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for he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself! A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to suppli- 220 cate or beg, and a number of the like; but all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So, again, a man's person hath many proper* relations, which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife, but as a husband; to his enemy, but upon terms: 225 whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to enumerate these things were endless. I have given the rule: where a man cannot fitly play his own part, if he have not a friend he may quit the stage.

222. are blushing: that is, are fit to

make one blush.

culiar relations or conditions which he cannot escape.

223, 224. proper... put off: that is, pe- 227. sorteth, suits, agrees.

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John Milton

CHARACTERIZATION BY CHANNING.

1. In delineating Milton's character as a poet, we are saved the necessity of looking far for its distinguishing attributes. His name is almost identified with sublimity. He is in truth the sublimest of men. He rises, not by effort or discipline, but by

a native tendency and a godlike instinct, to the contemplation of objects of grandeur and awfulness. He always moves with a conscious energy. There is no subject so vast or terrific as to repel or intimidate him. The overpowering grandeur of a theme kindles and attracts him. He enters on the description of the infernal regions with a fearless tread, as if he felt within himself a power to erect the prison-house of fallen spirits, to encircle them with flames and horrors worthy of their crimes, to call forth from them shouts which should "tear hell's concave," and to embody in their chief an archangel's energies and a demon's pride and hate. Even the stupendous conception of Satan seems never to oppress his faculties. This character of power runs through all Milton's works. His descriptions of nature show a free and bold hand. He has no need of the minute, graphic skill which we prize in Cowper or Crabbe. With a few strong or delicate touches, he impresses, as it were, his own mind on the scenes which he would describe, and kindles the imagination of the gifted reader to clothe them with the same radiant hues under which they appeared to his own.

2. From this very imperfect view of the qualities of Milton's poetry, we hasten to his great work, Paradise Lost, perhaps the noblest monument of human genius. The two first books, by universal consent, stand pre-eminent in sublimity. Hell and hell's king have a terrible harmony, and dilate into new grandeur and awfulness the longer we contemplate them. From one element, "solid and liquid fire," the poet has framed a world of horror and suffering, such as imagination had never traversed. But fiercer flames than those which encompass Satan burn in his own soul. Revenge, exasperated pride, consuming wrath, ambition; though fallen, yet unconquered by the thunders of the Omnipotent, and grasping still at the empire of the universethese form a picture more sublime and terrible than hell. Hell yields to the spirit which it imprisons. The intensity of its fires reveals the intenser passions and more vehement will of Satan ; and the ruined Archangel gathers into himself the sublimity of the scene which surrounds him. terest of these wonderful books. the most terrible powers of nature. subdued by energy of soul.

This forms the tremendous in-
We see mind triumphant over
We see unutterable agony

3. Milton's versification has the prime charm of expressiveness. His numbers vary with, and answer to, the depth or tenderness or sublimity of his conceptions, and hold intimate alliance with the soul. Like Michael Angelo, in whose hands the marble was said to be flexible, he bends our language, which foreigners reproach with hardness, into whatever forms the subject demands. All the treasures of sweet and solemn sound are at his command. Words harsh and discordant in the writings of less gifted men flow through his poetry in a full stream of harmony. This power over language is not to be ascribed to Milton's musical ear. It belongs to the soul. It is a gift or exercise of genius, which has power to impress itself on whatever it touches; and finds or frames, in sounds, motions, and material forms, correspondences and harmonies with its own fervid thoughts and feeelings.

4. Milton's poetry is characterized by seriousness. Great and various as are its merits, it does not discover all the variety of genius which we find in Shakespeare, whose imagination revelled equally in regions of mirth, beauty, and terror, now evoking spectres, now sporting with fairies, and now "ascending the highest heaven of invention." Milton was cast on times too solemn and eventful, was called to take part in transactions too perilous, and had too perpetual need of the presence of high thoughts and motives, to indulge himself in light and gay creations, even had his genius been more flexible and sportive. But his poetry, though habitually serious, is always healthful and bright and vigorous. It has no gloom. He took no pleasure in drawing dark pictures of life; for he knew by experience that there is a power in the soul to transmute calamity into an occasion and nutriment of moral power and triumphant virtue. We find nowhere in his writings that whining sensibility and exaggeration of morbid feeling which make so much of modern poetry effeminating. If he is not gay, he is not spirit-broken. His L'Allegro proves that he understood thoroughly the bright and joyous aspects of nature; and in his Penseroso, where he was tempted to accumulate images of gloom, we learn that the saddest views which he took of creation are such as inspire only pensive musing or lofty contemplation.

5. From Milton's poetry we turn to his prose; and, first, it is

objected to his prose writings that the style is difficult and obscure, abounding in involutions, transpositions, and Latinisms; that his protracted sentences exhaust and weary the mind, and too often yield it no better recompense than confused and indistinct perceptions.

6. We mean not to deny that these charges have some grounds; but they seem to us much exaggerated; and when we consider that the difficulties of Milton's style have almost sealed up his prose writings, we cannot but lament the fastidiousness and effeminacy of modern readers. We know that simplicity and perspicuity are important qualities of style; but there are vastly nobler and more important ones, such as energy and richness, and in these Milton is not surpassed. The best style is not that which puts the reader most easily and in the shortest time in possession of a writer's naked thoughts; but that which is the truest image of a great intellect, which conveys fully and carries furthest into other souls the conceptions and feelings of a profound and lofty spirit. To be universally intelligible is not the highest merit. A great mind cannot, without injurious constraint, shrink itself to the grasp of common passive readers. Its natural movement is free, bold, and majestic; and it ought not to be required to part with these attributes that the multitude may keep pace with it. A full mind will naturally overflow in long sentences; and in the moment of inspiration, when thick-coming thoughts and images crowd on it, will often pour them forth in a splendid confusion, dazzling to common readers, but kindling to congenial spirits. There are writings which are clear through their shallowness. We must not expect in the ocean the transparency of the calm inland stream. For ourselves, we love what is called easy reading perhaps too well, especially in our hours of relaxation; but we love, too, to have our faculties tasked by master-spirits. We delight in long sentences in which a great truth, instead of being broken up into numerous periods, is spread out in its full proportions, is irradiated with variety of illustrations and imagery, is set forth in a splendid affluence of ianguage, and flows, like a full stream, with a majestic harmony which fills at once the ear and soul.

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