Books: Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley

S >> Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley

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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.

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.

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
-

Of which the least could wield
Those elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions;

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.

In the examination of epic poems much speculation is commonly
employed upon the CHARACTERS. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Of the PROBABLE and the MARVELLOUS, 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.

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.

Of the MACHINERY, so called from [Greek text], 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.

Of EPISODES, 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.

To the completeness or INTEGRITY 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.

The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly ONE,
whether the poem can be properly termed HEROIC, 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.

After the scheme and fabric of the poem, must be considered its
component parts, the sentiments and the diction.

The SENTIMENTS, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to
characters, are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The vulgar inhabitants of Pandaemonium, 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.

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.

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 AEschylus, 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.

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 asphaltus, a work too
bulky for ideal architects.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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