Great indeed His name, and high was his degree in Heaven; His countenance, as the morning-star that guides The starry flock, allured them.1 Raphael also repeats to Adam and Eve the command of God to His Son beginning, Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved," and concluding, Pursue these Sons of Darkness, drive them out From all Heaven's bounds, into the utter Deep. Again there is an effect of contrast, as the angel continues: He said, and on His Son with rays direct The Son promises to fulfil the divine dictate, and to rid Heaven of these rebelled, To their prepared ill mansion driven down, To chains of darkness." After man's overthrow has been accomplished, Satan simply is referred to as the 'Prince of Darkness"; and now Milton's concept receives its final, possibly most imaginative, treatment. The Arch-fiend dispatches Sin and Death to Paradise under these commands: 1P. L. 5. 703-706. 'P. L. 6. 680. 2P. L. 6. 715-716. 'P. L. 6. 719-721. "P. L. 6. 737-739. "P. L. 10. 383. There dwell and reign in bliss; thence on the Earth Chiefly on Man, sole lord of all declared; Him first make sure your thrall, and lastly kill. My substitutes I send ye, and create Thus commissioned, Sin and Death depart, and so informed are they with the evil effluence from the Prince of Darkness that at their passage, the blasted stars looked wan, And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse As light had emanated from good, darkness now issues from evil; Satan diffuses through his followers a darkness that assails and dims even the centres of light. Milton's thought has reached its complete development. The angel, whose countenance had been as the morning-star, now has power to dull with his baleful influence the very planets themselves, and the brightness that he presently assumes before his companions is the final revelation of his guile. Hitherto, whatever light shone from Satan's outer form testified to some remnants in him of original nobility; now light itself has become the instrument of his wickedness. He shines indeed, but his glory is 'permissive,' and his glitter false. With miserable and dangerous substitutes for a true 'P. L. 10. 399-409. 'P. L. 10. 412-414. radiance he gilds over his inward darkness, and makes a lie of the symbol of truth. After a final look at the brilliance of the loyal angels, who in Book Eleven are called the 'Sons of Light,' Milton abandons this theme of the poem. By the terms of his hypothesis he could in no way either so logically or so impressively have depicted deformity as by the gradual encroachment and final triumph of darkness where light had been. Consciously or unconsciously aided by a lifelong habit of thought, Milton has given complete and unified expression to his theory of form. In shaping his expression he has been guided by his propensity to adjudge an object according to its establishment in some end (the phrase is suggested by Milton himself1); by all that, through interchanging analysis and synthesis, he has learned of the identity of form and function; by his unerring perception of spirit in substance; and by his observations of the interaction of soul and body. But the concept has acquired more than completeness and unity; in Paradise Lost it has reached poetic sublimity. Its vigor and its epic dimensions are the sign and proof of its influence upon Milton's aesthetic theory; so that, impossible as it is to know in what literary type he might have chosen to enunciate that theory, one thing is certain-he would have developed it from some theme, however phrased and accented, that proclaimed the high function of all fine art, and called for sensitiveness, clear vision, and lofty purpose in every artist. 1See Tetrachordon (Deut. 24. 1, 2), Works 4.183: 'All ordinances are established in their end.' CHAPTER II MILTON AND THE FINE ARTS OTHER THAN POETRY Except as regards poetry, and to a certain extent music, there is little in Milton's writings to show his conception of any one of the fine arts. Yet one thing stands to reason: an emphasis upon function must have characterized all his criticism. Whatever his exactions and estimates, we cannot suppose them undetermined. He never would condone aimlessness in the arts, or view without scorn their reduction to so-called 'pure expression,' or tolerate the decadent standards of later generations that have praised 'art for art's sake.' But as he judged laws, and customs, and enterprises, by what they accomplished for humanity, so, being a great humanist, would he judge the arts. The occurrences in Milton's poetry and prose of the word 'art' show his careful usage. Almost always an adjective or phrase saves the word from ambiguity—from its present loose acceptation. When used by Milton without qualification, the word 'art' (except in certain passages, of little import to us, where it denotes duplicity or deceit) generally refers to a skilful method of procedure toward whatever end, or stands in a conventional contrast with nature. At no time does it have a vague aesthetic connotation, or appear in the doubtful rôle of an adjective. Such a statement, that is, as 'he has adopted art as his profession,"1 would have 1 See Webster's Modern English Dictionary, Unabridged, s.v. 'Art' 6. meant nothing to Milton, and the term 'art-product' would have seemed to him equally unintelligible. Yet he himself refers impartially and, as we shall see, with entire precision, to the art of the poet and the art of the smith, and bestows the title of 'neat-fingered artist' upon the cook, of 'gymnic artists' upon the tumblers and wrestlers in Samson Agonistes, and of 'Tuscan artist' upon Galileo. His coupling of the two nouns in the phrase, 'wild above rule or art," brings out his basic meaning, which is amplified in the lines, But with such gardening tools as art yet rude, Guiltless of fire, had formed," and in Mammon's assurance to his fallen peers that they lack neither skill nor art to raise 'Magnificence." Finally, a glance at the term in the following connections should clarify its sense in Milton: he speaks, for example, of art and strength, art and argument, art and mysteries; of the art of divinity and (by implication) of the art of Christian religion; of theologic art and episcopal art; of the art of teaching, operating under methodical laws; of the art of policy much 'cankered in her principles'; of regal arts, the art of war, and the art of tyranny; of art and simony, and the calumnious art of counterfeited truth; of the arts of women, of amorous arts and sophisticated arts; of the magician's art, the art of alchemy, the land-pilot's art, the herdsman's art, the art of hawking, the art of flying1 (though not by that 1 P. L. 5.297. P. L. 9.391-392. 'P. L. 2.272-273. See the story of Elmer, the venturesome and 'strangely aspiring' monk of the eleventh century, who 'made and fitted wings to his hands and feet,' and fluttered down from the top of a tower 'to the maiming of all his limbs.' Whereupon, with dauntlessness like that of his twentiethcentury descendants, he was 'so conceited of his art that he attributed the cause of his fall to the want of a tail.' Hist. Brit. (Bk. 6), Works 5.293. |