Milton finished after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner.1 Skinner, it is well known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions of the government during that persecution of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford parliament,2 and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it has been found. But whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic of the great poet. Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his Majesty to edite and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honourable to his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed. very easy or elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare merit of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and tolerant towards those of others. The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the diction of our academical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in short, sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject compelled him to use many words "That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."4 A pupil and friend to whom Milton addressed two of his sonnets. 2 The last Parliament of Charles II., and the last held anywhere but at Westminster, met at Oxford on the 21st of March, 1681. The Whig leaders were about to reintroduce the bill for excluding James, Duke of York, from the succession, as being a Roman Catholic, when Charles, trusting to the change of feeling in the country, dissolved the Parliament a few days after it had assembled. Charles Richard Sumner, 1790-1874, was appointed historiographer to the Crown and royal librarian in 1820. He thus was chosen to edit the De Doctrina Christiana. He afterwards became Bishop of Llandaff, whence he was translated to Winchester. 4 "Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek -MILTON, Sonnet xi. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, A.D. 35-95, although a Spaniard by birth, was the best Latin critic and one of the most elegant Latin writers of the imperial epoch. His great work was the Institutio Oratoria. But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother tongue; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to are from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham 1 with great felicity says of Cowley.2 He wears the garb, but not the clothes of the ancients. Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes to form his system from the Bible alone; and his digest of scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations. Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seem to have excited considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism,3 and his theory on the subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could have read the Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the former; nor do we think that any reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ough to be much startled at the latter. The opinions which he has expressed respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of 1 "Horace's wit and Virgil's state He did not steal, but emulate: And when he would like them appear Their garb but not their clothes did wear.' -"On Mr. Abraham Cowley's Death and Burial amongst the Ancient Poets." John Denham, Sir, 1615-1669, whose poems, once famous, are now almost entirely forgotten with the exception of four lines in his Cooper's Hill, alluding to the Thames : "O could I flow like thee and make thy stream My great example as it is my theme, Though deep, yet clear; though gentle yet not dull, 2 Abraham Cowley, 1618-1667, the most distinguished of that school of poets known as the metaphysical" (i.e., remarkable for ingenious conceits and farfetched expressions) which flourished under James I. and Charles I. 3 The Arian doctrine that the Son was not co-equal or co-eternal with the Father is adopted in Milton's treatise above referred to, but it seems, as Macaulay says, to be implied in various passages of Paradise Lost, especially book v., line 600 et seq. 4 Milton's opinions concerning marriage are stated in several pamphlets, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 1643; The Judgment of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce, 1644; Tetrachordon, Expositions upon the Four Chief Places in Scripture which Treat of Marriage, 1645; and Colasterion, A Reply to a Nameless Answer against the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 1645. According to his nephew, Edward Phillips, Milton, when his first wife, Mary Powell, left him and refused to return, thought of taking a substitute. But if this were so, his reconciliation with his wife changed his mind. To this statement Macaulay seems to refer. matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more just surprise.1 But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it-is, would not much edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf? The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its publication, will secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then, to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn to make room for the forthcoming novelties. We wish however to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a int, until they have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the late interesting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and good man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turn for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of English liberty. It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of 1 In the De Doctrinâ Christianâ Milton inclines to a somewhat anthropomorphic conception of the Deity. He holds that the world was not created out of nothing, and he denies that the ordinance of the Sabbath is binding on Christians. 2 In March, 1651, Milton published his Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, a reply to the Defensio Regia written by the learned Salmasius (Claude Saumaise) in vindication of Charles I. and in denunciation of those who put him to death. Both pamphlets were in Latin and so much disfigured with scurrility as to be now offensive. 3 The Capuchins, so styled from their hoods (Ital. cappuccio), were a branch of the Franciscans erected into a separate order by Clement VII. in 1528. They have been distinguished by their energy as preachers and missionaries. 4 Milton was assuredly the glory of English literature and the champion of English liberty, but certainly not a statesman, scarcely a philosopher and only a martyr in the sense in which every earnest adherent of a vanquished party may be so termed. the civilised world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the art. His detractors, however, though outvoted, have not been silenced. There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the poems and to decry the poet.. The works they acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilisation, supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors created; he lived in an enlightened age; he received a finished education, and we must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages. We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable circumstances than Milton.1 He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born "an age too late." 2 For this notion son 3 has thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy riceule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilisation which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions.. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we feryently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the It is not clear, even if we admit Macaulay's theory, why Milton should have had to struggle with more unfavourable circumstances than the great poets of a later time who lived in a still more highly civilised society. 2" unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years, damp my intended wing Depressed -Paradise Lost, book ix., lines 44-46. 3 Johnson, "Life of Milton." exception. Surely the uniformity of the phænomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. The fact is, that common observers ́reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slów. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague 2 or Walpole 3 many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation. But it is not thus with music, wit painting, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular It 1 Jane Haldimand, 1769-1858, married in 1799 Dr. Alexander Marcet. Her Conversations on Political Economy, published in 1816, and intended to serve as an elementary text-book, passed through many editions and called forth the praise of such authorities as J. B. Say and McCulloch. 2 Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax 1661-1715, first attracted notice by a parody of Dryden's Hind and Panther, entitled the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, written jointly by him and Prior. He entered the House of Commons in 1689, and soon became a leader of the Whigs. He was made a Lord of the Treasury in 1692, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1694. He took the chief part in commencing the National Debt, founding the Bank of England and reforming the currency. In 1699 he resigned his office and next year he was called to the Upper House as Baron Halifax. He was impeached without success in 1701. In 1714 he was raised to the rank of an earl. As a patron of letters he was ridiculed by Pope under the name of Bufo. As a financier he was one of the greatest in English history. 3 Robert Walpole, Sir, 1676-1745, rose to be First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1715. After a brief exclusion from power he regained these offices and was virtually Prime Minister between 1721 and 1742. Walpole had neither the opportunities nor the daring temper of Montague. His improvements in the tariff, however, and his Excise scheme, defeated by party malice, entitle him to honourable rank as a financier. |