Class. L Book / *?1 REVIEW JOHNSON'S CRITICISM ON MILTON'S ENGLISH PROSE. / CHARLES WOOD, Printer, Foppin's Court, Fleet Street, London. A REVIEW OF JOHNSON'S CRITICISM ON THE STYLE OF MILTON'S ENGLISH PROSE; WITH STRICTURES ON THE INTRODUCTION OF LATIN IDIOMS INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. BY T. HOLT WHITE, ESQ. Ourif, tfitv Z&vrog xou im y$w\ $tgxo{j.evoto, 2o* xo/Atj? iraga. vrivo) Gageixg %£~j5af lirofost, 2TMIIANTGN AANAGN* OTA HN ATAMEMNONA EinH2, *Og vuv 7roXXov ctgitrrog iv< otdoltS) tvytrou ilvcu. PRINTED FOR R. HUNTER, SUCCESSOR TO MR. JOHNSON, N° 72, st. Paul's churchyard. 1818. REVIEW, 85c. 8$c. WE may, I think, attribute in a consi- derable degree the neglect into which Milton's Prose Works had fallen, to the vulgar obloquy inseparably attendant upon bold and open conduct on the unsuc- cessful side in civil dissensions. It re- quired the intervention of a century, before Dryderis incontestable merit as a Poet could buoy him up effectually under the public odium brought on his name by abetting the House of Stuart, with his wit and genius, in their attempts to subvert the Liberties and Religion of his Country. Whatever be their dissimilarity in many circumstances, the consequence of adverse fortune was to both in some measure the same. It is but recently that Dry den has had his high rank, as a Writer of Prose, acknowleged ; and no great number of years has passed away since the Earl of Orrery, in a publication, which had its season of reputation, told his Son, that he would find the " prosaical works of " Milton more nervous than elegant ; " more distinguished by the strength of H reason than by the rules of rhetoric : " his diction is harsh, his periods tedious ; u and, when he becomes a prose writer, 11 the majesty that attends his poetry " vanishes, and is entirely lost : yet, with H all his faults, and exclusive of his cha- " racter as a poet, he must ever remain " the only learned author of that tasteless " age in which he flourished : and it is u probable, that his great attention to the " Latin language might have rendered " him less correct than he otherwise " would have been in his native tongue.' ' Justice to so great a writer as Mivton demands, that these summary and unde- - 3 signated strictures should no longer stand without some notice ; rather because not a few, for want of examination, have taken up the same ill impressions, than from any intrinsic weight which we should be in- clined to allow to the disapprobation of the Letter-writer on Swift. If it were said of the poet's blank verse, in the same vague and superficial way, that, through his endeavour to aggrandize it, in order to keep it from sinking into prose, he occasionally made it uncouth, and some- times embarrassed his meaning by strains of language, by disarrangements in the structure of the verse, and by involutions of the sense, or by other devices of arti- ficial contexture, entirely alien from the natural order and disposition of legitimate English — such remark, while it would not be altogether destitute of foundation, so far as it was referred to his great epic, must be received with very many limita- tions as to Paradise Regained; and would be especially misapplied to the sweetness and to the chastity of expression for whict b 2 the Masque of Comus is conspicuous. His Prose partakes as little as his Poetry of any uniform and settled character. As in other skilful writers, we find the style suited respectively to his subjects. If there be sometimes fair ground for the observation, that " his diction is harsh" in his first and polemical treatises, which grew out of knotty texts in Scripture, and were on abstruse and disputable points of ecclesiastical history and government, his written Speech in defence of an open Press furnishes a perpetual and resistless testi- mony, that he could be as smooth and flowing as he is animated and copious. It abounds in passages where the life and vigour of the sentiment are happily ex- pressed in the unadulterated energies of his native tongue. Parts might be readily selected from it, to establish, that he often " drew from wells of English undefiTd." By this I would not be understood to deny, that a sprinkling of " extern words" may be pointed out; nor would I insinuate, that his phraseology in this, or in any other of his performances, is invariably exempt from solecisms of classical derivation : neither was to be expected in one who, like him, was habitually exercised in reading and writing Latin ; who through the whole of life was a diligent collector of materials for a Latin Dictionary, and who had been so sedulously instituted in all the literature of Athens and of Rome. In several of his works, however, parti- cularly in those of a later date, these blemishes are of no very frequent recur- rence. Few, if any, of his time will in these respects be found less exceptionable. It would be easy to bring abundant proof of Milton's powers as a writer of Eng- lish Prose. Here, to put the futility of Lord Orrery's deteriorating opinion out of question, I transcribe his panegyric on the Long Parliament ; since, in the Areo- pagitica, he himself refers to it with com- placency, and because a favourite subject would call forth much of his care in the composition. " Now, although it be a digression from ' the ensuing matter, yet, because it shall ' not be said I am apter to blame others 6 than to make trial myself, and that I c may, after this harsh discord, touch upon ' a smoother string, awhile to entertain 6 myself and him that list with some more ' pleasing fit, and not the less to testify ' the gratitude which I owe to those pub- ' lie benefactors of their country, for the ' share I enjoy in the common peace and ' good by their incessant labours, I shall 6 be so troublesome to this declaimer, for 6 once, as to show him what he might ' have better said in their praise ; wherein ' I must mention only some few things of ' many; for more than that to a digression c may not be granted ; although cer- 6 tainly their actions are worthy not thus c to be spoken of by the way; yet if here- c after it befall me to attempt something 6 more answerable to their great merits, 6 I perceive how hopeless it will be to ' reach the height of their praises, at the c accomplishment of that expectation that 6 waits upon their noble deeds, the un~ u finishing whereof already surpasses what " others before them have left enacted, " with their utmost performance, through " many ages. And to the end we may " be confident, that what they do pro- " ceeds neither from uncertain opinion " nor sudden counsels, but from mature u wisdom, deliberate virtue, and dear af- fection to the public good, I shall begin at that, which made them likeliest, in the eyes of good men, to effect those things for the recovery of decayed reli- " gion and the commonwealth, which they " who were best minded had long wished " for, but few, as the times then were " desperate, had the courage to hope for. i6 First, therefore, the most of them being " either of ancient and high nobility, or " at least of known and well reputed an- " cestry, which is a great advantage to- " wards virtue one way, but, in respect of " wealth, ease, and flattery, which accom- " panies a nice and tender education, is * as much a hindrance another way, the " good which lay before them they took^ 8 " in imitating the worthiest of their pro- " genitors ; and the evil which assaulted " their younger years, by the temptation " of riches, high birth, and that usual " bringing up, perhaps too favourable and " too remiss, through the strength of an " inbred goodness, and with the help of " divine grace, that had marked them out " for no mean purposes, they nobly over- u came. Yet had they a greater danger " to cope with ; for, being trained up in " the knowledge of learning, and sent to " those places which were intended to be " the seed-plots of piety and the liberal " arts, but were become the nurseries of " superstition and empty speculation, as " they were prosperous against those vices " which grow upon youth out of idleness " and superfluity, so were they happy in " working off the harms of their abused " studies and labours ; correcting, by the " clearness of their own judgment, the " errors of their misinstruction; and were, " as David was, wiser than their teachers. " And although their lot fell into such 9 ' times, and to be bred in such places, f where, if they chanced to be taught any ' thing good, or of their own accord had ' learnt it, they might see that presently c untaught them by the custom and ill ' example of their elders ; so far, in all ' probability, was their youth from being ' misled by the single power of example, c as their riper years were known to be ' unmoved with the baits of preferment, ' and undaunted for any discouragement * and terror, which appeared often to 6 those that loved religion and their * native liberty; which two things God ' hath inseparably knit together, and hath ' disclosed to us, that they who seek to ' corrupt our religion are the same that 6 would enthrall our civil liberty. Thus, c in the midst of all disadvantages and 6 disrespects (some also at last not with- ' out imprisonment and open disgraces in ' the cause of their country) having given ' proof of themselves to be better made ' and framed by nature to the love and ' practice of virtue than others under the 10 " holiest precepts and best examples have " been headstrong and prone to vice, and " having, in all the trials of a firm in- " grafted honesty, not oftener buckled in " the conflict than given every opposition " the foil, this moreover was added by " favour from Heaven, as an ornament " and happiness to their virtue, that it " should be neither obscure in the opinion " of men, nor eclipsed for want of matter " equal to illustrate itself; God and man " consenting, in joint approbation, to " choose them out as worthiest above " others to be both the great reform- " ers of the church and the restorers " of the commonwealth. Nor did they " deceive that expectation, which, with the " eyes and desires of their country, was " fixt upon them ; for no sooner did the " force of so much united excellence meet " in one globe of brightness and efficacy, u but, encountering the dazzled resistance " of tyranny, they gave not over, though u their enemies were strong and subtle, " till they had laid her grovelling upon 11 " the fatal block ; with one stroke win- " ning again our lost liberties and char- " ters, which our forefathers, after so " many battles, could scarce maintain. " And meeting next, as I may so resem- " ble, with the second life of tyranny (for " she was grown an ambiguous monster, " and to be slain in two shapes), guarded " with superstition, which hath no small " power to captivate the minds of men, " otherwise most wise, they neither " were taken with her mitred hypocrisy, " nor terrified with the push of her " bestial horns ; but, breaking them im- " mediately, forced her to unbend the w pontifical brow and recoil ; which re- " pulse only, given to the prelates (that " we may imagine how happy their re- " moval would be), was the produce- " ment of such glorious effects and " consequences in the church, that, if " I should compare them with those ex- " ploits of highest fame in poems and " panegyrics of old, I am certain it would " but diminish and impair their worth, 12 " who are now my argument. For those " ancient worthies delivered men from " such tyrants as were content to enforce " only an outward obedience, letting the " mind be as free as it could ; but these " have freed us from a doctrine of ty- " ranny, that offered violence and corrup- " tion even to the inward persuasion. ft They set at liberty nations and cities of " men, good and bad mixed together ; but " these, opening the prisons and dungeons, " called out of darkness and bonds the " elect martyrs and witnesses of their " Redeemer. They restored the body to " ease and wealth ; but these the op- " pressed conscience to that freedom, " which is the chief prerogative of the " Gospell; taking off those cruel burdens " imposed not by necessity, as other tyrants " are wont for the safeguard of their " lives, but laid upon our necks* by the * " Laid upon our necks;" i. e. as a yoke: after the Latin, " Itaque posuistis in cervicibus nostris sempi- " temum dominum, quern dies et noctes timeremus." Cicero, De Natura Deorum, i, 54, 13 strange wilfulness and wantonness of a needless* and jolly persecutor called Indifference. Lastly, some of those ancient deliverers have had immortal praises for preserving their citizens from a famine of corn ; but these, by this only repulse of an unholy hierarchy, almost in a moment replenished with saving knowledge their country, nigh fa- mished for want of that which should feed their souls. All this being done while two armies in the field stood gaz- ing on ; the one in reverence of such nobleness quietly gave back and dis- lodged ; the other, spite of the unruli- ness and doubted fidelity in some regi- ments, was either persuaded or com- pelled to disband and retire home : with such a majesty had their wisdom begirt itself, that whereas others had levied war to subdue a nation that sought for peace, they, sitting here in peace, could so many miles extend the force of their * Is " weedless" an errour of the Press for £eed- lass? 14 " single words as to overawe the dissolute " stoutness of an armed power, secretly " stirred up, and almost hired against "them; and having by a solemn Pro- " testation vowed themselves and the " kingdom anew to God and his service, " and by a prudent foresight, above what " their fathers thought on, prevented the " dissolution and frustrating of their de- " signs by an untimely breaking up, not- <• withstanding all the treasonous plots " against them, all the rumours either of " rebellion or invasion, they have not been ci yet brought to change their constant " resolution, ever to think fearlessly of " their own safeties and hopefully of the " commonwealth; which hath gained " them such an admiration from all good " men, that now they hear it as their or- " dinary surname to be saluted the fathers " of their country, and sit as gods among " daily petitions and public thanks flowing " in upon them. Which doth so little yet " exalt them in their own thoughts, that vi), they excite little surprize. * Beidley on Phalaris. 65 Meanwhile, for fear that I should, when unfolding the motive of our Au- thour, and the excuse for his encroach- ing, like others of that day, on our An- glicisms, be ranged among those who mistake such depravations for improve- ments, I digress to declare, that the glit- tering fragments, which we for centuries have applied ourselves with unremitting industry to import from Rome to stud our Saxon fabric, give it, to my view, a tesselated, or rather a party-coloured and grotesque, appearance. We have wrought up a superstructure, which calls to re- membrance what travellers relate of some of the humbler habitations in modern Greece : they are, we are told, raised with the first rude materials that offered themselves, and here and there some ex- quisite remains of Grecian architecture, negligently intermixed by the builder, in mockery, as it were, of the original style of the edifice. Let it also be remembered, that, in the course of what many have persuaded f 66 themselves to believe the amelioration of our language, we have dropped not a few of those useful and ornamental distinctions of speech, which our Saxon ancestors brought over with them. In a happy fa- cility for compounded words their tongue vied with the Greek. A sufficient number of them are polysyllabic and well-vow* elled*; too many of ours are clusters of Consonants, curtailed of their fair propor- tion, or abbreviated to one syllable. Nearly all of their masculine and femi- nine Substantives, so conducive to perspe- cuity, have, with the lapse of centuries, fal- len into disuse f. We have continued only * To exemplify this, I will extract a passage from a metrical Calendar, printed by Hickes ; where we also catch a glimmering of Poetry. Spylce ymb pyprt pucan. Daenne pangar hpa&e, Butan anpe nibs. Blortmnm blopaS. ©get te ylbum bpin^S. Spylce bkr ajritfS. Sisel beophte bajar. Eeonb mibban geapb, 8umop vo tune. OOamgpa haba J7eapme jepybepu. Epicepa cynna. Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium Thesaurus ; I. 205. t As Fpeonb (Freond) Arnicas, a Friend J Fpeunbyn* 67 one of the variations of Case in the de- clension of the Nouns substantive. No distinction of Gender, Case, or Number in the termination of their Adjectives has de- scended to us. The Editor of Fortescue's Treatise on the Difference between an absolute and limited Monarchy, justly re- grets, that we have laid aside too many of the Saxon Comparatives and Superla- tives, by using more and most in modern English*: and for their Verbs, time has swept away the discriminations of the plural Number ; while we have poorly sup- plied the place of their Moods f; and the (Freundyne), Arnica; (Lye's Saxon Diet, by Man- ning in v.) ; which latter word our forefathers were con- tented to express by a She- Friend; and we have softened into a female Friend. So, at an earlier period Kunmjmna. signified Queen, and was deduced from Kunmg, King, * p. 19, 8vo. 1724. A book not unknown to the late Mv.Horne Tooke, as is evident by some of the Saxon Etymologies in his Diversions of Purley, borrowed from the first Lord Fortescue's glossarial annotations on this work of his venerable Ancestor. f " Longe melius vet. Anglo- Saxones prseteritum pass". " participium per ge, vet. Angli per y vel i, augmento F 2 68 inflections of our Verbs are become woe- fully irregular. For the loss of all these distinguishing properties, the introduction of a countless multitude of Latin words makes but a sorry recompense. They would be a sorry recompense, even if the larger number had not been previously barbarized by the French ; some of them no less preposterously than the names of our Circumnavigators were disguised by the islanders of O'Taheite, when they distorted Banks into Opane, and Cook into Toote. But of this enough. The impression of Dr. Johnson's wis- dom and integrity has, not without good reason, sunk deep into the public mind ; while his Critical Biography bids fair to rival in permanency the popularity of Addison's daily Essays ; I will, therefore, bring still closer to him the proof of his " more Grsecorum addito, formaruntj quod nos rejecimus; c * sic melius infinitiva sua Anglo-Saxones, per term, aw, " quam nos hodie aequivoco illo articulo to prsemisso ssepe w etiam omisso, distinxerunt," &c. Skinner ; Canone* EtymologicL 69 determined leaning against Milton. His carping and calumniating criticisms pro- voke the retort; and it is much to the purpose, because it supplies an undeniable confirmation of the unworthy and incur- able prepossession which rankled in his breast. For surely he himself too com- monly oppressed his sentences with gi- gantic, ponderous words, and not seldom overlaid his sense by " aggravating his style " with sesquipedalian Latinism ; where the Reader's attention is too much called to the consideration of the language in which the sentiments are conveyed. In his own scheme of sentence and me- thod of period he is far more artificial than the Writer whom he reprehends as perversely pedantic; insomuch, that he has undeniably become monotonous and a man- nerist. Without a doubt, neither of theni can boast the golden mean of Addison and Goldsmith ; but in the general turn and inclination of his diction, we are more to seek for genuine Anglicisms, and the radical constitutions and customary forms 70 of our H idiotic" phraseology. He la- mentably impeached his own consistency in decrying Milton's Latinized words, after the verbal sophistications, the stu- died deformities, of Sir Thomas Brown had met in him with an Apologist, if we may not call him an Imitator. That inge- nious Scholar seems to have been misled into the egregious errour, that in every step he receded from his mother-tongue the nearer he approached to elegancy and ex- cellence*. Now the Critic pronounces his style to be " a tissue of many languages, €( a mixture of heterogeneous words " brought together from distant regions, * In the address to the Reader, prefixed to his " Pseu- " doxia Epidemica ; or, Enquiries into very many received " Tenents, and commonly presumed Truths," Brown ob- serves — " I confess the quality of the subject will some- " times carry us into expressions beyond meer English " apprehensions. And indeed, if elegancy still pro- " ceedeth, and English pens maintain that stream, we ec have of late observed to flow from many, we shall " within few years be fain to learn Latine to understand " English, and a work will prove of equal facility in « either." n 46 with terms originally appropriated to one " art, and drawn by violence into the ser- " vice of another. He must, however, " be confessed to have augmented our " philosophical diction; and, in defence " of his uncommon words and expressions, % we must consider, that he had uncom- " mon sentiments, and was not content to " express in many words that idea for " which any language could supply a 66 single term. But his innovations are " sometimes pleasing, and his temerities f f happy : he has many verba ardentia % u forcible expressions, which he would " never have found but by venturing to " the utmost verge of propriety; and " flights, which would never have been i( reached but by one who had very little " fear of the shame of falling.'' The greater part of the merit in this antithesis of blame and commendation, it was a debt due to Truth and to Milton, at the very least, to have allowed him like- wise; since his defects, both for number and account, are of much smaller note thaji 72 Brown's; of whose pedantries what more ought to be said than that " he had been " at a feast of languages, and stolen the " scraps ?" Our Authour's tenour of ex- pression is superiour beyond all competition. His Prose Works are a rich fund of ele- vated phraseology : while, with a modifi- cation of his sentences infinitely diver- sified, he uses words with a philolo- gical strictness of signification, which the Lexicographer himself has not sur- passed. He never entered into controversy as if he was playing for a prize of oratorical disputation. In consequence, the Reader has not anywhere to complain, that he is cold, or jejune, or languid. The same acer spiritus ac vis pervades and inspires the vo- luminous body of his works. There is a so- lidity of Reasoning, a force of Eloquence, and an originality of Sentiment, that pe- culiarly marks them for his own ; not un- frequently accompanied with a plenitude and glow of thought, impressed by an in- tellectual energy highly characteristic of 73 an honest confidence in powerful talents and transcendent acquirements, exerted, as was his assured belief, in promoting the dearest interests of his country ; exerted, too, we should ever have in remembrance, without reward, and at the expense of eye -sight*, * Here I cannot forbear the gratification of tran- scribing the solemn and affecting adjuration forced from him by the inhuman reproaches of his enemies, on the sorest calamity that can afflict the human frame. " Ad "me quod attinet, te tester, Dkus, mentis intima?, cogita- " 'tiontimque omnium indagator, me nullius rei (quan- ** quam hoc apud me saepius, et quam maxime potui, seri5 " quaesivi et recessus vita? omnes excussi) nuilius vel lc recens vel olim commissi, mihimet conscium esse, cujus