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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley + +Author: Samuel Johnson + +Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5098] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on April 24, 2002] +[Most recently updated: April 24, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the 1891 +Cassell and Co. edition.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS: WALLER, MILTON, COWLEY<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Contents:<br> + Introduction<br> + Waller<br> + Milton<br> + Cowley<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +INTRODUCTION.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Samuel Johnson, born at Lichfield in the year 1709, on the 7th of September +Old Style, 18th New Style, was sixty-eight years old when he agreed +with the booksellers to write his “Lives of the English Poets.” +“I am engaged,” he said, “to write little Lives, and +little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets.” +His conscience was also a little hurt by the fact that the bargain was +made on Easter Eve. In 1777 his memorandum, set down among prayers +and meditations, was “29 March, Easter Eve, I treated with booksellers +on a bargain, but the time was not long.”<br> +<br> +The history of the book as told to Boswell by Edward Dilly, one of the +contracting booksellers, was this. An edition of Poets printed +by the Martins in Edinburgh, and sold by Bell in London, was regarded +by the London publishers as an interference with the honorary copyright +which booksellers then respected among themselves. They said also +that it was inaccurately printed and its type was small. A few +booksellers agreed, therefore, among themselves to call a meeting of +proprietors of honorary or actual copyright in the various Poets. +In Poets who had died before 1660 they had no trade interest at all. +About forty of the most respectable booksellers in London accepted the +invitation to this meeting. They determined to proceed immediately +with an elegant and uniform edition of Poets in whose works they were +interested, and they deputed three of their number, William Strahan, +Thomas Davies, and Cadell, to wait on Johnson, asking him to write the +series of prefatory Lives, and name his own terms. Johnson agreed +at once, and suggested as his price two hundred guineas, when, as Malone +says, the booksellers would readily have given him a thousand. +He then contemplated only “little Lives.” His energetic +pleasure in the work expanded his Preface beyond the limits of the first +design; but when it was observed to Johnson that he was underpaid by +the booksellers, his reply was, “No, sir; it was not that they +gave me too little, but that I gave them too much.” He gave +them, in fact, his masterpiece. His keen interest in Literature +as the soul of life, his sympathetic insight into human nature, enabled +him to put all that was best in himself into these studies of the lives +of men for whom he cared, and of the books that he was glad to speak +his mind about in his own shrewd independent way. Boswell was +somewhat disappointed at finding that the selection of the Poets in +this series would not be Johnson’s, but that he was to furnish +a Preface and Life to any Poet the booksellers pleased. “I +asked him,” writes Boswell, “if he would do this to any +dunce’s works, if they should ask him. JOHNSON. “Yes, +sir; and <i>say</i> he was a dunce.”<br> +<br> +The meeting of booksellers, happy in the support of Johnson’s +intellectual power, appointed also a committee to engage the best engravers, +and another committee to give directions about paper and printing. +They made out at once a list of the Poets they meant to give, “many +of which,” said Dilly, “are within the time of the Act of +Queen Anne, which Martin and Bell cannot give, as they have no property +in them. The proprietors are almost all the booksellers in London, +of consequence.”<br> +<br> +In 1780 the booksellers published, in separate form, four volumes of +Johnson’s “Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the most +Eminent of the English Poets.” The completion followed in +1781. “Sometime in March,” Johnson writes in that +year, “I finished the Lives of the Poets.” The series +of books to which they actually served as prefaces extended to sixty +volumes. When his work was done, Johnson then being in his seventy-second +year, the booksellers added £100 to the price first asked. +Johnson’s own life was then near its close. He died on the +13th of December, 1784, aged seventy-five.<br> +<br> +Of the Lives in this collection, Johnson himself liked best his Life +of Cowley, for the thoroughness with which he had examined in it the +style of what he called the metaphysical Poets. In his Life of +Milton, the sense of Milton’s genius is not less evident than +the difference in point of view which made it difficult for Johnson +to know Milton thoroughly. They know each other now. For +Johnson sought as steadily as Milton to do all as “in his great +Taskmaster’s eye.”<br> +<br> +H. M.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +WALLER.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Edmund Waller was born on the third of March, 1605, at Coleshill, in +Hertfordshire. His father was Robert Waller, Esquire, of Agmondesham, +in Buckinghamshire, whose family was originally a branch of the Kentish +Wallers; and his mother was the daughter of John Hampden, of Hampden, +in the same county, and sister to Hampden, the zealot of rebellion.<br> +<br> +His father died while he was yet an infant, but left him a yearly income +of three thousand five hundred pounds; which, rating together the value +of money and the customs of life, we may reckon more than equivalent +to ten thousand at the present time.<br> +<br> +He was educated, by the care of his mother, at Eton; and removed afterwards +to King’s College, in Cambridge. He was sent to Parliament +in his eighteenth, if not in his sixteenth year, and frequented the +court of James the First, where he heard a very remarkable conversation, +which the writer of the Life prefixed to his Works, who seems to have +been well informed of facts, though he may sometimes err in chronology, +has delivered as indubitably certain:<br> +<br> +“He found Dr. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Neale, Bishop +of Durham, standing behind his Majesty’s chair; and there happened +something extraordinary,” continues this writer, “in the +conversation those prelates had with the king, on which Mr. Waller did +often reflect. His Majesty asked the bishops, ‘My Lords, +cannot I take my subject’s money, when I want it, without all +this formality of Parliament?’ The Bishop of Durham readily +answered, ‘God forbid, Sir, but you should: you are the breath +of our nostrils.’ Whereupon the king turned and said to +the Bishop of Winchester, ‘Well, my Lord, what say you?’ +‘Sir,’ replied the bishop, ‘I have no skill to judge +of Parliamentary cases. The king answered, ‘No put-offs, +my Lord; answer me presently.’ ‘Then, Sir,’ +said he, ‘I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale’s +money; for he offers it.’ Mr. Waller said the company was +pleased with this answer, and the wit of it seemed to affect the king; +for a certain lord coming in soon after, his Majesty cried out, ‘Oh, +my lord, they say you lig with my Lady.’ ‘No, Sir,’ +says his lordship in confusion; ‘but I like her company, because +she has so much wit.’ ‘Why, then,’ says the +king, ‘do you not lig with my Lord of Winchester there?’”<br> +<br> +Waller’s political and poetical life began nearly together. +In his eighteenth year he wrote the poem that appears first in his works, +on “The Prince’s Escape at St. Andero:” a piece which +justifies the observation made by one of his editors, that he attained, +by a felicity like instinct, a style which perhaps will never be obsolete; +and that “were we to judge only by the wording, we could not know +what was wrote at twenty, and what at’ fourscore.” +His versification was, in his first essay, such as it appears in his +last performance. By the perusal of Fairfax’s translation +of Tasso, to which, as Dryden relates, he confessed himself indebted +for the smoothness of his numbers, and by his own nicety of observation, +he had already formed such a system of metrical harmony as he never +afterwards much needed, or much endeavoured, to improve. Denham +corrected his numbers by experience, and gained ground gradually upon +the ruggedness of his age; but what was acquired by Denham was inherited +by Waller.<br> +<br> +The next poem, of which the subject seems to fix the time, is supposed +by Mr. Fenton to be the “Address to the Queen,” which he +considers as congratulating her arrival, in Waller’s twentieth +year. He is apparently mistaken; for the mention of the nation’s +obligations to her frequent pregnancy proves that it was written when +she had brought many children. We have therefore no date of any +other poetical production before that which the murder of the Duke of +Buckingham occasioned; the steadiness with which the king received the +news in the chapel deserved indeed to be rescued from oblivion.<br> +<br> +Neither of these pieces that seem to carry their own dates could have +been the sudden effusion of fancy. In the verses on the prince’s +escape, the prediction of his marriage with the Princess of France must +have been written after the event; in the other, the promises of the +king’s kindness to the descendants of Buckingham, which could +not be properly praised till it had appeared by its effects, show that +time was taken for revision and improvement. It is not known that +they were published till they appeared long afterwards with other poems.<br> +<br> +Waller was not one of those idolaters of praise who cultivate their +minds at the expense of their fortunes. Rich as he was by inheritance, +he took care early to grow richer, by marrying Mrs. Banks, a great heiress +in the city, whom the interest of the court was employed to obtain for +Mr. Crofts. Having brought him a son, who died young, and a daughter, +who was afterwards married to Mr. Dormer, of Oxfordshire, she died in +childbed, and left him a widower of about five-and-twenty, gay and wealthy, +to please himself with another marriage.<br> +<br> +Being too young to resist beauty, and probably too vain to think himself +resistible, he fixed his heart, perhaps half-fondly and half-ambitiously, +upon the Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, +whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated; +the name is derived from the Latin appellation of “sugar,” +and implies, if it means anything, a spiritless mildness, and dull good-nature, +such as excites rather tenderness and esteem, and such as, though always +treated with kindness, is never honoured or admired.<br> +<br> +Yet he describes Sacharissa as a sublime predominating beauty, of lofty +charms, and imperious influence, on whom he looks with amazement rather +than fondness, whose chains he wishes, though in vain, to break, and +whose presence is “wine” that “inflames to madness.”<br> +<br> +His acquaintance with this high-born dame gave wit no opportunity of +boasting its influence; she was not to be subdued by the powers of verse, +but rejected his addresses, it is said, with disdain, and drove him +away to solace his disappointment with Amoret or Phillis. She +married in 1639 the Earl of Sunderland, who died at Newbury in the king’s +cause; and, in her old age, meeting somewhere with Waller, asked him, +when he would again write such verses upon her; “When you are +as young, Madam,” said he, “and as handsome as you were +then.”<br> +<br> +In this part of his life it was that he was known to Clarendon, among +the rest of the men who were eminent in that age for genius and literature; +but known so little to his advantage, that they who read his character +will not much condemn Sacharissa, that she did not descend from her +rank to his embraces, nor think every excellence comprised in wit.<br> +<br> +The lady was, indeed, inexorable; but his uncommon comprised in wit, +qualifications, though they had no power upon her, recommended him to +the scholars and statesmen; and undoubtedly many beauties of that time, +however they might receive his love, were proud of his praises. +Who they were, whom he dignifies with poetical names, cannot now be +known. Amoret, according to Mr. Fenton, was the Lady Sophia Murray. +Perhaps by traditions preserved in families more may be discovered.<br> +<br> +From the verses written at Penshurst, it has been collected that he +diverted his disappointment by a voyage; and his biographers, from his +poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas; +but it seems much more likely that he should amuse himself with forming +an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to +America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability.<br> +<br> +From his twenty-eighth to his thirty-fifth year, he wrote his pieces +on the Reduction of Sallee; on the Reparation of St. Paul’s; to +the King on his Navy; the Panegyric on the Queen Mother; the two poems +to the Earl of Northumberland; and perhaps others, of which the time +cannot be discovered.<br> +<br> +When he had lost all hopes of Sacharissa, he looked round him for an +easier conquest, and gained a lady of the family of Bresse, or Breaux. +The time of his marriage is not exactly known. It has not been +discovered that his wife was won by his poetry; nor is anything told +of her, but that she brought him many children. He doubtless praised +some whom he would have been afraid to marry, and perhaps married one +whom he would have been ashamed to praise. Many qualities contribute +to domestic happiness, upon which poetry has no colours to bestow; and +many airs and sallies may delight imagination, which he who flatters +them never can approve. There are charms made only for distant +admiration. No spectacle is nobler than a blaze.<br> +<br> +Of this wife, his biographers have recorded that she gave him five sons +and eight daughters.<br> +<br> +During the long interval of Parliament, he is represented as living +among those with whom it was most honourable to converse, and enjoying +an exuberant fortune with that independence and liberty of speech and +conduct which wealth ought always to produce. He was, however, +considered as the kinsman of Hampden, and was therefore supposed by +the courtiers not to favour them.<br> +<br> +When the Parliament was called in 1640, it appeared that Waller’s +political character had not been mistaken. The king’s demand +of a supply produced one of those noisy speeches which disaffection +and discontent regularly dictate; a speech filled with hyperbolical +complaints of imaginary grievances: “They,” says he, “who +think themselves already undone, can never apprehend themselves in danger; +and they who have nothing left can never give freely.” Political +truth is equally in danger from the praises of courtiers, and the exclamations +of patriots.<br> +<br> +He then proceeds to rail at the clergy, being sure at that time of a +favourable audience. His topic is such as will always serve its +purpose; an accusation of acting and preaching only for preferment: +and he exhorts the Commons “carefully” to “provide” +for their “protection against Pulpit Law.”<br> +<br> +It always gratifies curiosity to trace a sentiment. Waller has +in his speech quoted Hooker in one passage; and in another has copied +him, without quoting. “Religion,” says Waller, “ought +to be the first thing in our purpose and desires; but that which is +first in dignity is not always to precede in order of time; for well-being +supposes a being; and the first impediment which men naturally endeavour +to remove, is the want of those things without which they cannot subsist. +God first assigned unto Adam maintenance of life, and gave him a title +to the rest of the creatures before he appointed a law to observe.”<br> +<br> +“God first assigned Adam,” says Hooker, “maintenance +of life, and then appointed him a law to observe. True it is, +that the kingdom of God must be the first thing in our purpose and desires; +but inasmuch as a righteous life presupposeth life, inasmuch as to live +virtuously it is impossible, except we live; therefore the first impediment +which naturally we endeavour to remove is penury, and want of things +without which we cannot live.”<br> +<br> +The speech is vehement; but the great position, that grievances ought +to be redressed before supplies are granted, is agreeable enough to +law and reason: nor was Waller, if his biographer may be credited, such +an enemy to the king, as not to wish his distresses lightened; for he +relates, “that the king sent particularly to Waller, to second +his demand of some subsidies to pay off the army, and Sir Henry Vane +objecting against first voting a supply, because the king would not +accept unless it came up to his proportion, Mr. Waller spoke earnestly +to Sir Thomas Jermyn, comptroller of the household, to save his master +from the effects of so bold a falsity; ‘for,’ he said, ‘I +am but a country gentleman, and cannot pretend to know the king’s +mind:’ but Sir Thomas durst not contradict the secretary; and +his son, the Earl of St. Albans, afterwards told Mr. Waller, that his +father’s cowardice ruined the king.”<br> +<br> +In the Long Parliament, which, unhappily for the nation, met Nov. 3, +1640, Waller represented Agmondesham the third time; and was considered +by the discontented party as a man sufficiently trusty and acrimonious +to be employed in managing the prosecution of Judge Crawley, for his +opinion in favour of ship-money; and his speech shows that he did not +disappoint their expectations. He was probably the more ardent, +as his uncle Hampden had been particularly engaged in the dispute, and, +by a sentence which seems generally to be thought unconstitutional, +particularly injured.<br> +<br> +He was not, however, a bigot to his party, nor adopted all their opinions. +When the great question, whether Episcopacy ought to be abolished, was +debated, he spoke against the innovation so coolly, so reasonably, and +so firmly, that it is not without great injury to his name that his +speech, which was as follows, has been hitherto omitted in his works:<br> +<br> +“There is no doubt but the sense of what this nation had suffered +from the present bishops hath produced these complaints; and the apprehensions +men have of suffering the like, in time to come, make so many desire +the taking away of Episcopacy: but I conceive it is possible that we +may not, now, take a right measure of the minds of the people by their +petitions; for, when they subscribed them, the bishops were armed with +a dangerous commission of making new canons, imposing new oaths, and +the like; but now we have disarmed them of that power. These petitioners +lately did look upon Episcopacy as a beast armed with horns and claws; +but now that we have cut and pared them (and may, if we see cause, yet +reduce it into narrower bounds), it may, perhaps, be more agreeable. +Howsoever, if they be still in passion, it becomes us soberly to consider +the right use and antiquity thereof; and not to comply further with +a general desire, than may stand with a general good.<br> +<br> +“We have already showed that Episcopacy and the evils thereof +are mingled like water and oil; we have also, in part, severed them; +but I believe you will find, that our laws and the present government +of the Church are mingled like wine and water; so inseparable, that +the abrogation of, at least, a hundred of our laws is desired in these +petitions. I have often heard a noble answer of the Lords, commended +in this House, to a proposition of like nature, but of less consequence; +they gave no other reason of their refusal but this, ‘<i>Nolumus +mutare Leges Angliæ</i>:’ it was the bishops who so answered +them; and it would become the dignity and wisdom of this House to answer +the people, now, with a <i>‘Nolumus mutare.</i>’<br> +<br> +“I see some are moved with a number of hands against the bishops; +which, I confess, rather inclines me to their defence; for I look upon +Episcopacy as a counterscarp, or outwork; which, if it be taken by this +assault of the people, and, withal, this mystery once revealed, ‘that +we must deny them nothing when they ask it thus in troops,’ we +may, in the next place, have as hard a task to defend our property, +as we have lately had to recover it from the Prerogative. If, +by multiplying hands and petitions, they prevail for an equality in +things ecclesiastical, the next demand perhaps may be <i>Lex Agraria, +</i>the like equality in things temporal.<br> +<br> +“The Roman story tells us, that when the people began to flock +about the Senate, and were more curious to direct and know what was +done, than to obey, that Commonwealth soon came to ruin; their <i>Legem +regare </i>grew quickly to be a <i>Legem ferre: </i>and after, when +their legions had found that they could make a Dictator, they never +suffered the Senate to have a voice any more in such election.<br> +<br> +“If these great innovations proceed, I shall expect a flat and +level in learning too, as well as in Church preferments:<i> Hones alit +Artes</i>. And though it be true, that grave and pious men do +study for learning-sake, and embrace virtue for itself; yet it is true, +that youth, which is the season when learning is gotten, is not without +ambition; nor will ever take pains to excel in anything, when there +is not some hope of excelling others in reward and dignity.<br> +<br> +“There are two reasons chiefly alleged against our Church government.<br> +<br> +“First, Scripture, which, as some men think, points out another +form.<br> +<br> +“Second, the abuses of the present superiors.<br> +<br> +“For Scripture, I will not dispute it in this place; but I am +confident that, whenever an equal division of lands and goods shall +be desired, there will be as many places in Scripture found out, which +seem to favour that, as there are now alleged against the prelacy or +preferment of the Church. And, as for abuses, when you are now +in the remonstrance told what this and that poor man hath suffered by +the bishops, you may be presented with a thousand instances of poor +men that have received hard measure from their landlords; and of worldly +goods abused, to the injury of others, and disadvantage of the owners.<br> +<br> +“And therefore, Mr. Speaker, my humble motion is that we may settle +men’s minds herein; and by a question, declare our resolution, +‘to reform,’ that is, ‘not to abolish, Episcopacy.’”<br> +<br> +It cannot but be wished that he, who could speak in this manner, had +been able to act with spirit and uniformity.<br> +<br> +When the Commons begun to set the royal authority at open defiance, +Waller is said to have withdrawn from the House, and to have returned +with the king’s permission; and, when the king set up his standard, +he sent him a thousand broad-pieces. He continued, however, to +sit in the rebellious conventicle; but “spoke,” says Clarendon, +“with great sharpness and freedom, which, now there was no danger +of being out-voted, was not restrained; and therefore used as an argument +against those who were gone upon pretence that they were not suffered +to deliver their opinion freely in the House, which could not be believed, +when all men knew what liberty Mr. Waller took, and spoke every day +with impunity against the sense and proceedings of the House.”<br> +<br> +Waller, as he continued to sit, was one of the commissioners nominated +by the Parliament to treat with the king at Oxford; and when they were +presented, the king said to him, “Though you are the last, you +are not the lowest nor the least in my favour.” Whitelock, +who, being another of the commissioners, was witness of this kindness, +imputes it to the king’s knowledge of the plot, in which Waller +appeared afterwards to have been engaged against the Parliament. +Fenton, with equal probability, believes that his attempt to promote +the royal cause arose from his sensibility of the king’s tenderness. +Whitelock says nothing of his behaviour at Oxford: he was sent with +several others to add pomp to the commission, but was not one of those +to whom the trust of treating was imparted.<br> +<br> +The engagement, known by the name of Waller’s plot, was soon afterwards +discovered. Waller had a brother-in-law, Tomkyns, who was clerk +of the queen’s council, and at the same time had a very numerous +acquaintance, and great influence, in the city. Waller and he, +conversing with great confidence, told both their own secrets and those +of their friends; and, surveying the wide extent of their conversation, +imagined that they found in the majority of all ranks great disapprobation +of the violence of the Commons, and unwillingness to continue the war. +They knew that many favoured the king, whose fear concealed their loyalty; +and many desired peace, though they durst not oppose the clamour for +war; and they imagined that, if those who had these good intentions +should be informed of their own strength, and enabled by intelligence +to act together, they might overpower the fury of sedition, by refusing +to comply with the ordinance for the twentieth part, and the other taxes +levied for the support of the rebel army, and by uniting great numbers +in a petition for peace. They proceeded with great caution. +Three only met in one place, and no man was allowed to impart the plot +to more than two others; so that, if any should be suspected or seized, +more than three could not be endangered.<br> +<br> +Lord Conway joined in the design, and, Clarendon imagines, incidentally +mingled, as he was a soldier, some martial hopes or projects, which +however were only mentioned, the main design being to bring the loyal +inhabitants to the knowledge of each other; for which purpose there +was to be appointed one in every district, to distinguish the friends +of the king, the adherents to the Parliament, and the neutrals. +How far they proceeded does not appear; the result of their inquiry, +as Pym declared, was, that within the walls, for one that was for the +Royalists, there were three against them; but that without the walls, +for one that was against them, there were five for them. Whether +this was said from knowledge or guess, was perhaps never inquired.<br> +<br> +It is the opinion of Clarendon, that in Waller’s plan no violence +or sanguinary resistance was comprised; that he intended only to abate +the confidence of the rebels by public declarations, and to weaken their +powers by an opposition to new supplies. This, in calmer times, +and more than this, is done without fear; but such was the acrimony +of the Commons, that no method of obstructing them was safe.<br> +<br> +About this time another design was formed by Sir Nicholas Crispe, a +man of loyalty, that deserves perpetual remembrance; when he was a merchant +in the city, he gave and procured the king, in his exigencies, a hundred +thousand pounds; and, when he was driven from the Exchange, raised a +regiment, and commanded it.<br> +<br> +Sir Nicholas flattered himself with an opinion, that some provocation +would so much exasperate, or some opportunity so much encourage, the +king’s friends in the city, that they would break out in open +resistance, and would then want only a lawful standard, and an authorised +commander; and extorted from the king, whose judgment too frequently +yielded to importunity, a commission of array, directed to such as he +thought proper to nominate, which was sent to London by the Lady Aubigny. +She knew not what she carried, but was to deliver it on the communication +of a certain token which Sir Nicholas imparted.<br> +<br> +This commission could be only intended to lie ready till the time should +require it. To have attempted to raise any forces would have been +certain destruction; it could be of use only when the forces should +appear. This was, however, an act preparatory to martial hostility.<br> +<br> +Crispe would undoubtedly have put an end to the session of Parliament, +had his strength been equal to his zeal; and out of the design of Crispe, +which involved very little danger, and that of Waller, which was an +act purely civil, they compounded a horrid and dreadful plot.<br> +<br> +The discovery of Waller’s design is variously related.<br> +<br> +In “Clarendon’s History” it is told, that a servant +of Tomkyns, lurking behind the hangings when his master was in conference +with Waller, heard enough to qualify him for an informer, and carried +his intelligence to Pym.<br> +<br> +A manuscript, quoted in the “Life of Waller,” relates, that +“he was betrayed by his sister Price, and her Presbyterian chaplain +Mr. Goode, who stole some of his papers; and if he had not strangely +dreamed the night before, that his sister had betrayed him, and thereupon +burnt the rest of his papers by the fire that was in his chimney, he +had certainly lost his life by it.” The question cannot +be decided. It is not unreasonable to believe that the men in +power, receiving intelligence from the sister, would employ the servant +of Tomkyns to listen at the conference, that they might avoid an act +so offensive as that of destroying the brother by the sister’s +testimony.<br> +<br> +The plot was published in the most terrific manner.<br> +<br> +On the 31st of May (1643), at a solemn fast, when they were listening +to the sermon, a messenger entered the church, and communicated his +errand to Pym, who whispered it to others that were placed near him, +and then went with them out of the church, leaving the rest in solicitude +and amazement. They immediately sent guards to proper places, +and that night apprehended Tomkyns and Waller; having yet traced nothing +but that letters had been intercepted, from which it appears that the +Parliament and the city were soon to be delivered into the hands of +the cavaliers.<br> +<br> +They perhaps yet knew little themselves, beyond some general and indistinct +notices. “But Waller,” says Clarendon, “was +so confounded with fear, that he confessed whatever he had heard, said, +thought, or seen; all that he knew of himself, and all that he suspected +of others, without concealing any person of what degree or quality soever, +or any discourse which he had ever upon any occasion entertained with +them; what such and such ladies of great honour, to whom, upon the credit +of his wit and great reputation, he had been admitted, had spoken to +him in their chambers upon the proceedings in the Houses, and how they +had encouraged him to oppose them; what correspondence and intercourse +they had with some Ministers of State at Oxford, and how they had conveyed +all intelligence thither.” He accused the Earl of Portland +and Lord Conway as co-operating in the transaction; and testified that +the Earl of Northumberland had declared himself disposed in favour of +any attempt that might check the violence of the Parliament, and reconcile +them to the king.<br> +<br> +He undoubtedly confessed much which they could never have discovered, +and perhaps somewhat which they would wish to have been suppressed; +for it is inconvenient in the conflict of factions, to have that disaffection +known which cannot safely be punished.<br> +<br> +Tomkyns was seized on the same night with Waller, and appears likewise +to have partaken of his cowardice; for he gave notice of Crispe’s +commission of array, of which Clarendon never knew how it was discovered. +Tomkyns had been sent with the token appointed, to demand it from Lady +Aubigny, and had buried it in his garden, where, by his direction, it +was dug up; and thus the rebels obtained, what Clarendon confesses them +to have had, the original copy.<br> +<br> +It can raise no wonder that they formed one plot out of these two designs, +however remote from each other, when they saw the same agent employed +in both, and found the commission of array in the hands of him who was +employed in collecting the opinions and affections of the people.<br> +<br> +Of the plot, thus combined, they took care to make the most. They +sent Pym among the citizens, to tell them of their imminent danger and +happy escape; and inform them, that the design was, “to seize +the Lord Mayor and all the Committee of Militia, and would not spare +one of them.” They drew up a vow and covenant, to be taken +by every member of either House, by which he declared his detestation +of all conspiracies against the Parliament, and his resolution to detect +and oppose them. They then appointed a day of thanksgiving for +this wonderful delivery; which shut out, says Clarendon, all doubts +whether there had been such a deliverance, and whether the plot was +real or fictitious.<br> +<br> +On June 11, the Earl of Portland and Lord Conway were committed, one +to the custody of the mayor, and the other of the sheriff; but their +lands and goods were not seized.<br> +<br> +Waller was still to immerse himself deeper in ignominy. The Earl +of Portland and Lord Conway denied the charge; and there was no evidence +against them but the confession of Waller, of which undoubtedly many +would be inclined to question the veracity. With these doubts +he was so much terrified, that he endeavoured to persuade Portland to +a declaration like his own, by a letter extant in Fenton’s edition. +“But for me,” says he, “you had never known anything +of this business, which was prepared for another; and therefore I cannot +imagine why you should hide it so far as to contract your own ruin by +concealing it, and persisting unreasonably to hide that truth, which, +without you, already is, and will every day be made more manifest. +Can you imagine yourself bound in honour to keep that secret, which +is already revealed by another? or possible it should still be a secret, +which is known to one of the other sex? - If you persist to be cruel +to yourself for their sakes who deserve it not, it will nevertheless +be made appear, ere long, I fear, to your ruin. Surely, if I had +the happiness to wait on you, I could move you to compassionate both +yourself and me, who, desperate as my case is, am desirous to die with +the honour of being known to have declared the truth. You have +no reason to contend to hide what is already revealed - inconsiderately +to throw away yourself, for the interest of others, to whom you are +less obliged than you are aware of.”<br> +<br> +This persuasion seems to have had little effect. Portland sent +(June 29) a letter to the Lords, to tell them that he “is in custody, +as he conceives, without any charge; and that, by what Mr. Waller hath +threatened him with since he was imprisoned, he doth apprehend a very +cruel, long, and ruinous restraint:- He therefore prays, that he may +not find the effects of Mr. Waller’s threats, a long and close +imprisonment; but may be speedily brought to a legal trial, and then +he is confident the vanity and falsehood of those informations which +have been given against him will appear.”<br> +<br> +In consequence of this letter, the Lords ordered Portland and Waller +to be confronted; when the one repeated his charge, and the other his +denial. The examination of the plot being continued (July 1), +Thinn, usher of the House of Lords, deposed, that Mr. Waller having +had a conference with the Lord Portland in an upper room, Lord Portland +said, when he came down, “Do me the favour to tell my Lord Northumberland, +that Mr. Waller has extremely pressed me to save my own life and his, +by throwing the blame upon the Lord Conway and the Earl of Northumberland.”<br> +<br> +Waller, in his letter to Portland, tells him of the reasons which he +could urge with resistless efficacy in a personal conference; but he +overrated his own oratory; his vehemence, whether of persuasion or entreaty, +was returned with contempt.<br> +<br> +One of his arguments with Portland is, that the plot is already known +to a woman. This woman was doubtless Lady Aubigny, who, upon this +occasion, was committed to custody; but who, in reality, when she delivered +the commission, knew not what it was.<br> +<br> +The Parliament then proceeded against the conspirators, and committed +their trial to a council of war. Tomkyns and Chaloner were hanged +near their own doors. Tomkyns, when he came to die, said it was +a “foolish business;” and indeed there seems to have been +no hope that it should escape discovery; for, though never more than +three met at a time, yet a design so extensive must by necessity be +communicated to many who could not be expected to be all faithful and +all prudent. Chaloner was attended at his execution by Hugh Peters. +His crime was, that he had commission to raise money for the king; but +it appears not that the money was to be expended upon the advancement +of either Crispe’s or Waller’s plot.<br> +<br> +The Earl of Northumberland, being too great for prosecution, was only +once examined before the Lords. The Earl of Portland and Lord +Conway persisting to deny the charge, and no testimony but Waller’s +yet appearing against them, were, after a long imprisonment, admitted +to bail. Hassel, the king’s messenger, who carried the letters +to Oxford, died the night before his trial. Hampden [Alexander] +escaped death, perhaps by the interest of his family; but was kept in +prison to the end of his life. They whose names were inserted +in the commission of array were not capitally punished, as it could +not be proved that they had consented to their own nomination; but they +were considered as malignants, and their estates were seized.<br> +<br> +“Waller, though confessedly,” says Clarendon, “the +most guilty, with incredible dissimulation affected such a remorse of +conscience, that his trial was put off, out of Christian compassion, +till he might recover his understanding.” What use he made +of this interval, with what liberality and success he distributed flattery +and money, and how, when he was brought (July 4) before the House, he +confessed and lamented, and submitted and implored, may be read in the +“History of the Rebellion” (B. vii.). The speech, +to which Clarendon ascribes the preservation of his “dear-bought +life,” is inserted in his works. The great historian, however, +seems to have been mistaken in relating that “he prevailed” +in the principal part of his supplication, “not to be tried by +a council of war;” for, according to Whitelock, he was by expulsion +from the House abandoned to the tribunal which he so much dreaded, and, +being tried and condemned, was reprieved by Essex; but after a year’s +imprisonment, in which time resentment grew less acrimonious, paying +a fine of ten thousand pounds, he was permitted to “recollect +himself in another country.”<br> +<br> +Of his behaviour in this part of life, it is not necessary to direct +the reader’s opinion. “Let us not,” says his +last ingenious biographer, “condemn him with untempered severity, +because he was not a prodigy which the world hath seldom seen, because +his character included not the poet, the orator, and the hero.”<br> +<br> +For the place of his exile he chose France, and stayed some time at +Roan, where his daughter Margaret was born, who was afterwards his favourite, +and his amanuensis. He then removed to Paris, where he lived with +great splendour and hospitality; and from time to time amused himself +with poetry, in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels, and their usurpation, +in the natural language of an honest man.<br> +<br> +At last it became necessary, for his support, to sell his wife’s +jewels; and being reduced, as he said, at last “to the rump-jewel,” +he solicited from Cromwell permission to return, and obtained it by +the interest of Colonel Scroop, to whom his sister was married. +Upon the remains of a fortune, which the danger of his life had very +much diminished, he lived at Hallbarn, a house built by himself very +near to Beaconsfield, where his mother resided. His mother, though +related to Cromwell and Hampden, was zealous for the royal cause, and, +when Cromwell visited her, used to reproach him; he, in return, would +throw a napkin at her, and say he would not dispute with his aunt; but +finding in time that she acted for the king, as well as talked, he made +her a prisoner to her own daughter, in her own house. If he would +do anything, he could not do less.<br> +<br> +Cromwell, now Protector, received Waller, as his kinsman, to familiar +conversation. Waller, as he used to relate, found him sufficiently +versed in ancient history; and, when any of his enthusiastic friends +came to advise or consult him, could sometimes overhear him discoursing +in the cant of the times: but, when he returned, he would say, “Cousin +Waller, I must talk to these men in their own way;” and resumed +the common style of conversation.<br> +<br> +He repaid the Protector for his favours (1654) by the famous Panegyric, +which has been always considered as the first of his poetical productions. +His choice of encomiastic topics is very judicious; for he considers +Cromwell in his exaltation, without inquiring how he attained it; there +is consequently no mention of the rebel or the regicide. All the +former part of his hero’s life is veiled with shades; and nothing +is brought to view but the chief, the governor, the defender of England’s +honour, and the enlarger of her dominion. The act of violence +by which he obtained the supreme power is lightly treated, and decently +justified. It was certainly to be desired that the detestable +band should be dissolved, which had destroyed the Church, murdered the +king, and filled the nation with tumult and oppression; yet Cromwell +had not the right of dissolving them, for all that he had before done +could be justified only by supposing them invested with lawful authority. +But combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world by the advantage +which licentious principles afford, did not those, who have long practised +perfidy, grow faithless to each other.<br> +<br> +In the poem on the War with Spain are some passages at least equal to +the best parts of the Panegyric; and, in the conclusion, the poet ventures +yet a higher flight of flattery, by recommending royalty to Cromwell +and the nation. Cromwell was very desirous, as appears from his +conversation, related by Whitelock, of adding the title to the power +of monarchy, and is supposed to have been withheld from it partly by +fear of the army, and partly by fear of the laws, which, when he should +govern by the name of king, would have restrained his authority. +When, therefore, a deputation was solemnly sent to invite him to the +crown, he, after a long conference, refused it, but is said to have +fainted in his coach when he parted from them.<br> +<br> +The poem on the death of the Protector seems to have been dictated by +real veneration for his memory. Dryden and Sprat wrote on the +same occasion; but they were young men, struggling into notice, and +hoping for some favour from the ruling party. Waller had little +to expect; he had received nothing but his pardon from Cromwell, and +was not likely to ask anything from those who should succeed him.<br> +<br> +Soon afterwards, the Restoration supplied him with another subject; +and he exerted his imagination, his elegance, and his melody, with equal +alacrity, for Charles the Second. It is not possible to read, +without some contempt and indignation, poems of the same author, ascribing +the highest degree of “power and piety” to Charles the First, +then transferring the same “power and piety” to Oliver Cromwell; +now inviting Oliver to take the Crown, and then congratulating Charles +the Second on his recovered right. Neither Cromwell nor Charles +could value his testimony as the effect of conviction, or receive his +praises as effusions of reverence; they could consider them but as the +labour of invention, and the tribute of dependence.<br> +<br> +Poets, indeed, profess fiction; but the legitimate end of fiction is +the conveyance of truth, and he that has flattery ready for all whom +the vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt must be scorned as a prostituted +mind, that may retain the glitter of wit, but has lost the dignity of +virtue.<br> +<br> +The Congratulation was considered as inferior in poetical merit to the +Panegyric; and it is reported that, when the king told Waller of the +disparity, he answered, “Poets, Sir, succeed better in fiction +than in truth.”<br> +<br> +The Congratulation is indeed not inferior to the Panegyric, either by +decay of genius, or for want of diligence, but because Cromwell had +done much and Charles had done little. Cromwell wanted nothing +to raise him to heroic excellence but virtue, and virtue his poet thought +himself at liberty to supply. Charles had yet only the merit of +struggling without success, and suffering without despair. A life +of escapes and indigence could supply poetry with no splendid images.<br> +<br> +In the first Parliament summoned by Charles the Second (March 8, 1661), +Waller sat for Hastings, in Sussex, and served for different places +in all the Parliaments of that reign. In a time when fancy and +gaiety were the most powerful recommendations to regard, it is not likely +that Waller was forgotten. He passed his time in the company that +was highest, both in rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety +did not exclude him. Though he drank water, he was enabled by +his fertility of mind to heighten the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; +and Mr. Saville said, that “no man in England should keep him +company without drinking but Ned Waller.”<br> +<br> +The praise given him by St. Evremond is a proof of his reputation; for +it was only by his reputation that he could be known, as a writer, to +a man who, though he lived a great part of a long life upon an English +pension, never consented to understand the language of the nation that +maintained him.<br> +<br> +In Parliament, “he was,” says Burnet, “the delight +of the House, and though old, said the liveliest things of any among +them.” This, however, is said in his account of the year +seventy-five, when Waller was only seventy. His name as a speaker +occurs often in Grey’s Collections, but I have found no extracts +that can be more quoted as exhibiting sallies of gaiety than cogency +of argument.<br> +<br> +He was of such consideration, that his remarks were circulated and recorded. +When the Duke of York’s influence was high, both in Scotland and +England, it drew, says Burnet, a lively reflection from Waller, the +celebrated wit. He said, “The House of Commons had resolved +that the duke should not reign after the king’s death: but the +king, in opposition to them, had resolved that he should reign even +in his life.” If there appear no extraordinary “liveliness” +in this “remark,” yet its reception proves its speaker to +have been a “celebrated wit,” to have had a name which men +of wit were proud of mentioning.<br> +<br> +He did not suffer his reputation to die gradually away, which may easily +happen in a long life, but renewed his claim to poetical distinction +from time to time, as occasions were offered, either by public events +or private incidents; and, contenting himself with the influence of +his Muse, or loving quiet better than influence, he never accepted any +office of magistracy.<br> +<br> +He was not, however, without some attention to his fortune, for he asked +from the king (in 1665) the provostship of Eton College, and obtained +it; but Clarendon refused to put the seal to the grant, alleging that +it could be held only by a clergyman. It is known that Sir Henry +Wotton qualified himself for it by deacon’s orders.<br> +<br> +To this opposition, the Biographia imputes the violence and acrimony +with which Waller joined Buckingham’s faction in the prosecution +of Clarendon. The motive was illiberal and dishonest, and showed +that more than sixty years had not been able to teach him morality. +His accusation is such as conscience can hardly be supposed to dictate +without the help of malice. “We were to be governed by Janizaries +instead of Parliaments, and are in danger from a worse plot than that +of the fifth of November; then, if the Lords and Commons had been destroyed, +there had been a succession; but here both had been destroyed for ever.” +This is the language of a man who is glad of an opportunity to rail, +and ready to sacrifice truth to interest at one time, and to anger at +another.<br> +<br> +A year after the chancellor’s banishment, another vacancy gave +him encouragement for another petition, which the king referred to the +Council, who, after hearing the question argued by lawyers for three +days, determined that the office could be held only by a clergyman, +according to the Act of Uniformity, since the provosts had always received +institution as for a parsonage from the Bishops of Lincoln. The +king then said he could not break the law which he had made; and Dr. +Zachary Cradock, famous for a single sermon, at most for two sermons, +was chosen by the Fellows.<br> +<br> +That he asked anything else is not known; it is certain that he obtained +nothing, though he continued obsequious to the court through the rest +of Charles’s reign.<br> +<br> +At the accession of King James (in 1685) he was chosen for Parliament, +being then fourscore, at Saltash, in Cornwall; and wrote a Presage of +the Downfall of the Turkish Empire, which he presented to the king on +his birthday. It is remarked, by his commentator Fenton, that +in reading Tasso he had early imbibed a veneration for the heroes of +the Holy War, and a zealous enmity to the Turks, which never left him. +James, however, having soon after begun what he thought a holy war at +home, made haste to put all molestation of the Turks out of his power.<br> +<br> +James treated him with kindness and familiarity, of which instances +are given by the writer of his life. One day, taking him into +the closet, the king asked him how he liked one of the pictures: “My +eyes,” said Waller, “are dim, and I do not know it.” +The king said it was the Princess of Orange. “She is,” +said Waller, “like the greatest woman in the world.” +The king asked who was that; and was answered, Queen Elizabeth. +“I wonder,” said the king, “you should think so; but +I must confess she had a wise council.” “And, Sir,” +said Waller, “did you ever know a fool choose a wise one?” +Such is the story, which I once heard of some other man. Pointed +axioms, and acute replies, fly loose about the world, and are assigned +successively to those whom it may be the fashion to celebrate.<br> +<br> +When the king knew that he was about to marry his daughter to Dr. Birch, +a clergyman, he ordered a French gentleman to tell him that “the +king wondered he could think of marrying his daughter to a falling church.” +“The king,” said Waller, “does me great honour in +taking notice of my domestic affairs; but I have lived long enough to +observe that this falling church has got a trick of rising again.”<br> +<br> +He took notice to his friends of the king’s conduct; and said +that “he would be left like a whale upon the strand.” +Whether he was privy to any of the transactions that ended in the revolution +is not known. His heir joined the Prince of Orange.<br> +<br> +Having now attained an age beyond which the laws of nature seldom suffer +life to be extended, otherwise than by a future state, he seems to have +turned his mind upon preparation for the decisive hour, and therefore +consecrated his poetry to devotion. It is pleasing to discover +that his piety was without weakness; that his intellectual powers continued +vigorous; and that the lines which he composed when “he, for age, +could neither read nor write,” are not inferior to the effusions +of his youth.<br> +<br> +Towards the decline of life he bought a small house, with a little land, +at Coleshill; and said “he should be glad to die, like the stag, +where he was roused.” This, however, did not happen. +When he was at Beaconsfield, he found his legs grow tumid: he went to +Windsor, where Sir Charles Scarborough then attended the king, and requested +him, as both a friend and physician, to tell him “what that swelling +meant.” “Sir,” answered Scarborough, “your +blood will run no longer.” Waller repeated some lines of +Virgil, and went home to die.<br> +<br> +As the disease increased upon him, he composed himself for his departure; +and calling upon Dr. Birch to give him the holy sacrament, he desired +his children to take it with him, and made an earnest declaration of +his faith in Christianity. It now appeared what part of his conversation +with the great could be remembered with delight. He related, that +being present when the Duke of Buckingham talked profanely before King +Charles, he said to him, “My lord, I am a great deal older than +your grace and have, I believe, heard more arguments for atheism than +ever your grace did; but I have lived long enough to see there is nothing +in them; and so, I hope, your grace will.”<br> +<br> +He died October 21, 1687, and was buried at Beaconsfield, with a monument +erected by his son’s executors, for which Rymer wrote the inscription, +and which I hope is now rescued from dilapidation.<br> +<br> +He left several children by his second wife, of whom his daughter was +married to Dr. Birch. Benjamin, the eldest son, was disinherited, +and sent to New Jersey as wanting common understanding. Edmund, +the second son, inherited the estate, and represented Agmondesham in +parliament, but at last turned quaker. William, the third son, +was a merchant in London. Stephen, the fourth, was an eminent +doctor of laws, and one of the commissioners for the union. There +is said to have been a fifth, of whom no account has descended.<br> +<br> +The character of Waller, both moral and intellectual, has been drawn +by Clarendon, to whom he was familiarly known, with nicety, which certainly +none to whom he was not known can presume to emulate. It is therefore +inserted here, with such remarks as others have supplied; after which, +nothing remains but a critical examination of his poetry.<br> +<br> +“Edmund Waller,” says Clarendon, “was born to a very +fair estate, by the parsimony, or frugality, of a wise father and mother; +and he thought it so commendable an advantage, that he resolved to improve +it with his utmost care, upon which in his nature he was too much intent; +and in order to that, he was so much reserved and retired, that he was +scarcely ever heard of, till by his address and dexterity he had gotten +a very rich wife in the city, against all the recommendation and countenance +and authority of the court, which was thoroughly engaged on the behalf +of Mr. Crofts, and which used to be successful, in that age, against +any opposition. He had the good fortune to have an alliance and +friendship with Dr. Morley, who had assisted and instructed him in the +reading many good books, to which his natural parts and promptitude +inclined him, especially the poets; and at the age when other men used +to give over writing verses (for he was near thirty years when he first +engaged himself in that exercise, at least that he was known to do so), +he surprised the town with two or three pieces of that kind; as if a +tenth Muse had been newly born to cherish drooping poetry. The +doctor at that time brought him into that company which was most celebrated +for good conversation, where he was received and esteemed with great +applause and respect. He was a very pleasant discourser in earnest +and in jest, and therefore very grateful to all kind of company, where +he was not the less esteemed for being very rich.<br> +<br> +He had been even nursed in parliaments, where he sat when he was very +young; and so, when they were resumed again (after a long intermission) +he appeared in those assemblies with great advantage; having a graceful +way of speaking, and by thinking much on several arguments (which his +temper and complexion, that had much of melancholic, inclined him to), +he seemed often to speak upon the sudden, when the occasion had only +administered the opportunity of saying what he had thoroughly considered, +which gave a great lustre to all he said; which yet was rather of delight +than weight. There needs no more be said to extol the excellence +and power of his wit, and pleasantness of his conversation, than that +it was of magnitude enough to cover a world of very great faults; that +is, so to cover them, that they were not taken notice of to his reproach, +viz., a narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree; an abjectness +and want of courage to support him in any virtuous undertaking; an insinuation +and servile flattery to the height, the vainest and most imperious nature +could be contented with; that it preserved and won his life from those +who most resolved to take it, and in an occasion in which he ought to +have been ambitious to have lost it; and then preserved him again from +the reproach and the contempt that was due to him for so preserving +it, and for vindicating it at such a price that it had power to reconcile +him to those whom he had most offended and provoked; and continued to +his age with that rare felicity, that his company was acceptable where +his spirit was odious; and he was at least pitied where he was most +detested.”<br> +<br> +Such is the account of Clarendon; on which it may not be improper to +make some remarks.<br> +<br> +“He was very little known till he had obtained a rich wife in +the city.”<br> +<br> +He obtained a rich wife about the age of three-and-twenty; an age, before +which few men are conspicuous much to their advantage. He was +now, however, in parliament and at court; and, if he spent part of his +time in privacy, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he endeavoured +the improvement of his mind as well as his fortune.<br> +<br> +That Clarendon might misjudge the motive of his retirement is the more +probable, because he has evidently mistaken the commencement of his +poetry, which he supposes him not to have attempted before thirty. +As his first pieces were perhaps not printed, the succession of his +compositions was not known; and Clarendon, who cannot be imagined to +have been very studious of poetry, did not rectify his first opinion +by consulting Waller’s book.<br> +<br> +Clarendon observes, that he was introduced to the wits of the age by +Dr. Morley; but the writer of his life relates that he was already among +them, when, hearing a noise in the street, and inquiring the cause, +they found a son of Ben Jonson under an arrest. This was Morley, +whom Waller set free at the expense of one hundred pounds, took him +into the country as director of his studies, and then procured him admission +into the company of the friends of literature. Of this fact Clarendon +had a nearer knowledge than the biographer, and is therefore more to +be credited.<br> +<br> +The account of Waller’s parliamentary eloquence is seconded by +Burnet, who, though he calls him “the delight of the House,” +adds, that “he was only concerned to say that which should make +him be applauded, he never laid the business of the House to heart, +being a vain and empty, though a witty man.”<br> +<br> +Of his insinuation and flattery it is not unreasonable to believe that +the truth is told. Ascham, in his elegant description of those +whom in modern language we term wits, says, that they are “open +flatterers, and private mockers.” Waller showed a little +of both, when, upon sight of the Duchess of Newcastle’s verses +on the Death of a Stag, he declared that he would give all his own compositions +to have written them, and being charged with the exorbitance of his +adulation, answered, that “nothing was too much to be given, that +a lady might be saved from the disgrace of such a vile performance.” +This, however, was no very mischievous or very unusual deviation from +truth; had his hypocrisy been confined to such transactions, he might +have been forgiven, though not praised: for who forbears to flatter +an author or a lady?<br> +<br> +Of the laxity of his political principles, and the weakness of his resolution, +he experienced the natural effect, by losing the esteem of every party. +From Cromwell he had only his recall; and from Charles the Second, who +delighted in his company, he obtained only the pardon of his relation +Hampden, and the safety of Hampden’s son.<br> +<br> +As far as conjecture can be made from the whole of his writing, and +his conduct, he was habitually and deliberately a friend to monarchy. +His deviation towards democracy proceeded from his connexion with Hampden, +for whose sake he prosecuted Crawley with great bitterness; and the +invective which he pronounced on that occasion was so popular, that +twenty thousand copies are said by his biographer to have been sold +in one day.<br> +<br> +It is confessed that his faults still left him many friends, at least +many companions. His convivial power of pleasing is universally +acknowledged; but those who conversed with him intimately, found him +not only passionate, especially in his old age, but resentful; so that +the interposition of friends was sometimes necessary.<br> +<br> +His wit and his poetry naturally connected him with the polite writers +of his time: he was joined with Lord Buckhurst in the translation of +Corneille’s Pompey; and is said to have added his help to that +of Cowley in the original draft of the Rehearsal.<br> +<br> +The care of his fortune, which Clarendon imputes to him in a degree +little less than criminal, was either not constant or not successful; +for having inherited a patrimony of three thousand five hundred pounds +a year in the time of James the First, and augmented at least by one +wealthy marriage, he left, about the time of the Revolution, an income +of not more than twelve or thirteen hundred; which, when the different +value of money is reckoned, will be found perhaps not more than a fourth +part of what he once possessed.<br> +<br> +Of this diminution, part was the consequence of the gifts which he was +forced to scatter, and the fine which he was condemned to pay at the +detection of his plot; and if his estate, as is related in his life, +was sequestered, he had probably contracted debts when he lived in exile; +for we are told, that at Paris he lived in splendour, and was the only +Englishman, except the Lord St. Albans, that kept a table.<br> +<br> +His unlucky plot compelled him to sell a thousand a year; of the waste +of the rest there is no account, except that he is confessed by his +biographer to have been a bad economist. He seems to have deviated +from the common practice; to have been a hoarder in his first years, +and a squanderer in his last.<br> +<br> +Of his course of studies, or choice of books, nothing is known more +than that he professed himself unable to read Chapman’s translation +of Homer without rapture. His opinion concerning the duty of a +poet is contained in his declaration, that “he would blot from +his works any line that did not contain some motive to virtue.”<br> +<br> +The characters by which Waller intended to distinguish his writing are +sprightliness and dignity; in his smallest pieces, he endeavours to +be gay; in the larger to be great. Of his airy and light productions, +the chief source is gallantry, that attentive reverence of female excellence +which has descended to us from the Gothic ages. As his poems are +commonly occasional, and his addresses personal, he was not so liberally +supplied with grand as with soft images; for beauty is more easily found +than magnanimity.<br> +<br> +The delicacy, which he cultivated, restrains him to a certain nicety +and caution, even when he writes upon the slightest matter. He +has, therefore, in his whole volume, nothing burlesque, and seldom anything +ludicrous or familiar. He seems always to do his best; though +his subjects are often unworthy of his care.<br> +<br> +It is not easy to think without some contempt on an author, who is growing +illustrious in his own opinion by verses, at one time, “To a Lady, +who can do anything but sleep, when she pleases;” at another, +“To a Lady who can sleep when she pleases;” now, “To +a Lady, on her passing through a crowd of people;” then, “On +a braid of divers colours woven by four Ladies;” “On a tree +cut in paper;” or, “To a Lady, from whom he received the +copy of verses on the paper-tree, which, for many years, had been missing.”<br> +<br> +Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the +Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus: and a writer naturally pleases +himself with a performance, which owes nothing to the subject. +But compositions merely pretty have the fate of other pretty things, +and are quitted in time for something useful; they are flowers fragrant +and fair, but of short duration; or they are blossoms to be valued only +as they foretell fruits.<br> +<br> +Among Waller’s little poems are some, which their excellency ought +to secure from oblivion; as, To Amoret, comparing the different modes +of regard with which he looks on her and Sacharissa; and the verses +on Love, that begin, “Anger in hasty words or blows.”<br> +<br> +In others he is not equally successful; sometimes his thoughts are deficient, +and sometimes his expression.<br> +<br> +The numbers are not always musical; as,<br> +<br> +<br> +Fair Venus, in thy soft arms<br> + The god of rage confine:<br> +For thy whispers are the charms<br> + Which only can divert his fierce design.<br> +What though he frown, and to tumult do incline;<br> + Thou the flame<br> +Kindled in his breast canst tame<br> +With that snow which unmelted lies on thine.<br> +<br> +<br> +He seldom indeed fetches an amorous sentiment from the depths of science; +his thoughts are for the most part easily understood, and his images +such as the superfices of nature readily supplies; he has a just claim +to popularity, because he writes to common degrees of knowledge; and +is free at least from philosophical pedantry, unless perhaps the end +of a song to the Sun may be excepted, in which he is too much a Copernican. +To which may be added the simile of the “palm” in the verses +“on her passing through a crowd;” and a line in a more serious +poem on the Restoration, about vipers and treacle, which can only be +understood by those who happen to know the composition of the Theriaca.<br> +<br> +His thoughts are sometimes hyperbolical and his images unnatural<br> +<br> +<br> + The plants admire,<br> +No less than those of old did Orpheus’ lyre;<br> +If she sit down, with tops all tow’rds her bow’d,<br> +They round about her into arbours crowd;<br> +Or if she walks, in even ranks they stand,<br> +Like some well-marshall’d and obsequious band.<br> +<br> +<br> +In another place:<br> +<br> +<br> +While in the park I sing, the listening deer<br> +Attend my passion, and forget to fear:<br> +When to the beeches I report my flame,<br> +They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.<br> +To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers<br> +With loud complaints they answer me in showers.<br> +To thee a wild and cruel soul is given,<br> +More deaf than trees, and prouder than the Heaven!<br> +<br> +<br> +On the head of a stag:<br> +<br> +<br> +O fertile head! which every year<br> +Could such a crop of wonder bear!<br> +The teeming earth did never bring,<br> +So soon, so hard, so large a thing:<br> +Which might it never have been cast,<br> +Each year’s growth added to the last,<br> +These lofty branches had supplied<br> +The earth’s bold sons’ prodigious pride:<br> +Heaven with these engines had been scaled,<br> +When mountains heap’d on mountains fail’d.<br> +<br> +<br> +Sometimes having succeeded in the first part, he makes a feeble conclusion. +In the song of “Sacharissa’s and Amoret’s Friendship,” +the two last stanzas ought to have been omitted.<br> +<br> +His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate.<br> +<br> +<br> +Then shall my love this doubt displace<br> + And gain such trust that I may come<br> +And banquet sometimes on thy face,<br> + But make my constant meals at home.<br> +<br> +<br> +Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential; as +in the verses on the Lady Dancing:<br> +<br> +<br> + The sun in figures such as these<br> +Joys with the moon to play:<br> + To the sweet strains they advance,<br> +Which do result from their own spheres;<br> + As this nymph’s dance<br> +Moves with the numbers which she hears.<br> +<br> +<br> +Sometimes a thought, which might perhaps fill a distich, is expanded +and attenuated till it grows weak and almost evanescent.<br> +<br> +<br> +Chloris! since first our calm of peace<br> + Was frighted hence, this good we find,<br> +Your favours with your fears increase,<br> + And growing mischiefs make you kind.<br> +So the fair tree, which still preserves<br> + Her fruit, and state, while no wind blows,<br> +In storms from that uprightness swerves;<br> + And the glad earth about her strows<br> + With treasure from her yielding boughs.<br> +<br> +<br> +His images are not always distinct; as in the following passage, he +confounds <i>Love </i>as a person with <i>Love </i>as a passion:<br> +<br> +<br> +Some other nymphs, with colours faint,<br> +And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,<br> +And a weak heart in time destroy;<br> +She has a stamp, and prints the boy;<br> +Can, with a single look, inflame<br> +The coldest breast, the rudest tame.<br> +<br> +<br> +His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as that +in return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling, as that +upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few lines written +in the Duchess’s Tasso, which he is said by Fenton to have kept +a summer under correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, +that his success was not always in proportion to his labour.<br> +<br> +Of these pretty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults deserve +much attention. The amorous verses have this to recommend them, +that they are less hyperbolical than those of some other poets. +Waller is not always at the last gasp; he does not die of a frown, nor +live upon a smile. There is, however, too much love, and too many +trifles. Little things are made too important: and the Empire +of Beauty is represented as exerting its influence further than can +be allowed by the multiplicity of human passions, and the variety of +human wants. Such books, therefore, may be considered as showing +the world under a false appearance, and, so far as they obtain credit +from the young and unexperienced, as misleading expectation, and misguiding +practice.<br> +<br> +Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is panegyrical: +for of praise he was very lavish, as is observed by his imitator, Lord +Lansdowne:<br> +<br> +<br> +No satyr stalks within the hallow’d ground,<br> +But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound;<br> +Glory and arms and love are all the sound.<br> +<br> +<br> +In the first poem, on the danger of the prince on the coast of Spain, +there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion at the beginning; +and the last paragraph, on the cable, is in part ridiculously mean, +and in part ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is such as +may be justly praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry +and language at that time.<br> +<br> +The two next poems are upon the king’s behaviour at the death +of Buckingham, and upon his Navy.<br> +<br> +He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety:<br> +<br> +<br> +’Twas want of such a precedent as this<br> +Made the old heathens frame their gods amiss.<br> +<br> +<br> +In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble which suppose the +king’s power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it +were almost criminal to remark the mistake of “centre” for +“surface,” or to say that the empire of the sea would be +worth little if it were not that the waters terminate in land.<br> +<br> +The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is +feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul’s has something +vulgar and obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent +and harsh: as,<br> +<br> +<br> +So all our minds with his conspire to grace<br> +The Gentiles’ great apostle and deface<br> +Those state obscuring sheds, that like a chain<br> +Seem’d to confine, and fetter him again:<br> +Which the glad saint shakes off at his command,<br> +As once the viper from his sacred hand.<br> +So joys the aged oak, when we divide<br> +The creeping ivy from his injured side.<br> +<br> +<br> +Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second mean.<br> +<br> +His praise of the Queen is too much exaggerated; and the thought, that +he “saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured +by lopping the limb,” presents nothing to the mind but disgust +and horror.<br> +<br> +Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say whether +it is intended to raise terror or merriment. The beginning is +too splendid for jest, and the conclusion too light for seriousness. +The versification is studied, the scenes are diligently displayed, and +the images artfully amplified; but as it ends neither in joy nor sorrow, +it will scarcely be read a second time.<br> +<br> +The panegyric upon Cromwell has obtained from the public a very liberal +dividend of praise, which, however, cannot be said to have been unjustly +lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in +the English language. Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, +and all are musical. There is now and then a feeble verse; or +a trifling thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero.<br> +<br> +The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and striking +than Waller is accustomed to produce. The succeeding parts are +variegated with better passages and worse. There is something +too farfetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English +on by saluting St. Lucar with cannon, “to lambs awakening the +lion by bleating.” The fate of the Marquis and his Lady, +who were burnt in their ship, would have moved more, had the poet not +made him die like the Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor +expressed their affection and their end by a conceit at once false and +vulgar:<br> +<br> +<br> +Alive, in equal flames of love they burn’d,<br> +And now together are to ashes turn’d.<br> +<br> +<br> +The verses to Charles, on his return, were doubtless intended to counterbalance +the panegyric on Cromwell. If it has been thought inferior to +that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of its deficience +has been already remarked.<br> +<br> +The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly. They +must be supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with the +rest. The Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; they +were the work of Waller’s declining life, of those hours in which +he looked upon the fame and the folly of the time past with the sentiments +which his great predecessor Petrarch bequeathed to posterity, upon his +review of that love and poetry which have given him immortality.<br> +<br> +That natural jealousy which makes every man unwilling to allow much +excellence in another, always produces a disposition to believe that +the mind grows old with the body; and that he, whom we are now forced +to confess superior, is hastening daily to a level with ourselves. +By delighting to think this of the living, we learn to think it of the +dead; and Fenton, with all his kindness for Waller, has the luck to +mark the exact time when his genius passed the zenith, which he places +at his fifty-fifth year. This is to allot the mind but a small +portion. Intellectual decay is doubtless not uncommon; but it +seems not to be universal. Newton was in his eighty-fifth year +improving his chronology, a few days before his death; and Waller appears +not, in my opinion, to have lost at eighty-two any part of his poetical +power.<br> +<br> +His Sacred Poems do not please like some of his other works; but before +the fatal fifty-five, had he written on the same subjects, his success +would hardly have been better.<br> +<br> +It has been the frequent lamentation of good men that verse has been +too little applied to the purposes of worship, and many attempts have +been made to animate devotion by pious poetry. That they have +very seldom attained their end is sufficiently known, and it may not +be improper to inquire why they have miscarried.<br> +<br> +Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition to many authorities, +that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines of religion +may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and he, who has the happy +power of arguing in verse, will not lose it because his subject is sacred. +A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers +of the spring, and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, +and the revolutions of the sky, and praise the Maker for his works, +in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation +is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not +God, but the works of God.<br> +<br> +Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, +cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his +Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher +state than poetry can confer.<br> +<br> +The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as by producing something +unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion are +few, and being few are universally known; but, few as they are, they +can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, +and very little from novelty of expression.<br> +<br> +Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than +things themselves afford. This effect proceeds from the display +of those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those +which repel, the imagination: but religion must be shown as it is; suppression +and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already.<br> +<br> +From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, +the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy: but +this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. +Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name +of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity +cannot be amplified; Perfection cannot be improved.<br> +<br> +The employments of pious meditation are Faith, Thanksgiving, Repentance, +and Supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested +by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, the most joyful of all +holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, is confined +to a few modes, and is to be felt rather then expressed. Repentance, +trembling in the presence of the judge, is not at leisure for cadences +and epithets. Supplication of man to man may diffuse itself through +many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for +mercy.<br> +<br> +Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple +expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its +power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent +than itself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory +and delight the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but +it supplies nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology +are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic +for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify +by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere.<br> +<br> +As much of Waller’s reputation was owing to the softness and smoothness +of his numbers, it is proper to consider those minute particulars to +which a versifier must attend.<br> +<br> +He certainly very much excelled in smoothness most of the writers who +were living when his poetry commenced. The poets of Elizabeth +had attained an art of modulation, which was afterwards neglected or +forgotten. Fairfax was acknowledged by him as his model; and he +might have studied with advantage the poem of Davies, which, though +merely philosophical, yet seldom leaves the ear ungratified.<br> +<br> +But he was rather smooth than strong; of “the full resounding +line,” which Pope attributes to Dryden, he has given very few +examples. The critical decision has given the praise of strength +to Denham, and of sweetness to Waller.<br> +<br> +His excellence of versification has some abatements. He uses the +expletive “do” very frequently; and, though he lived to +see it almost universally ejected, was not more careful to avoid it +in his last compositions than in his first. Praise had given him +confidence; and finding the world satisfied, he satisfied himself.<br> +<br> +His rhymes are sometimes weak words: “so” is found to make +the rhyme twice in ten lines, and occurs often as a rhyme through his +book.<br> +<br> +His double rhymes, in heroic verse, have been censured by Mrs. Phillips, +who was his rival in the translation of Corneille’s “Pompey;” +and more faults might be found were not the inquiry below attention.<br> +<br> +He sometimes uses the obsolete termination of verbs, as “waxeth,” +“affecteth;” and sometimes retains the final syllable of +the preterite, as “amazed,” “supposed,” of which +I know not whether it is not to the detriment of our language that we +have totally rejected them.<br> +<br> +Of triplets he is sparing; but he did not wholly forbear them: of an +Alexandrine he has given no example.<br> +<br> +The general character of his poetry is elegance and gaiety. He +is never pathetic, and very rarely sublime. He seems neither to +have had a mind much elevated by nature nor amplified by learning. +His thoughts are such as a liberal conversation and large acquaintance +with life would easily supply. They had however then, perhaps, +that grace of novelty which they are now often supposed to want by those +who, having already found them in later books, do not know or inquire +who produced them first. This treatment is unjust. Let not +the original author lose by his imitators.<br> +<br> +Praise, however, should be due before it is given. The author +of Waller’s Life ascribes to him the first practice of what Erythræus +and some late critics call “Alliteration,” of using in the +same verse many words beginning with the same letter. But this +knack, whatever be its value, was so frequent among early writers, that +Gascoigne, a writer of the sixteenth century, warns the young poet against +affecting it; Shakespeare, in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” +is supposed to ridicule it; and in another play the sonnet of Holofernes +fully displays it.<br> +<br> +He borrows too many of his sentiments and illustrations from the old +mythology, for which it is vain to plead the example of ancient poets; +the deities, which they introduced so frequently, were considered as +realities, so far as to be received by the imagination, whatever sober +reason might even then determine. But of these images time has +tarnished the splendour. A fiction, not only detected but despised, +can never afford a solid basis to any position, though sometimes it +may furnish a transient allusion, or slight illustration. No modern +monarch can be much exalted by hearing that, as Hercules had his “club” +he has his “navy.”<br> +<br> +But of the praise of Waller, though much may be taken away, much will +remain; for it cannot be denied that he added something to our elegance +of diction, and something to our propriety of thought; and to him may +be applied what Tasso said, with equal spirit and justice, of himself +and Guarini, when, having perused the Pastor Fido, he cried out, “If +he had not read Aminta, he had not excelled it.”<br> +<br> +As Waller professed himself to have learned the art of versification +from Fairfax, it has been thought proper to subjoin a specimen of his +work, which, after Mr. Hoole’s translation, will perhaps not be +soon reprinted. By knowing the state in which Waller found our +poetry, the reader may judge how much he improved it.<br> +<br> +1.<br> +<br> + Erminia’s steed (this while) his mistresse bore<br> +Through forrests thicke among the shadie treene,<br> +Her feeble hand the bridle raines forelore,<br> +Halfe in a swoune she was for fear I weene;<br> +But her flit courser spared nere the more,<br> +To beare her through the desart woods unseene<br> + Of her strong foes, that chas’d her through +the plaine<br> + And still pursu’d, but still pursu’d in +vaine.<br> +<br> +2.<br> +<br> +Like as the wearie hounds at last retire,<br> +Windlesse, displeased, from the fruitlesse chace,<br> +When the slie beast Tapisht in bush and brire,<br> +No art nor paines can rowse out of his place:<br> +The Christian knights so full of shame and ire<br> +Returned backe, with faint and wearie pace!<br> +Yet still the fearfull Dame fled, swift as winde<br> +Nor euer staid, nor euer lookt behinde.<br> +<br> +3.<br> +<br> +Through thicke and thinne, all night, all day, she driued,<br> +Withouten comfort, companie, or guide,<br> +Her plaints and teares with euery thought reuiued,<br> +She heard and saw her greefes, but nought beside.<br> +But when the sunne his burning chariot diued<br> +In Thetis wane, and wearie teame vntide,<br> + On Iordans sandie banks her course she staid,<br> + At last, there downe she light, and downe she laid<br> +<br> +4<br> +<br> +Her teares, her drinke; her food, her sorrowings,<br> +This was her diet that vnhappie night;<br> +But sleepe (that sweet repose and quiet brings)<br> +To ease the greefes of discontented wight,<br> +Spred forth his tender, soft, and nimble wings,<br> +In his dull armes foulding the virgin bright;<br> + And loue, his mother, and the graces kept<br> + Strong watch and warde, while this faire Ladie slept<br> +<br> +5.<br> +<br> +The birds awakte her with their morning song,<br> +Their warbling musicke pearst her tender eare,<br> +The murmuring brookes and whistling windes among<br> +The rattling boughes, and leaues, their parts did beare;<br> +Her eies vnclos’d beheld the groues along<br> +Of swaines and shepherd groomes, that dwellings weare;<br> + And that sweet noise, birds, winds, and waters sent,<br> + Prouokt again the virgin to lament.<br> +<br> +6.<br> +<br> +Her plaints were interrupted with a sound,<br> +That seem’d from thickest bushes to proceed,<br> +Some iolly shepherd sung a lustie round,<br> +And to his voice had tun’d his oaten reed;<br> +Thither she went, an old man there she found,<br> +(At whose right hand his little flock did feed)<br> + Sat making baskets, his three sonnes among<br> + That learn’d their father’s art, and learn’d +his song.<br> +<br> +7.<br> +<br> +Beholding one in shining armes appeare<br> +The seelie man and his were sore dismaid;<br> +But sweet Erminia comforted their feare,<br> +Her ventall vp, her visage open laid<br> +You happie folke, of heau’n beloued deare,<br> +Work on (quoth she) upon your harmless traid,<br> + These dreadfull armes I beare no warfare bring<br> + To your sweet toile, nor those sweet tunes yon sing.<br> +<br> +8.<br> +<br> +But father, since this land, these townes and towres,<br> +Destroied are with sword, with fire and spoile,<br> +How may it be unhurt, that you and yours<br> +In safetie thus, applie your harmlesse toile?<br> +My sonne (quoth he) this pore estate of ours<br> +Is euer safe from storm of warlike broile;<br> + This wilderneese doth vs in safetie keepe,<br> + No thundering drum, no trumpet breakes our sleepe.<br> +<br> +9.<br> +<br> +Haply iust heau’ns defence and shield of right,<br> +Doth loue the innocence of simple swains,<br> +The thunderbolts on highest mountains light,<br> +And seld or neuer strike the lower plaines;<br> +So kings have cause to feare <i>Bellonaes</i> might,<br> +Not they whose sweat and toile their dinner gaines,<br> + Nor ever greedie soldier was entised<br> + By pouertie, neglected and despised.<br> +<br> +10.<br> +<br> +O Pouertie, chefe of the heau’nly brood,<br> +Dearer to me than wealth or kingly crowne!<br> +No wish for honour, thirst of others good,<br> +Can moue my hart, contented with mine owne:<br> +We quench our thirst with water of this flood,<br> +Nor fear we poison should therein be throwne;<br> + These little flocks of sheepe and tender goates<br> + Giue milke for food, and wool to make us coates.<br> +<br> +11.<br> +<br> +We little wish, we need but little wealth,<br> +From cold and hunger vs to cloath and feed;<br> +These are my sonnes, their care preserues from stealth<br> +Their fathers flocks, nor servants moe I need:<br> +Amid these groues I walks oft for my health,<br> +And to the fishes, birds, and beastes give heed,<br> + How they are fed, in forrest, spring and lake,<br> + And their contentment for ensample take.<br> +<br> +12.<br> +<br> +Time was (for each one hath his doting time,<br> +These siluer locks were golden tresses than)<br> +That countrie life I hated as a crime,<br> +And from the forrests sweet contentment ran,<br> +To Memphis’ stately pallace would I clime,<br> +And there became the mightie Caliphes man<br> + And though I but a simple gardner weare,<br> + Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare.<br> +<br> +13.<br> +<br> +Entised on with hope of future gaine,<br> +I suffred long what did my soule displease;<br> +But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine,<br> +I felt my native strength at last decrease;<br> +I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine,<br> +And wisht I had enjoy’d the countries peace;<br> + I bod the court farewell, and with content<br> + My later age here have I quiet spent.<br> +<br> +14.<br> +<br> +While thus he spake, Erminia husht and still<br> +His wise discourses heard, with great attention,<br> +His speeches graue those idle fancies kill,<br> +Which in her troubled soule bred such dissention;<br> +After much thought reformed was her will,<br> +Within those woods to dwell was her intention,<br> + Till fortune should occasion new afford,<br> + To turne her home to her desired Lord.<br> +<br> +15.<br> +<br> +She said therefore, O shepherd fortunate!<br> +That troubles some didst whilom feele and proue.<br> +Yet liuest now in this contented state,<br> +Let my mishap thy thoughts to pitie moue,<br> +To entertaine me as a willing mate<br> +In shepherds life, which I admire and loue;<br> + Within these plessant groues perchance my hart,<br> + Of her discomforts, may vnload some part.<br> +<br> +16.<br> +<br> +If gold or wealth of most esteemed deare,<br> +If iewels rich, thou diddest hold in prise,<br> +Such store thereof, such plentie haue I seen,<br> +As to a greedie minde might well suffice:<br> +With that downe trickled many a siluer teare,<br> +Two christall streames fell from her watrie eies;<br> + Part of her sad misfortunes then she told,<br> + And wept, and with her wept that shepherd old.<br> +<br> +17.<br> +<br> +With speeches kinde, he gan the virgin deare<br> +Towards his cottage gently home to guide;<br> +His aged wife there made her homely cheare,<br> +Yet welcomde her, and plast her by her side.<br> +The Princesse dond a poor pastoraes geare,<br> +A kerchiefe course vpon her head she tide;<br> + But yet her gestures and her lookes (I gesse)<br> + Were such, as ill beseem’d a shepherdesse.<br> +<br> +18.<br> +<br> +Not those rude garments could obscure, and hide<br> +The heau’nly beautie of her angels face,<br> +Nor was her princely ofspring damnifide,<br> +Or ought disparag’de, by those labours bace;<br> +Her little flocks to pasture would she guide,<br> +And milke her goates, and in their folds them place,<br> + Both cheese and butter could she make, and frame<br> + Her selfe to please the shepherd and his dame.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +MILTON.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with +such minute inquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented +myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton’s elegant +abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the uniformity +of this edition.<br> +<br> +John Milton was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors +of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate +in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know +not; his descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose.<br> +<br> +His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous +Papist, who disinherited his son because he had forsaken the religion +of his ancestors.<br> +<br> +His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his +support to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent +for his skill in music, many of his compositions being still to be found; +and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and +retired to an estate. He had probably more than common literature, +as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. +He married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom +he had two sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law +and adhered, as the law taught him, to the king’s party, for which +he was a while persecuted; but having by his brother’s interest +obtained permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably +by chamber-practice, that, soon after the accession of King James, he +was knighted and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak +for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became +necessary.<br> +<br> +He had likewise a daughter Anne, whom he married with a considerable +fortune to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the +Crown-office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward, +who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only authentic +account of his domestic manners.<br> +<br> +John the poet, was born in his father’s house, at the Spread Eagle, +in Bread Street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. +His father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; +for he was instructed at first by private tuition under the care of +Thomas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at +Hamburgh, and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar +considered him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.<br> +<br> +He was then sent to St. Paul’s school, under the care of Mr. Gill; +and removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ’s +College, in Cambridge, where he entered a sizar, Feb. 12, 1624.<br> +<br> +He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he himself, +by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the +learned Politian has given him an example, seems to commend the earliness +of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity.<br> +<br> +But the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, +and particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of +the mind it is difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton +in their first essays, who never rose to works like “Paradise +Lost.”<br> +<br> +At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated or +versified two Psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the public +eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would in any numerous +school have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.<br> +<br> +Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year, +by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very +nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of +Polybius, remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman +who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance. +If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, +the pride of Elizabeth’s reign, however they may have succeeded +in prose, no sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. +If we produced anything worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, +it was perhaps Alabaster’s “Roxana.”<br> +<br> +Of these exercises, which the rules of the University required, some +were published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly +applauded; for they were such as few can form: yet there is reason to +suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. +That he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which +he was treated was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate +what I fear is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either +University that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction.<br> +<br> +It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him, +that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently +not true; but it seems plain, from his own verses to “Diodati”, +that he had incurred “rustication,” a temporary dismission +into the country, with perhaps the loss of a term.<br> +<br> +<br> +Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ,<br> + Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.<br> +Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum<br> + Nec dudum <i>vetiti</i> me <i>laris</i> angit amor. +-<br> +Nec duri libet usque minas preferre magistri,<br> + Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.<br> +Si sit hoc exilium patrias adiisse penates,<br> + Et vacuum curis otia greta sequi,<br> +Non ego vel <i>profugi</i> nomen sortemve recuso,<br> + Lætus et <i>exilii</i> conditione fruor.<br> +<br> +<br> +I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence +can give to the term, “vetiti laris,” “a habitation +from which he is excluded;” or how “exile” can be +otherwise interpreted. He declares yet more, that he is weary +of enduring “the threats of a rigorous master, and something else +which a temper like his cannot undergo.” What was more than +threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his +“exile,” proves likewise that it was not perpetual; for +it concludes with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. +And it may be conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated +the memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.<br> +<br> +He took both the usual degrees: that of bachelor in 1628, and that of +master in 1632; but he left the University with no kindness for its +institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his governors, +or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be known, +but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education, +inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being intended +to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in literature, from +their entrance upon grammar, till they proceed, as it is called Masters +of Art. And in his discourse “on the likeliest Way to remove +Hirelings out of the Church,” he ingeniously proposes that the +profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses should +be applied to such academies all over the land where languages and arts +may be taught together that youth may be at once brought up to a competency +of learning and an honest trade, by which means such of them as had +the gift, being enabled to support themselves (without tithes) by the +latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers.<br> +<br> +One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted, +is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act +plays, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and +dishonest gestures of Trincalos, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the +shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes +of courtiers and court-ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles.<br> +<br> +This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile +from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which +the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were therefore +only criminal when they were acted by academics.<br> +<br> +He went to the university with a design of entering into the church, +but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a +clergyman, must “subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, +unless he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight +perjure himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence +before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.”<br> +<br> +These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the Articles; +but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical obedience. +I know not any of the Articles which seem to thwart his opinions: but +the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil, raise his indignation.<br> +<br> +His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced +to a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one +of his friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which +he seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastic luxury +of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, +in which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not +from the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining +more fitness for his task; and that he goes on, “not taking thought +of being late, so it gives advantage to be more fit.”<br> +<br> +When he left the University, he returned to his father, then residing +at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years, in which +time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. +With what limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall +inform us?<br> +<br> +It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing +else; but Milton found time to write the “Masque of Comus,” +which was presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President +of Wales, in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of +Bridgewater’s sons and daughter. The fiction is derived +from Homer’s “Circe;” but we never can refuse to any +modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:<br> +<br> +<br> + - a quo ceu fonte perenni<br> +Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.<br> +<br> +<br> +His next production was Lycidas, an elegy, written in 1637, on the death +of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, Secretary for Ireland in the +time of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. King was much a favourite +at Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to his memory. +Milton’s acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered +by a mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of +Tuscan poetry, and his malignity to the church by some lines which are +interpreted as threatening its extermination.<br> +<br> +He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for while +he lived at Horton he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few +days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the Countess Dowager +of Derby, where the Arcades made part of a dramatic entertainment.<br> +<br> +He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking +chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother set him +at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father’s consent, +and Sir Henry Wotton’s directions; with the celebrated precept +of prudence, <i>i pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto; </i>“thoughts +close, and looks loose.”<br> +<br> +In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favour +of Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then +residing at the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden. +From Paris he hasted into Italy, of which he had with particular diligence +studied the language and literature; and, though he seems to have intended +a very quick perambulation of the country, stayed two months at Florence; +where he found his way into the academies, and produced his compositions +with such applause as appears to have exalted him in his own opinion, +and confirmed him in the hope, that, “by labour and intense study, +which,” says he, “I take to be my portion in this life, +joined with a strong propensity of nature,” he might “leave +something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let +it die.”<br> +<br> +It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant of +great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not +without some contempt of others, for scarcely any man ever wrote so +much, and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as +he set its value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security +against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.<br> +<br> +At Florence he could not indeed complain that his merit wanted distinction. +Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastic inscription, in the tumid +lapidary style; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the first stanza +is only empty noise; the rest are perhaps too diffuse on common topics: +but the last is natural and beautiful.<br> +<br> +From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was +again received with kindness by the learned and the great. Holstenius, +the keeper of the Vatican library, who had resided three years at Oxford, +introduced him to Cardinal Barberini: and he, at a musical entertainment, +waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly. +Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a tetrastich: +neither of them of much value. The Italians were gainers by this +literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli, +though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance indisputably +in Milton’s favour.<br> +<br> +Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough +to publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected +but to have known that they were said <i>non</i> <i>tam de se, quam +supra se.<br> +<br> +</i>At Rome, as at Florence, he stayed only two months: a time indeed +sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its antiquities, +or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too short for the +contemplation of learning, policy, or manners.<br> +<br> +From Rome he passed on to Naples, in company of a hermit, a companion +from whom little could be expected; yet to him Milton owed his introduction +to Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron of Tasso. +Manso was enough delighted with his accomplishments to honour him with +a sorry distich, in which he commends him for everything but his religion: +and Milton, in return, addressed him in a Latin poem, which must have +raised a high opinion of English elegance and literature.<br> +<br> +His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but hearing of +the differences between the king and parliament, he thought it proper +to hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements while +his countrymen were contending for their rights. He therefore +came back to Rome, though the merchants informed him of plots laid against +him by the Jesuits, for the liberty of his conversations on religion. +He had sense enough to judge that there was no danger, and therefore +kept on his way, and acted as before, neither obtruding nor shunning +controversy. He had perhaps given some offence by visiting Galileo, +then a prisoner in the Inquisition for philosophical heresy; and at +Naples he was told by Manse, that, by his declarations on religious +questions, he had excluded himself from some distinctions which he should +otherwise have paid him. But such conduct, though it did not please, +was yet sufficiently safe; and Milton stayed two months more at Rome, +and went on to Florence without molestation.<br> +<br> +From Florence he visited Lucca. He afterwards went to Venice; +and, having sent away a collection of music and other books, travelled +to Geneva, which he probably considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy.<br> +<br> +Here he reposed as in a congenial element, and became acquainted with +John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity. +From Geneva he passed through France; and came home, after an absence +of a year and three months.<br> +<br> +At his return he heard of the death of his friend, Charles Diodati; +a man whom it is reasonable to suppose of great merit, since he was +thought by Milton worthy of a poem, entitled “Epitaphium Damonis,” +written with the common but childish imitation of pastoral life.<br> +<br> + He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russel a tailor in +St. Bride’s Churchyard, and undertook the education of John and +Edward Philips, his sister’s sons. Finding his rooms too +little, he took a house and garden in Aldersgate Street, which was not +then so much out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at +the upper end of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street. +Here he received more boys, to be boarded and instructed.<br> +<br> +Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree +of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who +hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, +and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism +in a private boarding-school. This is the period of his life from +which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling +that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but since it cannot +be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, +and another that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning +and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse +an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful. +His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its +deficiencies by an honest and useful employment<br> +<br> +It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a +formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were +read in Aldersgate Street by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen +years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider, +that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed +of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse. Every +man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances +he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall +vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify +absurd misapprehension.<br> +<br> +The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid +than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that +treat of physical subjects, such as the Georgic, and astronomical treatises +of the ancients. This was a scheme of improvement which seems +to have busied many literary projectors of that age. Cowley, who +had more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments +of life, formed the same plan of education in his imaginary college.<br> +<br> +But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences +which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the +frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action +or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first +requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the +next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those +examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the +reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues and +excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, +but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with +intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, +and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare emergence, +that one may know another half his life without being able to estimate +his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential +character immediately appears.<br> +<br> +Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most +axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials +for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, +and historians.<br> +<br> +Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or paradoxical; +for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my side. +It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of Nature to speculations +upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention +from life to nature. They seem to think that we are placed here +to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars. Socrates +was rather of opinion that what we had to learn was how to do good and +avoid evil.<br> +<br> +<br> +Οτι ποι εν μεγαροισι +κακοντ' αγαθοντε +τετυκται<br> +<br> +<br> +Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working +academy I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent +for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small History +of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which perhaps +none of my readers has ever heard.<br> +<br> +That in his school, as in everything else which he undertook, he laboured +with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One part +of his method deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct +his scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology, +of which he dictated a short system, gathered from the writers that +were then fashionable in the Dutch universities.<br> +<br> +He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now +and then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence +with some gay gentlemen of Gray’s Inn.<br> +<br> +He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent his +breath to blow the flames of contention. In 1641 he published +a treatise of Reformation in two books, against the Established Church, +being willing to help the Puritans, who were, he says, “inferior +to the Prelates in learning.”<br> +<br> +Hall, Bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in defence +of Episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers, of whose names the +first letters made the celebrated word <i>Smectymnuus, </i>gave their +answer. Of this answer a confutation was attempted by the learned +Usher; and to the confutation Milton published a reply, entitled, “Of +Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical +Times, by virtue of those Testimonies which are alleged to that purpose +in some late Treatises, one whereof goes under the Name of James, Lord +Bishop of Armagh.”<br> +<br> +I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention of +Usher, that he had now adopted the Puritanical savageness of manners. +His next work was, “The Reason of Church Government urged against +Prelacy,” by Mr. John Milton, 1642. In this book he discovers, +not with ostentatious exultation, but with calm confidence, his high +opinion of his own powers, and promises to undertake something, he yet +knows not what, that may be of use and honour to his country. +“This,” says he, “is not to be obtained but by devout +prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and +knowledge, and sends out His seraphim, with the hallowed fire of His +altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases. To this +must be added, industrious and select reading, steady observation, and +insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs till which in +some measure be compassed, I refuse not to sustain this expectation.” +From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and rational, might +be expected the “Paradise Lost.”<br> +<br> +He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same question. +To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was “vomited out +of the university,” he answers in general terms: “The fellows +of the college wherein I spent some years, at my parting, after I had +taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many times how much better +it would content them that I should stay. - As for the common approbation +or dislike of that place, as now it is, that I should esteem or disesteem +myself the more for that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to +obtain with me. Of small practice were the physician who could +not judge by what she and her sister have of long time vomited, that +the worser stuff she strongly keeps in her stomach, but the better she +is ever kecking at, and is queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but +before it will be well with her, she must vomit with strong physic. +The university, in the time of her better health, and my younger judgment, +I never greatly admired, but now much less.”<br> +<br> +This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been injured. +He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and the train of +his thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of incontinence, gives +an account of his own purity: “That if I be justly charged,” +says he, “with this crime, it may come upon me with tenfold shame.”<br> +<br> +The style of his piece is rough, and such perhaps was that of his antagonist. +This roughness he justifies by great examples, in a long digression. +Sometimes he tries to be humorous: “Lest I should take him for +some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one who +serves not at the altar only, but at the court-cupboard, he will bestow +on us a pretty model of himself; and sets me out half-a-dozen phthisical +mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion +fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, +instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring +posies. - And thus ends this section, or rather dissection, of himself.” +Such is the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy seriousness +is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity, “that hell +grows darker at his frown.”<br> +<br> +His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his +house, and his school increased. At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth +year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Powel, a justice of the peace +in Oxfordshire. He brought her to town with him, and expected +all the advantages of a conjugal life. The lady, however, seems +not much to have delighted in the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; +for, as Philips relates, “having for a month led a philosophic +life, after having been used at home to a great house, and much company +and joviality, her friends, possibly by her own desire, made earnest +suit to have her company the remaining part of the summer, which was +granted, upon a promise of her return at Michaelmas.”<br> +<br> +Milton was too busy to much miss his wife; he pursued his studies, and +now and then visited the Lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned +in one of his sonnets. At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady +had no inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband’s +habitation, and therefore very willingly forgot her promise. He +sent her a letter, but had no answer; he sent more with the same success. +It could be alleged that letters miscarry; he therefore despatched a +messenger, being by this time too angry to go himself. His messenger +was sent back with some contempt. The family of the lady were +Cavaliers.<br> +<br> +In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton’s, less +provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton +soon determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of +those who could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published +(in 1644) “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,” which +was followed by the “Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,” +and the next year his “Tetrachordon, Expositions upon the four +chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage.”<br> +<br> +This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who, +then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the +author should be called before the Lords; “but that house,” +says Wood, “whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring his +accusers, did soon dismiss him.”<br> +<br> +There seems not to have been much written against him, nor anything +by any writer of eminence. The antagonist that appeared is styled +by him, “A Serving Man turned Solicitor.” Howel, in +his Letters, mentions the new doctrine with contempt; and it was, I +suppose, thought more worthy of derision than of confutation. +He complains of this neglect in two sonnets, of which the first is contemptible, +and the second not excellent.<br> +<br> +From this time it is observed that he became an enemy to the Presbyterians, +whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party by his +humour is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest; +he loves himself rather than truth.<br> +<br> +His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting +sufferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun to put his doctrine +in practice, by courting a young woman of great accomplishments, the +daughter of one Doctor Davis, who was, however, not ready to comply, +they resolved to endeavour a reunion. He went sometimes to the +house of one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, +and at one of his usual visits was surprised to see his wife come from +another room, and implore forgiveness on her knees. He resisted +her entreaties for a while; “but partly,” says Philips, +“his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than +to perseverance in anger or revenge, and partly the strong intercession +of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion and +a fair league of peace.” It were injurious to omit that +Milton afterwards received her father and her brothers in his own house, +when they were distressed, with other Royalists.<br> +<br> +He published about the same time his “Areopagitica, a speech of +Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing.” +The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, +have produced a problem in the science of government, which human understanding +seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but +what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always +be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate +his prospects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government +may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptic +in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The +remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed +that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of +opinions which that society shall think pernicious; but this punishment, +though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not +more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained because +writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors +unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.<br> +<br> +But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestic poetry was never +long out of his thoughts.<br> +<br> +About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, +in which the “Allegro,” and “Penseroso,” with +some others, were first published.<br> +<br> +He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars; +but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted +refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they +went away; “and the house again,” says Philips, “now +looked like a house of the Muses only, though the accession of scholars +was not great. Possibly his having proceeded so far in the education +of youth may have been the occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue +and schoolmaster; whereas it is well known he never set up for a public +school, to teach all the young fry of a parish, but only was willing +to impart his learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons +of gentlemen who were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings +nor his way of teaching savoured in the least of pedantry.”<br> +<br> +Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and +what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man +who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his +warmest friends seem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. +He did not sell literature to all comers at an open shop; he was a chamber-milliner, +and measured his commodities only to his friends.<br> +<br> +Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of degradation, +tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character +again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: “He is +much mistaken,” he says, “if there was not about this time +a design of making him an adjutant-general in Sir William Waller’s +army. But the new-modelling of the army proved an obstruction +to the design.” An event cannot be set at a much greater +distance than by having been only “designed, about some time,” +if a man “be not much mistaken.” Milton shall be a +pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips be not much mistaken, somebody +at some time designed him for a soldier.<br> +<br> +About the time that the army was new-modelled (1645), he removed to +a smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln’s +Inn Fields. He is not known to have published anything afterwards +till the king’s death, when, finding his murderers condemned by +the Presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, “and to +compose the minds of the people.”<br> +<br> +He made some remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the +Irish rebels. While he contented himself to write, he perhaps +did only what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly +watch the influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence +of opinions, first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged; +if objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced +conviction, he yet shared - only the common weakness of mankind, and +might be no less sincere than his opponents. But, as faction seldom +leaves a man honest, however it might find him, Milton is suspected +of having interpolated the book called “Icon Basilike,” +which the council of state, to whom he was now made Latin Secretary, +employed him to censure, by inserting a prayer taken from Sidney’s +“Arcadia,” and imputing it to the king, whom he charges, +in his “Iconoclastes,” with the use of this prayer, as with +a heavy come, in the indecent language with which prosperity had emboldened +the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is venerable or great: +“Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-seeing +deity - as, immediately before his death, to pop into the hands of the +grave bishop that attended him, as a special relic of his saintly exercises, +a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen woman praying +to a heathen god?”<br> +<br> +The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon on the scaffold the regicides +took away; so that they were at least the publishers of this prayer; +and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care, was inclined +to think them the forgers. The use of it by adaptation was innocent, +and they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension of +their malice could contrive what they wanted to accuse.<br> +<br> +King Charles the Second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed Salmasius, +professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a defence of his father +and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as was reported, +a hundred Jacobuses. Salmasius was a man of skill in languages, +knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of emendatory criticism, almost +exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive praises, +been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he probably had +not much considered the principles of society or the right of government, +undertook the employment without distrust of his own qualifications; +and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in 1649 published “Defensio +Regis.”<br> +<br> +To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he performed +(1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable to decide +whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst. In my +opinion, Milton’s periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; +but he delights himself with teasing his adversary as much as with confuting +him. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine +he considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmasius, which, +whoever entered, left half his virility behind him. Salmasius +was a Frenchman, and was unhappily married to a scold. <i>Tu es +Gallus, </i>says Milton, <i>et, ut aiunt, nimium gallinaceus</i>. +But his supreme pleasure is to tax his adversary, so renowned for criticism, +with vicious Latin. He opens his book with telling that he has +used <i>Persona, </i>which, according to Milton, signifies only a <i>Mask, +</i>in a sense not known to the Romans, by applying it as we apply <i>Person. +</i>But as Nemesis is always on the watch, it is memorable that he has +enforced the charge of a solecism by an expression in itself grossly +solecistical, when for one of those supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, +and I think some one before him, has remarked, <i>propino te</i> <i>grammatistis +tuis vapulandum</i>.” From <i>vapulo</i>, which has a passive +sense, <i>vapulandus</i> can never be derived. No man forgets +his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings, sink into questions +of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.<br> +<br> +Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of sight; +but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was supplied +by zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book +was much read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance, easily +gains attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal to his +king, could hardly want an audience.<br> +<br> +That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity, +or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only +the stale doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; +and he had been so long not only the monarch, but the tyrant of literature, +that almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted +by a new name, not yet considered as any one’s rival. If +Christina, as is said, commended the defence of the people, her purpose +must be to torment Salmasius, who was then at court; for neither her +civil station, nor her natural character, could dispose her to favour +the doctrine, who was by birth a queen, and by temper despotic.<br> +<br> +That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton’s book, treated +with neglect, there is not much proof; but to a man, so long accustomed +to admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently +offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which however +he was dismissed, not with any mark of contempt, but with a train of +attendants scarce less than regal.<br> +<br> +He prepared a reply, which, left as it was imperfect, was published +by his son in the year of the Restoration. In the beginning, being +probably most in pain for his Latinity, he endeavours to defend his +use of the word <i>persona; </i>but, if I remember right, he misses +a better authority than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in his +fourth satire:<br> +<br> +<br> +- Quid agis cum dira et fœdior omni<br> +Crimine <i>persona</i> est?<br> +<br> +<br> +As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel, +Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened Salmasius’s +life, and both perhaps with more malignity than reason. Salmasius +died at the Spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and, as controvertists are commonly +said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered with the +credit of destroying him.<br> +<br> +Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which +he had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the +title of Protector, but with kingly and more than kingly power. +That his authority was lawful, never was pretended; he himself founded +his right only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey +of public employment, would not return to hunger and philosophy, but, +continuing to exercise his office under a manifest usurpation, betrayed +to his power that liberty which he had defended. Nothing can be +more just than that rebellion should end in slavery; that he, who had +justified the murder of his king, for some acts which seemed to him +unlawful, should now sell his services, and his flatteries, to a tyrant, +of whom it was evident that he could do nothing lawful.<br> +<br> +He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect was +such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin secretary, +or continue his controversies. His mind was too eager to be diverted, +and too strong to be subdued.<br> +<br> +About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three +daughters. As he probably did not much love her, he did not long +continue the appearance of lamenting her; but after a short time married +Catharine, the daughter of one Captain Woodcock, of Hackney, a woman +doubtless educated in opinions like his own. She died, within +a year, of childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her husband +honoured her memory with a poor sonnet.<br> +<br> +The first reply to Milton’s “Defensio Populi” was +published in 1651, called “Apologia pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, +contra Johannis Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni) defensionem destructivam +Regis et Populi.” Of this the author was not known; but +Milton and his nephew Philips, under whose name he published an answer +so much corrected by him, that it might be called his own, imputed it +to Bramhal; and, knowing him no friend to regicides, thought themselves +at liberty to treat him as if they had known what they only suspected.<br> +<br> +Next year appeared “Regii Sanguinis clamor ad Cœlum.” +Of this the author was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary +of Canterbury; but Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care +of its publication, was treated as the writer by Milton, in his “Defensio +Secunda,” and overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that +he began to shrink under the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means +of knowing the true author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; +but Milton’s pride operated against his malignity; and both he +and his friends were more willing that Du Moulin should escape than +that he should be convicted of mistake.<br> +<br> +In this second Defence he shows that his eloquence is not merely satirical; +the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness of his flattery, +<i>Deserimur, Cromuelle tu solus superes, ad te summa nostrarum rerum, +rediit, in te solo consistit, insuperabili tuæ virtuti cedimus +cuncti, nemine vel obloquente, nisi qui æquales inæqualis +ipse honores sibi quærit, aut digniori concessos invidet, aut +non intelligit nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo gratum, +vel rationi consentaneum, esse in civitate nihil æquius, nihil +utilius, quam potiri rerum dignissimum. Eum te agnoscunt omnes, +Cromuelle, ea tu civis maximus, et gloriosissimus, dux publici consilii, +exercituum fortissimorum imperator, pater patriæ gessisti. +Sic tu spontanea bonorum omnium et animitus missa voce salutaris.<br> +<br> +</i>Cæsar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not +more servile or more elegant flattery. A translation may show +its servility; but its elegance is less attainable. Having exposed +the unskilfulness or selfishness of the former government, “We +were left,” says Milton, “to ourselves: the whole national +interest fell into our hands, and subsists only in your abilities. +To your virtue, overpowering and resistless, every man gives way, except +some who, without equal qualifications, aspire to equal honours, who +envy the distinctions of merit greater than their own, or who have yet +to learn, that in the coalition of human society nothing is more pleasing +to God, or more agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind should +have the sovereign power. Such, sir, are you by general confession; +such are the things achieved by you, the greatest and most glorious +of our countrymen, the director of our public councils, the leader of +unconquered armies, the father of your country; for by that title doss +every good man hail you with sincere and voluntary praise.”<br> +<br> +Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure +to defend himself. He undertook his own vindication against More, +whom he declares in his title to be justly called the author of the +“Regii Sanguinis Clamor.” In this there is no want +of vehemence nor eloquence, nor does he forget his wonted wit. +<i>Morus es? an Momus? an uterque idem est</i>? He then remembers +that Morus is Latin for a mulberry-tree, and hints at the known transformation:<br> +<br> +<br> +- Poma alba ferebat<br> +Quæ post nigra tulit Morus.<br> +<br> +<br> +With this piece ended his controversies; and he from this time gave +himself up to his private studies and his civil employment.<br> +<br> +As secretary to the Protector he is supposed to have written the Declaration +of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was considered +as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden was artfully +suspended, the delay was publicly imputed to Mr. Milton’s indisposition; +and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder that only one +man in England could write Latin, and that man blind.<br> +<br> +Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered from +external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former purposes, +and to have resumed three great works which he had planned for his future +employment - an epic poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary +of the Latin tongue.<br> +<br> +To collect a dictionary seems a work of all others least practicable +in a state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute +inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have begun +it, after he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always before him, +he continued it, says Philips, “almost to his dying day; but the +papers were so discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted +for the press.” The compilers of the Latin dictionary, printed +at Cambridge, had the use of those collections in three folios; but +what was their fate afterwards is not known.<br> +<br> +To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be consulted +by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible, but with more skilful and +attentive help than can be commonly obtained; and it was probably the +difficulty of consulting and comparing that stopped Milton’s narrative +at the Conquest - a period at which affairs were not very intricate, +nor authors very numerous.<br> +<br> +For the subject of his epic poem, after much deliberation, long choosing, +and beginning late, he fixed upon “Paradise Lost,” a design +so comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. +He had once designed to celebrate King Arthur, as he hints in his verses +to Mansus; but “Arthur was reserved,” says Fenton, “to +another destiny.”<br> +<br> +It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript, +and to be seen in a library at Cambridge, that he had digested his thoughts +on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were anciently called +Mysteries; and Philips had seen what he terms part of a tragedy, beginning +with the first ten lines of Satan’s address to the Sun. +These mysteries consist of allegorical persons, such as Justice, Mercy, +Faith. Of the tragedy or mystery of “Paradise Lost” +there are two plans<br> +<br> +<br> +<i>The Persons. + The Persons.<br> +</i>Michael. + Moses.<br> +Chorus of Angels. Divine Justice, +Wisdom<br> +Heavenly Love. + Heavenly Love.<br> +Lucifer. + The Evening Star, Hesperus.<br> +Adam, } with the Serpent Chorus of Angels.<br> +Eve, } + Lucifer.<br> +Conscience. +Adam.<br> +Death. + Eve.<br> +Labour, } + Conscience.<br> +Sickness, } +Labour, }<br> +Discontent, } Mutes. Sickness, }<br> +Ignorance, } +Discontent, } Mutes<br> +with others;} +Ignorance, }<br> +Faith. + Fear, }<br> +Hope. + Death, }<br> +Charity. + Faith.<br> + Hope.<br> + Charity.<br> +<br> +PARADISE LOST.<br> +<br> +<i>The Persons.<br> +<br> +</i>Moses, προλογιζει<i>, +</i>recounting how he assumed his true body; that it corrupts not, because +it is with God in the mount; declares the like of Enoch and Elijah; +besides the purity of the place, that certain pure winds, dews, and +clouds, preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to the sight of +God; tells they cannot see Adam in the state of innocence, by reason +of their sin.<br> +<br> +Justice, }<br> +Mercy, } debating what should become of man, if he fall.<br> +Wisdom, }<br> +Chorus of Angels singing a hymn of the Creation.<br> +<br> +ACT II.<br> +<br> +Heavenly Love.<br> +Evening Star.<br> +Chorus sing the marriage-song, and describe Paradise.<br> +<br> +ACT III.<br> +<br> +Lucifer contriving Adam’s ruin.<br> +Chorus fears for Adam, and relates Lucifer’s rebellion and fall.<br> +<br> +ACT IV.<br> +<br> +Adam, }<br> +Eve, } fallen.<br> +Conscience cites them to God’s examination.<br> +Chorus bewails, and tells the good Adam has lost.<br> +<br> +ACT V.<br> +<br> +Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise.<br> +-- -- presented by an angel with Labour, Grief, Hatred, }<br> +Envy, War, Famine, Pestilence, Sickness, Discontent, }<br> +Ignorance, Fear, Death + +} Mutes.<br> +To whom he gives their names. Likewise Winter, Heat, Tempest, +etc.<br> +Faith, }<br> +Hope, } comfort him and instruct him.<br> +Charity, }<br> +Chorus briefly concludes.<br> +<br> +<br> +Such was his first design, which could have produced only an allegory +or mystery. The following sketch seems to have attained more maturity.<br> +<br> +<br> +ADAM UNPARADISED.<br> +<br> +The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering; showing, since this +globe was created, his frequency as much on earth as in heaven; describes +Paradise. Next the Chorus, showing the reason of his coming to +keep his watch in Paradise, after Lucifer’s rebellion, by command +from God; and withal expressing his desire to see and know more concerning +this excellent new creature, man. The angel Gabriel, as by his +name signifying a prince of power, tracing Paradise with a more free +office, passes by the station of the Chorus, and, desired by them, relates +what he knew of man; as the creation of Eve, with their love and marriage. +After this, Lucifer appears; after his overthrow, bemoans himself, seeks +revenge on man. The Chorus prepare resistance on his first approach. +At last, after discourse of enmity on either side, he departs: whereat +the Chorus sings of the battle and victory in Heaven, against him and +his accomplices: as before, after the first act, was sung a hymn of +the creation. Here again may appear Lucifer, relating and exulting +in what he had done to the destruction of man. Man next, and Eve, +having by this time been seduced by the serpent, appears confusedly +covered with leaves. Conscience in a shape accuses him; Justice +cites him to the place whither Jehovah called for him. In the +meanwhile, the Chorus entertains the stage, and is informed by some +angel the manner of the fall. Here the Chorus bewails Adam’s +fall; Adam then and Eve return; accuse one another; but especially Adam +lays the blame to his wife; is stubborn in his offence. Justice +appears, reasons with him, convinces him. The Chorus admonishes +Adam, and bids him beware of Lucifer’s example of impenitence. +The angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise; but before causes +to pass before his eyes, in shapes, a mask of all the evils of this +life and world. He is humbled, relents, despairs; at last appears +Mercy, comforts him, promises the Messiah; then calls in Faith, Hope, +and Charity; - instructs him; he repents, gives God the glory, submits +to his penalty. The Chorus briefly concludes. Compare this +with the former draft.<br> +<br> +These are very imperfect rudiments of “Paradise Lost;” but +it is pleasant to see great works in their seminal state, pregnant with +latent possibilities of excellence; nor could there be any more delightful +entertainment than to trace their gradual growth and expansion, and +to observe how they are sometimes suddenly advanced by accidental hints, +and sometimes slowly improved by steady meditation.<br> +<br> +Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot +obstruct, and therefore he naturally solaced his solitude by the indulgence +of his fancy, and the melody of his numbers. He had done what +he knew to be necessarily previous to poetical excellence; he had made +himself acquainted with “seemly arts and affairs;” his comprehension +was extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual +treasures. He was skilful in many languages, and had, by reading +and composition, attained the full mastery of his own. He would +have wanted little help from books, had he retained the power of perusing +them.<br> +<br> +But while his greater designs were advancing, having now, like many +other authors, caught the love of publication, he amused himself, as +he could, with little productions. He sent to the press (1658) +a manuscript of Raleigh, called “The Cabinet Council;” and +next year gratified his malevolence to the clergy, by a “Treatise +of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Cases, and the Means of removing Hirelings +out of the Church.”<br> +<br> +Oliver was now dead; Richard constrained to resign; the system of extemporary +government, which had been held together only by force, naturally fell +into fragments when that force was taken away; and Milton saw himself +and his cause in equal danger. But he had still hope of doing +something. He wrote letters, which Toland has published, to such +men as he thought friends to the new commonwealth; and even in the year +of the Restoration he “bated no jot of heart or hope,” but +was fantastical enough to think that the nation, agitated as it was, +might be settled by a pamphlet, called “A Ready and Easy Way to +Establish a Free Commonwealth;” which was, however, enough considered +to be both seriously and ludicrously answered.<br> +<br> +The obstinate enthusiasm of the commonwealth-men was very remarkable. +When the king was apparently returning, Harrington, with a few associates +as fantastical as himself, used to meet, with all the gravity of political +importance, to settle an equal government by rotation; and Milton, kicking +when he could strike no longer, was foolish enough to publish, a few +weeks before the Restoration, Notes upon a Sermon preached by one Griffiths, +entitled, “The Fear of God and the King.” To these +notes an answer was written by L’Estrange, in a pamphlet petulantly +called “No Blind Guides.”<br> +<br> +But whatever Milton could write, or men of greater activity could do, +the king was now about to be restored with the irresistible approbation +of the people, he was therefore no longer secretary, and was consequently +obliged to quit the house which he held by his office; the importance +of his writings, thought it convenient to seek some shelter, and hid +himself for a time in Bartholomew Close, by West Smithfield.<br> +<br> +I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously paid to +this great man by his biographers: every house in which he resided is +historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any +place that he honoured by his presence.<br> +<br> +The king, with lenity of which the world has had perhaps no other example, +declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father’s +wrongs; and promised to admit into the Act of Oblivion all except those +whom the Parliament should except; and the Parliament doomed none to +capital punishment but the wretches who had immediately co-operated +in the murder of the king. Milton was certainly not one of them; +he had only justified what they had done.<br> +<br> +This justification was indeed sufficiently offensive; and (June 16) +an order was issued to seize Milton’s “Defence,” and +Goodwin’s “Obstructors of Justice,” another book of +the same tendency, and burn them by the common hangman. The attorney-general +was ordered to prosecute the authors; but Milton was not seized, nor +perhaps very diligently pursued.<br> +<br> +Not long after (August 19) the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled +by an Act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation +of elegance, rather called an Act of Oblivion than of Grace. Goodwin +was named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for any public trust; +but of Milton there was no exception.<br> +<br> +Of this tenderness shown to Milton the curiosity of mankind has not +forborne to inquire the reason. Burnet thinks he was forgotten; +but this is another instance which may confirm Dalrymple’s observation, +who says, “that whenever Burnet’s narrations are examined, +he appears to be mistaken.”<br> +<br> +Forgotten he was not; for his prosecution was ordered; it must be therefore +by design that he was included in the general oblivion. He is +said to have had friends in the House, such as Marvel, Morrice, and +Sir Thomas Clarges: and undoubtedly a man like him must have had influence. +A very particular story of his escape is told by Richardson in his Memoirs, +which he received from Pope, as delivered by Betterton, who might have +heard it from Davenant. In the war between the King and Parliament, +Davenant was made prisoner and condemned to die; but was spared at the +request of Milton. When the turn of success brought Milton into +the like danger, Davenant repaid the benefit by appearing in his favour. +Here is a reciprocation of generosity and gratitude so pleasing, that +the tale makes its own way to credit. But if help were wanted, +I know not where to find it. The danger of Davenant is certain +from his own relation; but of his escape there is no account. +Betterton’s narration can be traced no higher; it is not known +that he hid it from Davenant. We are told that the benefit exchanged +was life for life; but it seems not certain that Milton’s life +ever was in danger. Goodwin, who had committed the same kind of +crime, escaped with incapacitation; and, as exclusion from public trust +is a punishment which the power of Government can commonly inflict without +the help of a particular law, it required no great interest to exempt +Milton from a censure little more than verbal. Something may be +reasonably ascribed to veneration and compassion; to veneration of his +abilities, and compassion for his distresses, which made it fit to forgive +his malice for his learning. He was now poor and blind; and who +would pursue with violence an illustrious enemy, depressed by fortune +and disarmed by nature?<br> +<br> +The publication of the “Act of Oblivion” put him in the +same condition with his fellow-subjects. He was, however, upon +some pretence now not known, in the custody of the serjeant in December; +and when he was released, upon his refusal of the fees demanded, he +and the serjeant were called before the House. He was now safe +within the shade of oblivion, and knew himself to be as much out of +the power of a griping officer as any other man. How the question +was determined is not known. Milton would hardly have contended +but that he knew himself to have right on his side.<br> +<br> +He then removed to Jewin Street, near Aldersgate Street, and, being +blind and by no means wealthy, wanted a domestic companion and attendant; +and therefore, by the recommendation of Dr. Paget, married Elizabeth +Minshul, of a gentleman’s family in Cheshire, probably without +a fortune. All his wives were virgins; for he has declared that +he thought it gross and indelicate to be a second husband: upon what +other principles his choice was made cannot now be known; but marriage +afforded not much of his happiness. The first wife left him in +disgust, and was brought back only by terror; the second, indeed, seems +to have been more a favourite, but her life was short. The third, +as Philips relates, oppressed his children in his lifetime, and cheated +them at his death.<br> +<br> +Soon after his marriage, according to an obscure story, he was offered +the continuance of his employment, and, being pressed by his wife to +accept it, answered, “You, like other women, want to ride in your +coach; my wish is to live and die an honest man.” If he +considered the Latin secretary as exercising any of the powers of government, +he that had shared authority, either with the Parliament or Cromwell, +might have forborne to talk very loudly of his honesty; and if he thought +the office purely ministerial, he certainly might have honestly retained +it under the King. But this tale has too little evidence to deserve +a disquisition; large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most +common topics of falsehood.<br> +<br> +He had so much either of prudence or gratitude, that he forbore to disturb +the new settlement with any of his political or ecclesiastical opinions, +and from this time devoted himself to poetry and literature. Of +his zeal for learning in all its parts, he gave a proof by publishing, +the next year (1661), “Accidence commenced Grammar;” a little +book which has nothing remarkable, but that its author, who had been +lately defending the supreme powers of his country, and was then writing +“Paradise Lost,” could descend from his elevation to rescue +children from the perplexity of grammatical confusion, and the trouble +of lessons unnecessarily repeated.<br> +<br> +About this time, Elwood the Quaker, being recommended to him as one +who would read Latin to him for the advantage of his conversation, attended +him every afternoon except on Sundays. Milton, who, in his letter +to Hartlib, had declared, that “to read Latin with an English +mouth is as ill a hearing as Law French,” required that Elwood +should learn and practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, +was necessary, if he would talk with foreigners. This seems to +have been a task troublesome without use. There is little reason +for preferring the Italian pronunciation to our own, except that it +is more general; and to teach it to an Englishman is only to make him +a foreigner at home. He who travels, if he speaks Latin, may so +soon learn the sounds which every native gives it, that he need make +no provision before his journey; and if strangers visit us, it is their +business to practise such conformity to our modes as they expect from +us in their own countries. Elwood complied with the directions, +and improved himself by his attendance; for he relates, that Milton, +having a curious ear, knew by his voice when he read what he did not +understand, and would stop him, and “open the most difficult passages.”<br> +<br> +In a short time he took a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill +Fields; the mention of which concludes the register of Milton’s +removals and habitations. He lived longer in this place than any +other.<br> +<br> +He was now busied by “Paradise Lost.” Whence he drew +the original design has been variously conjectured by men who cannot +bear to think themselves ignorant of that which, at last, neither diligence +nor sagacity can discover. Some find the hint in an Italian tragedy. +Voltaire tells a wild and unauthorised story of a farce seen by Milton +in Italy which opened thus: “Let the Rainbow be the Fiddlestick +of the Fiddle of Heaven.” It has been already shown, that +the first conception was a tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but +a dramatic work which he is supposed to have began to reduce to its +present form about the time (1655) when he finished his dispute with +the defenders of the king.<br> +<br> +He long had promised to adorn his native country by some great performance, +while he had yet perhaps no settled design, and was stimulated only +by such expectations as naturally arose from the survey of his attainments, +and the consciousness of his powers. What he should undertake +it was difficult to determine. He was “long choosing, and +began late.”<br> +<br> +While he was obliged to divide his time between his private studies +and affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted; +and perhaps he did little more in that busy time than construct the +narrative, adjust the episodes, proportion the parts, accumulate images +and sentiments, and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing, +such hints as books or meditation would supply. Nothing particular +is known of his intellectual operations while he was a statesman; for, +having every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon +expedients.<br> +<br> +Being driven from all public stations, he is yet too great not to be +traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found by Mr. +Richardson, the fondest of his admirers, sitting before his door in +a grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh +air; and so, as in his own room, receiving the visits of people of distinguished +parts as well as quality. His visitors of high quality must now +be imagined to be few; but men of parts might reasonably court the conversation +of a man so generally illustrious, that foreigners are reported, by +Wood, to have visited the house in Bread Street where he was born.<br> +<br> +According to another account, he was seen in a small house, neatly enough +dressed in black clothes, sitting in a room hung with rusty green; pale +but not cadaverous, with chalkstones in his hands. He said that, +if it were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable.<br> +<br> +In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common exercises, +he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an organ.<br> +<br> +He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which +the progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for +he was obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would +conveniently retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, +at least for part of the time, no regular attendant. This gave +opportunity to observations and reports.<br> +<br> +Mr. Philips observes, that there was a very remarkable circumstance +in the composure of “Paradise Lost,” “which I have +a particular reason,” says he, “to remember; for whereas +I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, as +I went from time to time to visit him, in parcels of ten, twenty, or +thirty verses at a time (which, being written by whatever hand came +next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing), +having, as the Summer came on, not been showed any for a considerable +while, and desiring the reason thereof, was answered, that his vein +never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal; and +that whatever he attempted at other times was never to his satisfaction, +though he courted his fancy never so much; so that, in all the years +he was about this poem, he may be said to have spent half his time therein.”<br> +<br> +Upon this relation Toland remarks, that in his opinion Philips has mistaken +the time of the year; for Milton, in his Elegies, declares, that with +the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his poetical force, +<i>redeunt in carmina vires</i>. To this it is answered, that +Philips could hardly mistake time so well marked; and it may be added, +that Milton might find different times of the year favourable to different +parts of life. Mr. Richardson conceives it impossible that “such +a work should be suspended for six months, or for one. It may +go on faster or slower, but it must go on.” By what necessity +it must continually go on, or why it might not be laid aside and resumed, +it is not easy to discover.<br> +<br> +This dependence of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and periodical +ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be derided as the +fumes of vain imagination. <i>Sapiens dominabitur astris</i>. +The author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little +help from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted. But while +this notion has possession of the head, it produces the inability which +it supposes. Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes; +<i>possunt quia posse videntur</i>. When success seems attainable, +diligence is enforced; but when it is admitted that the faculties are +suppressed by a cross wind, or a cloudy sky, the day is given up without +resistance; for who can contend with the course of nature?<br> +<br> +From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free. There +prevailed in his time an opinion, that the world was in its decay, and +that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of +nature. It was suspected that the whole creation languished, that +neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors, +and that everything was daily sinking by gradual diminution. Milton +appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and +is not without some fear that his book is to be written in “an +age too late” for heroic poesy.<br> +<br> +Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception +among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind +to particular regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born +in a degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit. +From this fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, +when he feared lest the <i>climate </i>of his country might be <i>too +cold </i>for flights of imagination.<br> +<br> +Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another, not more reasonable, +might easily find its way. He that could fear lest his genius +had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might consistently +magnify to himself the influence of the seasons, and believe his faculties +to be vigorous only half the year.<br> +<br> +His submission to the seasons was at least more reasonable than his +dread of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must +operate uniformly in a general abatement of mental power; if less could +be performed by the writer, less likewise would content the judges of +his work. Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he might +still have risen into eminence by producing something which “they +should not willingly let die.” However inferior to the heroes +who were born in better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, +with the hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of posterity. +He might still be the giant of the pigmies, the one-eyed monarch of +the blind.<br> +<br> +Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have +little account, and there was perhaps little to be told. Richardson, +who seems to have been very diligent in his inquiries, but discovers +always a wish to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates that +“he would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could +he make; and on a sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon him with +an <i>impetus</i> or <i>æstrum</i>, and his daughter was immediately +called to secure what came. At other times he would dictate perhaps +forty lines in a breath, and then reduce them to half the number.”<br> +<br> +These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness, these transient +and involuntary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some +appearance of deviation from the common train of nature, are eagerly +caught by the lovers of a wonder. Yet something of this inequality +happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental. +The mechanic cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with +equal dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when <i>his hand +is out</i>. By Mr. Richardson’s relation, casually conveyed, +much regard cannot be claimed. That, in his intellectual hour, +Milton called for his daughter “to secure what came,” may +be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be known that his daughters +were never taught to write; nor would he have been obliged, as it is +universally confessed, to have employed any casual visitor in disburdening +his memory, if his daughter could have performed the office.<br> +<br> +The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors; +and, though doubtless true of every fertile and copious mind, seems +to have been gratuitously transferred to Milton.<br> +<br> +What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed +much of this poem in the night and morning, I suppose before his mind +was disturbed with common business; and that he poured out with great +fluency his “unpremeditated verse.” Versification, +free, like this, from the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, +be made prompt and habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, +the words would come at his command.<br> +<br> +At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written, +cannot often be known. The beginning of the third book shows that +he had lost his sight, and the introduction to the seventh, that the +return of the king had clouded him with discountenance; and that he +was offended by the licentious festivity of the Restoration. There +are no other internal notes of time. Milton, being now cleared +from all effects of his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but +the common duty of living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right +of protection; but this, which, when he skulked from the approach of +his king, was perhaps more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied +him; for no sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger, “fallen +on evil days and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compassed +round.” This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, +had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger +was ungrateful and unjust. He was fallen indeed on “evil +days;” the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast +their wickedness. But of “evil tongues” for Milton +to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; +Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow that he never spared any +asperity of reproach or brutality of insolence.<br> +<br> +But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to recollect +any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous, through the +whole remaining part of his life. He pursued his studies or his +amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult. Such +is the reverence paid to great abilities, however misused; they, who +contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget +the reviler of his king.<br> +<br> +When the plague (1665) raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont, +in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a +complete copy of “Paradise Lost,” and, having perused it, +said to him, “Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; +what hast thou to say upon Paradise Found?”<br> +<br> +Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to Bunhill +Fields, and designed the publication of his poem. A licence was +necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of +the Archbishop of Canterbury. He seems, however, to have been +treated with tenderness; for, though objections were made to particular +passages, and among them to the simile of the sun eclipsed in the first +book, yet the licence was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, +to Samuel Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation +to receive five pounds more when thirteen hundred should be sold of +the first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same +number of the second edition; and another five pounds after the same +sale of the third. None of the three editions were to be extended +beyond fifteen hundred copies.<br> +<br> +The first edition was ten books, in a small quarto. The titles +were varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments +of the books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.<br> +<br> +The sale gave him in two years a right to his second payment, for which +the receipt was signed April 26, 1669. The second edition was +not given till 1674; it was printed in small octave; and the number +of books was increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth; +and some other small improvements were made. The third edition +was published in 1678; and the widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, +sold all her claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt +given December 21, 1680. Simmons had already agreed to transfer +the whole right to Brabazon Aylmer for £25; and Aylmer sold to +Jacob Tonson half, August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price +considerably enlarged. In the history of “Paradise Lost” +a deduction thus minute will rather gratify than fatigue.<br> +<br> +The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always mentioned +as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary +fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered, about the +causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the case +been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished +on an evil that was never felt?<br> +<br> +That in the reigns of Charles and James the “Paradise Lost “ +received no public acclamations is readily confessed. Wit and +literature were on the side of the court: and who that solicited favour +or fashion would venture to praise the defender of the regicides? +All that he himself could think his due, from “evil tongues” +in “evil days,” was that reverential silence which was generously +preserved. But it cannot be inferred that his poem was not read, +or not, however unwillingly, admired.<br> +<br> +The sale, if it be considered, will justify the public. Those +who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always +doubt their conclusions. The call for books was not, in Milton’s +age, what it is at present. To read was not then a general amusement; +neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by +ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was +every house supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those, indeed, +who professed learning, were not less learned than at any other time; +but of that middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, +and who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was +then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it +may be sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from +1623 to 1664 - that is, forty-one years - with only two editions of +the works of Shakespeare, which probably did not together make one thousand +copies.<br> +<br> +The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so +much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all and disgusting +to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius. +The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than +were supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand +were sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; +its admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities +now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; +the means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced +by that general literature which now pervades the nation through all +its ranks. But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, +till the Revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and “Paradise +Lost” broke into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.<br> +<br> +Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed +the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing +its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence. +I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not +at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, +and waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the +impartiality of a future generation.<br> +<br> +In the meantime he continued his studies, and supplied the want of sight +by a very odd expedient, of which Phillips gives the following account:-<br> +<br> +Mr. Philips tells us, “that though our author had daily about +him one or other to read, some persons of man’s estate, who, of +their own accord, greedily catched at the opportunity of being his readers, +that they might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as +oblige him by the benefit of their reading; and others of younger years +were sent by their parents to the same end; yet excusing only the eldest +daughter by reason of her bodily infirmity and difficult utterance of +speech (which, to say truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing +her), the other two were condemned to the performance of reading and +exactly pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he should, +at one time or other, think fit to peruse, viz., the Hebrew (and I think +the Syriac), the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French. +All which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding +one word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance. +Yet it was endured by both for a long time, though the irksomeness of +this employment could not be always concealed, but broke out more and +more into expressions of uneasiness; so that at length they were all, +even the eldest also, sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts +of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn, particularly embroideries +in gold or silver.”<br> +<br> +In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets before +our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the father +are most to be lamented. A language not understood can never be +so read as to give pleasure, and very seldom so as to convey meaning. +If few men would have had resolution, to write books with such embarrassments, +few likewise would have wanted ability to find some better expedient.<br> +<br> +Three years after his “Paradise Lost” (1667) he published +his “History of England,” comprising the whole fable of +Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued to the Norman Invasion. Why +he should have given the first part, which he seems not to believe, +and which is universally rejected, it is difficult to conjecture. +The style is harsh; but it has something of rough vigour, which perhaps +may often strike, though it cannot please.<br> +<br> +On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and before he could +transmit it to the press tore out several parts. Some censures +of the Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the +modern clergy; and a character of the Long Parliament, and Assembly +of Divines, was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the Earl +of Anglesea, and which, being afterwards published, has been since inserted +in its proper place.<br> +<br> +The same year were printed “Paradise Regained;” and “Samson +Agonistes,” a tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and +never designed by the author for the stage. As these poems were +published by another bookseller, it has been asked whether Simmons was +discouraged from receiving them by the slow sale of the former. +Why a writer changed his bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from +hoping to discover. Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen +hundred copies of a volume in quarto, bought for two payments of five +pounds each, has no reason to repent his purchase.<br> +<br> +When Milton showed “Paradise Regained” to Elwood, “This,” +said he, “is owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question +you put to me at Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of.”<br> +<br> +His last poetical offspring was his favourite. He could not, as +Elwood relates, endure to hear “Paradise Lost” preferred +to “Paradise Regained.” Many causes may vitiate a +writer’s judgment of his own works. On that which has cost +him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think +that he has been diligent in vain; what has been produced without toilsome +efforts is considered with delight, as a proof of vigorous faculties +and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily +most of the grace of novelty. Milton, however it happened, had +this prejudice, and had it to himself.<br> +<br> +To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that +entitled this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind of +humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to literature. +The epic poet, the controvertist, the politician, having already descended +to accommodate children with a book of rudiments, now, in the last years +of his life, composed a book of logic for the initiation of students +in philosophy; and published (1672) “Artis Logicæ plenior +Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata;” that is, “A +new Scheme of Logic, according to the method of Ramus.” +I know not whether, even in this book, he did not intend an act of hostility +against the universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of +the old philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the +schools.<br> +<br> +His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe +so long that he forgot his fears, and published a “Treatise of +True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the Best Means to Prevent +the Growth of Popery.”<br> +<br> +But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of +the Church of England and an appeal to the Thirty-nine Articles. +His principle of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the +Scriptures; and he extends it to all who, whatever their opinions are, +profess to derive them from the sacred books. The Papists appeal +to other testimonies, and are therefore, in his opinion, not to be permitted +the liberty of either public or private worship; for though they plead +conscience, “we have no warrant,” he says, “to regard +conscience which is not grounded in Scripture.”<br> +<br> +Those who are not convinced by his reasons, may perhaps be delighted +with his wit. The term “Roman Catholic is,” he says, +“one of the Pope’s Bulls; it is particular universal, or +Catholic schismatic.”<br> +<br> +He has, however, something better. As the best preservative against +Popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the Scriptures, a duty +from which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves +excused.<br> +<br> +He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions.<br> +<br> +In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take delight +in publication, a collection of “Familiar Epistles in Latin;” +to which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical exercises, +which perhaps he perused with pleasure, as they recalled to his memory +the days of youth; but for which nothing but veneration for his name +could now procure a reader.<br> +<br> +When he had attained his sixty-sixth year, the gout, with which he had +been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature. +He died by a quiet and silent expiration, about the 10th of November, +1674, at his house in Bunhill Fields; and was buried next his father +in the chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate. His funeral was very +splendidly and numerously attended.<br> +<br> +Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our +time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey “To the +Author of ‘Paradise Lost,’” by Mr. Benson, who has +in the inscription bestowed more words upon himself than upon Milton.<br> +<br> +When the inscription for the monument of Philips, in which he was said +to be <i>soli Miltono secundus</i>, was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then +Dean of Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, +in his opinion, too detestable to be read on the wall of a building +dedicated to devotion. Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author +of the inscription, permitted its reception. “And such has +been the change of public opinion,” said Dr. Gregory, from whom +I heard this account, “that I have seen erected in the church +a statue of that man, whose name I once knew considered as a pollution +of its walls.”<br> +<br> +Milton has the reputation of having been in his youth eminently beautiful, +so as to have been called the lady of his college. His hair, which +was of a light brown, parted at the fore-top, and hung down upon his +shoulders, according to the picture which he has given of Adam. +He was, however, not of the heroic stature, but rather below the middle +size, according to Mr. Richardson, who mentions him as having narrowly +escaped from being “short and thick.” He was vigorous +and active, and delighted in the exercise of the sword, in which he +is related to have been eminently skilful. His weapon was, I believe, +not the rapier, but the back-sword, of which he recommends the use in +his book on education.<br> +<br> +His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous +fencer, they must have been once quick.<br> +<br> +His domestic habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe +student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without +excess in quantity, and in his earlier years without delicacy of choice. +In his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed his hours, +and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer and five in the winter. +The course of his day was best known after he was blind. When +he first rose, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then studied +till twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined, then played +on the organ, and sang, or heard another sing, then studied till six; +then entertained his visitors till eight; then supped, and, after a +pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.<br> +<br> +So is his life described; but this even tenour appears attainable only +in colleges. He that lives in the world will sometimes have the +succession of his practice broken and confused. Visitors, of whom +Milton is represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay +unseasonably; business, of which every man has some, must be done when +others will do it.<br> +<br> +When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by +his bedside; perhaps at this time his daughters were employed. +He composed much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely +in an elbow-chair, with his leg thrown over the arm. Fortune appears +not to have had much of his care. In the civil wars, he lent his +personal estate to the Parliament; but when, after the contest was decided, +he solicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but “sharp +rebuke;” and, having tired both himself and his friends, was given +up to poverty and hopeless indignation, till he showed how able he was +to do greater service. He was then made Latin Secretary, with +two hundred pounds a year; and had a thousand pounds for his “Defence +of the People.” His widow, who, after his death, retired +to Nantwich, in Cheshire, and died about 1729, is said to have reported +that he lost two thousand pounds by entrusting it to a scrivener; and +that, in the general depredation upon the Church, he had grasped an +estate of about sixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster Abbey, +which, like other sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards +obliged to return. Two thousand pounds which he had placed in +the Excise Office were also lost. There is yet no reason to believe +that he was ever reduced to indigence. His wants, being few, were +competently supplied. He sold his library before his death, and +left his family fifteen hundred pounds, on which his widow laid hold, +and only gave one hundred to each of his daughters.<br> +<br> +His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages +which are considered either as learned or polite: Hebrew, with its two +dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. In Latin +his skill was such as places him in the first rank of writers and critics; +and he appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence. +The books in which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented +him as most delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were +Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” and Euripides. His Euripides +is, by Mr. Cradock’s kindness, now in my hands: the margin is +sometimes noted; but I have found nothing remarkable.<br> +<br> +Of the English poets he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and +Cowley. Spenser was apparently his favourite; Shakespeare he may<i> +</i>easily be supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but +I should not have expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were +different from his own, would have had much of his approbation. +His character of Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was +a good rhymist, but no poet.<br> +<br> +His theological opinions are said to have been first Calvinistical; +and afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the Presbyterians, to +have tended towards Arminianism. In the mixed questions of theology +and government, he never thinks that he can recede far enough from Popery, +or Prelacy; but what Baudius says of Erasmus seems applicable to him, +“<i>Magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod sequeretur</i>.” +He had determined rather what to condemn, than what to approve. +He has not associated himself with any denomination of Protestants: +we know rather what he was not than what he was. He was not of +the Church of Rome; he was not of the Church of England.<br> +<br> +To be of no Church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards +are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide +by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed +by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary +influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had a full conviction +of the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures +with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical +peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the +immediate and occasional agency of Providence, yet grew old without +any visible worship. In the distribution of his hours, there was +no hour of prayer, either solitary or with his household; omitting public +prayers, he omitted all.<br> +<br> +Of this omission the reason has been sought upon a supposition which +ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and +justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not +thought superfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying +acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their +fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his +studies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of +it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned himself, +and which he intended to correct; but that death, as too often happens, +intercepted his reformation.<br> +<br> +His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly Republican; +for which it is not known that he gave any better reason than that “a +popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy +would set up an ordinary commonwealth.” It is surely very +shallow policy that supposes money to be the chief good; and even this, +without considering that the support and expense of a court is, for +the most part, only a particular kind of traffic, for which money is +circulated, without any national impoverishment.<br> +<br> +Milton’s Republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious +hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance +impatient of control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He +hated monarchs in the State, and prelates in the Church; for he hated +all whom he was required to obey. It is to be suspected that his +predominant desire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he +felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority.<br> +<br> +It has been observed that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do +not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton’s character, +in domestic relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His +family consisted of women; and there appears in his books something +like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior beings. +That his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to +be depressed by a mean and penurious education. He thought woman +made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion.<br> +<br> +Of his family some account may be expected. His sister, first +married to Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her +first husband, who succeeded him in the Crown office. She had, +by her first husband, Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; +and by her second, two daughters.<br> +<br> +His brother, Sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catharine, +and a son, Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the Crown office, and left +a daughter living in 1749 in Grosvenor Street.<br> +<br> +Milton had children only by his first wife: Anne, Mary, and Deborah. +Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died of her first +child. Mary died single. Deborah married Abraham Clark, +a weaver in Spitalfields, and lived seventy-six years, to August, 1727. +This is the daughter of whom public mention has been made. She +could repeat the first lines of Homer, the “Metamorphoses,” +and some of Euripides, by having often read them. Yet here incredulity +is ready to make a stand. Many repetitions are necessary to fix +in memory lines not understood; and why should Milton wish or want to +hear them so often? These lines were at the beginning of the poems. +Of a book written in a language not understood, the beginning raises +no more attention than the end; and as those that understand it know +commonly the beginning best, its rehearsal will seldom be necessary. +It is not likely that Milton required any passage to be so much repeated +as that his daughter could learn it; nor likely that he desired the +initial lines to be read at all; nor that the daughter, weary of the +drudgery of pronouncing unideal sounds, would voluntarily commit them +to memory.<br> +<br> +To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some establishment, +but died soon after. Queen Caroline sent her fifty guineas. +She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had any children, +except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb went to +Fort St. George, in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom nothing +now is known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spitalfields, +and had seven children, who all died. She kept a petty grocer’s +or chandler’s shop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock +Lane, near Shoreditch Church. She knew little of her grandfather, +and that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his +daughters, and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in opposition +to other accounts, represented him as delicate, though temperate, in +his diet.<br> +<br> +In 1750, April 5th, <i>Comus </i>was played for her benefit. She +had so little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not +know what was intended when a benefit was offered her. The profits +of the night were only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton +brought a large contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, +a man who is to be praised as often as he is named. Of this sum +one hundred pounds were placed in the stocks, after some debate between +her and her husband in whose name it should be entered; and the rest +augmented their little stock, with which they removed to Islington. +This was the greatest benefaction that “Paradise Lost” ever +procured the author’s descendants; and to this he who has now +attempted to relate his Life, had the honour of contributing a Prologue.<br> +<br> +In the examination of Milton’s poetical works, I shall pay so +much regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. +For his early pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very +laudable; what he has once written he resolves to preserve, and gives +to the public an unfinished poem which he broke off because he was “nothing +satisfied with what he had done,” supposing his readers less nice +than himself. These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, +Latin, and English. Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as +a critic; but I have heard them commended by a man well qualified to +decide their merit. The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant: but +the delight which they afford is rather by the exquisite imitation of +the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the harmony of +the numbers, than by any power of invention or vigour of sentiment. +They are not all of equal value; the elegies excel the odes; and some +of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason might have been spared.<br> +<br> +The English poems, though they make no promises of “Paradise Lost,” +have this evidence of genius - that they have a cast original and unborrowed. +But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from the verses +of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often distinguished +by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are new, but they +are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be laboriously sought, +and violently applied.<br> +<br> +That in the early parts of his life he wrote with much care appears +from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many +of his smaller works are found as they were first written, with the +subsequent corrections. Such relics show how excellence is acquired; +what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.<br> +<br> +Those who admire the beauties of this great poet sometimes force their +own judgment into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail +upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. +All that short compositions can commonly attain is neatness and elegance. +Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked +the milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a “Lion” +that had no skill in “dandling the Kid.”<br> +<br> +One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is “Lycidas;” +of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers +unpleasing. What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the +sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion +of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure +opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor +calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough “satyrs” +and “fauns with cloven heel.” Where there is leisure +for fiction, there is little grief.<br> +<br> +In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no +art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral; +easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can supply +are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces +dissatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey, that +they studied together, it is easy to suppose how much he must miss the +companion of his labours, and the partner of his discoveries; but what +image of tenderness can be excited by these lines? -<br> +<br> +<br> +We drove afield, and both together heard<br> +What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn,<br> +Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.<br> +<br> +<br> +We know that they never drove afield, and that they had no flocks to +batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, +the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is never sought, +because it cannot be known when it is found.<br> +<br> +Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen deities; +Jove and Phœbus, Neptune and Æolus, with a long train of +mythological imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing +can less display knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell +how a shepherd has lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks +alone, without any judge of his skill in piping; and how one god asks +another god what is become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. +He who thus grieves will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will +confer no honour.<br> +<br> +This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions +are mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to +be polluted with such irreverent combinations. The shepherd likewise +is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a +superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always +unskilful; but here they are indecent, and at least approach to impiety, +of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been conscious.<br> +<br> +Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze drives +away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could have fancied +that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the author.<br> +<br> +Of the two pieces, “L’Allegro” and “il Penseroso,” +I believe, opinion is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them +with pleasure. The author’s design is not, what Theobald +has remarked, merely to show how objects derive their colours from the +mind, by representing the operation of the same things upon the gay +and the melancholy temper, or upon the same man as he is differently +disposed; but rather how, among the successive variety of appearances, +every disposition of mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified.<br> +<br> +The <i>cheerful </i>man hears the lark in the morning; the<i> pensive +</i>man hears the nightingale in the evening. The <i>cheerful +</i>man sees the cock strut, and hears the horn and hounds echo in the +wood; then walks, <i>not unseen</i>,<i> </i>to observe the glory of +the rising sun, or listen to the singing milkmaid, and view the labours +of the ploughman and the mower; then casts his eyes about him over scenes +of smiling plenty, and looks up to the distant tower, the residence +of some fair inhabitant; thus he pursues real gaiety through a day of +labour or of play, and delights himself at night with the fanciful narratives +of superstitious ignorance.<br> +<br> +The <i>pensive </i>man at one time walks <i>unseen </i>to muse at midnight, +and at another hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives +him home, he sits in a room lighted only by “glowing embers;” +or by a lonely lamp outwatches the North Star, to discover the habitation +of separate souls, and varies the Shades of meditation by contemplating +the magnificent or pathetic scenes of tragic and epic poetry. +When the morning comes - a morning gloomy with rain and wind - he walks +into the dark, trackless woods, falls asleep by some murmuring water, +and with melancholy enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, +or some music played by aërial performers.<br> +<br> +Both mirth and melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the breast, +that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is therefore +made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The seriousness +does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the gaiety from +the pleasures of the bottle.<br> +<br> +The man of <i>cheerfulness</i>,<i> </i>having exhausted the country, +tries what “towered cities” will afford, and mingles with +scenes of splendour, gay assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he +mingles a mere spectator, as, when the learned comedies of Jonson, or +the wild dramas of Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.<br> +<br> +The <i>pensive </i>man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the +cloister, or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not +yet forsaken the Church.<br> +<br> +Both his characters delight in music; but he seems to think that cheerful +notes would have obtained from Pluto a complete dismission of Eurydice, +of whom solemn sounds procured only a conditional release.<br> +<br> +For the old age of Cheerfulness he makes no provision: but Melancholy +he conducts with great dignity to the close of life. His Cheerfulness +is without levity, and his Pensiveness without asperity.<br> +<br> +Through these two poems the images are properly selected and nicely +distinguished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently +discriminated. I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently +apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I +am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth. They +are two noble efforts of imagination.<br> +<br> +The greatest of his juvenile performances is the “Mask of <i>Comus,</i>”<i> +</i>in which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of +“Paradise Lost.” Milton appears to have formed very +early that system of diction, and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment +approved, and from which he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate.<br> +<br> +Nor does <i>Comus </i>afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits +likewise his power of description and his vigour of sentiment, employed +in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical +is rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish +almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines, +therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with +which the votaries have received it.<br> +<br> +As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. +A mask, in those parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, +must indeed be given up to all the freaks of imagination, but so far +as the action is merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can +hardly be said of the conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister +sinks with fatigue in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together +in search of berries too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless +lady to all the sadness and danger of solitude. This, however, +is a defect over-balanced by its convenience.<br> +<br> +What deserves more reprehension is, that the prologue spoken in the +wild wood by the attendant Spirit is addressed to the audience; a mode +of communication so contrary to the nature of dramatic representation, +that no precedents can support it.<br> +<br> +The discourse of the Spirit is too long; an objection that may be made +to almost all the following speeches; they have not the sprightliness +of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather declamations +deliberately composed, and formally repeated, on a moral question. +The auditor therefore listens as to a lecture, without passion, without +anxiety.<br> +<br> +The song of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend +Milton’s morals as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure +are so general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment, +and take no dangerous hold on the fancy.<br> +<br> +The following soliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant but tedious. +The song must owe much to the voice if it ever can delight. At +last the Brothers enter with too much tranquillity; and, when they have +feared lest their Sister should be in danger, and hoped that she is +not in danger, the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the +younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.<br> +<br> +Then descends the Spirit in form of a shepherd; and the Brother, instead +of being in haste to ask his help, praises his singing, and inquires +his business in that place. It is remarkable, that at this interview +the Brother is taken with a short fit of rhyming, The Spirit relates +that the Lady is in the power of Comus; the Brother moralises again; +and the Spirit makes a long narration, of no use because it is false, +and therefore unsuitable to a good being.<br> +<br> +In all these parts the language is poetical, and the sentiments are +generous; but there is something wanting to allure attention.<br> +<br> +The dispute between the Lady and Comus is the most animated and affecting +scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker reciprocation of +objections and replies to invite attention, and detain it.<br> +<br> +The songs are vigorous and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their +diction, and not very musical in their numbers.<br> +<br> +Throughout the whole the figures are too bold, and the language too +luxuriant for dialogue. It is a drama in the epic style, inelegantly +splendid, and tediously instructive.<br> +<br> +The sonnets were written in different parts of Milton’s life, +upon different occasions. They deserve not any particular criticism; +for of the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and perhaps +only the eighth and twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender +commendation. The fabric of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian +language, has never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety +of termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.<br> +<br> +Those little pieces may be despatched without much anxiety; a greater +work calls for greater care. I am now to examine “Paradise +Lost;” a poem which, considered with respect to design, may claim +the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among +the productions of the human mind.<br> +<br> +By the general consent of critics the first praise of genius is due +to the writer of an epic poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the +powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry +is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to +the help of reason. Epic poetry undertakes to teach the most important +truths by the most pleasing precepts, and therefore relates some great +event in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer +with the rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by +a nobler art, must animate by dramatic energy, and diversify by retrospection +and anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different +shades, of vice and virtue; from policy, and the practice of life, he +has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the +passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him +with illustrations and images. To put those materials to poetical +use, is required an imagination capable of painting nature and realising +fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension +of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all +the colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to +all the varieties of metrical modulation.<br> +<br> +Bossu is of opinion, that the poet’s first work is to find a <i>moral</i>,<i> +</i>which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. +This seems to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other +poems is incidental and consequent; in Milton’s only it is essential +and intrinsic. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous: +“to vindicate the ways of God to man;” to show the reasonableness +of religion, and the necessity of obedience to the Divine Law.<br> +<br> +To convey this moral there must be a <i>fable</i>,<i> </i>a narration +artfully constructed, so as to excite curiosity and surprise expectation. +In this part of his work Milton must be confessed to have equalled every +other poet. He has involved in his account of the Fall of Man +the events which preceded and those that were to follow it: he has interwoven +the whole system of theology with such propriety, that every part appears +to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the +sake of quickening the progress of the main action.<br> +<br> +The subject of an epic poem is naturally an event of great importance. +That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a colony, +or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of worlds, +the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against the Supreme +King, raised by the highest order of created beings; the overthrow of +their host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation of a new +race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and innocence, +their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to hope and peace.<br> +<br> +Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated +dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton’s poem, +all other greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are +the highest and noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; +with whose actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude or deviation +of will, depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the condition +of all the future inhabitants of the globe.<br> +<br> +Of the other agents in the poem, the chief are such as it is irreverence +to name on slight occasions. The rest were lower powers -<br> +<br> +<br> + Of which the least could wield<br> +Those elements, and arm him with the force<br> +Of all their regions;<br> +<br> +<br> +powers, which only the control of Omnipotence restrains from laying +creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and +confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus superior, +so far as human reason can examine them, or human imagination represent +them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.<br> +<br> +In the examination of epic poems much speculation is commonly employed +upon the <i>characters</i>. The characters in the “Paradise +Lost,” which admit of examination, are those of angels and of +man; of angels good and evil; of man in his innocent and sinful state.<br> +<br> +Among the angels, the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy +condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and lofty, +and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature. +Abdiel and Gabriel appear occasionally, and act as every incident requires; +the solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very amiably painted.<br> +<br> +Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified. To Satan, +as Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit “the most +exalted and most depraved being.” Milton has been censured +by Clarke, for the impiety which sometimes breaks from Satan’s +mouth; for there are thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation +of character can justify, because no good man would willingly permit +them to pass, however transiently, through his own mind. To make +Satan speak as a rebel, without any such expression as might taint the +reader’s imagination, was indeed one of the great difficulties +in Milton’s undertaking; and I cannot but think that he has extricated +himself with great happiness. There is in Satan’s speeches +little that can give pain to a pious ear. The language of rebellion +cannot be the same with that of obedience. The malignity of Satan +foams in haughtiness and obstinacy; but his expressions are commonly +general, and no otherwise offensive than as they are wicked.<br> +<br> +The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously discriminated +in the first and second books; and the ferocious character of Moloch +appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact consistency.<br> +<br> +To Adam and to Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments +as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence +and mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence +without toil. Their addresses to their Maker have little more +than the voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them +nothing to ask; and innocence left them nothing to fear.<br> +<br> +But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and stubborn +self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and dread +their Creator as the avenger of their transgression. At last they +seek shelter in His mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in supplication. +Both before and after the fall, the superiority of Adam is diligently +sustained.<br> +<br> +Of the <i>probable </i>and the <i>marvellous</i>,<i> </i>two parts of +a vulgar epic poem which immerge the critic in deep consideration, the +“Paradise Lost” requires little to be said. It contains +the history of a miracle, of creation and redemption; it displays the +power and the mercy of the Supreme Being; the probable therefore is +marvellous, and the marvellous is probable. The substance of the +narrative is truth; and, as truth allows no choice, it is, like necessity, +superior to rule. To the accidental or adventitious parts, as +to everything human, some slight exceptions may be made; but the main +fabric is immovably supported.<br> +<br> +It is justly remarked by Addison, that this poem has, by the nature +of its subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally +and perpetually interesting. All mankind will, through all ages, +bear the same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that +good and evil which extend to themselves.<br> +<br> +Of the <i>machinery</i>,<i> </i>so called from Θεòς +απò μηχανης, by which +is meant the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another +fertile topic of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because +everything is done under the immediate and visible direction of Heaven; +but the rule is so far observed, that no part of the action could have +been accomplished by any other means.<br> +<br> +Of <i>episodes</i>,<i> </i>I think there are only two - contained in +Raphael’s relation of the war in Heaven, and Michael’s prophetic +account of the changes to happen in this world. Both are closely +connected with the great action; one was necessary to Adam as a warning, +the other as a consolation.<br> +<br> +To the completeness or <i>integrity </i>of the design nothing can be +objected; it has distinctly and clearly what Aristotle requires - a +beginning, a middle, and an end. There is perhaps no poem, of +the same length, from which so little can be taken without apparent +mutilation. Here are no funeral games, nor is there any long description +of a shield. The short digressions at the beginning of the third, +seventh, and ninth books, might doubtless be spared, but superfluities +so beautiful who would take away? or who does not wish that the author +of the “Iliad” had gratified succeeding ages with a little +knowledge of himself? Perhaps no passages are more attentively +read than those extrinsic paragraphs; and, since the end of poetry is +pleasure, that cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.<br> +<br> +The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly <i>one</i>,<i> +</i>whether the poem can be properly termed <i>heroic</i>,<i> </i>and +who is the hero, are raised by such readers as draw their principles +of judgment rather from books than from reason. Milton, though +he entitled “Paradise Lost” only a “poem,” yet +calls it himself “heroic song.” Dryden petulantly +and indecently denies the heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; +but there is no reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except +established practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily +together. Cato is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan’s authority +will not be suffered by Quintilian to decide. However, if success +be necessary, Adam’s deceiver was at last crushed; Adam was restored +to his Maker’s favour, and therefore may securely resume his human +rank.<br> +<br> +After the scheme and fabric of the poem, must be considered its component +parts, the sentiments and the diction.<br> +<br> +The <i>sentiments</i>,<i> </i>as expressive of manners, or appropriated +to characters, are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just.<br> +<br> +Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of prudence, +occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this poem, that, +as it admits no human manners till the Fall, it can give little assistance +to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary +cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of that fortitude, with which +Abdiel maintained his singularity of virtue against the scorn of multitudes, +may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael’s reproof of Adam’s +curiosity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned by Adam, +may be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet has delivered.<br> +<br> +The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress are +such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree +fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study +and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton’s mind may be +said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit +of science, unmingled with its grosser parts.<br> +<br> +He had considered creation in its whole extent, and his descriptions +are therefore learned. He had accustomed his imagination to unrestrained +indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extensive. The +characteristic quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes +descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can +occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantic +loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is +his peculiar power to astonish.<br> +<br> +He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know +what it was that Nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than +upon others - the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, +enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful; +he therefore chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on +which he might tire his fancy without the censure of extravagance.<br> +<br> +The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate +his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are requires +a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. +Milton’s delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; +reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties +out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and +delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and +action to superior beings; to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany +the choirs of heaven.<br> +<br> +But he could not be always in other worlds; he must sometimes revisit +earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise +wonder by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.<br> +<br> +Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. +But his images and descriptions of the scenes or operations of nature +do not seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the +freshness, raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He saw +nature, as Dryden expresses it, “through the spectacles of books;” +and on most occasions calls learning to his assistance. The garden +of Eden brings to his mind the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering +flowers. Satan makes his way through fighting elements, like Argo +between the Cyanean rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, +when he shunned Charybdis on the larboard. The mythological allusions +have been justly censured, as not being always used with notice of their +vanity; but they contribute variety to the narration, and produce an +alternate exercise of the memory and the fancy.<br> +<br> +His similes are less numerous, and more various, than those of his predecessors. +But he does not confine himself within the limits of rigorous comparison: +his great excellence is amplitude; and he expands the adventitious image +beyond the dimensions which the occasion required. Thus, comparing +the shield of Satan to the orb of the moon, he crowds the imagination +with the discovery of the telescope, and all the wonders which the telescope +discovers.<br> +<br> +Of his moral sentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel +those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his +acquaintance with the sacred writings. The ancient epic poets, +wanting the light of Revelation, were very unskilful teachers of virtue; +their principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable. +The reader may rise from their works with a greater degree of active +or passive fortitude, and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able +to carry away few precepts of justice, and none of mercy.<br> +<br> +From the Italian writers it appears that the advantages of even Christian +knowledge may be possessed in vain. Ariosto’s pravity is +generally known; and, though the “Deliverance of Jerusalem” +may be considered as a sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing +of moral instruction.<br> +<br> +In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity of manners, +except when the train of the narration requires the introduction of +the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled to acknowledge their +subjection to God, in such a manner as excites reverence and confirms +piety.<br> +<br> +Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of +mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and +amiable after it for repentance and submission. In the first state +their affection is tender without weakness, and their piety sublime +without presumption. When they have sinned, they show how discord +begins in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; +how confidence of the Divine favour is forfeited by sin, and how hope +of pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of +innocence we can only conceive, if indeed, in our present misery, it +be possible to conceive it; but the sentiments and worship proper to +a fallen and offending being, we have all to learn, as we have all to +practise.<br> +<br> +The poet, whatever be done, is always great. Our progenitors in +their first state conversed with angels; even when folly and sin had +degraded them, they had not in their humiliation “the port of +mean suitors;” and they rise again to reverential regard, when +we find that their prayers were heard.<br> +<br> +As human passions did not enter the world before the Fall, there is +in the “Paradise Lost” little opportunity for the pathetic; +but what little there is has not been lost. That passion, which +is peculiar to rational nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness +of transgression, and the horrors attending the sense of the Divine +displeasure, are very justly described and forcibly impressed. +But the passions are moved only on one occasion; sublimity is the general +and prevailing quality in this poem; sublimity variously modified - +sometimes descriptive, sometimes argumentative.<br> +<br> +The defects and faults of “Paradise Lost” - for faults and +defects every work of man must have - it is the business of impartial +criticism to discover. As, in displaying the excellence of Milton, +I have not made long quotations, because of selecting beauties there +had been no end, I shall in the same general manner mention that which +seems to deserve censure; for what Englishman can take delight in transcribing +passages, which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish in +some degree the honour of our country?<br> +<br> +The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal +inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps better skilled in grammar and poetry, +has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he imputed +to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the author’s blindness obliged +him to employ; a supposition rash and groundless, if he thought it true; +and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he in private allowed it to +be false.<br> +<br> +The plan of “Paradise Lost” has this inconvenience, that +it comprises neither human actions nor human manners. The man +and woman who act and suffer are in a state which no other man or woman +can ever know. The reader finds no transaction in which he can +be engaged - beholds no condition in which he can by any effort of imagination +place himself; he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy.<br> +<br> +We all, indeed, feel the effects of Adam’s disobedience; we all +sin like Adam, and like him must all bewail our offences; we have restless +and insidious enemies in the fallen angels, and in the blessed spirits +we have guardians and friends; in the redemption of mankind we hope +to be included; in the description of heaven and hell we are surely +interested, as we are all to reside hereafter either in the regions +of horror or bliss.<br> +<br> +But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught +to our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar +conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture +of life. Being therefore not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion +in the mind; what we knew before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected, +cannot surprise.<br> +<br> +Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we recede with +reverence, except when stated hours require their association; and from +others we shrink with horror, or admit them only as salutary inflictions, +as counterpoises to our interests and passions. Such images rather +obstruct the career of fancy than incite it.<br> +<br> +Pleasure and terror are indeed the genuine sources of poetry; but poetical +pleasure must be such as human imagination can at least conceive, and +poetical terrors such as human strength and fortitude may combat. +The good and evil of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of wit; +the mind sinks under them in passive helplessness, content with calm +belief and humble adoration.<br> +<br> +Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed +to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton +has undertaken and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar +to himself. Whoever considers the few radical positions which +the Scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetic operation +he expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to so much variety, +restrained as he was by religious reverence from licentiousness of fiction.<br> +<br> +Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius - of +a great accumulation of materials, with judgment to digest and fancy +to combine them: Milton was able to select from nature or from story, +from an ancient fable or from modern science, whatever could illustrate +or adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated +his mind, fermented by study and exalted by imagination.<br> +<br> +It has been therefore said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one of +his encomiasts, that in reading “Paradise Lost” we read +a book of universal knowledge.<br> +<br> +But original deficiency cannot be supplied. The want of human +interest is always felt. “Paradise Lost” is one of +the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take +up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal +is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, +retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; +we desert our master, and seek for companions.<br> +<br> +Another inconvenience of Milton’s design is, that it requires +the description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. +He saw that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not +show angels acting but by instruments of action; he therefore invested +them with form and matter. This, being necessary, was therefore +defensible; and he should have secured the consistency of his system, +by keeping immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop +it from his thoughts. But he has unhappily perplexed his poetry +with his philosophy. His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes +pure spirit, and sometimes animated body. When Satan walks with +his lance upon the “burning marl,” he has a body; when, +in his passage between hell and the new world, he is in danger of sinking +in the vacuity, and is supported by a gust of rising vapours, he has +a body; when he animates the toad, he seems to be more spirit, that +can penetrate matter at pleasure; when he “starts up in his own +shape,” he has at least a determined form; and when he is brought +before Gabriel, he has “a spear and a shield,” which he +had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the contending +angels are evidently material.<br> +<br> +The vulgar inhabitants of Pandæmonium, being “incorporeal +spirits,” are “at large, though without number,” in +a limited space: yet in the battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, +their armour hurt them, “crushed in upon their substance, now +grown gross by sinning.” This likewise happened to the uncorrupted +angels, who were overthrown the “sooner for their arms, for unarmed +they might easily as spirits have evaded by contraction or remove.” +Even as spirits they are hardly spiritual: for “contraction” +and “remove” are images of matter; but if they could have +escaped without their armour, they might have escaped from it, and left +only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he rides on a +sunbeam, is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of the prowess +of Adam.<br> +<br> +The confusion of spirit and matter, which pervades the whole narration +of the war of heaven, fills it with incongruity; and the book in which +it is related is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually +neglected as knowledge is increased.<br> +<br> +After the operation of immaterial agents, which cannot be explained, +may be considered that of allegorical persons which have no real existence. +To exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and +animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry. +But such airy beings are, for the most part, suffered only to do their +natural office, and retire. Thus Fame tells a tale, and Victory +hovers over a general, or perches on a standard; but Fame and Victory +can do no more. To give them any real employment, or ascribe to +them any material agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but +to shock the mind by ascribing effects to nonentity. In the “Prometheus” +of Æschylus, we see Violence and Strength, and in the “Alcestis” +of Euripides we see Death, brought upon the stage, all as active persons +of the drama; but no precedents can justify absurdity.<br> +<br> +Milton’s allegory of Sin and Death is undoubtedly faulty. +Sin is indeed the mother of Death, and may be allowed to be the portress +of hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described +as real, and when Death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. +That Sin and Death should have shown the way to hell, might have been +allowed; but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, +because the difficulty of Satan’s passage is described as real +and sensible, and the bridge ought to be only figurative. The +hell assigned to the rebellious spirits is described as not less local +than the residence of man. It is placed in some distant part of +space, separated from the regions of harmony and order by a chaotic +waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but Sin and Death worked up a “mole +of aggravated soil” cemented with <i>asphaltus</i>,<i> </i>a work +too bulky for ideal architects.<br> +<br> +This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of +the poem; and to this there was no temptation but the author’s +opinion of its beauty.<br> +<br> +To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made. Satan +is with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is +suffered to go away unmolested. The creation of man is represented +as the consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of +the rebels; yet Satan mentions it as a report “rife in Heaven” +before his departure.<br> +<br> +To find sentiments for the state of innocence was very difficult; and +something of anticipation perhaps is now and then discovered. +Adam’s discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of +a new-created being. I know not whether his answer to the angel’s +reproof for curiosity does not want something of propriety; it is the +speech of a man acquainted with many other men. Some philosophical +notions, especially when the philosophy is false, might have been better +omitted. The angel, in a comparison, speaks of “timorous +deer,” before deer were yet timorous, and before Adam could understand +the comparison.<br> +<br> +Dryden remarks, that Milton has some flats among his elevations. +This is only to say, that all the parts are not equal. In every +work, one part must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; +a poem must have transitions. It is no more to be required that +wit should always be blazing, than that the sun should always stand +at noon. In a great work there is a vicissitude of luminous and +opaque parts, as there is in the world a succession of day and night. +Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed sometimes +to revisit earth; for what other author ever soared so high, or sustained +his flight so long?<br> +<br> +Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed +often from them; and, as every man catches something from his companions, +his desire of imitating Ariosto’s levity has disgraced his work +with the Paradise of Fools; a fiction not in itself ill-imagined, but +too ludicrous for its place.<br> +<br> +His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations, +which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his +unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not necessary +to mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured; +and at last bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely +deserve the attention of a critic.<br> +<br> +Such are the faults of that wonderful performance “Paradise Lost;” +which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered +not as nice but as dull, as less to be censured for want of candour +than pitied for want of sensibility.<br> +<br> +Of “Paradise Regained,” the general judgment seems now to +be right, that it is in many parts elegant, and everywhere instructive. +It was not to be supposed that the writer of “Paradise Lost” +could ever write without great effusions of fancy, and exalted precepts +of wisdom. The basis of “Paradise Regained” is narrow; +a dialogue without action can never please like a union of the narrative +and dramatic powers. Had this poem been written not by Milton, +but by some imitator, it would have claimed and received universal praise.<br> +<br> +If “Paradise Regained” has been too much depreciated, “Samson +Agonistes” has, in requital, been too much admired. It could +only be by long prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton +could prefer the ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, +to the exhibitions of the French and English stages; and it is only +by a blind confidence in the reputation of Milton that a drama can be +praised in which the intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, +neither hasten nor retard the catastrophe.<br> +<br> +In this tragedy are, however, many particular beauties, many just sentiments +and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the attention +which a well connected plan produces.<br> +<br> +Milton would not have excelled in dramatic writing; he knew human nature +only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor +the combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. +He had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little +in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must +confer.<br> +<br> +Through all his greater works there prevails a uniform peculiarity of +<i>diction</i>,<i> </i>a mode and cast of expression which bears little +resemblance to that of any former writer; and which is so far removed +from common use, that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, +finds himself surprised by a new language.<br> +<br> +This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton, +imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur +of his ideas. “Our language,” says Addison, “sank +under him.” But the truth is, that, both in prose and verse, +he had formed his style by a perverse and pedantic principle. +He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom. This, +in all his prose, is discovered and condemned; for there judgment operates +freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor awed by the dignity of his +thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry, that his call is obeyed +without resistance, the reader feels himself in captivity to a higher +and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks in admiration.<br> +<br> +Milton’s style was not modified by his subject; what is shown +with greater extent in “Paradise Lost” may be found in “Comus.” +One source of his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets; +the disposition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps +sometimes combined with other tongues. Of him, at last, may be +said what Jonson says of Spenser, that “he wrote no language,” +but has formed what Butler calls a “Babylonish dialect,” +in itself harsh and barbarous, but made by exalted genius and extensive +learning the vehicle of so much instruction and so much pleasure, that, +like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity.<br> +<br> +Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of +copiousness and variety. He was master of his language in its +full extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, +that from his book alone the Art of English Poetry might be learned.<br> +<br> +After his diction something must be said of his <i>versification</i>. +The <i>measure</i>,<i> </i>he says, “is the English heroic verse +without rhyme.” Of this mode he had many examples among +the Italians, and some in his own country. The Earl of Surrey +is said to have translated one of Virgil’s books without rhyme; +and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had appeared in blank verse, +particularly one tending to reconcile the nation to Raleigh’s +wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh himself. +These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much influenced +Milton, who more probably took his hint from Trissino’s “Italia +Liberata;” and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous +of persuading himself that it is better.<br> +<br> +“Rhyme,” he says, and says truly, “is no necessary +adjunct of true poetry.” But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental +operation, metre or music is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, by +the music of metre that poetry has been discriminated in all languages; +and, in languages melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long +and short syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot +communicate its rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, +some help is necessary. The music of the English heroic lines +strikes the ear so faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables +of every line co-operate together; this co-operation can only be obtained +by the preservation of every verse unmingled with another as a distinct +system of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by +the artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted +by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet +to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and +happy readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where +the lines end or begin. “Blank verse,” said an ingenious +critic, “seems to be verse only to the eye.”<br> +<br> +Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often +please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared but where the subject is +able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to that +which is called the “lapidary style;” has neither the easiness +of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and therefore tires by long continuance. +Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, +not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence has been confuted +by the ear.<br> +<br> +But, whatever be the advantages of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself +to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to +be other than it is; yet like other heroes, he is to be admired rather +than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may +write blank verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend +to rhyme.<br> +<br> +The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot +be said to have contrived the structure of an epic poem, and therefore +owes reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations +must be indebted for the art of poetical narration, for the texture +of the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, +and all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, +of all the borrowers from Homer, Milton is perhaps the least indebted. +He was naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, +and disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to +the thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. +From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there +is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might +be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation +of support. His great works were performed under discountenance +and in blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born +for whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroic +poems, only because it is not the first.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The Life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, +has been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination +and elegance of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of +literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has +produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, +not the life, of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail, that scarcely +anything is distinctly known, but all is shown confused and enlarged +through the mist of panegyric.<br> +<br> +<br> +Abraham Cowley was born in the year one thousand sir hundred and eighteen. +His father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals under the +general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not have +been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the register +of St. Dunstan’s parish gives reason to suspect that his father +was a sectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his +son, and consequently left him to the care of his mother: whom Wood +represents as struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, +and who, as she lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded +by seeing her son eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and +partaking his prosperity. We know at least, from Sprat’s +account, that he always acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues +of filial gratitude.<br> +<br> +In the window of his mother’s apartment lay Spenser’s “Fairy +Queen,” in which he very early took delight to read, till by feeling +the charms of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. +Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes +forgotten, produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity +for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called Genius. +The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined +to some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter +of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the +perusal of Richardson’s treatise.<br> +<br> +By his mother’s solicitation he was admitted into Westminster +school, where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat, +to relate, “that he had this defect in his memory at that time, +that his teachers never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules +of grammar.”<br> +<br> +This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder. +It is surely very difficult to tell anything as it was heard, when Sprat +could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though the +book to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation. +A memory admitting some things, and rejecting others, an intellectual +digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, +had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision +made by nature for literary politeness. But in the author’s +own honest relation, the marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such “an +enemy to all constraint, that his master never could prevail on him +to learn the rules without book.” He does not tell that +he could not learn the rules; but that, being able to perform his exercises +without them, and being an “enemy to constraint,” he spared +himself the labour.<br> +<br> +Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope might be said “to +lisp in numbers;” and have given such early proofs, not only of +powers of language, but of comprehension of things, as to more tardy +minds seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities +of Cowley there is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only +written, but printed in his thirteenth year; containing, with other +poetical compositions, “The tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe,” +written when he was ten years old; and “Constantia and Philetus,” +written two years after.<br> +<br> +While he was yet at school he produced a comedy called “Love’s +Riddle,” though it was not published till he had been some time +at Cambridge. This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires +no acquaintance with the living world, and therefore the time at which +it was composed adds little to the wonders of Cowley’s minority.<br> +<br> +In 1636 he was removed to Cambridge, where he continued his studies +with great intenseness; for he is said to have written, while he was +yet a young student, the greater part of his “Davideis;” +a work of which the materials could not have been collected without +the study of many years, but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity.<br> +<br> +Two years after his settlement at Cambridge, he published “Love’s +Riddle,” with a poetical dedication to Sir Kenelm Digby, of whose +acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious; and +“Naufragium Joculare,” a comedy written in Latin, but without +due attention to the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but +mere prose. It was printed, with a dedication in verse to Dr. +Comber, master of the college; but having neither the facility of a +popular, nor the accuracy of a learned work, it seems to be now universally +neglected.<br> +<br> +At the beginning of the civil war, as the prince passed through Cambridge +in his way to York, he was entertained with the representation of “The +Guardian,” a comedy which Cowley says was neither written nor +acted, but rough-drawn by him, and repeated by the scholars. That +this comedy was printed during his absence from his country he appears +to have considered as injurious to his reputation; though, during the +suppression of the theatres, it was sometimes privately acted with sufficient +approbation.<br> +<br> +In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the +Parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John’s +College in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire, +called “The Puritan and Papist,” which was only inserted +in the last collection of his works; and so distinguished himself by +the warmth of his loyalty, and the elegance of his conversation, that +he gained the kindness and confidence of those who attended the king, +and amongst others of Lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all +to whom it was extended.<br> +<br> +About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, he followed +the Queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the Lord Jermyn, afterwards +Earl of St. Albans, and was employed in such correspondence as the royal +cause required, and particularly in ciphering and deciphering the letters +that passed between the king and queen; an employment of the highest +confidence and honour. So wide was his province of intelligence, +that for several years it filled all his days and two or three nights +in the week.<br> +<br> +In the year 1647, his “Mistress” was published; for he imagined, +as he declared in his preface to a subsequent edition, that “poets +are scarcely thought freemen of their company, without paying some duties, +or obliging themselves to be true to love.”<br> +<br> +This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to +the fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful +homage to his Laura refined the manners of the lettered world, and filled +Europe with love and poetry. But the basis of all excellence is +truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch +was a real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. +Of Cowley, we are told by Barnes, who had means enough of information, +that, whatever he may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety +of characters by which his heart was divided, he in reality was in love +but once, and then never had resolution to tell his passion.<br> +<br> +This consideration cannot but abate in some measure the reader’s +esteem for the works and the author. To love excellence is natural; +it is natural likewise for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by +an elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of +pleasing has in different men produced actions of heroism, and effusions +of wit; but it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet +of an airy “nothing,” and to quarrel as to write for what +Cowley might have learned from his master Pindar to call “the +dream of a shadow.”<br> +<br> +It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the +bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment. +No man needs to be so burdened with life as to squander it in voluntary +dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down to suppose +himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an +elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never +within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency +of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never saw; complains +of jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, +and sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and ransacks his memory +for images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope or the gloominess of +despair; and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis sometimes in flowers +fading as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her virtues.<br> +<br> +At Paris, as secretary to Lord Jermyn, he was engaged in transacting +things of real importance with real men and real women, and at that +time did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry. +Some of his letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington, from +April to December, in 1650, are preserved in “Miscellanea Aulica,” +a collection of papers published by Brown. These letters, being +written like those of other men whose minds are more on things than +words, contribute no otherwise to his reputation, than as they show +him to have been above the affectation of unseasonable elegance, and +to have known that the business of a statesman can be little forwarded +by flowers of rhetoric.<br> +<br> +One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking +of the Scotch treaty then in agitation:<br> +<br> +“The Scotch treaty,” says he, “is the only thing now +in which we are vitally concerned; I am one of the last hopers, and +yet cannot now abstain from believing that an agreement will be made; +all people upon the place incline to that opinion. The Scotch +will moderate something of the rigour of their demands; the mutual necessity +of an accord is visible; the king is persuaded of it. And to tell +you the truth (which I take to be an argument above all the rest), Virgil +has told me something to that purpose.”<br> +<br> +This expression, from a secretary of the present time, would be considered +as merely ludicrous, or at most as an ostentatious display of scholarship; +but the manners of that time were so tinged with superstition, that +I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted on this great occasion +the Virgilian lots, and to have given some credit to the answer of his +oracle.<br> +<br> +Some years afterwards, “business,” says Sprat, “passed +of course into other hands;” and Cowley, being no longer useful +at Paris, was in 1656 sent back into England, that, “under pretence +of privacy and retirement, he might take occasion of giving notice of +the posture of things in this nation.”<br> +<br> +Soon after his return to London, he was seized by some messengers of +the usurping powers, who were sent out in quest of another man; and +being examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed +without the security of a thousand pounds given by Dr. Scarborough.<br> +<br> +This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he seems +to have inserted something suppressed in subsequent editions, which +was interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. In this +preface he declares, that “his desire had been for some days past, +and did still very vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of +the American plantations, and to forsake this world for ever.”<br> +<br> +From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers +brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him, +and indeed it does not seem to have lessened his reputation. His +wish for retirement we can easily believe to be undissembled; a man +harassed in one kingdom, and persecuted in another, who, after a course +of business that employed all his days and half his nights, in ciphering +and deciphering, comes to his own country and steps into a prison, will +be willing enough to retire to some place of quiet and of safety. +Yet let neither our reverence for a genius, nor our pity for a sufferer, +dispose us to forget, that, if his activity was virtue, his retreat +was cowardice.<br> +<br> +He then took upon him the character of physician, still, according to +Sprat, with intention “to dissemble the main design of his coming +over;” and, as Mr. Wood relates, “complying with the men +then in power (which was much taken notice of by the royal party), he +obtained an order to be created doctor of physic; which being done to +his mind (whereby he gained the ill-will of some of his friends), he +went into France again, having made a copy of verses on Oliver’s +death.”<br> +<br> +This is no favourable representation; yet even in this not much wrong +can be discovered. How far he complied with the men in power is +to be inquired before he can be blamed. It is not said that he +told them any secrets, or assisted them by intelligence or any other +act. If he only promised to be quiet, that they in whose hands +he was might free him from confinement, he did what no law of society +prohibits.<br> +<br> +The man whose miscarriage in a just cause has put him in the power of +his enemy, may, without any breach of his integrity, regain his liberty, +or preserve his life, by a promise of neutrality: for the stipulation +gives the enemy nothing which he had not before. The neutrality +of a captive may be always secured by his imprisonment or death. +He that is at the disposal of another may not promise to aid him in +any injurious act, because no power can compel active obedience. +He may engage to do nothing, but not to do ill.<br> +<br> +There is reason to think that Cowley promised little. It does +not appear that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted +without security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor +that it made him think himself secure, for, at that dissolution of government +which followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he +resumed his former station, and stayed till the restoration.<br> +<br> +“He continued,” says his biographer, “under these +bonds till the general deliverance;” it is therefore to be supposed +that he did not go to France, and act again for the king, without the +consent of his bondsman: that he did not show his loyalty at the hazard +of his friend, but by his friend’s permission.<br> +<br> +Of the verses on Oliver’s death, in which Wood’s narrative +seems to imply something encomiastic, there has been no appearance. +There is a discourse concerning his government, indeed, with verses +intermixed, but such as certainly gained its author no friends among +the abettors of usurpation.<br> +<br> +A doctor of physic, however, he was made at Oxford in December, 1657; +and in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account has +been published by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the experimental +philosophers with the title of Doctor Cowley.<br> +<br> +There is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice: but +his preparatory studies have contributed something to the honour of +his country. Considering botany as necessary to a physician, he +retired into Kent to gather plants; and as the predominance of a favourite +study affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, botany in +the mind of Cowley turned into poetry. He composed, in Latin, +several books on plants, of which the first and second display the qualities +of herbs, in elegiac verse; the third and fourth, the beauties of flowers, +in various measures; and the fifth and sixth, the use of trees, in heroic +numbers.<br> +<br> +At the same time were produced, from the same university, the two great +poets, Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite principles, +but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry; in which the English, +till their works and May’s poem appeared, seemed unable to contest +the palm with any other of the lettered nations.<br> +<br> +If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared (for May +I hold to be superior to both), the advantage seems to lie on the side +of Cowley. Milton is generally content to express the thoughts +of the ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of purity +or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.<br> +<br> +At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and +with consciousness, not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity +of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that +he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a song of triumph. +But this was a time of such general hope, that great numbers were inevitably +disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. +He had been promised, by both Charles the First and Second, the mastership +of the Savoy; “but he lost it,” says Wood, “by certain +persons, enemies to the Muses.”<br> +<br> +The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having by such +alteration as he thought proper, fitted his old comedy of “The +Guardian” for the stage, he produced it under the title of “The +Cutter of Coleman Street.” It was treated on the stage with +great severity, and was afterwards censured as a satire on the king’s +party.<br> +<br> +Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related +to Mr. Dennis, “that, when they told Cowley how little favour +had been shown him, he received the news of his ill success, not with +so much firmness as might have been expected from so great a man.”<br> +<br> +What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered, cannot +be known. He that misses his end will never be as much pleased +as he that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure +to himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man perhaps +has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw +the whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and +shame, by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.<br> +<br> +For the rejection of this play it is difficult now to find the reason: +it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention +and exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates +himself in his preface, by observing how unlikely it is, that, having +followed the royal family through all their distresses, “he should +choose the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them.” +It appears, however, from the theatrical register of Downes the prompter, +to have been popularly considered as a satire on the royalists.<br> +<br> +That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he published his pretensions +and his discontent in an ode called “The Complaint;” in +which he styles himself the <i>melancholy </i>Cowley. This met +with the usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more +contempt than pity.<br> +<br> +These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in +some stanzas, written about that time on the choice of a laureate; a +mode of satire, by which, since it was first introduced by Suckling, +perhaps every generation of poets has been teased.<br> +<br> +<br> +Savoy-missing Cowley came into the court,<br> + Making apologies for his bad play;<br> +Every one gave him so good a report,<br> + That Apollo gave heed to all he could say:<br> +<br> +Nor would he have had, ‘tis thought, a rebuke,<br> + Unless he had done some notable folly;<br> +Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,<br> + Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.<br> +<br> +<br> +His vehement desire of retirement now came again upon him. “Not +finding,” says the morose Wood, “that preferment conferred +upon him which he expected, while others for their money carried away +most places, he retired discontented into Surrey.”<br> +<br> +“He was now,” says the courtly Sprat, “weary of the +vexations and formalities of an active condition. He had been +perplexed with a long compliance to foreign manners. He was satiated +with the arts of a court; which sort of life, though his virtue made +it innocent to him, yet nothing could make it quiet. Those were +the reasons that moved him to follow the violent inclination of his +own mind, which, in the greatest throng of his former business, had +still called upon him, and represented to him the true delights of solitary +studies, of temperate pleasures, and a moderate revenue below the malice +and flatteries of fortune.”<br> +<br> +So differently are things seen! and so differently are they shown! +But actions are visible, though motives are secret. Cowley certainly +retired; first to Barn Elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey. +He seems, however, to have lost part of his dread of the <i>hum</i> +<i>of men</i>. He thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, +without the defence of mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking +shelter in America, wisely went only so far from the bustle of life +as that he might easily find his way back when solitude should grow +tedious. His retreat was at first but slenderly accommodated; +yet he soon obtained, by the interest of the Earl of St. Alban’s, +and the Duke of Buckingham, such lease of the queen’s lands as +afforded him an ample income.<br> +<br> +By the lovers of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if +he now was happy. Let them peruse one of his letters accidentally +preserved by Peck, which I recommend to the consideration of all that +may hereafter pant for solitude.<br> +<br> +<br> +“TO DR. THOMAS SPRAT,<br> +“<i>Chertsey</i>,<i> May </i>21, 1665.<br> +<br> +“The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, +with a defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days. +And, two after, had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am +yet unable to move or turn myself in my bed. This is my personal +fortune here to begin with. And, besides, I can get no money from +my tenants, and have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in +by my neighbours. What this signifies, or may come to in time, +God knows; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging. +Another misfortune has been, and stranger than all the rest, that you +have broke your word with me and failed to come, even though you told +Mr. Bois that you would. This is what they call <i>monstri simile</i>. +I do hope to recover my late hurt so far within five or six days (though +it be uncertain yet whether I shall ever recover it) as to walk about +again. And then, methinks, you and I and the dean might be very +merry upon St. Ann’s Hill. You might very conveniently come +hither the way of Hampton Town, lying there one night. I write +this in pain, and can say no more: <i>verbum sapienti.</i>”<br> +<br> +<br> +He did not long enjoy the pleasure or suffer the uneasiness of solitude; +for he died at the Porch-house in Chertsey, in 1667 [28th July], in +the forty-ninth year of his age.<br> +<br> +He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser; and King Charles +pronounced, “That Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better +man in England.” He is represented by Dr. Sprat as the most +amiable of mankind; and this posthumous praise may safely be credited, +as it has never been contradicted by envy or by faction.<br> +<br> +Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to +the narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of civil war +were yet recent, and the minds of either party were easily irritated, +was obliged to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and +to leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell cannot, +however, now be known; I must therefore recommend the perusal of his +work, to which my narration can be considered only as a slender supplement.<br> +<br> +Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead +of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the minds +of men, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time +too much praised, and too much neglected at another.<br> +<br> +Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of +man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different +forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared +a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, +in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some +account.<br> +<br> +The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning +was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, +instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such +verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for +the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses +by counting the syllables.<br> +<br> +If the father of criticism had rightly denominated poetry τéχνη +μιμητικη, <i>an imitative art</i>,<i> +</i>these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the +name of poets; for they cannot be said to have imitated anything; they +neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter, +nor represented the operations of intellect.<br> +<br> +Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. +Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below +Donne in wit; but maintains that they surpass him in poetry.<br> +<br> +If wit be well described by Pope, as being “that which has been +often thought, but was never before so well expressed,” they certainly +never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular +in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope’s +account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous; he depresses it below its natural +dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language.<br> +<br> +If by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered +as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, +is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that +which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this +kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts +are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither +are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, +wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever +found.<br> +<br> +But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously +and philosophically considered as a kind of <i>discordia concors; </i>a +combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances +in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more +than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence +together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, +and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; +but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though +he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.<br> +<br> +From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred +that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections. +As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising, +they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us +to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: +they never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or +done; but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; +as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as epicurean +deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes +of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship +was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish +was only to say what they hoped had been never said before.<br> +<br> +Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic; for they +never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once +fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, +and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, +and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, +and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions +not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety that +subtlety, which in its original import means exility of particles, is +taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinction. Those +writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of +greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. +Their attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into fragments; +and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and laboured +particularities, the prospects of nature, or the scenes of life, than +he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence +of a summer noon.<br> +<br> +What they wanted, however, of the sublime they endeavoured to supply +by hyperbole; their amplifications had no limits; they left not only +reason but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused +magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be +imagined.<br> +<br> +Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost; +if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise +sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far fetched, +they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan, it +was at least necessary to read and think. No man could be born +a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions +copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by +traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, +and volubility of syllables.<br> +<br> +In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised +either by recollection or inquiry; something already learned is to be +retrieved, or something new is to be examined. If their greatness +seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination +is not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison +are employed; and in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity +has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes +found buried perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those +who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity +and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have more propriety +though less copiousness of sentiment.<br> +<br> +This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino and +his followers, had been recommended by the example of Donne, a man of +very extensive and various knowledge, and by Jonson, whose manner resembled +that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of +his sentiments.<br> +<br> +When their reputation was high, they had undoubtedly more imitators +than time has left behind. Their immediate successors, of whom +any remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham, +Cowley, Clieveland, and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another +way to fame, by improving the harmony of our members. Milton tried +the metaphysic style only in his lines upon Hobson the carrier. +Cowley adopted it, and excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment +and more music. Suckling neither improved versification nor abounded +in conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; +Suckling could not reach it, and Milton disdained it.<br> +<br> +Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have +therefore collected instances of the modes of writing by which this +species of poets (for poets they were called by themselves and their +admirers) was eminently distinguished.<br> +<br> +As the authors of this race were perhaps more desirous of being admired +than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from recesses of +learning not very much frequented by common readers of poetry. +Thus, Cowley on Knowledge:<br> +<br> +<br> +The sacred tree ‘midst the fair orchard grew;<br> + The phœnix truth did on it rest,<br> + And built his perfumed nest,<br> +That right Porphyrian tree which did true logic show.<br> + Each leaf did learned notions give,<br> + And the apples were demonstrative;<br> +So clear their colour and divine,<br> +The very shads they cast did other lights outshine.<br> +<br> +<br> +On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age:<br> +<br> +<br> +Love was with thy life entwined,<br> +Close as heat with fire is join’d;<br> +A powerful brand prescribed the date<br> +Of thine, like Meleager’s fate.<br> +Th’ antiperistasis of age<br> +More enflam’d thy amorous rage.<br> +<br> +<br> +In the following verses we have an allusion to a rabbinical opinion +concerning manna:<br> +<br> +<br> +Variety I ask not: give me one<br> +To live perpetually upon.<br> +The person Love does to us fit,<br> +Like manna, has the taste of all in it.<br> +<br> +<br> +Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastic verses:<br> +<br> +<br> + In everything there naturally grows<br> +A balsamum to keep it fresh and new,<br> + If ’twere not injured by extrinsic blows:<br> +Your youth and beauty are this balm in you.<br> + But you, of learning and religion,<br> +And virtue and such ingredients, have made<br> + A mithridate, whose operation<br> +Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said.<br> +<br> +<br> +Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, +have something in them too scholastic, they are not inelegant:<br> +<br> +<br> +This twilight of two years, not past nor next,<br> + Some emblem is of me, or I of this,<br> +Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext,<br> + Whose what and where in disputation is,<br> + If I should call me anything, should miss.<br> +I sum the years and me, and find me not<br> + Debtor to th’ old, nor creditor to th’ +new.<br> +That cannot say, my thanks I have forget,<br> + Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true<br> + This bravery is, since these times show’d me +you - DONNE.<br> +<br> +<br> +Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne’s reflection upon man +as a microcosm:<br> +<br> +<br> +If men be worlds, there is in every one<br> +Something to answer in some proportion;<br> +All the world’s riches; and in good men, this<br> +Virtue, our form’s form, and our soul’s soul, is<br> +<br> +<br> +Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural, +all their books are full.<br> +<br> +To a lady, who wrote posies for rings:<br> +<br> +<br> +They, who above do various circles find,<br> +Say, like a ring, th’ equator Heaven does bind<br> +When Heaven shall be adorned by thee,<br> +(Which then more Heaven than ‘tis will be)<br> +’Tis thou must write the poesy there,<br> + For it wanteth one as yet,<br> +Then the sun pass through’t twice a year,<br> + The sun, which is esteem’d the god of wit. - +COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy +are by Cowley, with still more perplexity applied to love:<br> +<br> +<br> +Five years ago (says story) I loved you,<br> +For which you call me most inconstant now;<br> +Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man;<br> +For I am not the same that I was then:<br> +No flesh is now the same ‘twas then in me,<br> +And that my mind is changed yourself may see.<br> +The same thoughts to retain still, and intents<br> +Were more inconstant far; for accidents<br> +Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove,<br> +If from one subject they t’ another move;<br> +My members then the father members were,<br> +From whence these take their birth, which now are here<br> +If then this body love what th’ other did,<br> +’Twere incest, which by nature is forbid.<br> +<br> +<br> +The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to +travels through different countries:<br> +<br> +<br> +Hast thou not found each woman’s breast<br> + (The land where thou hast travelled)<br> +Either by savages possest,<br> + Or wild, and uninhabited?<br> +What joy could’st take, or what repose,<br> +In countries so uncivilis’d as those?<br> +Lust, the scorching dog-star, here<br> + Rages with immoderate heat;<br> +Whilst Pride, the ragged northern bear,<br> + In others makes the cold too great.<br> +And where these are temperate known,<br> +The soil’s all barren sand, or rocky stone. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt:<br> +<br> +<br> +The fate of Egypt I sustain,<br> +And never feel the dew of rain,<br> +From clouds which in the head appear;<br> +But all my too-much moisture ewe<br> +To overflowings of the heart below. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury +and rites of sacrifice:<br> +<br> +<br> +And yet this death of mine, I fear,<br> +Will ominous to her appear:<br> + When, sound in every other part,<br> +Her sacrifice is found without an heart.<br> + For the last tempest of my death<br> +Shall sigh out that too, with my breath.<br> +<br> +<br> +That the chaos was harmonised, has been recited of old; but whence the +different sounds arose remained for a modern to discover:<br> +<br> +<br> +Th’ ungovern’d parts no correspondence knew;<br> +An artless war from thwarting motions grew;<br> +Till they to number and fixed rules were brought.<br> +Water and air he for the tenor chose,<br> +Earth made the base; the treble flame arose. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne +has extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, +they may be read again:<br> +<br> +<br> + On a round ball<br> + A workman, that bath copies by, can lay<br> + An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,<br> +And quickly make that which was nothing, all.<br> + So doth each tear,<br> + Which thee doth wear,<br> +A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,<br> +Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow<br> +This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so.<br> +<br> +<br> +On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out “Confusion +worse confounded.”<br> +<br> +<br> +Hers lies a she sun, and a he moon here,<br> + She gives the best light to his sphere,<br> + Or each is both, and all, and so,<br> +They unto one another nothing owe. - DONNE.<br> +<br> +<br> +Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?<br> +<br> +<br> +Though God be our true glass through which we see<br> +All, since the being of all things is He,<br> +Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive<br> +Things in proportion fit, by perspective<br> +Deeds of good men; for by their living here,<br> +Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.<br> +<br> +<br> +Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote +ideas could be brought together?<br> +<br> +<br> +Since ‘tis my doom, love’s undershrieve,<br> + Why this reprieve?<br> +Why doth my she advowson fly<br> + Incumbency?<br> +To sell thyself dust thou intend<br> + By candles end,<br> +And hold the contract thus in doubt,<br> + Life’s taper out?<br> +Think but how soon the market fails,<br> +Your sex lives faster than the males;<br> +And if to measure age’s span,<br> +The sober Julian were th’ account of man,<br> +Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian. - CLEVELAND.<br> +<br> +<br> +Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples:<br> +<br> +<br> +By every wind that comes this way,<br> + Send me at least a sigh or two,<br> +Such and so many I’ll repay<br> + As shall themselves make winds to get to you. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +In tears I’ll waste these eyes,<br> +By love so vainly fed:<br> +So lust of old the deluge punished. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +All arm’d in brass, the richest dress of war,<br> +(A dismal glorious sight!) he shone afar.<br> +The sun himself started with sudden fright,<br> +To see his beams return so dismal bright. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +A universal consternation:<br> +<br> +<br> +His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws<br> +Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,<br> +Lashing his angry tail and roaring out.<br> +Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;<br> +Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;<br> +Silence and horror fill the place around;<br> +Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +Their fictions were often violent and unnatural.<br> +<br> +Of his mistress bathing:<br> +<br> +<br> +The fish around her crowded, as they do<br> +To the false light that treacherous fishers show,<br> +And all with as much ease might taken be,<br> + As she at first took me;<br> + For ne’er did light so clear<br> + Among the waves appear,<br> +Though every night the sun himself set there. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +The poetical effect of a lover’s name upon glass:<br> +<br> +<br> + My name engraved herein<br> +Both contribute my firmness to this glass:<br> + Which, ever since that charm, hath been<br> +As hard as that which graved it was. - DONNE.<br> +<br> +<br> +Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling. On an inconstant +woman:<br> +<br> +<br> +He enjoys the calmy sunshine now,<br> + And no breath stirring hears,<br> +In the clear heaven of thy brow<br> + No smallest cloud appears.<br> +He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,<br> + And trusts the faithless April of thy May. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:<br> +<br> +<br> + Nothing yet in thee is seen,<br> + But when a genial heat warms thee within,<br> + A new-born wood of various lines there grows;<br> + Hers buds an L, and there a B,<br> + Here sprouts a V, and there a T,<br> +And all the flourishing letters stand in rows. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their +allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they +compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.<br> +<br> +Physic and chirurgery for a lover:<br> +<br> +<br> + Gently, ah gently, madam, touch<br> +The wound, which you yourself have made;<br> + That pain must needs be very much<br> +Which makes me of your hand afraid.<br> + Cordials of pity give me now,<br> +For I too weak of purgings grow. - COWLEY<i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>The world and a clock<br> +<br> +<br> +Mahol th’ inferior world’s fantastic face<br> +Through all the turns of matter’s maze did trace;<br> +Great Nature’s well-set clock in pieces took;<br> +On all the springs and smallest wheels did look<br> +Of life and motion, and with equal art<br> +Made up the whole again of every part. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its +due honour, Cleveland has paralleled it with the sun:<br> +<br> +<br> +The moderate value of our guiltless ore<br> +Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;<br> +Yet why should hallow’d vestal’s sacred shrine<br> +Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?<br> +These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,<br> +Than a few embers, for a deity.<br> +Had he our pits, the Persian would admire<br> +No sun, but warm’s devotion at our fire:<br> +He’d leave the trotting whipster, and prefer<br> +Our profound Vulcan ’bove that waggoner.<br> +For wants he heat, or light? or would have store<br> +Of both? ‘tis here: and what can suns give more?<br> +Nay, what’s the sun but, in a different name,<br> +A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame?<br> +Then let this truth reciprocally run,<br> +The sun’s heaven’s coalery, and coals our sun.<br> +<br> +<br> +Death, a voyage:<br> +<br> +<br> + No family<br> +E’er rigg’d a soul for Heaven’s discovery,<br> +With whom more venturers might boldly dare<br> +Venture their stakes with him in joy to share. - DONNE.<br> +<br> +<br> +Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such +as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding.<br> +<br> +A lover neither dead nor alive:<br> +<br> +<br> +Then down I laid my head<br> +Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,<br> +And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.<br> +<br> + Ah, sottish soul, said I,<br> + When back to its cage again I saw it fly;<br> + Fool to resume her broken chain,<br> + And row her galley here again!<br> + Fool, to that body to return<br> +Where it condemned and destined is to burn!<br> +Once dead, how can it be,<br> +Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,<br> +That thou should’st come to live it o’er again in me? - +COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +A lover’s heart, a hand grenado:<br> +<br> +Woe to her stubborn heart, if once mine come<br> + Into the self same room;<br> + ‘Twill tear and blow up all within,<br> +Like a grenade shot into a magazine.<br> +Then shall Love keep the ashes and torn parts,<br> + Of both our broken hearts;<br> + Shalt out of both one new one make;<br> +From hers th’ allay, from mine the metal take. - COWLEY<br> +<br> +<br> +The poetical propagation of light:<br> +<br> +<br> +The prince’s favour is diffused o’er all,<br> +From which all fortunes names, and natures fall:<br> +Then from those wombs of stars, the Bride’s bright eyes,<br> + At every glance a constellation flies,<br> +And sows the court with stars, and doth prevent<br> + In light and power, the all-ey’d firmament:<br> +First her eye kindles other ladies’ eyes,<br> + Then from their beams their jewels’ lustres +rise;<br> +And from their jewels torches do take fire,<br> +And all is warmth, and light, and good desire. - DONNE.<br> +<br> +<br> +They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance +of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often +gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their +thoughts.<br> +<br> +That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality is by Cowley +thus expressed:<br> +<br> +<br> +Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand<br> +Than woman can be placed by Nature’s hand;<br> +And I must needs, I’m sure, a loser be,<br> +To change thee as thou’rt there, for very thee.<br> +<br> +<br> +That prayer and labour should co-operate are thus taught by Donne:<br> +<br> +<br> +In none but us are such mix’d engines found,<br> +As hands of double office; for the ground<br> +We till with them; and them to heaven we raise<br> +Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays,<br> +Doth but one half, that’s none.<br> +<br> +<br> +By the same author, a common topic, the danger of procrastination, is +thus illustrated:<br> +<br> +<br> + That which I should have begun<br> +In my youth’s morning, now late must be done;<br> +And I, as giddy travellers must do,<br> +Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost<br> +Light and strength, dark and tired, must then ride post.<br> +<br> +<br> +All that man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is comprehended +by Donne in the following lines:<br> +<br> +<br> +Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie<br> +After enabled but to suck and cry.<br> +Think, when ‘twas grown to most, ‘twas a poor inn,<br> +A province pack’d up in two yards of skin,<br> +And that usurp’d, or threaten’d with a rage<br> +Of sicknesses or their true mother, age.<br> +But think that death hath now enfranchised thee;<br> +Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;<br> +Think, that a rusty piece discharged is flown<br> +In pieces, and the bullet is his own,<br> +And freely flies: this to thy soul allow,<br> +Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch’d but now.<br> +<br> +<br> +They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting. Cowley thus apostrophises +beauty:<br> +<br> +<br> + Thou tyrant which leav’st no man free!<br> +Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be!<br> +Thou murtherer, which has kill’d, and devil, which would’st +damn me!<br> +<br> +<br> +Thus he addresses his mistress:<br> +<br> +<br> +Thou who, in many a propriety,<br> +So truly art the sun to me,<br> +Add one more likeness, which I’m sure you can,<br> +And let me and my sun beget a man.<br> +<br> +<br> +Thus he represents the meditations of a lover:<br> +<br> +<br> +Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been<br> +So much as of original sin,<br> +Such charms thy beauty wears, as might<br> +Desires in dying confest saints excite.<br> + Thou with strange adultery<br> +Dost in each breast a brothel keep;<br> + Awake all men do lust for thee,<br> +And some enjoy thee when they sleep.<br> +<br> +<br> +The true taste of tears:<br> +<br> +<br> +Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,<br> + And take my tears, which are love’s wine,<br> +And try your mistress’ tears at home;<br> + For all are false, that taste not just like mine. +- DONNE.<br> +<br> +<br> +This is yet more indelicate:<br> +<br> +<br> +As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,<br> +As that which from chas’d musk-cat’s pores doth trill,<br> +As th’ almighty balm of th’ early east;<br> +Such are the sweet drops of my mistress’ breast.<br> +And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,<br> +They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets:<br> +Rank, sweaty froth thy mistress’ brow defiles. - DONNE.<br> +<br> +<br> +Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to +be pathetic:<br> +<br> +<br> +As men in hell are from diseases free,<br> +So from all other ills am I,<br> +Free from their known formality:<br> +But all pains eminently lie in thee. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which +they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were +popular. Bacon remarks, that some falsehoods are continued by +tradition, because they supply commodious allusions.<br> +<br> +<br> +It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke:<br> +In vain it something would have spoke;<br> +The love within too strong for’t was,<br> +Like poison put into a Venice-glass. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +<br> +In forming descriptions, they looked out not for images, but for conceits. +Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. +Dryden’s Night is well known; Donne’s is as follows:<br> +<br> +<br> +Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:<br> +Time’s dead low-water; when all minds divest<br> +To-morrow’s business; when the labourers have<br> +Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,<br> +Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;<br> +Now when the client, whose last hearing is<br> +To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,<br> +Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them the<br> +Again by death, although sad watch he keep;<br> +Doth practise dying by a little sleep:<br> +Thou at this midnight seest me.<br> +<br> +<br> +It must be, however, confessed of these writers, that if they are upon +common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle; yet, where +scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and +acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon +Hope shows an unequalled fertility of invention:<br> +<br> +<br> + Hops, whose weak being mind is,<br> + Alike if it succeed and if it miss;<br> +Whom good or ill does equally confound,<br> +And both the horns of fate’s dilemma wound;<br> + Vain shadow! which dust vanish quite,<br> + Both at full noon and perfect night!<br> + The stars have not a possibility<br> + Of blessing thee;<br> +If things then from their end we happy call<br> +’Tis Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.<br> + Hope, thou bold tester of delight,<br> + Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour’st +it quite!<br> + Thou bring’st us an estate, yet leav’st +us poor<br> + By clogging it with legacies before!<br> + The joys, which we entire should wed,<br> + Come deflowr’d virgins to our bed;<br> +Good fortunes without gain imported be,<br> + Such mighty custom’s paid to thee:<br> +For joy, like wine kept close, does better taste<br> +If it take air before its spirits waste.<br> +<br> +<br> +To the following comparison of a man that travels, and his wife that +stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity +or ingenuity has the better claim:<br> +<br> +<br> +Our two souls, therefore, which are one,<br> + Though I must go, endure not yet<br> +A breach, but an expansion,<br> + Like gold to airy thinness beat.<br> +If they be two, they are two so<br> + As stiff twin compasses are two;<br> +Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show<br> + To move, but doth if th’ other do.<br> +And, though it in the centre sit,<br> + Yet, when the other far doth roam,<br> +It leans and hearkens after it,<br> + And grows erect as that comes home.<br> +Such wilt thou be to me, who must<br> + Like th’ other foot obliquely run.<br> +Thy firmness makes my circle just,<br> + And makes me end where I begun. - DONNE.<br> +<br> +<br> +In all these examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or vicious, +is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something +new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight, by their +desire of exciting admiration.<br> +<br> +Having thus endeavoured to exhibit a general representation of the style +and sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine +particularly the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race, +and undoubtedly the best.<br> +<br> +His Miscellanies contain a collection of short compositions, written +some as they were dictated by a mind at leisure, and some as they were +called forth by different occasions; with great variety of style and +sentiment, from burlesque levity to awful grandeur. Such an assemblage +of diversified excellence no other poet has hitherto afforded. +To choose the best, among many good, is one of the most hazardous attempts +of criticism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded +many readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite +odes, which he estimates in his raptures at the value of a kingdom. +I will, however, venture to recommend Cowley’s first piece, which +ought to be inscribed “To my Muse,” for want of which the +second couplet is without reference. When the title is added, +there wills till remain a defect; for every piece ought to contain in +itself whatever is necessary to make it intelligible. Pope has +some epitaphs without names; which are therefore epitaphs to be let, +occupied indeed for the present, but hardly appropriated.<br> +<br> +The “Ode on Wit” is almost without a rival. It was +about the time of Cowley that <i>wit</i>,<i> </i>which had been till +then used for <i>intellection</i>,<i> </i>in contradistinction to <i>will</i>,<i> +</i>took the meaning, whatever it be, which it now bears.<br> +<br> +Of all the passages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts, +none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley +condemns exuberance of wit:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Yet ‘tis not to adorn and gild each part,<br> + That shows more cost than art.<br> +Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear;<br> + Rather than all things wit, let none be there.<br> +Several lights will not be seen,<br> + If there be nothing else between.<br> +Men doubt, because they stand so thick i’ th’ sky,<br> +If those be stars which paint the galaxy.<br> +<br> +<br> +In his verses to Lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud +to praise, there are, as there must be in all Cowley’s compositions, +some striking thoughts, but they are not well wrought. His “Elegy +on Sir Henry Wotton” is vigorous and happy; the series of thoughts +is easy and natural; and the conclusion, though a little weakened by +the intrusion of Alexander, is elegant and forcible.<br> +<br> +It may be remarked, that in this elegy, and in most of his encomiastic +poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes.<br> +<br> +In his poem on the death of Hervey, there is much praise, but little +passion; a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious +privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called +forth to action can display. He knew how to distinguish, and how +to commend, the qualities of his companion; but, when he wishes to make +us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining +how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. +It is the odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true. +The bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property +was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently +at ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But +the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise +the understanding.<br> +<br> +The “Chronicle” is a composition unrivalled and alone: such +gaiety of fancy, such facility of expression, such varied similitude, +such a succession of images, and such a dance of words, it is in vain +to expect except from Cowley. His strength always appears in his +agility; his volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound +of an elastic mind. His levity never leaves his learning behind +it; the moralist, the politician, and the critic, mingle their influence +even in this airy frolic of genius. To such a performance Suckling +could have brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have +supplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety.<br> +<br> +The verses to Davenant, which are vigorously begun, and happily concluded, +contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived and happily expressed. +Cowley’s critical abilities have not been sufficiently observed: +the few decisions and remarks, which his prefaces and his notes on the +“Davideis” supply, were at that time accessions to English +literature, and show such skill as raises our wish for more examples.<br> +<br> +The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the +familiar descending to the burlesque.<br> +<br> +His two metrical disquisitions <i>for </i>and <i>against </i>Reason +are no mean specimens of metaphysical poetry. The stanzas against +knowledge produce little conviction. In those which are intended +to exalt the human faculties, Reason has its proper task assigned it; +that of judging, not of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. +In the verses <i>for </i>Reason is a passage which Bentley, in the only +English verses which he is known to have written, seems to have copied, +though with the inferiority of an imitator.<br> +<br> +<br> +The Holy Book like the eighth sphere doth shine<br> + With thousand lights of truth divine,<br> +So numberless the stars, that to our eye<br> + It makes all but one galaxy.<br> +Yet Reason must assist too; for, in seas<br> + So vast and dangerous as these,<br> +Our course by stars above we cannot know<br> + Without the compass too below.<br> +<br> +<br> +After this says Bentley:<br> +<br> +<br> +Who travels in religious jars,<br> + Truth mix’d with error, shade with rays<br> +Like Whiston wanting pyx or stars,<br> + In ocean wide or sinks or strays.<br> +<br> +<br> +Cowley seems to have had what Milton is believed to have wanted, the +skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has therefore +closed his Miscellanies with the verses upon Crashaw, which apparently +excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are beauties +which common authors may justly think not only above their attainment, +but above their ambition.<br> +<br> +To the Miscellanies succeed the Anacreontics, or paraphrastical translations +of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under the name of +Anacreon. Of those songs dedicated to festivity and gaiety, in +which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but the +enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a pleasing than a +faithful representation, having retained their sprightliness, but lost +their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, +has admitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly +made more amiable to common readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly +declare their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom +courtesy and ignorance are content to style the learned.<br> +<br> +These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any +other of Cowley’s works. The diction shows nothing of the +mould of time, and the sentiments are at no great distance from our +present habitudes of thought. Real mirth must always be natural, +and nature is uniform. Men have been wise in very different modes; +but they have always laughed the same way.<br> +<br> +Levity of thought naturally produces familiarity of language, and the +familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue of comedy +when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life, is read from +age to age with equal pleasure. The artifices of inversion by +which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by +which new words, or new meanings of words, are introduced, is practised, +not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be +admired.<br> +<br> +The Anacreontics, therefore, of Cowley, give now all the pleasure which +they ever gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing +more than for another, his power seems to have been greatest in the +familiar and the festive.<br> +<br> +The next class of his poems is called “The Mistress,” of +which it is not necessary to select any particular pieces for praise +or censure. They have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly +in the same proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, +and with copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, +that the plenitude of the writer’s knowledge flows in upon his +page, so that the reader is commonly surprised into some improvement. +But, considered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved +will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetic, +have neither gallantry nor fondness. His praises are too far sought, +and too hyperbolical, either to express love, or to excite it; every +stanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with +mingled souls and with broken hearts.<br> +<br> +The principal artifice by which “The Mistress” is filled +with conceits is very copiously displayed by Addison. Love is +by Cowley, as by other poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and +fire; and that which is true of real fire is said of love, or figurative +fire, the same word in the same sentence retaining both significations. +Thus “observing the cold regard of his mistress’s eyes, +and at the same time their power of producing love in him, he considers +them as burning-glasses made of ice. Finding himself able to live +in the greatest extremities of love, he concludes the torrid zone to +be habitable. Upon the dying of a tree, on which he had cut his +loves, he observes that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree.”<br> +<br> +These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; that is, wit which consists +of thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other. +Addison’s representation is sufficiently indulgent: that confusion +of images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural it soon grows +wearisome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented +it; but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-blown +in modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro:<br> +<br> +<br> +Aspice quam variis distringar Lesbia curis!<br> + Uror, et heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor:<br> +Sum Nilus, sumque Ætna simul; restringite flammas<br> + O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.<br> +<br> +<br> +One of the severe theologians of that time censured him as having published +a book of profane and lascivious verses. From the charge of profaneness, +the constant tenor of his life, which seems to have been eminently virtuous, +and the general tendency of his opinions, which discover no irreverence +of religion, must defend him; but that the accusation of lasciviousness +is unjust, the perusal of his works will sufficiently evince.<br> +<br> +Cowley’s “Mistress” has no power of seduction: she +“plays round the head, but comes not at the heart.” +Her beauty and absence, her kindness and cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, +produce no correspondence of emotion. His poetical accounts of +the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more +sluggish frigidity. The compositions are such as might have been +written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philosophical rhymer +who had only heard of another sex; for they turn the mind only on the +writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the subject for his +task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and sometimes despise as trifling, +always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.<br> +<br> +The Pindaric Odes are now to be considered; a species of composition, +which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in his list of the +lost inventions of antiquity, and which he has made a bold and vigorous +attempt to recover.<br> +<br> +The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympic and Nemæan +Ode is by himself sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not +to show precisely what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking. +He was therefore not at all restrained to his expressions, nor much +to his sentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as +Pindar would not have written.<br> +<br> +Of the Olympic Ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in +elegance, and the conclusion below it in strength. The connection +is supplied with great perspicuity; and the thoughts, which to a reader +of less skill seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without +any abruption. Though the English ode cannot be called a translation, +it may be very properly consulted as a commentary.<br> +<br> +The spirit of Pindar is indeed not everywhere equally preserved. +The following pretty lines are not such as his “deep mouth” +was used to pour:<br> +<br> +<br> + Great Rhea’s son,<br> +If in Olympus’ top, where thou<br> +Sitt’st to behold thy sacred show,<br> +If in Alpheus’ silver flight,<br> +If in my verse thou take delight,<br> +My verse, great Rhea’s son, which is<br> +Lofty as that and smooth as this.<br> +<br> +<br> +In the Nemæan Ode, the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, +observe, whatever is said of the original new moon, her tender forehead +and her horns, is superadded by his paraphrast, who has many other plays +of words and fancy unsuitable to the original, as,<br> +<br> +<br> + The table, free for ev’ry guest,<br> + No doubt will thee admit,<br> +And feast more upon thee, than thou on it<br> +<br> +<br> +He sometimes extends his author’s thoughts without improving them. +In the Olympionic an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cowley +spends three lines in swearing by the Castalian Stream. We are +told of Theron’s bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which +Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming prose:<br> +<br> +<br> +But in this thankless world the giver<br> +Is envied even by the receiver;<br> +’Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion<br> +Rather to hide than own the obligation:<br> +Nay, ‘tis much worse than so;<br> +It now an artifice does grow<br> +Wrongs and injuries to do,<br> +Lest men should think we owe.<br> +<br> +<br> +It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and +wit, when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction, +could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.<br> +<br> +In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he sometimes +rises to dignity truly Pindaric; and, if some deficiencies of language +be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard were to +his contemporaries:<br> +<br> +<br> + Begin the song, and strike the living lyre:<br> +Lo how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted quire,<br> + All hand in hand do decently advance,<br> +And to my song with smooth and equal measure dance;<br> +While the dance lasts, how long soe’er it be,<br> +My music’s voice shall bear it company;<br> + Till all gentle notes be drown’d<br> +In the last trumpet’s dreadful sound.<br> +<br> +<br> +After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude +with lines like these:<br> +<br> +<br> + But stop, my Muse -<br> +Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,<br> +Which does to rage begin -<br> +- ’Tis an unruly and hard-mouth’d horse -<br> +‘Twill no unskilful touch endure,<br> +But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.<br> +<br> +<br> +The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphysical +race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to their last ramifications, +by which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the greatest things +the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and by claiming +dignity becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of description +is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration, and the force of metaphors +is lost, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more +upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which +the illustration is drawn than that to which it is applied.<br> +<br> +Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode entitled the “Muse,” +who goes to “take the air” in an intellectual chariot, to +which he harnesses Fancy and Judgment, Wit and Eloquence, Memory and +Invention; how he distinguished Wit from Fancy, or how Memory could +properly contribute to Motion, he has not explained: we are however +content to suppose that he could have justified his own fiction, and +wish to see the Muse begin her career; but there is yet more to be done.<br> +<br> +<br> +Let the <i>postillion</i> Nature mount, and let<br> +The <i>coachman </i>Art be set;<br> +And let the airy <i>footmen</i>, running all beside,<br> +Make a long row of goodly pride;<br> +Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences,<br> +In a well-worded dress,<br> +And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies,<br> +In all their gaudy <i>liveries</i>.<br> +<br> +<br> +Every mind is now disgusted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I +cannot refuse myself the four next lines:<br> +<br> +<br> +Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,<br> + And bid it to put on;<br> + For long though cheerful is the way,<br> +And life, alas! allows but one ill winter’s day.<br> +<br> +<br> +In the same ode, celebrating the power of the Muse, he gives her prescience, +or, in poetical language, the foresight of events hatching in futurity; +but, once having an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to show us that +he knows what an egg contains:<br> +<br> +<br> +Thou into the close nests of Time dost peep,<br> + And there with piercing eye<br> +Through the firm shell and the thick white float spy<br> + Years to come a-forming lie,<br> +Close in their sacred fecundine asleep.<br> +<br> +<br> +The same thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically expressed +by Casimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley:<br> +<br> +<br> +Omnibus mundi Dominator horis<br> +Aptat urgendas psr inane pennas,<br> +Pars adhuc nido latet, et futuros<br> + Crescit in annos.<br> +<br> +<br> +Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind +of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require +still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red Sea “new +dyes the water’s name;” and England, during the Civil War, +was “Albion no more, nor to be named from white.” +It is surely by some fascination not easily surmounted, that a writer, +professing to revive “the noblest and highest writing in verse,” +makes this address to the new year:<br> +<br> +<br> +Nay, if thou lov’st me, gentle year,<br> +Let not so much as love be there,<br> +Vain, fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,<br> + Although I fear<br> +There’s of this caution little need,<br> + Yet, gentle year, take heed<br> + How thou dost make<br> + Such a mistake;<br> +Such love I mean alone<br> +As by thy cruel predecessors has been shown:<br> +For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,<br> +I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.<br> +<br> +<br> +The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior -<br> +<br> +<br> + Ye critics, say,<br> +How poor to this was Pindar’s style!<br> +<br> +<br> +Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Isthmian or Nemæan songs +what Antiquity what disposed them to expect, will at least see that +they are ill represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine +that, if this be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival.<br> +<br> +To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley’s sentiments must +be added the uncertainty and looseness of his measures. He takes +the liberty of using in any place a verse of any length, from two syllables +to twelve. The verses of Pindar have, as he observes, very little +harmony to a modern ear; yet by examining the syllables we perceive +them to be regular, and have reason enough for supposing that the ancient +audiences were delighted with the sound. The imitator ought therefore +to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was wanting; to +have preserved a constant return of the same numbers, and to have supplied +smoothness of transition and continuity of thought.<br> +<br> +It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the “irregularity of numbers is +the very thing” which makes “that kind of poesy fit for +all manner of subjects.” But he should have remembered, +that what is fit for everything can fit nothing well. The great +pleasure of verse arises from the known measure of the lines, and uniform +structure of the stanzas, by which the voice is regulated, and the memory +relieved.<br> +<br> +If the Pindaric style be, what Cowley thinks it, “the highest +and noblest kind of writing in verse,” it can be adapted only +to high and noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the +poet with the critic, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind +of writing in verse which, according to Sprat, “is chiefly to +be preferred for its near affinity to prose.”<br> +<br> +This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies +of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately +overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing +fashion, and they that could do nothing else could write like Pindar. +The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disorder tried to break into +the Latin: a poem on the Sheldonian Theatre, in which all kinds of verse +are shaken together, is unhappily inserted in the “Musæ +Anglicanæ.” Pindarism prevailed about half a century; +but at last died gradually away, and other imitations supply its place.<br> +<br> +The Pindaric Odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical +reputation, that I am not willing to dismiss them with unabated censure; +and surely though the mode of their composition be erroneous, yet many +parts deserve at least that admiration which is due to great comprehension +of knowledge, and great fertility of fancy. The thoughts are often +new, and often striking; but the greatness of one part is disgraced +by the littleness of another; and total negligence of language gives +the noblest conceptions the appearance of a fabric august in the plan, +but mean in the materials. Yet surely those verses are not without +a just claim to praise; of which it may be said with truth, that no +man but Cowley could have written them.<br> +<br> +The “Davideis” now remains to be considered; a poem which +the author designed to have extended to twelve books, merely, as he +makes no scruple of declaring, because the “Æneid” +had that number; but he had leisure or perseverance only to write the +third part. Epic poems have been left unfinished by Virgil, Statius, +Spenser, and Cowley. That we have not the whole “Davideis” +is, however, not much to be regretted; for in this undertaking Cowley +is, tacitly at least, confessed to have miscarried. There are +not many examples of so great a work produced by an author generally +read, and generally praised, that has crept through a century with so +little regard. Whatever is said of Cowley, is meant of his other +works. Of the “Davideis” no mention is made; it never +appears in books, nor emerges in conversation. By the “Spectator” +it has been once quoted; by Rymer it has once been praised; and by Dryden, +in “Mac Flecknoe,” it has once been imitated; nor do I recollect +much other notice from its publication till now in the whole succession +of English literature.<br> +<br> +Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be found +partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of +the work.<br> +<br> +Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and an +imagination overawed and controlled. We have been accustomed to +acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentic narrative, +and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence as suppresses +curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with +him when he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all +addition to that which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion +seems not only useless, but in some degree profane.<br> +<br> +Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of Divine +Power are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle +of creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with +little diffusion of language: “He spake the word, and they were +made.”<br> +<br> +We are told that Saul “was troubled with an evil spirit;” +from this Cowley takes an opportunity of describing hell, and telling +the history of Lucifer, who was, he says,<br> +<br> +<br> +Once general of a gilded host of sprites,<br> +Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights;<br> +But down like lightning, which him struck, he came<br> +And roar’d at his first plunge into the flame.<br> +<br> +<br> +Lucifer makes a speech to the inferior agents of mischief, in which +there is something of heathenism, and therefore of impropriety; and, +to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing his breast with +his long tail: Envy, after a pause, steps out, and among other declarations +of her zeal utters these lines:<br> +<br> +<br> +Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,<br> +And thunder echo to the trembling sky;<br> +Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height,<br> +As shall the fire’s proud element affright,<br> +Th’ old drudging sun, from his long-beaten way,<br> +Shall at thy voice start, and misguide the day.<br> +The jocund orbs shall break their measured pace,<br> +And stubborn poles change their allotted place.<br> +Heaven’s gilded troops shall flutter here and there,<br> +Leaving their boasting songs tuned to a sphere.<br> +<br> +<br> +Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an allegorical +being.<br> +<br> +It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that fancy +and fiction lose their effect; the whole system of life, while the theocracy +was yet visible, has an appearance so different from all other scenes +of human action, that the reader of the sacred volume habitually considers +it as the peculiar mode of existence of a distinct species of mankind, +that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; so that it is difficult +even for imagination to place us in the state of them whose story is +related, and by consequence their joys and griefs are not easily adopted, +nor can the attention be often interested in anything that befalls them.<br> +<br> +To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of poetical +embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile impatience, +or attract curiosity. Nothing can be more disgusting than a narrative +spangled with conceits; and conceits are all that the “Davideis” +supplies.<br> +<br> +One of the great sources of poetical delight is description, or the +power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences +instead of images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been seen, +but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil +describes the stone which Turnus lifted against Æneas, he fixes +the attention on its bulk and weight:<br> +<br> +<br> +Saxum circumspicit ingens,<br> +Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat<br> +Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.<br> +<br> +<br> +Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,<br> +<br> +<br> +I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant<br> +At once his murther and his monument.<br> +<br> +<br> +Of the sword taken from Goliath, he says,<br> +<br> +<br> +A sword so great, that it was only fit<br> +To cut off his great head that came with it.<br> +<br> +<br> +Other poets describe Death by some of its common appearances. +Cowley says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps real or fabulous,<br> +<br> +<br> +‘Twixt his right ribs deep pierced the furious blade,<br> +And open’d wide those secret vessels where<br> +Life’s light goes out, when first they let in air.<br> +<br> +<br> +But he has allusions vulgar as well as learned in a visionary succession +of kings:<br> +<br> +<br> +Joas at first does bright and glorious show,<br> +In life’s fresh morn his fame does early crow.<br> +<br> +<br> +Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,<br> +<br> +<br> +His forces seem’d no army, but a crowd<br> +Heartless, unarm’d, disorderly, and loud,<br> +<br> +<br> +he gives them a fit of the ague.<br> +<br> +The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things; he offends +by exaggeration as much as by diminution:<br> +<br> +<br> +The king was placed alone, and o’er his head<br> +A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.<br> +<br> +<br> +Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:<br> +<br> +<br> +Where the sun’s fruitful beams give metals birth,<br> +Where he the growth of fatal gold does see,<br> +Gold, which alone more influence has than he.<br> +<br> +<br> +In one passage he starts a sudden question to the confusion of philosophy:<br> +<br> +<br> +Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,<br> +Why does that twining plant the oak embrace;<br> +The oak for courtship most of all unfit,<br> +And rough as are the winds that fight with it?<br> +<br> +<br> +His expressions have sometimes a degree of meanness that surpasses expectation;<br> +<br> +<br> +Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you’re in,<br> +The story of your gallant friend begin.<br> +<br> +<br> +In a simile descriptive of the morning:<br> +<br> +<br> +As glimmering stars just at th’ approach of day,<br> +Cashier’d by troops, at last all drop away.<br> +<br> +<br> +The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:<br> +<br> +<br> +He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,<br> +That e’er the mid-day sun pierced through with light;<br> +Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,<br> +Wash’d from the morning beauties’ deepest red:<br> +An harmless flatt’ring meteor shone for hair,<br> +And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;<br> +He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,<br> +Where the most sprightly azure pleased the eyes;<br> +This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,<br> +Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;<br> +Of a new rainbow ere it fret or fade,<br> +The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.<br> +<br> +<br> +This is a just specimen of Cowley’s imagery; what might in general +expressions be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous by +branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with +the softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, +and been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions +of conception; but Cowley could not let us go till he had related where +Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and +then his scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.<br> +<br> +Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with +his natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued +till it is tedious:<br> +<br> +<br> +I’ th’ library a few choice authors stood,<br> +Yet ‘twas well stored, for that small store was good;<br> +Writing, man’s spiritual physic, was not then<br> +Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.<br> +Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew;<br> +The common prostitute she lately grew,<br> +And with the spurious brood loads now the press;<br> +Laborious effects of idleness.<br> +<br> +<br> +As the “Davideis” affords only four books, though intended +to consist of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as +Epic poems commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very +imperfectly shown by the third part. The duration of an unfinished +action cannot be known. Of characters either not yet introduced, +or shown but upon few occasions, the full extent and the nice discriminations +cannot be ascertained. The fable is plainly implex, formed rather +from the “Odyssey” than the “Iliad;” and many +artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a man acquainted +with the beet models. The past is recalled by narration, and the +future anticipated by vision: but he has been so lavish of his poetical +art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight books more +without practising again the same modes of disposing his matter; and +perhaps the perception of this growing incumbrance inclined him to stop. +By this abruption, posterity lost more instruction than delight. +If the continuation of the “Davideis” can be missed, it +is for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in +which it had been explained.<br> +<br> +Had not his characters been depraved like every other part by improper +decorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives +Saul both the body and mind of a hero:<br> +<br> +<br> +His way once chose, he forward threat outright.<br> +Nor turned aside for danger or delight.<br> +<br> +<br> +And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michal +are very justly conceived and strongly painted.<br> +<br> +Rymer has declared the “Davideis” superior to the “Jerusalem” +of Tasso, “which,” says he, “the poet, with all his +care, has not totally purged from pedantry.” If by pedantry +is meant that minute knowledge which is derived from particular sciences +and studies, in opposition to the general notions supplied by a wide +survey of life and nature, Cowley certainly errs, by introducing pedantry, +far more frequently than Tasso. I know not, indeed, why they should +be compared; for the resemblance of Cowley’s work to Tasso’s +is only that they both exhibit the agency of celestial and infernal +spirits, in which, however, they differ widely; for Cowley supposes +them commonly to operate upon the mind by suggestion; Tasso represents +them as promoting or obstructing events by external agency.<br> +<br> +Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember only +the description of Heaven, in which the different manner of the two +writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley’s is scarcely +description, unless it be possible to describe by negatives; for he +tells us only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to +represent the splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. +Tasso affords images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, +that Tasso’s description affords some reason for Rymer’s +censure. He says of the Supreme Being:<br> +<br> +<br> +Hà sotto i piedi e fato e la natura<br> +Ministri humili, e’l moto, e ch’il misura.<br> +<br> +<br> +The second line has in it more of pedantry than perhaps can be found +in any other stanza of the poem.<br> +<br> +In the perusal of the “Davideis,” as of all Cowley’s +works, we find wit and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention +has no relief; the affections are never moved; we are sometimes surprised, +but never delighted; and find much to admire, but little to approve. +Still, however, it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by nature, +and replenished by study.<br> +<br> +In the general review of Cowley’s poetry it will be found that +he wrote with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; +with much thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetic, +and rarely sublime; but always either ingenious or learned, either acute +or profound.<br> +<br> +It is said by Denham in his elegy,<br> +<br> +<br> +To him no author was unknown,<br> +Yet what he writ was all his own.<br> +<br> +<br> +This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of +Cowley, than perhaps of any other poet. - He read much, and yet borrowed +little.<br> +<br> +His character of writing was indeed not his own; he unhappily adopted +that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; +and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued +to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself +with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring was bright +and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.<br> +<br> +He was in his own time considered as of unrivalled excellence. +Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went +before him; and Milton is said to have declared that the three greatest +English poets were Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley.<br> +<br> +His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his +own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his +copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and applicable +rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a +commodious idea merely because another had used it: his known wealth +was so great that be might have borrowed without loss of credit, in +his elegy on Sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance +to the noble epigram of Grotius on the death of Scaliger, that I cannot +but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile +hand.<br> +<br> +One passage in his “Mistress” is so apparently borrowed +from Donne, that he probably would not have written it had it not mingled +with his own thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking +it from another:<br> +<br> +<br> +Although I think thou never found wilt be,<br> + Yet I’m resolved to search for thee;<br> + The search itself rewards the pains.<br> +So, though the chymic his great secret miss<br> +(For neither it in Art or Nature is),<br> + Yet things well worth his toil he gains:<br> + And does his charge and labour pay<br> +With good unsought experiments by the way. - COWLEY.<br> +<br> +Some that have deeper digg’d Love’s mine than I,<br> +Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:<br> + I have loved, and got, and told;<br> +But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,<br> +I should not find that hidden mystery;<br> + Oh, ‘tis imposture all!<br> +And as no chymic yet th’ elixir got,<br> + But glorifies his pregnant pot,<br> + If by the way to him befal<br> +Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,<br> + So lovers dream a rich and long delight,<br> + But get a winter-seeming summer’s night.<br> +<br> +<br> +Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest esteem.<br> +<br> +It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledged his obligation +to the learning and industry of Jonson: but I have found no traces of +Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have been his purpose.; +and from Donne ~he may have learnt that familiarity with religious images, +and that light allusion to sacred things, by which readers far short +of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would not be borne in +the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate.<br> +<br> +Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompense +him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him. He +says of Goliath:<br> +<br> +<br> +His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,<br> +Which Nature meant some tall ship’s mast should be.<br> +<br> +<br> +Milton of Satan:<br> +<br> +<br> +His spear, to equal which the tallest pine<br> +Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast<br> +Of some great ammiral, were but a wand,<br> +He walked with.<br> +<br> +<br> +His diction was in his own time censured as negligent. He seems +not to have known, or not to have considered, that words being arbitrary +must owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that +only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought; +and as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded +and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rustics +or mechanics; so the most heroic sentiments will lose their efficacy, +and the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed +by words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar +mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.<br> +<br> +Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have +an intrinsic and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual +gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser +matter, that only a chemist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in +unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish +it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost +of their extraction.<br> +<br> +The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself +to the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends, a further +knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to benefit by +pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply +something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. +What is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness +of improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.<br> +<br> +Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without +care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of +phrase: he has no elegance either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours +were rather to impress sentences upon the understanding, than images +on the fancy: he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar +propriety of nice adaptation.<br> +<br> +It seems to follow from the necessity of the subject, rather than the +care of the writer, that the diction of his heroic poem is less familiar +than that of his slightest writings. He has given not the same +numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempestuous +Pindar.<br> +<br> +His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and if +what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they +are ill-read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are +commonly harsh to modern ears. He has indeed many noble lines, +such as the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk +of his thoughts sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable +grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks +willingly down to his general carelessness, and avoids with very little +care either meanness or asperity.<br> +<br> +His contractions are often rugged and harsh:<br> +<br> +<br> +One flings a mountain, and its rivers too<br> +Torn up with ‘t.<br> +<br> +<br> +His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like +unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy +of the line.<br> +<br> +His combination of different measures is sometimes dissonant and unpleasing; +he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide easily +into the latter.<br> +<br> +The words “do” and “did,” which so much degrade +in present estimation the line that admits them, were in the time of +Cowley little censured or avoided; how often he used them, and with +how bad an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a passage, in +which every reader will lament to see just and noble thoughts defrauded +of their praise by inelegance of language:<br> +<br> +<br> +Where honour or where conscience <i>does</i> not bind<br> + No other law shall shackle me;<br> + Slave to myself I ne’er will be;<br> +Nor shall my future actions be confined<br> + By my own present mind.<br> +Who by resolves and vows engaged <i>does </i>stand<br> + For days, that yet belong to fate,<br> +<i>Does</i> like an unthrift mortgage his estate,<br> + Before it falls into his hand;<br> + The bondman of the cloister so,<br> +All that he <i>does</i> receive <i>does </i>always owe.<br> +And still as Time comes in, it goes away,<br> + Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!<br> + Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell!<br> +Which his hour’s work as well as hours <i>does </i>tell:<br> +Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.<br> +<br> +<br> +His heroic lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are +sometimes sweet and sonorous.<br> +<br> +He says of the Messiah,<br> +<br> +<br> +Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,<br> +<i>And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>In another place, of David,<br> +<br> +<br> +Yet bid him go securely, when he sends;<br> +<i>’Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends.<br> +The man who has his God, no aid can lack;<br> +And we who bid him go, will bring him back.<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>Yet amidst his negligence he sometimes attempted an improved and +scientific versification; of which it will be best to give his own account +subjoined to this line:<br> +<br> +<br> +Nor can the glory contain itself in th’ endless space.<br> +<br> +<br> +“I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of +readers, that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, +and, as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the +thing which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other +places of this poem, that else will pass as very careless verses: as +before,<br> +<br> +<i>And over-runs the neighb’ring fields with violent course.<br> +<br> +</i>“In the second book:<br> +<br> +<i>Down a precipice deep</i>,<i> dowse he casts them all -<br> +<br> +</i>“And,<br> +<br> +<i>And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care.<br> +<br> +</i>“In the third,<br> +<br> +<i>Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o’er<br> +His breast a thick plate strong brass he wore.<br> +<br> +</i>“In the fourth,<br> +<br> +<i>Like some fair pine o’er-looking all the ignobler wood.<br> +<br> +</i>“And,<br> +<br> +<i>Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.<br> +<br> +</i>“And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. +The thing is, that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, +as that, out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may +be represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind +themselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught +I can find. The Latins <i>(qui musas colunt severiores</i>) sometimes +did it; and their prince, Virgil, always: in whom the examples are innumerable, +and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous +to collect them.”<br> +<br> +<br> +I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the +representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate +only sound and motion. A “boundless” verse, a “headlong” +verse, and a verse of “brass” or of “strong brass,” +seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there +is peculiar in the sound of the line expressing “loose care,” +I cannot discover; nor why the “pine” is “taller” +in an Alexandrine than in ten syllables.<br> +<br> +But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example +of representative versification, which perhaps no other English line +can equal:<br> +<br> +<br> +Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:<br> +He, who defers this work from day to day,<br> +Does on a river’s bank expecting stay<br> +Till the whole stream that stopp’d him shall be gone,<br> +<i>Which runs</i>,<i> and</i>,<i> as it runs</i>,<i> for ever shall +run on.<br> +<br> +<br> +</i>Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled Alexandrines +at pleasure with the common heroic of ten syllables, and from him Dryden +borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered +the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestic, and has therefore +deviated into that measure when he supposes the voice heard of the Supreme +Being.<br> +<br> +The author of the “Davideis” is commended by Dryden for +having written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff +was too lyrical for an heroic poem; but this seems to have been known +before by May and Sandys, the translators of the “Pharsalia” +and the “Metamorphoses.”<br> +<br> +In the “Davideis” are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect +by the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have +intended to complete them; that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably +concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman +poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of +recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because +all that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a <i>cœsura</i>,<i> +</i>and a full stop, will equally effect.<br> +<br> +Of triplets in his “Davideis” he makes no use, and perhaps +did not at first think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to +have changed his mind, for in the verses on the government of Cromwell +he inserts them liberally with great happiness.<br> +<br> +After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them +must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, +that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, +may be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his +verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His +thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, +which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is +far-sought, or hard-laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and +familiar without grossness.<br> +<br> +It has been observed by Felton, in his Essay on the Classics, that Cowley +was beloved by every Muse that he courted; and that he has rivalled +the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.<br> +<br> +It may be affirmed, without any encomiastic fervour, that he brought +to his poetic labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages +are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that +he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the +greater ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified +for sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those +who freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his +author at a distance, walked by his side; and that, if he left versification +yet improvable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens of +excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LIVES OF THE POETS: WALLER, ETC. ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named lvwal10h.htm or lvwal10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, lvwal11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, lvwal10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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