ideas were so wonderfully sublime, that it would have been impossible for him to have represented them in their full strength and beauty, without having recourse to these foreign assistances. Our language sank under 5 him, and was unequal to that greatness of soul which furnished him with such glorious conceptions. ΙΟ 15 20 A second fault in his language is, that he often affects a kind of jingle in his words, as in the following passages and many others : 1 And brought into this 2 World a world of woe. 3 Begirt the Almighty Throne Beseeching or besieging. 4 This tempted our attempt. 5 At one slight bound high overleaped all bound. I know there are figures for this kind of speech, that some of the greatest ancients have been guilty of it, and that Aristotle himself has given it a place in his Rhetoric among the beauties of that art. But as it is in itself poor and trifling, it is, I think, at present universally exploded by all the masters of polite writing. The last fault which I shall take notice of in Milton's style is the frequent use of what the learned call technical words, or terms of art. It is one of the great beauties of poetry to make hard things intelligible, and to 25 deliver what is abstruse of itself in such easy language as may be understood by ordinary readers; besides that the knowledge of a poet should rather seem born with him, or inspired, than drawn from books and systems. I have often wondered how Mr. Dryden could translate a passage out of Virgil after the following manner : — Tack to the larboard and stand off to sea, Veer starboard sea and land. Milton makes use of 'larboard' in the same manner. 5 When he is upon building, he mentions 'Doric pillars,' 'pilasters,' 'cornice,' 'frieze,' 'architrave.' When he talks of heavenly bodies, you meet with 'ecliptic' and 'eccentric,' 'the trepidation,' 'stars dropping from the zenith,' 'rays culminating from the equator': to which 10 might be added many instances of the like kind in several other arts and sciences. I shall in my next papers1 give an account of the many particular beauties in Milton which would have been too long to insert under those general heads I have already treated of, and with which I intend to conclude this piece of criticism. 1 First edition, 'Saturday's paper.' 15 7.1 BOOK I. Volet hæc sub luce videri, Judicis argutum quæ non formidat acumen. I HAVE seen in the works of a modern philosopher a map of the spots in the sun. My last paper of the faults and blemishes in Milton's Paradise Lost may be considered as a piece of the same nature. To pursue the allusion: As it is observed that among the bright parts of the luminous body above-mentioned there are some which glow more intensely and dart a stronger light than others; so, notwithstanding I have already shown Milton's poem to be very beautiful in general, I shall now proceed to take notice of such beauties as appear to me more exquisite than the rest. Milton has proposed the subject of his poem in the following verses: 2 Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, 1 Spectator, No. 303, Feb. 16, 1712. 2 I. I-6. These lines are perhaps as plain, simple, and unadorned as any of the whole poem, in which particular the author has conformed himself to the example of Homer and the precept of Horace. His invocation to a work which turns in a great meas- 5 ure upon the creation of the world is very properly made to the Muse who inspired Moses in those books from whence our author drew his subject, and to the Holy Spirit, who is therein represented as operating after a particular manner in the first production of nature. This 10 whole exordium rises very happily into noble language. and sentiment, as I think the transition to the fable is exquisitely beautiful and natural. The nine days' astonishment in which the angels lay entranced after their dreadful overthrow and fall from 15 heaven, before they could recover either the use of thought or speech, is a noble circumstance, and very finely imagined. The division of hell into seas of fire, and into firm ground impregnated with the same furious element, with that particular circumstance of the exclu- 20 sion of Hope from those infernal regions, are instances of the same great and fruitful invention. The thoughts in the first speech and description of Satan, who is one of the principal actors in this poem, are wonderfully proper to give us a full idea of him. His 25 pride, envy, and revenge, obstinacy, despair, and impenitence, are all of them very artfully interwoven. In short, his first speech is a complication of all those passions which discover themselves separately in several other of his speeches in the poem. The whole part of this great 30 enemy of mankind is filled with such incidents as are very apt to raise and terrify the reader's imagination. Of this nature, in the Book now before us, is his being the first that awakens out of the general trance, with his posture on the burning lake, his rising from it, and the descrip- 35 tion of his shield and spear: · ΙΟ 15 20 25 1 Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, 8 Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and, rolled Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, That felt unusual weight. 4 His ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, At evening, from the top of Fesolè, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, To which we may add his call to the fallen angels that lay plunged and stupefied in the sea of fire: 5 He called so loud, that all the hollow deep Of Hell resounded. 30 But there is no single passage in the whole poem worked up to a greater sublimity than that wherein his person is described in those celebrated lines: 1 I. 192-196. 2 The editions have 'beside.' 4 1. 284-296. |