had written, instead of "Or where," "There | else in the regions of poetry, although strict and where." These words are spoken by the poet in his own person; very improperly: they would have suited the character of any fallen angel; but the reporter of the occurrence ought not to have delivered such a sentence. V. 299. Which when Beelzebub perceived (than whom, A pillar of state. Deep on his front engraven Often and often have these verses been quoted, without a suspicion how strangely the corporeal is substituted for the moral. However Atlantean his shoulders might be, the weight of monarchies could no more be supported by them than by the shoulders of a grasshopper. The verses are sonorous, but they are unserviceable as an incantation to make a stout figure look like a pillar of state. thick, in v. 402, sound unpleasantly. V. 594. The parching wind Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire! The latter part of this verse is redundant, and ruinous to the former. Southey. Milton, like Dante, has mixed the Greek mythology with the Oriental. To hinder the damned from tasting a single drop of the Lethe they are ferried over, V. 604. Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards It is strange that until now they never had explored the banks of the other four infernal rivers. Landor. It appears to me that his imitation of Shakspeare, From beds of raging fire to starve in ice, is feeble. Never was poet so little made to imitate another. Whether he imitates a good or a bad one, the offence of his voluntary degradation is punished in general with ill success. Shakspeare, on the contrary, touches not even a worthless thing but he renders it precious. Southey. To continue the last verse I was reading, And of itself the water flies All taste of living wight, as once it fled The lip of Tantalus. No living wight had ever attempted to taste it; nor was it this water that fled the lip of Tantalus had already fled it. In the description of Sin at any time; least of all can we imagine that it and Death, and Satan's interview with them, there is a wonderful vigour of imagination and of thought, with such sonorous verse as Milton alone was capable of composing. But there is also much of what is odious and intolerable. The Landor. We have seen pillars of state which terrific is then sublime, and then only, when it made no figure at all, and which are quite as mis-fixes you in the midst of all your energies, and not when it weakens, nauseates, and repels you. placed as Milton's. But seriously; the pillar's V. 678. God and his son except, representative, if any figure but a metaphorical Created thing not valued he. one could represent him, would hardly be brought to represent the said pillar by rising up; as, Beelzebub in his rising seem'd, &c. His fondness for latinisms induces him to write, V. 329. What sit we then projecting peace and war? For "Why sit we?" as quid for cur. To my ear What sit sounds less pleasingly than why sit. I have often wished that Cicero, who so delighted in harmonious sentences, and was so studious of the closes, could have heard, V. 353. So was his will Pronounced among the Gods, and, by an oath This is not the only time when he has used such language, evidently with no other view than to defend it by his scholarship. But no authority can vindicate what is false, and no ingenuity can explain what is absurd. You have remarked it already in the Imaginary Conversations, referring to The fairest of her daughters, Eve. There is something not dissimilar in the form of expression, when we find on a sepulchral stone the most dreadful of denunciations against any who should violate it. Ultimus suum moriatur. Landor. I must now be the reader. It is im Although in the former part of the sentence two possible to refuse the ear its satisfaction at cadences are the same. So was his will, And by an oath. This is unhappy. But at 402 bursts forth again such a torrent of eloquence as there is nowhere | Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands Landor. Verse 586 is among the few inhar O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, death, A universe of death. Now who would not rather have forfeited an estate, than that Milton should have ended so deplorably, Which God by curse Where all life dies, death lives. Southey. How Ovidian! This book would be greatly improved, not merely by the rejection of a couple such as these, but by the whole from verse 647 to verse 1007. The number would still be 705; fewer by only sixty-four than the first would be after its reduction. Verses 1088 and 1089 could be spared. Satan but little encouraged his followers by reminding them that, if they took the course he pointed out, they were So much the nearer danger, nor was it necessary to remind them of the obvious fact by saying, Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain. Landor. In the third book the Invocation extends to fifty-five verses; of these however there are only two which you would expunge. He says to the Holy Light, But thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that toil in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn, So thick a drop serene hath quencht their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more, &c. The fantastical Latin expression gutta serena, for amaurosis, was never received under any form into our language, and a thick drop serene would be nonsense in any. I think every reader would be contented with To find thy piercing ray. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt, &c. Southey. Pope is not highly reverent to Milton, or to God the Father, whom he calls a school divine. The doctrines, in this place (V. 80) more scripturally than poetically laid down, are apostolic. But Pope was unlikely to know it; for while he was a papist he was forbidden to read the Holy Scriptures, and when he ceased to be a papist, he threw them overboard and clung to nothing. The fixedness of his opinions may be estimated by his having written at the commencement of his Essay, first, A mighty maze, a maze without a plan, And then, A mighty maze, but not without a plan. After the seventy-sixth verse I wish the poet had abstained from writing all the rest until we come to 345 and that after the 382d from all that precede the 418th. Again, all between 462 and 497. This about the Fool's Paradise, The indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, is too much in the manner of Dante, whose poetry, admirable as it often is, is at all times very far removed from the dramatic and the epic. Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep. There has lately sprung up among us a Vulcandescended body of splay-foot poets, who, unwilling Incudi reddere versus, or unable to hammer them into better shape and more solidity, tell us how necessary it is to shovel in the dust of a discord now and then. But Homer and Sophocles and Virgil could do without it. What a beautiful expression is there in v. 546, which I do not remember that any critic has noticed, Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill. Here the hill itself is instinct with life and activity. V. 574. "But up or down" in "longitude" are not worth the parenthesis. V. 109. Farewell remorse! all good to me is lost. Nothing more surprises me in Milton than that his ear should have endured this verse. Southey. How admirably contrasted with the malignant spirit of Satan, in all its intensity, is the scene of Paradise which opens at verse 131. The change comes naturally and necessarily to accomplish the order of events. The Fourth Book contains several imperfections. The six verses after 166 efface the delightful impression we had just received. At one slight bound high overleapt all bound. Such a play on words, so grave a pun, is unpardonable; and such a prodigious leap is ill represented by the feat of a wolf in a sheepfold; and still worse by A thief bent to unhoard the cash Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors, Cross-barr'd and bolted fast, fear no assault, In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles. like the "bound high above all bound:" and Landor. This "in at the window" is very unclimbing "o'er the tiles" is the practice of a more deliberate burglar. So since into his church lewd hirelings climb. I must leave the lewd hirelings where I find them; they are too many for me. I would gladly have seen omitted all between v. 160 and 205. Southey. Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks There had not yet been time for flocks, or even for one flock. Landor. At two hundred and ninety-seven commences a series of verses so harmonious, that my ear is impatient of any other poetry for seve ral days after I have read them. I mean those which begin, For contemplation he and valour formed, For softness she and sweet attractive grace, and ending with, And sweet, reluctant, amorous, delay. Southey. Here indeed is the triumph of our | Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower, Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought He had before told us that there was every tree than beauties this morning, tell me whether you of fragrant leaf: we wanted not "each odorous are quite contented with, She, as a veil, down to the slender waist Her unadorned golden tresses wore, Landor. Stopping there, you break the link of harmony just above the richest jewel that Poetry ever wore : Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, I would rather have written these two lines than all the poetry that has been written since Milton's time in all the regions of the earth. We shall see again things equal in their way to the best of them: but here the sweetest of images and sentiments is seized and carried far away from all pursuers. Never tell me, what I think is already on your lips, that the golden tresses in their wanton ringlets implied nothing like subjection. Take away, if you will, And by her yielded, by him best received, and all until you come to, Under a tuft of shade. Southey. In verse 388 I wish he had employed some other epithet for innocence than harmless. Verses 620 and 621 might be spared. While other animals inactive range, And of their doings God takes no account. V.660. Daughter of God and man, accomplisht Eve! Surely she was not daughter of man: and of all the words that Milton has used in poetry or prose, this accomplisht is the worst. In his time it had already begun to be understood in the sense it bears at present. Verse 674. "These, then, tho'" sounds so near together. V. 700. Mosaic; underfoot the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay shrub;" nor can we imagine how it fenced up a verdant wall: it constituted one itself; one very unlike anything else in Paradise, and more resembling the topiary artifices which had begun to flourish in France. Here is indeed an exuberance, and "a wanton growth that mocks our scant manuring." In shadier bower More sacred and sequestered, though but feign'd, He takes especial heed to guard us against the snares of Paganism, at the expense of his poetry. In Italian books, as you remember, where Fate, Fortune, Pan, Apollo, or any mythological personage is named incidentally, notice is given at the beginning that no harm is intended thereby to the Holy Catholic-Apostolic religion. But harm is done on this occasion, where it is intended just as little. On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire. This is a very weak and unsatisfactory verse. By one letter it may be much improved. . stolen, which also has the advantage of rendering it grammatical. The word who coalesces with had. In five consecutive lines you find three. Of such coalescences the poetry of Milton is full. Thee only extolled, son of thy father's might V. 722. The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven. Both must signify two things or persons, and never can signify more. From v. 735 I would willingly see all removed harsh until we come to, Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone The broidery and mosaic should not be set quite so closely and distinctly before our eyes. I think the passage might be much improved by a few defalcations. Let me read it: The roof Of thickest covert was inwoven shade, Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew Of firm and fragrant leaf; the violet, Crocus, and hyacinth. Hail wedded love! After these eight I would reject thirteen. In v. 73 and 74 there is an unfortunate recurrence of sound: The flowery roof and somewhat worse in the continuation, And O yet happiest, if ye seek No happier state, and know to know no more. Five similar sounds in ten syllables, beside the affectation of "know to know." V. 780. To their night watches in warlike parade. Is not only a slippery verse in the place where I dare not handle the embroidery. Is not this it stands, but is really a verse of quite another sufficiently verbose? Landor. Quite. Southey. Yet, if you look into your book again, you will find a gap as wide as the bank on either side of it: On either side Acanthus and each odorous bushy shrub metre. And I question whether you are better satisfied with the word parade. V. 813. As when a spark Its fitness for the tun and its convenience for the magazine, adapt it none the better to poetry. Would there be any detriment to the harmony or the expression if we skip over that verse, reading, Stored Against a rumoured war? Landor. No harm to either. The verses 333 and 334 I perceive have the same cesura, and precisely that which rhyme chooses in preference, and Milton in his blank verse admits the least frequently. A faithful leader, not to hazard all, To say and straight unsay, pretending first When he loses his temper he loses his poetry, Satan! and couldst thou faithful add? O name! Was this your discipline and faith engaged? You noticed the rhyme of supreme and seem. Southey. It is very amusing to read Johnson for his notions of harmony. He quotes these exquisite verses, and says, "There are two lines in this passage more remarkably inharmonious." This delicious place, For us too large, where thy abundance wants Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground. There are few so dull as to be incapable of perceiving the beauty of the rhythm in the last. Johnson goes out of his way to censure the best thought and the best verse in Cowley. And the soft wings of Peace cover him round. Certainly it is not iambic where he wishes it to be. Milton, like the Italian poets, was rather too fond of this cadence, but in the instances which Johnson has pointed out for reprobation, it produces a fine effect. So in the verse, Not Typhon huge, ending in smoky wire. It does the same in Samson Agonistes: Retiring from the popular noise, I seek This unfrequented place, to find some ease, Ease to the body some, none to the mind. Johnson tells us that the third and seventh are weak syllables, and that the period leaves the ear unsatisfied. Milton's ear happened to be satisfied by these pauses; and so will any ear be that is VOL. II. not (or was not intended by nature to be) nine fair inches long. Johnson is sensible of the harmony which is produced by the pause on the sixth syllable; but commends it for no better reason than because it forms a complete verse of itself. There can be no better reason against it. In regard to the pause at the third syllable, it is very singular and remarkable that Milton never has paused for three lines together on any other. In the 327th, 328th, and 329th of Paradise Lost are these. His swift pursuers from heaven's gates pursue Another, whose name I have forgotten, has off in the seventh syllable of that very verse, which censured in like manner the defection and falling remember your quoting as among the innumerable proofs of the poet's exquisite sensibility and judgment, I And toward the gate rolling her bestial train, where another would have written And rolling toward the gate, &c. On the same occasion you praised Thomson very highly for having once written a most admirable verse where an ordinary one was obvious. And tremble every feather with desire. Pope would certainly have preferred And every feather trembles with desire. So would Dryden probably. Johnson, who censures some of the most beautiful lines in Milton, praises one in Virgil with as little judgment. He says, "We hear the passing arrow Et fugit horrendùm stridens elapsa sagitta. Now there never was an arrow in the world that made a horrible stridor in its course. sound is a very slight one occasioned by the The only feather. Homer would never have fallen into such an incongruity. How magnificent is the close of this fourth book, from, Then when I am thy captive. Landor. I do not agree to the use of golden scales, not figurative but real jewellers' gold, for weighing events, Battles and realms. In these he put two weights, To pass over the slighter objection of quick and kick as displeasing to the ear, the vulgarity of kicking the beam is intolerable: he might as well, among his angels, and among sights and sounds befitting them, talk of kicking the bucket. Here again he pays a penalty for trespassing. Southey. I doubt whether (Fifth Book) there ever was a poet in a warm or temperate climate, who at some time or other of his life has not written about the nightingale. But no one rivals or approaches Milton in his fondness or his success. However, at the beginning of this book, in a passage full of beauty, there are two expressions, and F the first of them relates to the nightingale, which | qualities converted into appellations, and are well I disapprove. Sets off the face of things. V. 43, is worthier of Addison than of Milton. But know that in the soul, &c. V.100. This philosophy on dreams, expounded by Adam, These are thy glorious works, &c. V. 152. Ye mists and exhalations that now rise Such a verse might be well ejected from any Southey. "No fear lest dinner cool," v. 396, Imight as well never have been thought of: it seems a little too jocose. The speech of Raphael to Adam, on the subject of eating and drinking and the consequences, is neither angelic nor poetical: but the Sun supping with the Ocean is at least Anacreontic, and not very much debased by Cowley. Landor. So down they sat Meanwhile the eternal eye, whose sight discerns And smiling to his only son thus said, &c. V. 711. known to signify the Supreme Being: but, if the Eternal Eye is less well known to signify him, or not known at all, that is no reason why it should be thought inapplicable. It might be used injudiciously for instance, the right hand of the Eternal Eye would be singularly so; but smiles not. The Eternal Eye speaks to his only Son. This is more incomprehensible to the critics than the preceding. And truly if that eye were like ours, and the organ of speech like ours also, it might be strange. Yet the very same good people have often heard without wonder of a speaking eye in a very ordinary person, and are conversant with poets who precede an expostulation, or an entreaty for a reply, with "Lux mea." There is a much greater fault, which none of them has observed, in the beginning of the speech. Son! thou in whom my glory I behold In full resplendence! heir of all my might. Now an heir is the future and not the present possessor; and he to whom he is heir must be extinct before he comes into possession. But this is nothing if you compare it with what follows, a few lines below: Let us advise and to this hazard draw With speed what force is left, and all employ This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill. Such expressions of derision are very ill applied, and derogate much from the majesty of the Father. We may well imagine that far different tion of innumerable angels, and their inevitable thoughts occupied the Divine Mind at the defecand everlasting punishment. Southey. The critics do not agree on the meaning of the words, Much less for this to be our Lord. V. 799. Nothing I think can be clearer, even without the V. 860. There are those who can not understand the plainest things, yet who can admire every fault that any clever man has committed before. Thus, beseeching or besieging, spoken by an angel, is thought proper, and perhaps beautiful, because a quibbler in a Latin comedy says, amentiun haud Bentley, and several such critics of poetry, are amantium. It appears then on record that the sadly puzzled, perplexed, and irritated at this. first overt crime of the refractory angels was punOne would take refuge with the first grammar hening: they fell rapidly after that. can lay hold on, and cry pars pro toto: another strives hard for another suggestion. But if Milton by accident had written both Eternal and Eye with a capital letter at the beginning, they would have perceived that he had used a noble and sublime expression for the Deity. No one is offended at the words. "It is the will of Providence," or, " It is the will of the Almighty;" yet Providence is that which sees before; and will is different from might. True it is that Providence and Almighty are Landor. These tidings carry to the anointed king. V. 870. Whatever anointing the kings of the earth may have undergone, the King of Heaven had no occasion for it. Who anointed him? When did his reign commence ? Through the infinite host. V. 874. Although our poet would have made no difficulty of accenting "infinite" as we do, and as he himself |