CHAPTER V

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The Miltonic Group

That the influence of Milton, in the romantic revival of the eighteenth century, should have been hardly second in importance to Spenser's is a confirmation of our remark that Augustan literature was "classical" in a way of its own. It is another example of that curiously topsy-turvy condition of things in which rhyme was a mark of the classic, and blank verse of the romantic. For Milton is the most truly classical of English poets; and yet, from the angle of observation at which the eighteenth century viewed him, he appeared a romantic. It was upon his romantic side, at all events, that the new school of poets apprehended and appropriated him.

This side was present in Milton in a fuller measure than his completed works would show. It is well known that he, at one time, had projected an Arthuriad, a design which, if carried out, might have anticipated Tennyson and so deprived us of "The Idyls of the King." "I betook me," he writes, "among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood."[1] And in the "Epitaphium Damonis" he thus apprised the reader of his purpose:

"Ipse ego Dardanais Rutupina per aequora puppes, Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogeniae, Brennumque Arviragunque duces, priscumque Belinum, Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos; Tum gravidam Arturo fatali fraude Iörgernen; Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Gorlöis arma, Merlini dolus."[2]

The "matter of Britain" never quite lost the fascination which it had exercised over his youthful imagination, as appears from passages in "Paradise Lost"[3] and even in "Paradise Regained."[4] But with his increasing austerity, both religious and literary, Milton gravitated finally to Hebraic themes and Hellenic art forms. He wrote Homeric epics and Aeschylean tragedies, instead of masques and sonnets, of rhymed pieces on the Italian model, like "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," and of stanzaic poems, like the "Nativity Ode," touched with Elizabethan conceits. He relied more and more upon sheer construction and weight of thought and less upon decorative richness of detail. His diction became naked and severe, and he employed rhyme but sparingly, even in the choral parts of "Samson Agonistes." In short, like Goethe, he grew classical as he grew old. It has been mentioned that "Paradise Lost" did much to keep alive the tradition of English blank verse through a period remarkable for its bigoted devotion to rhyme, and especially to the heroic couplet. Yet it was, after all, Milton's early poetry, in which rhyme is used--though used so differently from the way in which Pope used it--that counted for most in the history of the romantic movement. Professor Masson contradicts the common assertion, that "Paradise Lost" was first written into popularity by Addison's Saturday papers. While that series was running, Tonson brought out (1711-13) an ediction of Milton's poetical works which was "the ninth of 'Paradise Lost,' the eight of 'Paradise Regained,' the seventh of 'Samson Agonistes' and the sixth of the minor poems." The previous issues of the minor poems had been in 1645, 1673, 1695, 1705, and 1707. Six editions in sixty-eight years is certainly no very great showing. After 1713 editions of Milton multiplied rapidly; by 1763 "Paradise Lost" was in its forty-sixth, and the minor poems in their thirtieth.[5]

Addison selected an occasional passage from Milton's juvenile poems, in the _Spectator_; but from all obtainable evidence, it seems not doubtful that they had been comparatively neglected, and that, although reissued from time to time in complete editions of Milton's poetry, they were regarded merely as pendents to "Paradise Lost" and floated by its reputation. "Whatever causes," says Dryden, "Milton alleges for the abolishing of rime . . . his own particular reason is plainly this, that rime was not his talent: he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it: which is manifest in his 'Juvenilia' or verses written in his youth; where his rime is always constrained and forced and comes hardly from him."

Joseph Warton, writing in 1756,[6] after quoting copiously from the "Nativity Ode," which, he says, is "not sufficiently read nor admired," continues as follows: "I have dwelt chiefly on this ode as much less celebrated than 'L'Allegro' and "Il Penseroso,"[7] which are now universally known,; but which, by a strange fatality, lay in a sort of obscurity, the private enjoyment of a few curious readers, till they were set to admirable music by Mr. Handel. And indeed this volume of Milton's miscellaneous poems has not till very lately met with suitable regard. Shall I offend any rational admirer of Pope, by remarking that these juvenile descriptive poems of Milton, as well as his Latin elegies, are of a strain far more exalted than any the former author can boast?"

The first critical edition of the minor poems was published in 1785, by Thomas Warton, whose annotations have been of great service to all later editors. As late as 1779, Dr. Johnson spoke of these same poems with an absence of appreciation that now seems utterly astounding. "Those who admire the beauties of this great poem sometimes force their own judgment into false admiration of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular." Of Lycidas he says: "In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting. . . Surely no man could have fancied that he read 'Lycidas' with pleasure, had he not known its author." He acknowledges that "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" are "noble efforts of imagination"; and that, "as a series of lines," "Comus" "may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with which the votaries have received it." But he makes peevish objections to its dramatic probability, finds its dialogues and soliloquies tedious, and unmindful of the fate of Midas, solemnly pronounces the songs--"Sweet Echo" and "Sabrina fair"--"harsh in their diction and not very musical in their numbers"! Of the sonnets he says: "They deserve not any particular criticism; for of the best it can only be said that they are not bad."[8] Boswell reports that, Hannah More having expressed her "wonder that the poet who had written 'Paradise Lost' should write such poor sonnets," Johnson replied: "Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry stones."

The influence of Milton's minor poetry first becomes noticeable in the fifth decade of the century, and in the work of a new group of lyrical poets: Collins, Gray, Mason, and the brothers Joseph and Thomas Warton. To all of these Milton was master. But just as Thomson and Shenstone got original effects from Spenser's stanza, while West and Cambridge and Lloyd were nothing but echoes; so Collins and Gray--immortal names--drew fresh music from Milton's organ pipes, while for the others he set the tune. The Wartons, indeed, though imitative always in their verse, have an independent and not inconsiderable position in criticism and literary scholarship, and I shall return to them later in that connection. Mason, whose "English Garden" has been reviewed in