How supremely grand is the close of Samson's | verse would be better and more regular by the omission of "seeming" or "at first," neither of speech! which is necessary. Southey. In v. 439 we know what is meant by Slewst them many a slain; Landor. The giant Harapha is not expected but the expression is absurd: he could not slay to talk wisely: but he never would have said to the slain. We also may object to The use of strongest wines And strongest drinks, knowing that wines were the "strongest drinks" in those times: perhaps they might have been made stronger by the infusion of herbs and spices. You will again be saddened by the deep harmony of those verses in which the poet represents his own condition. V. 590. All otherwise to me my thoughts portend, &c. And words addrest seem into tears dissolved, In v. 734, Which to have united, without excuse, the comma should be expunged after excuse, else Samson Thou knowst me now, If thou at all art known; much I have heard A pretty clear evidence of his being somewhat And black enchantments, some magician's art. No doubt of that. But what glorious lines from O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious. V. 1634. That to the arched roof gave main support. There were no arches in the time of Samson: but the mention of the two pillars in the centre makes Here we are forced by the double allusion to re-it requisite to imagine such a structure. V. 1660, cognise the later mythos of Circe. The cup alone, or the warbling alone, might belong to any other enchantress, any of his own or of a preceding age, since we know that in all times certain herbs and certain incantations were used by sorceresses. The chorus in this tragedy is not always conciliating and assuaging. Never was anything more bitter against the female sex than the verses from 1010 to 1060. The invectives of Euripides arenever the outpourings of the chorus, and their venom is cold as hemlock; those of Milton are hot and corrosive. It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit, Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit, Harder to hit, Which way soever men refer it: Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day Never has Milton, in poetry or prose, written Whate'er it be, to wisest men and best Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil, &c. This is a very ugly mis-shapen alexandrine. The The It is Milton's practice to make vowels syllabically weak either coalesce with or yield to others. In no place but at the end of a verse would he protract glorious into a trisyllable. structure of his versification was founded on the Italian, in which io and ia in some words are monosyllables in all places but the last. V. 1665, Among thy slain self-kill'd, Not willingly, but tangled in the fold Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more Than all thy life hath slain before. Milton differs extremely from the Athenian dramatists in neglecting the beauty of his chorusses. Here the third line is among his usually bad alexandrines; and there is not only a debility of rhythm but also a redundancy of words. The verse would be better, and the sense too, without the words "in death." And "slaughtered" is alike unnecessary in the next. Farther on, the chorus talks about the phoenix. Now the phoenix, although oriental, was placed in the orient by the Greeks. If the phoenix "no second knows," it is probable it knows "no third." All this nonsense is prated while Samson is lying dead be fore them. But the poem is a noble poem, and the characters of Samson and Delilah are drawn with precision and truth. The Athenian dramatists, both tragic and comic, have always one chief personage, one central light. Homer has not in the Iliad, nor has Milton in the Paradise Lost, nor has Shakspeare in several of his best tragedies. We find it in Racine, in the great Corneille, in the greater Schiller. In Calderon, and the other dramatists of Spain, it rarely is wanting; but their principal delight is in what we call plot or intrigue, in plainer English (and very like it) intricacy and trick. Hurd, after saying of the Samson Agonistes, that "it is, as might be expected, a masterpiece," tucks up his lawn sleeve and displays his slender wrist against Lowth. Nothing was ever equal to his cool effrontery when he says, "This critic, and all such, are greatly out in their judgments," &c. He might have profited, both in criticism and in style, by reading Lowth more attentively and patiently. In which case he never would have written out in, nor obliged to such freedoms, nor twenty more such strange things. "It Lowth was against the chorus: Hurd says, will be constantly wanting to rectify the wrong conclusions of the audience." Would it not be quite as advisable to drop carefully a few drops of laudanum on a lump of sugar, to lull the excitement of the sufferers by the tragedy? The chorus in Milton comes well provided with this narcotic. Voltaire wrote an opera, and intended it for a serious one, on the same subject. He decorated it with chorusses sung to Venus and Adonis, and represented Samson more gallantly French than either. He pulled down the temple on the stage, and cried, "J'ai réparé ma honte, et j'expire en vainqueur!" And yet Voltaire was often a graceful poet, and sometimes a judicious critic. It may be vain and useless to propose for imitation the chief excellences of a great author, such being the gift of transcendent genius, and not an acquisition to be obtained by study or labour: but it is only in great authors that defects are memorable when pointed out, and unsuspected until they are distinctly. For which reason I think it probable that at no distant time I may publish your remarks, if you consent to it. Southey. It is well known in what spirit I made them; and as you have objected to few, if any, I leave them at your discretion. Let us now pass on to Lycidas. It appears to me, that Warton is │less judicious than usual, in his censure of Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. I find in his note, "The mellowing year could not affect the leaves of the laurel, the myrtle, and the ivy, which last is characterised before as never sere." The ivy sheds its leaves in the proper season, though never all at once, and several hang on the stem longer than a year. In v. 88, But now my oar proceeds And listens to the herald of the sea. Does the oar listen? Blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook. V. 119. Now although mouths and bellies may designate the possessors or bearers, yet surely the blind v. 1750. And hears the inexpressive nuptial song In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. What can be the meaning? Landor. It is to be regretted, not so much that Milton has adopted the language and scenery and mythology of the ancients, as that he confounds the real simple field-shepherds with the mitred shepherds of St. Paul's Churchyard and West minster Abbey, and ties the two-handed sword against the crook. I have less objection to the with goose and mince-pie on the same plate. luxury spread out before me, than to be treated No poetry so harmonious had ever been written in our language; but in the same free metre both Tasso and Guarini had captivated the ear of Italy. In regard to poetry, the Lycidas will hardly bear a comparison with the Allegro and Penseroso. Many of the ideas in both are taken from Beaumont and Fletcher, from Raleigh and Marlowe, and from a poem in the first edition of Burton's but there are couplets in Milton's worth them all. Each of these has many beauties; Melancholy. We must, however, do what we set about. If we see the Faun walk lamely, we must look at his foot, find the thorn, and extract it. Southey. There are those who defend, in the first verses, the matrimonial, or other less legitimate alliance, of Cerberus and Midnight; but I have too much regard for Melancholy to subscribe to the filiation, especially as it might exclude her presently from the nunnery, whither she is invited as pensive, devout, and pure. The union of Erebus and Night is much spoken of in poetical circles, and we have authority for announcing it to the public; but Midnight, like Cerberus, is a misnomer. We have occasionally heard, in objurgation, a man called a son of a dog, on the mother's side; but never was there goddess of that parentage. You are pleased to find Milton writing pincht instead of pinched. Landor. Certainly; for there never existed the word "pinched," and never can exist the word pinch'd." In the same verse he writes sed for said. We have both of these, and we should keep them diligently. The pronunciation is always sed, excepting in rhyme. For the same reason we should retain agen as well as again. What a cloud of absurdities has been whiffed against me, by no unlearned men, about the Conversation of Tooke and Johnson! Their own petty conceits rise up between their eyes and the volume they are negligently reading, and utterly obscure or confound it irretrievably. One would represent me as attempting to undermine our native tongue; another as modernising; a third Southey. Turning back to the Allegro, I find an amusing note, conveying the surprising intelligence, all the way from Oxford, that eglantine means really the dog-rose, and that both dog-rose and honeysuckle (for which Milton mistook it), are often growing against the side or walls of a house." Thus says Mr. Thomas Warton. I wish he had also told us in what quarter of the world a house has sides without walls of some kind or other. But it really is strange that Milton should have misapplied the word, at a time when botany was become the favourite study. I do not recollect whether Cowley had yet written his Latin poems on the appearances and qualities of plants. What are you smiling at? Landor. as antiquating it. Whereas I am trying to un- | collect it from swineherds and Fra Diavolo: I derprop, not to undermine: I am trying to stop should have looked for it in vain among universithe man-milliner at his ungainly work of trim- ties and professors. ming and flouncing: I am trying to show how graceful is our English, not in its stiff decrepitude, not in its riotous luxuriance, but in its hale mid-life. I would make bad writers follow good ones, and good writers accord with themselves. If all can not be reduced into order, is that any reason why nothing should be done toward it? If languages and men too are imperfect, must we never make an effort to bring them a few steps nearer to what is preferable? If we find on the road a man who has fallen from his horse, and who has three bones dislocated, must we refuse him our aid because one is quite broken? It is by people who answer in the affirmative to these questions, or seem to answer so, it is by such writers that our language for the last half-century has fallen more rapidly into corruption and decomposition than any other ever spoken among men. The worst losses are not always those which are soonest felt, but those which are felt too late. Southey. I should have adopted all your sug gestions in orthography, if I were not certain that my bookseller would protest against it as ruinous. If you go no farther than to write compell and foretell, the compositor will correct your oversight: yet surely there should be some sign that the last syllable of those verbs ought to be spelt differently, as they are pronounced differently, from shrivel and level. Landor. Let us run back to our plantain. But a bishop stands in the way; a bishop no other than Hurd, who says that "Milton shows his judgment in celebrating Shakspeare's comedies rather than his tragedies." Pity he did not live earlier he would have served among the mummers both for bishop and fool. We now come to the Penseroso, in which title there are many who doubt the propriety of the spelling. Marsand, an editor of Petrarca, has defended the poet, who used equally pensiero and pensero. The mode is more peculiarly Lombard. The Milanese and Comascs invariably say pensèr. Yet it is wonderful how, at so short a distance, and professing to speak the same language, they differ in many expressions. The wonder ceases with those who have resided long in the country, and are curious about such matters, when they discover that at two gates of Milan two languages are spoken. The same thing occurs in Florence itself, where a street is inhabited by the Camaldolese, whose language is as little understood by learned academicians as that of Dante himself. Beyond the eastern gates a morning's walk, you come into Varlunga, a pastoral district, in which the people speak differently from both. I have always found a great pleasure in collecting the leaves and roots of these phonetic simples, especially in hill-countries. Nothing so conciliates many, and particularly the uneducated, as to ask and receive instruction from them. I have not hesitated to Our old field of battle, where Milton Calls up him who left untold Chaucer, like Shakspeare, like Homer, like Mil- Southey. Copy them rather. the imagination. Unless they felt the truth or When Freedom dreste in blood-stain'd veste. Landor. He is my favourite too, if you admit the expression without the signification of precedency. I do not think him equal to Chaucer even in imagination, and he appears to me very inferior to him in all other points, excepting harmony. Here the miscarriage is in Chaucer's age, not in Chaucer, many of whose verses are highly beautiful, but never (as in Spenser) one whole period. I love the geniality of his temperature: no straining, no effort, no storm, no fury. His vivid thoughts burst their way to us through the coarsest integuments of language. The heart is the creator of the poetical world; only the atmosphere is from the brain. Do I then undervalue imagination? No indeed: but I find imagination where others never look for it : in character multiform yet consistent. Chaucer | poetry, but in our apartments, where it gives a first united the two glorious realms of Italy and sunniness greatly wanted by the climate. Pindar England. Shakspeare came after, and subjected and Virgil are profuse of gold, but they reject the the whole universe to his dominion. But he gilded. mounted the highest steps of his throne under those bland skies which had warmed the congenial breasts of Chaucer and Boccaccio. The powers of imagination are but slender when it can invent only shadowy appearances; much greater are requisite to make an inert and insignificant atom grow up into greatness; to give it form, life, mobility, and intellect. Spenser hath accomplished the one; Shakspeare and Chaucer the other. Pope and Dryden have displayed a little of it in their Satires. In passing, let me express my wish that writers who compare them in generalities, and who lean mostly toward the stronger, would attempt to trim the balance, by placing Pope among our best critics on poetry, while Dryden is knee-deep below John Dennis. You do not like either: I read both with pleasure, so long as they keep to the couplet. But St. Cecilia's music-book is interlined with epigrams, and Alexander's Feast smells of gin at secondhand, with true Briton fiddlers full of native talent in the orchestra. Southey. Dryden says, "It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of Chaucer's verses which are lame for want of half, and sometimes a whole foot, which no pronunciation can make otherwise." Landor. Certainly no pronunciation but the proper one can do it. Southey. On the opposite quarter, comparing him with Boccaccio, he says, "He has refined on the Italian, and has mended his stories in his way of telling. Our countryman carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage." Landor. Certainly our brisk and vigorous poet carries with him no weight in criticism. Southey. Vivacity and shrewd sense are Dryden's characteristics, with quickness of perception rather than accuracy of remark, and consequently a facility rather than a fidelity of expression. We are coming to our last days if, according to the prophet Joel, "blood and fire and pillars of smoke" are signs of them. Again to Milton and the Penseroso. V. 90. What worlds, or what vast regions. Are not vast regions included in worlds? In 119, 120, 121, 122, the same rhymes are repeated. Thus, night, oft see me in thy pale career, is the only verse of ten syllables, and should be reduced to the ranks. You always have strongly objected to epithets which designate dresses and decoration; of which epithets, it must be acknow| ledged, both Milton and Shakspeare are unreasonably fond. Civil-suited, frownced, kercheft, come close together. I suspect they will find as little favour in your eyes as embroidered, trimmed, and gilded. Landor. I am fond of gilding, not in our Southey. I have counted ninety-three lines in Milton where gold is used, and only four where gilded is. A question is raised whether pale, in To walk the studious cloisters pale, is substantive or adjective. opinion? What is your Landor. That it is an adjective. Milton was very Italian, as you know, in his custom of adding a second epithet after the substantive, where one had preceded it. The Wartons followed him. Yet Thomas Warton would read in this verse the substantive, giving as his reason that our poet is fond of the singular. In the present word there is nothing extraordinary in finding it thus. We commonly say within the pale of the church, of the law, &c. But pale is an epithet to which Milton is very partial. Just before, he has written "pale career," and we shall presently see the "pale-eyed priest." Southey. With antick pillars massy-proof. The Wartons are fond of repeating in their poetry Landor. Whenever I come to the end of these poems, or either of them, it is always with a sigh of regret. We will pass by the Arcades, of which the little that is good is copied from Shakspeare. Southey. Nevertheless we may consider it as a nebula, which was not without its efficiency in forming the star of Comus. This Mask is modelled on another by George Peele. Two brothers wander in search of a sister enthralled by a magician. They call aloud her name, and Echo repeats it, as here in Comus. Much also has been taken from Puteanus, who borrowed at once the best and the worst of his poem from Philostratus. In the third verse I find spirits a dissyllable, which is unusual in Milton. Landor. I can account for his monosyllabic sound by his fondness of imitating the Italian spirto. But you yourself are addicted to these quavers, if you will permit me the use of the word here; and I find spirit, peril, &c., occupying no longer a time than if the second vowel were wanting. I do not approve of the apposition in The nodding horrour of whose shady brows. V. 47. Before which I find Sea-girt isles That, like to rich and various gems inlay How can a bosom be unadorned which already is to Echo. We must however go on and look inlaid with gems? Southey. You will object no less strongly to Sounds and seas with all their finny drove, sounds being parts of seas. Landor. There are yet graver faults. Where did the young lady ever hear or learn such expressions as "Swilled insolence"? The grey-hooded Even, Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed, Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain. Here is Eve a manifest female, with her own proper hood upon her head, taking the other parts of male attire, and rising (by good luck) from under a waggon-wheel. But nothing in Milton, and scarcely anything in Cowley, is viler than Else, O thievish night, Why should'st thou, but for some felonious end, It must have been a capacious dark-lantern that held them all. That Nature hung in heaven, and fill'd their lamps Hardly so bad; but very bad is Does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night? A greater and more momentous fault is, that three soliloquies come in succession for about 240 lines together. What time the laboured ox And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat. These are blamed by Warton, but blamed in the wrong place. The young lady, being in the wood, could have seen nothing of ox or hedger, and was unlikely to have made any previous observations on their work-hours. But in the summer, and this was in summer, neither the ox nor the hedger are at work that the ploughman always quits it at noon, as Warton says he does, is untrue. When he quits it at noon, it is for his dinner. Gray says: The ploughman homeward plods his weary way. He may do that, but certainly not at the season when The beetle wheels her drony flight. Nevertheless the stricture is captious; for the ploughman may return from the field, although not from ploughing; and ploughman may be accepted for any agriculturer. Certainly such must have been Virgil's meaning when he wrote Quos durus arator Observans nido implumes detraxit. after the young gentlemen. Comus says: I saw them under a green mantling vine It is much to be regretted that the banks of the Severn in our days present no such facilities. You would find some difficulty in teaching the readers of poetry to read metrically the exquisite verses which follow. What would they make of And as I past I worshipt it! These are the true times; and they are quite unintelligible to those who divide our verses into iambics, with what they call licences. Southey. We have found the two brothers; and never were two young gentlemen in stiffer doublets. Unmuffle, ye faint stars, &c. The elder, although "as smooth as Hebe's his unrazor'd lip," talks not only like a man, but like a philosopher of much experience. What need a man foretell his date of grief, &c. Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree, To save her blossoms and defend her fruit, &c. Landor. We now come to a place where we have only the choice of a contradiction or a nonsense. She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings. There is no sense in pluming a plume. Beyond a doubt Milton wrote prunes, and subsequently it was printed plumes to avoid what appeared a contrariety. And a contrariety it would be if the word prune were to be taken in no other sense than the gardener's. We suppose it must mean to cut shorter: but its real signification is to trim, which is usually done by that process. Milton here means to smoothen and put in order; prine is better. Among the strange unaccountable expressions which, within our memory, or a little earlier, were carried down, like shingle by a sudden torrent, over our language, can you tell me what writer first wrote "unbidden tears?" Southey. No indeed. The phrase is certainly a curiosity, although no rarity. I wish some logi cian or (it being beyond the reach of any) some metaphysician would attempt to render us an acount of it. Milton has never used unbidden, where it really would be significant, and only once unbid. Can you go forward with this "Elder Brother"? Landor. Let us try. I wish he would turn off his "liveried angels," v. 455, and would say nothing about lust. How could he have learned that lust By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, For ploughing, in Italy more especially, is never the labour in June, when the nightingale's young Can you tell me what wolves are "stabled wolves," are hatched. Gray's verse is a good one, which is more than can be said of Virgil's. Sweet Echo! sweetest nymph! that livest unseen The habitation is better adapted to an oyster than v. 534. Southey. Not exactly. But here is another verse of the same construction as you remarked before: And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on. |