Cowley, Davenant, Wycherley, Villiers, and others--had been in France
during the exile, and brought back with them French tastes. John Dryden
(1631-1700), who is the great literary figure of his generation, has
been called the first of the moderns. From the reign of Charles II.,
indeed, we may date the beginnings of modern English life. What we call
"society" was forming, the town, the London world. "Coffee, which makes
the politician wise," had just been introduced, and the ordinaries of
Ben Jonson's time gave way to coffee-houses, like Will's and Button's,
which became the head-quarters of literary and political gossip. The two
great English parties, as we know them to-day, were organized: the words
Whig and Tory date from this reign. French etiquette and fashions came
in, and French phrases of convenience--such as _coup de grace_, _bel
esprit_, etc.--began to appear in English prose. Literature became
intensely urban and partisan. It reflected city life, the disputes of
faction, and the personal quarrels of authors. The politics of the great
rebellion had been of heroic proportions, and found fitting expression
in song. But in the Revolution of 1688 the issues were constitutional
and to be settled by the arguments of lawyers. Measures were in question
rather than principles, and there was little inspiration to the poet in
Exclusion Bills and Acts of Settlement.
Court and society, in the reign of Charles II. and James II., were
shockingly dissolute, and in literature, as in life, the reaction
against Puritanism went to great extremes. The social life of the time
is faithfully reflected in the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was a
simple-minded man, the son of a London tailor, and became, himself,
secretary to the admiralty. His diary was kept in cipher, and published
only in 1825. Being written for his own eye, it is singularly outspoken;
and its _naive_, gossipy, confidential tone makes it a most diverting
book, as it is, historically, a most valuable one.
Perhaps the most popular book of its time was Samuel Butler's _Hudibras_
(1663-1664), a burlesque romance in ridicule of the Puritans. The king
carried a copy of it in his pocket, and Pepys testifies that it was
quoted and praised on all sides. Ridicule of the Puritans was nothing
new. Zeal-of-the-land Busy, in Ben Jonson's _Bartholomew Fair_, is an
early instance of the kind. There was nothing laughable about the
earnestness of men like Cromwell, Milton, Algernon Sidney, and Sir Henry
Vane. But even the French Revolution had its humors; and as the English
Puritan Revolution gathered head and the extremer sectaries pressed to
the front--Quakers, New Lights, Fifth Monarchy Men, Ranters, etc.,--its
grotesque sides came uppermost. Butler's hero is a Presbyterian justice
of the peace who sallies forth with his secretary, Ralpho--an
Independent and Anabaptist-like Don Quixote with Sancho Panza, to
suppress May games and bear-baitings. (Macaulay, it will be remembered,