As men divinely taught, and better teaching In their majestic unaffected style, Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome (P.R. iv. 353-360). To have taken up a severer attitude would indeed have been ingratitude in one who owed so much of his unrivalled style to a lifelong study of the poets and orators of classical antiquity. The same spirit is shown in Milton's qualified depreciation of the subjects and imagery of ancient epic or romantic poetry: Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect, But in practice, constant parallels, similes, and allusions in Paradise Lost to the Iliad, the Eneid, Orlando Furioso, and Gerusalemme Liberata bear witness to the delight with which he had read those epic masterpieces. Perhaps the most signal proof of Milton's artistic judgment is to be found in the astronomical system adopted in Paradise Lost. It is evident that his own belief inclined to the new theories of Copernicus and Galileo.1 But these were as yet far from having established their authority in the opinion of the time, and on many accounts the Ptolemaic astronomy was more convenient than the Copernican for poetical purposes. As it corresponded with the sensible appearances of things, the imagination could grasp it with comparative ease, and Milton, whose business it was to tell "of things invisible 1 That Milton was inclined to the doctrine of these philosophers is evident from the speech of Raphael in Paradise Lost, book viii. 130-140, where the various motions of the earth are mentioned, and their possibility suggested, in a spirit very different from that of Bacon, who (in his De Augmentis) discredits the idea of the earth's diurnal motion. The alternative to the Ptolemaic theory is also put forward in Paradise Lost, book iii. 483. to mortal sight," made use of it to convey to the reader his idea of the relative situations of heaven, hell, and chaos. With him, in fact, scholastic science discharges the same function as allegory does in the scheme of Dante. The Ptolemaic system was also more applicable to the Scriptural narrative of Creation; and Milton, by using the former to interpret the account given in Genesis of the making of the firmament, gave distinct form and imagery to what is there said as to the separation of the waters. His ready concession to established belief prepared the way for the introduction into Paradise Lost of vast stores of curious learning. Mixed with his philosophic reasoning we find countless images drawn from pagan mythology, rabbinical tradition, and obsolete science, but these are so dexterously managed as to avoid the reproach of encouraging fable and error. For example, after the noble lines describing the falling of Mulciber from heaven, he adds: "Thus they relate, Erring"; and when he mentions Adonis he identifies him with Thammuz, whom he may with propriety regard as an actual evil spirit, and rationalises the Greek legend : Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured In amorous ditties all a summer's day, Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded (P.L. i. 446-452). Or, modelling himself on the long elaboration of the Homeric simile, he diverts his learning into passages of illustration in order to heighten the vividness and verisimilitude of his narrative. Thus, to give the reader an idea of the sweet odours perceived by Satan in the neighbourhood of Paradise, he writes: As when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Sabean odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the Blest, with such delay Well pleased, they slack their course, and many a league, Who came their bane, though with them better pleased That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse Of Tobit's son, and with a vengeance sent From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound (P.L. iv. 159-172). In completing Samson Agonistes, the last of his three sacred poems, Milton had been able to put the crown on all his poetical designs. Henceforth he wrote no more verse. But, exile from politics though he was, he retained all his interest in the fortunes of his country, and in 1673, the year before his death, taking advantage of the public excitement against the Roman Catholics, he published a pamphlet, moderate in tone, under the title of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what best means may be used against the Growth of Popery. An interesting sketch of him in his last days has been left by Pope's friend, Jonathan Richardson, the painter. I have heard (says he) many years since that he used to sit in a gray coarse cloth coat at the door of his house, near Bunhill Fields, without Moorgate, in warm sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air, and so, as well as in his room, received the visits of distinguished parts as well as quality; and very lately I had the good fortune to have another picture of him from an aged clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright. He found him in a small house, he thinks but one room on a floor. In that, up one pair of stairs, which was hung with a rusty green, he found John Milton sitting in an elbow chair, black clothes, and neat enough; pale but not cadaverous; his hands and fingers gouty, and with chalk stones. Among other discourse, he expressed himself to this purpose that, was he tolerably free from the pain this gave him, his blindness would be tolerable.1 In this atmosphere of calm and obscurity the greatest of the non-dramatic poets of medieval England passed to his rest. He died on Sunday, 8th November 1674, and was buried near his father, on 12th November, in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. 1 Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost, by J. Richardson, Father and Son, pp. iv.-v. CHAPTER XIV THE VERSIFICATION, VOCABULARY, AND SYNTAX OF MILTON THE style of Milton reflects the complexity of his thought, which I have attempted to analyse in the last chapter. As his poetical imagination is the mirror of all the great forces operating in the first half of the seventeenth century on the mind of the English people, so is his poetical diction the noblest monument of art achieved by the combination of the Saxon and Latin elements in our language. In examining the character of this fusion I shall begin with the versification (particularly that of Paradise Lost), since in poetry the vocabulary is largely determined by the tendencies of the metre, and the metre again is the most efficient factor in the grammatical arrangement of the words. The metre of Paradise Lost is described by Milton himself in the short note prefixed to that poem : The measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin-rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint, to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse, than they would have expressed them. Not without cause, therefore, some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works, as have also since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings,—a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming. The tone of this is polemical and somewhat arrogant. Considering that in every country of modern Europe rhyme had been adopted as the basis of metrical composition, it seems presumptuous to say that the principle had been originally adopted "to set off wretched matter and lame metre." Nor is it in any way true that the use of rhyme by poets like Dante, Chaucer, and Ariosto leads them," much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint, to express things otherwise, and for the most part worse, than they would have expressed them." Rather is it difficult to conceive that the peculiar thought of Dante and Ariosto could have been so characteristically expressed in rhymeless verse as in terza or ottava rima. To pretend that rhyme was adopted by modern poets solely to produce the cheap pleasure arising from "the jingling sound of like endings " was disingenuous. Rhyme had no doubt been properly rejected in "our best English tragedies"; but that was because rhymeless verse was obviously the fitting vehicle for dialogue on the stage: it did not necessarily follow that blank verse was to be universally preferred to rhyme as a vehicle for epic poetry. The presumptuous note in Milton's preface is to be explained by the circumstances of his time. In it the spirit of Ascham, Harvey, Campion, and other scholars, the refined champions of humanism, seems to be protesting, in a later age, against the taste which had banished from the drama the blank verse of the great Elizabethan poets, to make way for the rhyming couplet, used in French tragedy, and effective, in its own kind, for the purposes of rhetorical declamation and pointed antithesis. Anticipating the objections likely to be brought by the reader of his day against blank verse, Milton, as a controver |