Life Of John Milton by Richard Garnett (best free novels TXT) 📖
- Author: Richard Garnett
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The Epic. Attempts Have Been Made To Invest Adam With This Character. He
Is, Indeed, A Great Figure To Contemplate, And Such As Might Represent
The Ideal Of Humanity Till Summoned To Act And Suffer. When, Indeed, He
Partakes Of The Forbidden Fruit In Disobedience To His Maker, But In
Compassion To His Mate, He Does Seem For A Moment To Fulfil The Canon
Which Decrees That The Hero Shall Not Always Be Faultless, But Always
Shall Be Noble. The Moment, However, That He Begins To Wrangle With Eve
About Their Respective Shares Of Blame, He Forfeits His Estate Of
Heroism More Irretrievably Than His Estate Of Holiness--A Fact Of Which
Milton Cannot Have Been Unaware, But He Had No Liberty To Forsake The
Scripture Narrative. Satan Remains, Therefore, The Only Possible Hero,
And It Is One Of The Inevitable Blemishes Of The Poem That He Should
Disappear Almost Entirely From The Latter Books.
Chapter 9 Pg 85
These Defects, And Many More Which Might Be Adduced, Are Abundantly
Compensated By The Poet's Vital Relation To The Religion Of His Age. No
Poet Whose Fame Is Co-Extensive With The Civilised World, Except
Shakespeare And Goethe, Has Ever Been Greatly In Advance Of His Times.
Had Milton Been So, He Might Have Avoided Many Faults, But He Would Not
Have Been A Representative Poet; Nor Could Shelley Have Classed Him With
Homer And Dante, And Above Virgil, As "The Third Epic Poet; That Is, The
Third Poet The Series Of Whose Creations Bore A Defined And Intelligible
Relation To The Knowledge And Sentiment And Religion Of The Age In Which
He Lived, And Of The Ages Which Followed It, Developing Itself In
Correspondence With Their Development." Hence It Is That In The
"Adonais," Shelley Calls Milton "The Third Among The Sons Of Light."
A Clear Conception Of The Universe As Milton's Inner Eye Beheld It, And
Of His Religious And Philosophical Opinions In So Far As They Appear In
The Poem, Is Indispensable For A Correct Understanding Of "Paradise
Lost." The Best Service To Be Rendered To The Reader Within Such Limits
As Ours Is To Direct Him To Professor Masson's Discussion Of Milton's
Cosmology In His "Life Of Milton," And Also In His Edition Of The
Poetical Works. Generally Speaking, It May Be Said That Milton's
Conception Of The Universe Is Ptolemaic, That For Him Sun And Moon And
Planets Revolve Around The Central Earth, Rapt By The Revolution Of The
Crystal Spheres In Which, Sphere Enveloping Sphere, They Are
Successively Located. But The Light Which Had Broken In Upon Him From
The Discoveries Of Galileo Has Led Him To Introduce Features Not
Irreconcilable With The Solar Centre And Ethereal Infinity Of
Copernicus; So That "The Poet Would Expect The Effective Permanence Of
His Work In The Imagination Of The World, Whether Ptolemy Or Copernicus
Should Prevail." So Professor Masson, Who Finely And Justly Adds That
Milton's Blindness Helped Him "By Having Already Converted All External
Space In His Own Sensations Into An Infinite Of Circumambient Blackness
Through Which He Could Flash Brilliance At His Pleasure." His
Inclination As A Thinker Is Evidently Towards The Copernican Theory, But
He Saw That The Ptolemaic, However Inferior In Sublimity, Was Better
Adapted To The Purpose Of A Poem Requiring A Definite Theatre Of Action.
For Rapturous Contemplation Of The Glory Of God In Nature, The
Copernican System Is Immeasurably The More Stimulating To The Spirit,
But When Made The Theatre Of An Action The Universe Fatigues With Its
Infinitude--
"Millions Have Meaning; After This
Cyphers Forget The Integer."
An Infinite Sidereal Universe Would Have Stultified The Noble
Description How Satan--
"In The Emptier Waste, Resembling Air,
Weighs His Spread Wings, At Leisure To Behold
Far Off The Empyreal Heaven, Extended Wide
In Circuit, Undetermined Square Or Round,
With Opal Towers And Battlements Adorned
Of Living Sapphire, Once His Native Seat;
And Fast By, Hanging In A Golden Chain,
Chapter 9 Pg 86This Pendant World, In Bigness As A Star
Of Smallest Magnitude Close By The Moon."
This Pendant World, Observe, Is Not The Earth, As Addison Understood It,
But The Entire Sidereal Universe, Depicted Not As The Infinity We Now
Know It To Be, But As A Definite Object, So Insulated In The Vastness Of
Space As To Be Perceptible To The Distant Fiend As A Minute Star, And No
Larger In Comparison With The Courts Of Heaven--Themselves Not Wholly
Seen--Than Such A Twinkler Matched With The Full-Orbed Moon. Such A
Representation, If It Diminishes The Grandeur Of The Universe Accessible
To Sense, Exalts That Of The Supersensual And Extramundane Regions Where
The Action Takes Its Birth, And Where Milton's Gigantic Imagination Is
Most Perfectly At Home.
There Is No Such Compromise Between Religious Creeds In Milton's Mind As
He Saw Good To Make Between Ptolemy And Copernicus. The Matter Was, In
His Estimation, Far Too Serious. Never Was There A More Unaccountable
Misstatement Than Ruskin's, That "Paradise Lost" Is A Poem In Which
Every Artifice Of Invention Is Consciously Employed--Not A Single Fact
Being Conceived As Tenable By Any Living Faith. Milton Undoubtedly
Believed Most Fully In The Actual Existence Of All His Chief Personages,
Natural And Supernatural, And Was Sure That, However He Might Have
Indulged His Imagination In The Invention Of Incidents, He Had
Represented Character With The Fidelity Of A Conscientious Historian.
His Religious Views, Moreover, Are Such As He Could Never Have Thought
It Right To Publish If He Had Not Been Intimately Convinced Of Their
Truth. He Has Strayed Far From The Creed Of Puritanism. He Is An Arian;
His Son Of God, Though An Unspeakably Exalted Being, Is Dependent,
Inferior, Not Self-Existent, And Could Be Merged In The Father's Person
Or Obliterated Entirely Without The Least Diminution Of Almighty
Perfection. He Is, Moreover, No Longer A Calvinist: Satan And Adam Both
Possess Free Will, And Neither Need Have Fallen. The Reader Must Accept
These Views, As Well As Milton's Conception Of The Materiality Of The
Spiritual World, If He Is To Read To Good Purpose. "If His Imagination,"
Says Pattison, Pithily, "Is Not Active Enough To Assist The Poet, He
Must At Least Not Resist Him."
This Is Excellent Advice As Respects The General Plan Of "Paradise
Lost," The Materiality Of Its Spiritual Personages, And Its System Of
Philosophy And Theology. Its Poetical Beauties Can Only Be Resisted
Where They Are Not Perceived. They Have Repeated The Miracles Of Orpheus
And Amphion, Metamorphosing One Most Bitterly Obnoxious, Of Whom So Late
As 1687 A Royalist Wrote That "His Fame Is Gone Out Like A Candle In A
Snuff, And His Memory Will Always Stink," Into An Object Of Universal
Veneration. From The First Instant Of Perusal The Imagination Is Led In
Captivity, And For The First Four Books At Least Stroke Upon Stroke Of
Sublimity Follows With Such Continuous And Undeviating Regularity That
Sublimity Seems This Creation's First Law, And We Feel Like Pigmies
Transported To A World Of Giants. There Is Nothing Forced Or Affected
In This Grandeur, No Visible Effort, No Barbaric Profusion, Everything
Proceeds With A Severe And Majestic Order, Controlled By The Strength
That Called It Into Being. The Similes And Other Poetical Ornaments,
Though Inexpressibly Magnificent, Seem No More So Than The Greatness Of
Chapter 9 Pg 87The General Conception Demands. Grant That Satan In His Fall Is Not
"Less Than Archangel Ruined," And It Is No Exaggeration But The Simplest
Truth To Depict His Mien--
"As When The Sun, New Risen,
Looks Through The Horizontal Misty Air,
Shorn Of His Beams; Or From Behind The Moon,
In Dim Eclipse, Disastrous Twilight Sheds
On Half The Nations."
When Such A Being Voyages Through Space It Is No Hyperbole To Compare
Him To A Whole Fleet, Judiciously Shown At Such Distance As To Suppress
Every Minute Detail That Could Diminish The Grandeur Of The Image--
"As When Far Off At Sea A Fleet Descried
Hangs In The Clouds, By Equinoctial Winds
Close Sailing From Bengala, Or The Isles
Of Ternate And Tidore, Whence Merchants Bring
Their Spicy Drugs: They On The Trading Flood,
Through The Wide Ethiopian To The Cape,
Ply Stemming Nightly Towards The Pole: So Seemed
Far Off The Flying Fiend."
These Similes, And An Infinity Of Others, Are Grander Than Anything In
Homer, Who Would, However, Have Equalled Them With An Equal Subject.
Dante's Treatment Is Altogether Different; The Microscopic Intensity Of
Perception In Which He So Far Surpasses Homer And Milton Affords, In
Our Opinion, No Adequate Compensation For His Inferiority In
Magnificence. That The Theme Of "Paradise Lost" Should Have Evoked Such
Grandeur Is A Sufficient Compensation For Its Incurable Flaws And The
Utter Breakdown Of Its Ostensible Moral Purpose. There Is Yet Another
Department Of The Poem Where Milton Writes As He Could Have Written On
Nothing Else. The Elements Of His Under-World Are Comparatively Simple,
Fire And Darkness, Fallen Angels Now Huddled Thick As Leaves In
Vallombrosa; Anon,
"A Forest Huge Of Spears And Thronging Helms,"
Charming Their Painful Steps Over The Burning Marl By
"The Dorian Mood
Of Flutes And Soft Recorders;"
The Dazzling Magnificence Of Pandemonium; The Ineffable Welter Of Chaos;
Proudly Eminent Over All Like A Tower, The Colossal Personality Of
Satan. The Description Of Paradise And The Story Of Creation, If Making
Less Demand On The Poet's Creative Power, Required Greater Resources Of
Knowledge, And More Consummate Skill In Combination. Nature Must Yield
Up Her Treasures, Whatever Of Fair And Stately The Animal And Vegetable
Kingdoms Can Afford Must Be Brought Together, Blended In Gorgeous Masses
Or Marshalled In Infinite Procession. Here Milton Is As Profuse As He
Has Hitherto Been Severe, And With Good Cause; It Is Possible To Make
Hell Too Repulsive For Art, It Is Not Possible To Make Eden Too
Enchanting. In His Descriptions Of The Former The Effect Is Produced By
Chapter 9 Pg 88
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