INTRODUCTION.

THERE are indications that Addison's literary criticisms, and especially his papers on Paradise Lost, are not so generally read, nor so highly esteemed, as was the case a hundred years ago. We hear much of the Roger de Coverley series and of the Fan Drill, when we hear of Addison at all, but little of his more serious and solid writings. "He does not go very deep," says his admirer Thackeray. Can it also be that, when he strives to go deep, he is not worth the labor of perusal? Says Leslie Stephen, treating of Addison in the Dictionary of National Biography, "The critical doctrines are obsolete, and the judgments often worse than obsolete." Were this true, there would be little need of re-editing the essays on Paradise Lost. Is it true?

For our part we think not, or at least we dissent from the sweeping form of the statement. Other causes must contribute to the contemporary, and, we think, temporary neglect of his critical essays. Perhaps we shall discover some of them through an examination of Matthew Arnold's strictures in that one of his Mixed Essays entitled A French Critic on Milton. Much of the portion relevant to this inquiry is cited in our Notes, but for the sake of convenience we may be permitted to reintroduce, from point to point of the discussion, what is most significant in his criticism.

It must be premised that Arnold is not lacking in respect for Milton. Not only does he quote him in other essays as furnishing examples of the grand style, but, in the Address. delivered at the unveiling of the Memorial Window, Feb.

13, 1888, he is full of laudatory appreciations of Milton's genius. Thus he says: "Shakespeare and Milton - he who wishes to keep his standard of excellence high, cannot choose two better objects of regard and honor." Again: "If to our English race an inadequate sense for perfection of work is a real danger, if the discipline of respect for a high and flawless excellence is peculiarly needed by us, Milton is of all our gifted men the best lesson, the most salutary influence. In the sure and flawless perfection of his rhythm and diction he is as admirable as Virgil or Dante, and in this respect he is unique amongst us. No one else in English literature and art possesses the like distinction." And again: Milton, from one end of Paradise Lost to the other, is in his diction and rhythm constantly a great artist in the great style. Whatever may be said as to the subject of his poem, as to the conditions under which he received his subject and treated it, that praise, at any rate, is assured to him."

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It may be remarked in passing that, when Arnold speaks of "the sure and flawless perfection of his rhythm and diction," he is at variance with such critics, not only as Addison, but as Dryden, as Johnson, and as Landor. Dryden charges Milton with running" into a flat thought, sometimes for a hundred lines together." Johnson remarks: "His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations, which Bentley endeavors 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." Though it is true he adds, "And at last bear so little proportion to the whole that they scarcely deserve the attention of a critic." The criticisms of Landor occupy considerable space in the Conversation between himself and Southey. No one of these distinguished authors goes so far as to say, with Arnold," From style really high and pure Milton never departs." "Never'

is an emphatic word, yet one that could easily be condoned in most writers; it strikes us with surprise only as coming from a critic who, speaking of such as have made a certain degree of progress in the intellectual life, calmly adds, "At this stage, rhetoric, even when it is so good as Macaulay's, dissatisfies."

Arnold begins that part of his article which is concerned with Addison by saying: "This is the fault of Addison's Miltonic criticism, once so celebrated; it rests almost entirely upon convention." If we are seriously to consider the animadversions which follow, we are disposed to inquire at the outset regarding the sense in which the word 'convention' is used. But we are not left wholly in the dark by Arnold himself. Thus he tells us, for instance, after three or four pages of disquisition, that "the great merit of Johnson's criticism on Milton is that from rhetoric and convention it is free." We may therefore obtain assistance in discovering Arnold's sense of the word 'convention' by examining Johnson's criticism, seeing what it contains, and deliberately assuring ourselves that whatever we find in it is at least free from the odious blot of conventionality.

Turning, then, to Johnson's remarks on Paradise Lost, we observe, first of all, that he calls it " 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." We shall be somewhat surprised, on again referring to Arnold's essay, to discover that he criticizes Addison for the opinion that "the Paradise Lost is looked upon by the best judges as the greatest production, or at least the noblest work of genius in our language, and therefore deserves to be set before an English reader in its full beauty." To an unsophisticated understanding it would seem that Addison claims rather less for the poem than Johnson. But Johnson's criticism is devoid of convention, according to Matthew Arnold. May we not therefore assume that Addison is blameless on this score?

In the next paragraph, Johnson discusses the epic poem, from which it would appear that he regards Paradise Lost as an epic. Here we are given pause, for are we not dangerously near a convention at this point? Professor Whitney, the eminent philologist, referring to the word 'conventional,' thus defines it ('Max Müller and the Science of Language,' p. 11) "The word everywhere signifies neither more nor less than 'resting on a mutual understanding or a community of habit.’ But does not the word 'epic' rest on a mutual understanding? If you range a given poem under a certain head, assign it to a certain class, call it by the name of a distinct historical species, are you not availing yourself of a convention? Has the term epic, considered as the name of a poetical species, any meaning apart from convention? Are you not, in thus doing, appealing to a tradition, according to which a poem composed in a particular way, or at least possessing certain recognizable characteristics, is called an epic? If an opponent denies that the name is properly bestowed upon a composition which you call an epic, have you any recourse except to the statements of the literary historians and critics your predecessors, who have given the name to works which you esteem similar? And if you are still challenged to make good your assumption, can you do otherwise than point out these similarities, ranging them, if you can thus facilitate the demonstration, under convenient or natural heads? In other words, is not your appeal, under these circumstances, to history, to a literary tradition in short, to convention? But Arnold says, we . must remember, that "the great merit of Johnson's criticism on Milton is that from rhetoric and convention it is free."

Johnson considers the epic under the heads of the fable, the characters, the sentiments, the diction, and the versification, treating by the way of the probable and the marvelous, the machinery, the episodes, the integrity of the design, the

question whether Paradise Lost can be properly termed heroic, and who is to be regarded as the hero. The fable? The characters? The sentiments? Are none of these conventional? Certainly when Addison takes "a general view of it under these four heads the fable, the characters, the sentiments, and the language," Mr. Arnold has nothing better to say for his judgment than what follows: "This is the sort of criticism which held our grandfathers and greatgrandfathers spellbound in solemn reverence. But it is all based upon convention, and on the positivism of the modern reader it is thrown away." Does the positivism of the modern reader, then, enable him to dispense with a definite critical vocabulary when he wishes to discuss the merits and peculiarities of a poem? Or are we supposed to have advanced beyond the stage of discussion, and to enjoy, or dislike, in silence? Apparently not; else why Essays in Criticism, First Series and Second Series?

Evidently we are in a quandary. We might take refuge in the hypothesis that our guide, knowing the terminology employed by Addison to be of Greek coinage, and, if the truth must be admitted, Aristotelian, objected to it as antiquated and effete. Yet, it might be answered, why change the names, if the things still exist? We might call the beams and rafters of a house by names of our own invention, if we chose; but to what purpose, provided their essential functions, their offices in the building, remained the same? We should still need some names, provided the framework of the edifice remained materially unchanged. That the framework of Paradise Lost is, in the main, similar to that of ancient compositions known as epics, is allowed by Arnold; for does he not say, "The great merit of Johnson's criticism on Milton is that from rhetoric and convention it is free"? And does not Johnson recognize this framework? Does he not, indeed, retain the ancient names, in this respect quite on a level with Addison himself?