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, 
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 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 
 <c with all gentle affability and courteous 
 
15 
 
 " acceptance they both receive and return 
 " that tribute of thanks which is rendered 
 " them, testifying their zeal and desire to 
 " spend themselves as it were piecemeal 
 iC upon the grievances and wrongs of their 
 " distressed nation ; insomuch that the 
 " meanest artizans and labourers, at other 
 " times also women, and often the younger 
 tc sort of servants, assembling with their 
 " complaints, and that sometimes in a less 
 " humble guise than for petitioners, have 
 " gone with confidence, that neither their 
 " meanness would be rejected, nor their 
 " simplicity contemned, nor yet their 
 " urgency distasted either by the dignity, 
 " wisdom, or moderation of that supreme 
 " senate : nor did they depart unsatisfied. 
 " And, indeed, if we consider the general 
 " concourse of suppliants, the free and 
 " ready admittance, the willing and 
 " speedy redress in what is possible, it 
 " will not seem much otherwise than as 
 " if some divine commission from Heaven 
 u were descended to take into hearing 
 fc and commiseration the long remediless 
 
16 
 
 " afflictions of this kingdom ; were it not 
 
 " that none more than themselves labour 
 
 " to remove and divert such thoughts} 
 
 " lest men should place too much confi- 
 
 " dence in their persons, still referring us 
 
 " and our prayers to him that can grant 
 
 " all, and appointing the monthly return 
 
 " of public fasts and supplications. There- 
 
 " fore, the more they seek to humble them- 
 
 " selves, the more does God by manifest 
 
 " signs and testimonies visibly honour 
 
 " their proceedings, and sets them as the 
 
 " mediators of this his covenant, which he 
 
 *f offers us to renew. Wicked men daily 
 
 " conspire their hurt, and it comes to 
 
 iC nothing. Rebellion rages in our Irish 
 
 " Province, but, with miraculous and loss- 
 
 " less victories of few against many, is 
 
 " daily discomfited and broken ; if we 
 
 " neglect not this early pledge of God's 
 
 " inclining towards us by the slackness of 
 
 " our needful aids. And whereas at other 
 
 u times we count it ample honour when 
 
 " God vouchsafes to make man the in- 
 
 " strument and subordinate worker of his 
 
17 
 
 H gracious will, such acceptation have 
 " their prayers found with him, that to 
 " them he hath been pleased to make 
 u himself the agent and immediate per- 
 " former of their desires ; dissolving their 
 " difficulties when they are thought in- 
 " explicable, cutting out ways for them 
 " where no passage could be seen ; as who 
 " is there so regardless of Divine Provi- 
 " dence, that from late occurrences will 
 " not confess ? If, therefore, it be so high 
 " a grace when men are preferred to be 
 " but the inferior officers of good things 
 " from God, what is it when God him- 
 " self condescends and works with his 
 " own hands to fulfil the requests of men ? 
 " which I leave with them as the greatest 
 " praise that can belong to human nature. 
 ■ ' Not that we should think they are at the 
 " end of their glorious progress, but that 
 " they will go on to follow his Almighty 
 " leading, who seems to have thus cove- 
 " nanted with them, that, if the will and 
 " the endeavour shall be theirs, the per- 
 " formance and the perfecting shall be 
 
18 
 
 " his. Whence only it is that I have not 
 
 " feared, though many wise men have 
 
 " miscarried in praising great designs be- 
 
 " fore the utmost event ; because I see 
 
 " who is their assistant, who is their con- 
 
 " federate, who hath engaged his omni- 
 
 H. potent arm to support and crown with 
 
 " success their faith, their fortitude, their 
 
 "just and magnanimous actions, till he 
 
 " hath brought to pass all that expected 
 
 " good, which his servants trust is in his 
 
 " thoughts to bring upon this land, in 
 
 " the full and perfect reformation of his 
 
 " church*. 
 
 While sufficiently eloquent and luxu- 
 riant through his Oration for the Liberty of 
 unlicensed Printing, in the History of 
 Britain, he carefully avoids all redun- 
 dancy. There he is terse : perhaps not 
 unfrequently too concise for elegance. 
 The general cast of his periods is com- 
 pact, and unquestionably the opposite of 
 " tedious, " or expanded. It was Old- 
 
 * From an Apology for Smectymnuus, 
 
19 
 
 mixon's remark, when contrasting his 
 style in that History with the amplifica- 
 tion of Clarendon, that our Authour had 
 not allowed words enough for his matter. 
 Oldmiocon omitted to subjoin, on the other 
 part, that this brevity of expression does 
 not injure the perspicuity of the narration. 
 
 To give every reader the opportunity of 
 judging for himself, I will exhibit his por- 
 trait of Alfred, traced with the pencil of 
 a master, and delineated con amove; which, 
 by the way, argues strongly, that he was 
 no enemy to kingly rule, when adminis- 
 tered so as to conduce to the People's 
 welfare. " He was of person comelier 
 " than all his brethren, of pleasing tongue 
 " and graceful behaviour, ready wit and 
 46 memory ; yet, through the fondness of 
 " his parents towards him, had not been 
 " taught to read till the twelfth year of 
 " his age ; but the great desire of learn- 
 " ing, which was in him, soon appeared, 
 44 by his conning of Saxon poems day and 
 ?' night, which, with great attention, he 
 44 heard by others repeated. He was, be- 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 " side, excellent at hunting, and the new 
 " art then of hawking ; but more exem- 
 Xi plary in devotion, having collected into a 
 " book certain prayers and psalms, which 
 " he carried ever with him in his bosom, 
 " to use on all occasions. He thirsted 
 " after all liberal knowledge, and oft 
 " complained, that in his youth he had 
 " no teachers, in his middle age so little 
 " vacancy from wars and the cares of his 
 " kingdom ; yet leisure he found, some- 
 " times, not only to learn much himself, 
 " but to communicate thereof what he 
 " could to his people, by translating books 
 " out of Latin into English, Orosius, 
 " Boethius, Beda's History, and others : 
 " permitted none unlearned to bear office, 
 " either in court or commonwealth. At 
 " twenty years of age, not yet reigning, 
 *' he took to wife Egelswitha, the daugh- 
 " ter of Ethelred, a Mercian earl. The 
 " extremities, which befel him in the sixth 
 " of his reign, Neothan, abbot, told him 
 " were justly come upon him for neglecting, 
 in his younger days, the complaints of 
 
 cc 
 
21 
 
 " such as, injured and oppressed, repaired 
 
 * to him, as then second person in the 
 ' kingdom, for redress ; which neglect, 
 ' were it such indeed, were yet excusable 
 c in a youth, through jollity of mind, im- 
 ' willing perhaps to be detained long with 
 6 sad and sorrowful narrations : but from 
 6 the time of his undertaking regal charge 
 c no man more patient in hearing causes, 
 ' more inquisitive in examining, more ex- 
 ' act in doing justice and providing good 
 c laws, which are yet extant ; more severe 
 c in punishing unjust judges or obstinate 
 ' offenders, thieves especially and robbers, 
 ' to the terror of whom in cross ways were 
 6 hung, upon a high post, certain chains 
 
 * of gold, as it were daring any one to 
 6 take them thence; so that justice seemed 
 c in his days not to flourish only but to 
 ' triumph. No man than he more frugal 
 ' of two precious things in man's life, his 
 c time and his revenue ; no man wiser in 
 ' the disposal of both- His time, the day 
 ' and night, he distributed, by the burn- 
 
 * ing of certain tapers, into three equal 
 
22 
 
 " portions ; the one was for devotiop, the 
 " other for public or private affairs, the 
 " third for bodily refreshment : how each 
 " hour past he was put in mind by one 
 " who had that office. His whole annual 
 " revenue, which his first care was should 
 " be justly his own, he divided into two 
 " equal parts : the first he employed to 
 " secular uses, and subdivided those into 
 i( three ; the first to pay his soldiers, 
 " household servants, and guard, of which, 
 " divided into three bands, one attended 
 " monthly by turn : the second was to pay 
 " his architects and workmen, whom he 
 " had got together of several nations ; for 
 " he was also an elegant builder, above 
 " the custom and conceit of Englishmen 
 " in those days : the third he ha-d in rea- 
 " diness to relieve or honour strangers, 
 " according to their worth, who came 
 " from all parts to see him and to live 
 " under him. The other equal part of his 
 " yearly wealth he dedicated to religious 
 iC uses, those of four sorts : the first to 
 " relieve the poor ; the second to the 
 
i 23 
 
 66 building and maintenance of two iiio- 
 ? nasteries ; the third of a school, where 
 " he had persuaded the sons of many 
 " noblemen to study sacred knowledge and 
 " liberal arts, some say at Oxford ; the 
 " fourth was for the relief of foreign 
 " churches, as far as India to the shrine 
 " of St. Thomas, sending thither Sigelm, 
 te Bishop of Sherburn, who both returned 
 " safe, and brought with him many rich 
 " gems and spices ; gifts also and a letter 
 " he received from the patriarch of Jeru- 
 " salem ; sent many to Rome, and for 
 " them received reliques. Thus far, and 
 " much more, might be said of his noble 
 " mind, which rendered him the mirror of 
 " princes. His body was diseased in his 
 " youth with a great soreness in the seige; 
 " and that ceasing of itself, with another 
 " inward pain, of unknown cause, which 
 " held him by frequent fits to his dying 
 " day, yet not disenabled to sustain those 
 " many glorious labours of his life, both 
 " in peace and war*." 
 
 * The History of Britain, b. v. 
 
24 
 
 Lord Orrery's critical dictation, that 
 the Poet's " majesty vanishes and is en- 
 " tirely lost when he became a Prose 
 " Writer/' might well be controverted : 
 but the short and plain answer to the 
 noble Objector is, that he has placed on a 
 parity cases that have no sameness of 
 principle. There cannot be a fair com- 
 parison between works, which are quite 
 distinct in their end and aim. With equal 
 propriety might he have urged against 
 Shakspeare, that the sublimity of Macbeth 
 is entirely lost in the Comedy of Twelfth 
 Night. This remark is beside so loosely 
 stated, that we are unable to fix the sense. 
 By " majesty," did he mean grandeur of 
 conception ? or did he mean stateliness of 
 expression ? But we ought not to require 
 either, in disputations concerning ecclesias- 
 tical discipline, and the wearing or the not 
 wearing of hoods atid copes, and linen vest- 
 ments, or oilier sace iotal ornaments; and 
 as little in Colasterion, or in a pamphlet of 
 Considerations touching the hheliest Means 
 to remove Hirelings out of the Church. No : 
 
25 
 
 these and most of our Authour's controver- 
 sial pieces were hastened to the Press, and 
 treated on dark and intricate questions -*— 
 questions, which refused ambitious orna- 
 ment, and in which a regular pomp of 
 phrase would have been ridiculously mis- 
 placed. It was enough when they in- 
 structed his readers ; he had no anxiety 
 beyond. If he pressed his arguments 
 home to their understandings, he defeated 
 his antagonists, and accomplished all that 
 he had in his intention. Still, at times, 
 he breaks out in a touching strain of elo- 
 quence, such as we might look to find in 
 the prose writings of the Authour of 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 Lord Orrery, indeed, allows his Prose, 
 with no restriction, to be " nervous, and to 
 " be distinguished by strength of reason." 
 Surely this is the best, as it is the most 
 decisive test of its merit ; and all that we 
 ought to promise ourselves, on topics bar- 
 ren as these were. This Nobleman's warm 
 and merited recommendation of Sydney's 
 Discourses concerning Government, both 
 
26 
 
 for propriety of diction and for their his- 
 torical matter, sets him above the sus- 
 picion, that political bigotry dictated this 
 ambages verborum, these " ragged notions 
 " and babblements." He repeated, we 
 may conclude, the undistinguishing cen- 
 sures he had heard current, without exa- 
 mination of their validity, and with as 
 little reflection as when he asserts, that 
 Milton was the only learned person of 
 an age, eminent for Usher, Selden, and 
 Cudworth, to name no more. 
 
 The excuse of exemption from prejudice 
 cannot, I state it with sorrow and reluc- 
 tance, be pleaded in behalf of Dr. Johnson. 
 Party spleen " put rancours in the vessel 
 f 1 of his peace :" as often as the renown of 
 a Nonconformist and Commonwealth's- 
 man crossed his mind, it excited fervours 
 of animosity not easily allayed. 
 
 While writing his " new narrative" of 
 Milton, he betrays an implacable bitter- 
 ness against him, notwithstanding he was 
 under the strong restraint of public opi- 
 nion, as the late Mr. George Steevens 
 
27 
 
 assured me : and the anecdote bears the 
 appearance of much probability ; for when 
 speaking his mind concealed under a mask 
 he is explicit, that " Shakspeare's faults 
 " were those of a great poet ; those of 
 " Milton of a little pedant. When Shak- 
 " speare is execrable he is so exquisitely 
 " so, that he is inimitable in his blemishes 
 " as in his beauties. The puns of Milton 
 " betray a narroivness of education and % 
 " degeneracy of habit/' Such was the 
 direct hostility of his anonymous defama- 
 tion, and it carries its own condemnation 
 along with it. Again : " If we consider 
 *' him as a prose writer, he has neither the 
 "learning of a scholar nor the manners of 
 " a gentleman : there is no force in his 
 \\ reasoning, no elegance in his style, and 
 " no taste in his composition* !" 
 
 With sympathies far different, Sir Wil- 
 liam Jones paid due homage to Milton's 
 matchless endowments and exemplary mo- 
 
 * Quoted by Archdeacon JBlackburne, in his caustic 
 taunts and acute Remarks on the ZAfe of Mijlton, from 
 a communication to the Literary Magazine by Johnson* 
 
28 
 
 rals. In a panegyrical Oration, after the 
 manner of Isocrates, which he composed^ 
 for recitation before the assembled Univer- 
 sity of Oxford, he exclaims — " What a 
 " glorious character was Milton ! How 
 * sublime a Poet ! How copious an Orator ! 
 " How profound a Scholar ! The mise- 
 " rable times in which he lived deprived 
 *' this great man of the glory, which he 
 " must have acquired, if his genius had 
 " found room to expand itself in a free air 
 " and a favourable climate ; for, had he 
 " flourished in Athens, while Athens her- 
 u self was independent, he would have 
 " rivalled Sophocles in poetry, Demos- 
 " thenes in eloquence, and even Socrates 
 " in virtue*/' Not that we ought to 
 arraign Johnson, because the affections of 
 
 * Sir William Jones published this Oration in I7S2, 
 appended to the second edition of his constitutional Tract, 
 « An Inquiry into the legal Mode of suppressing Riots;" 
 together with an excellent Speech he made, in 17^0, on 
 the nomination of Candidates to represent the County of 
 Middlesex. They were neither of them incorporated into 
 his works. Why w r ere they omitted ? 
 
29 
 
 his mind could not vibrate in unison with 
 this high-toned eulogy on the strenuous 
 vindicator of the Parliament ; yet we may 
 w r ith justice reprobate the inveteracy with 
 which he pursued him. An antipathy so 
 marked, so virulent and unrelenting, and 
 taking its rise from the causes I have as- 
 signed, cannot but diminish our veneration 
 for this great teacher of Morality. Alas ! 
 it lies heavy on his memory, that his in- 
 exorable enmity (it can be called nothing 
 less) should leave it difficult to conjecture 
 into what vehemence of angry reproach 
 it might have hurried him had it not been 
 bridled by his awe of the public. But 
 though he had kept no measure, and had 
 let this malevolent impulse run its course, 
 who at this day would assent to the asser- 
 tion, that he could have proved a censor of 
 power sufficient to displace Milton from 
 his elevated rank among the learned, the 
 wise, and the good ? 
 
 " Mark ! how the dread Pantheon stands 
 6S Amid the dome! of modern hands ; 
 
30 
 
 " Amid the toys of idle state, 
 
 " How simply, how severely great ! 
 
 " Then turn, and while each western clime 
 
 " Presents her tuneful sons to Time, 
 
 ■ So mark thou Milton's name.'* 
 
 In the mean time, without allowing his 
 acrimony full scope, it never slept ; nor 
 did he suffer any occasion to pass by un- 
 heeded, when he thought he saw the op- 
 portunity, either openly or by stealth, to 
 traduce Milton's great qualities or to 
 depress his name*. A premeditated, half- 
 veiled design to vilify him is diffused 
 throughout this biographical memoir ; the 
 
 * In a conversation I once held with Professor Porson, 
 on Dr. Johnson's participation in the accusation which 
 Lauder preferred against Milton for plagiarisms from 
 Latin Poets of the modern ages, he mentioned, that the 
 subject had occupied his thoughts with a view to publi- 
 cation 5 and added, that he only delayed it till he could 
 procure a Pamphlet' which that controversy produced. 
 Two of the arguments he stated were to my judgment 
 conclusive on the question. 1. That, with a mind always 
 eager for inquiry on every subject connected with litera- 
 ture, as well as greedy of every pretence to depreciate 
 
31 
 
 same in every event, whether it be in the 
 scenes of domestic society and literary re- 
 tirement, or in the career of his public 
 occupations. To speak out, the Biogra- 
 pher has dissected him with an invenomed 
 scalpel. This infirmity of mind is exempli- 
 fied in an instance that calls for a direct an- 
 swer, where Johnson decides magisterially, 
 that our Authour, both in prose and verse , 
 formed his style on a perverse and pedantic 
 principle : that he was desirous to use 
 English words with a foreign idiom. By 
 
 Milton, it is not credible that Johnson, as soon as ap- 
 prized by Lauder of his alleged discovery, would not have 
 expressed a desire to examine the works himself in which 
 the original passages were asserted to exist. 2. That 
 Johnson, throughout his biography of Milton, has pre- 
 served a deep silence on the story of Lauder and his 
 falsified quotations. Mr. Porson closed his remarks by 
 saying, in his own emphatic way-—" Guilty-— •Death/* 
 
 At the time, I understood him to be prepared for the 
 Press, waiting only to read the Tract he mentioned ; but 
 as I have been informed, that no such manuscript was at 
 his death to be found among his papers, I now suppose, 
 that he had been contented to retain the whole in his 
 memory. 
 
32 
 
 a foreign idiom the biographer means a 
 Latin idiom ; his phrase when elsewhere 
 inflicting the same animadversion on 
 Milton. I am not quite satisfied, that I 
 comprehend correctly what Johnson here 
 intended by idiom. Did he accuse him of 
 " Romanizing our tongue '■] too much, 
 as Dry den accused Ben Jonson; " leaving 
 " the words which he translated almost as 
 " much Latin as he found them, wherein, 
 " though he learnedly followed their lan- 
 " guage, he did not enough comply with 
 " the idiom of ours ?" Or was it, that, in 
 the formation of his sentences, Milton 
 still fixed his eye on a Roman model ? I 
 am inclined to think, that he employed it 
 in a sense different from that in this quota- 
 tion from Dryden. He would, I believe, 
 represent our Authour as giving systemati- 
 cally a Latin signification to words radi- 
 cally English ; or to words of foreign ex- 
 traction, which time had legitimated so as 
 to have acquired an acknowleged and ap- 
 proved acceptation, become familiar by 
 
33 
 
 general usage. Of this tendency I will 
 subjoin some instances*. At the same 
 
 * For example : hears ill, and of a sensible nostril^ 
 phrases which occur in his Areopagitica, are of classic 
 origin. To hear ill, Kockcxj^ axovziv; (Vide Steph. Thes, 
 Grcec. in v. Akovuj.) to be spoken ill of, to be of bad 
 fame. So Tacitus ; " Palam laudares : secreta male 
 audiebant." Hist. i. 10. 
 
 Ben Jonson raised a witticism on the equivoque which 
 the introduction of this idiom afforded to our language : — 
 " Sub. I do not hear well. 
 " Fac. Not of this, I think it. 
 
 The Alchymist ; Act i, Scene 1. 
 
 Laud too used it ; "I conceive/' said he, " 'tis no 
 " genteel part for a man of place and power in his coun- 
 " try to oppress poor clergymen which neighbour about 
 " him. In which kind this gentleman pessime audiebat, 
 iC heard extremely ill." 
 
 State Trials ; Har grave's Edit. vol. i, col. 874. 
 
 Of a sensible nostril, 
 
 " Minus aptus acutis 
 
 " Naribus." Horat. Sat. I, iii. 29. 
 
 Milton was not however tjie first who imported this 
 aukward phraseology. His antagonist, Bishop Hall, has, 
 " While now my rhymes relish of the ferule still, 
 " Some nose-wise pedant saith." 
 
 Satires; p. 58, edit. 1753. 
 And in the same Oration Milton asks — « who shall 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 time this predilection for Latin-English 
 is susceptible of an explanation, which 
 will prove the perverseness and pedantry 
 here laid to his charge to be a flagrant 
 exaggeration. It may be, that his eager- 
 ness of detraction in every circumstance 
 which bore relation to Milton instigated 
 the sagacious Critic to this particular re- 
 prehension against his better knowlege : 
 otherwise, the view he took of this ques- 
 tion was narrow and darkly clouded by 
 prejudice and passion. He confounded 
 antient practices with the opinions of the 
 
 " be the rectors of our daily rioting ?" Where rectors 
 
 is in the same Latin acceptation as in his verses in 
 
 Quintum Novembris : 
 
 "Cum niger umbrarum dominus, rector que silentum." 
 But this sense in English was far from novel or peculiar 
 
 to him. We find it in DanyeVs Sonnets, 4to. 1592. 
 
 Signat, b. 2. 
 
 " No bayes I seeke to deck my mourning brow, 
 " O cleer eyde rector of the holie hill." 
 
 06 well as in others of our earlier writers. 
 
 These examples, and many more than these might be 
 brought, will assist to screen Milton from this imputed 
 singularity of intruding a Latin-English diction. 
 
35 
 
 eighteenth century. To rectify his mis- 
 take or his misrepresentation, it will be ne- 
 cessary to throw a retrospective glance 
 over the period in which Milton's birth 
 was cast ; and as well to bear in mind 
 how much of the. fashion of style and the 
 ornaments of all languages are the work 
 of chance or conventional. 
 
 That a language, as it becomes more 
 cultivated, should retrograde in any parti- 
 cular of correctness, or should drop any 
 refinement it possessed in ruder ages, 
 would not be readily anticipated. Yet so 
 fortuitous, so changeful are the operations 
 of time and custom on human speech, so 
 much is it in all particulars the creature 
 of casualty, that this happened even to 
 the Latin tongue. Cicero has recorded, 
 " Quinetiam, quod jam subrusticum vide- 
 " tur, olim autem politius, eorum ver- 
 " borum, quorum eodem erant postremse 
 " duse literee, quee sunt in optmnus, post; 
 " remam literam detrahebant, nisi vocalis 
 " insequabatur. Ita non erat offensio in? 
 " versibus, quam nunc fugiunt poetse novi. 
 
 p2 
 
36 
 
 " Ita enim loquebamur, 
 
 u Qui est omnibu' princeps : non, omnibus princeps, Et 
 
 iC Vita ilia dignu' locoqile : non, dignus." 
 
 Orator, s. 161. 
 
 In like manner, the rustic dialect in 
 the northern division of our island occa- 
 sionally sinks the final consonant : 
 
 " Wi* mair o' horrible and awfu', 
 
 " Which ev'n to name wad be unlawful'." 
 
 Burns's Tarn o' Shanter. 
 
 Extravagant, metaphorical " Orienta- 
 lities," driven, as we think, past the boun- 
 daries of bombast and hyperbole into 
 utter absurdity, captivate the glowing 
 fancies of the Asiatics. " What (asks 
 " Warburton) is purity, but the use of 
 " such terms, with their multiplied com- 
 " binations, as the interest, the com- 
 " plexion, or the caprice of a writer or 
 " speaker of authority hath preferred to its 
 " equals ? What is elegance, but such a 
 " turn of idiom as a fashionable fancy hath 
 ** brought into repute ? And what is sub- 
 " limity, but the application of such 
 
37 
 
 " images as arbitrary or casual con- 
 " nexions, rather than their own native 
 " grandeur, have dignified and ennobled ?" 
 As there are modes of composition 
 peculiar to different countries, so are 
 there modes peculiar to different eeras in 
 the same country ; and contemporaries 
 often imbibe such peculiarities without 
 thought, in the way we all receive but 
 too many of our opinions, almost mecha- 
 nically, like the air we breathe. Every au- 
 thor' s style and manner, therefore, neces- 
 sarily catches a part of its colour from the 
 influence of situation. This happened to 
 Milton like others ; perhaps insensibly to 
 himself, unless to bespeak approbation he 
 purposely conformed to the ideas of good 
 writing then predominant, and to which 
 few have run counter with impunity. But 
 for these causes, would the dignity of his 
 epic poem have been debased by the mise- 
 rable conceits which have found a place 
 there ? These corrupt " fetches of wit," 
 where so much labour was thrown away 
 in combining similarities of sound, or 
 
38 
 
 associations of remote or unallied ima- 
 gery, were the delight of the age ; and 
 that they were the vice of the time, Addi- 
 son held to be an extenuation sufficient for 
 such manifest transgressions of the deco- 
 rum, which in heroic, and in sacred poetry 
 more especially, ought to be preserved in- 
 violate. " Considering," says the Spec- 
 tator, speaking of Paradise Lost, ** that 
 " all the poets of the age in which he 
 " writ were infected with this wrong way 
 " of thinking, he is rather to be admired 
 ° that he did not give more into it, than 
 " that he did sometimes comply with the 
 " vicious taste which still prevails so 
 " much." Not so Johnson : he viewed 
 this practice with the eyes of the 
 present age, and so measured one time 
 by the standard of another. Making 
 neither allowance for the effects of 
 education, nor for the infection of ex- 
 ample, nor for the ceaseless fluctua- 
 tions in affairs of taste, he sternly de- 
 crees, as if Mil,ton ought to be bound 
 by the canons of criticism we have agreed 
 
39 
 
 to acknowlege, but to which it is strange 
 that he could hold a writer amenable, who 
 had been in the grave for more than a 
 century. We must believe, that this 
 Dictator in the Republic of Letters either 
 had himself forgotten, or that he hoped 
 we should forget, the latitude left with 
 the early writers of English. This la- 
 titude in some degree extended to a 
 lower period than that I am now con- 
 sidering. Numberless violations of the 
 precepts in the critical art, which the 
 fastidious precision of to-day has been 
 taught not to endure, were heretofore 
 deemed pardonable license. The privilege 
 of constraining, at pleasure, the ortho- 
 graphy to their rhymes, which Spenser and 
 Fairfax assumed, and to which sometimes 
 Milton, and in a few instances Dry den y 
 disdained not to resort, with Ste?mhold, 
 Quarles, and other poetasters, did not and 
 does not lessen their poetical reputation. 
 The same resource would have reduced in 
 our eyes Gray, or Cowper, or Lord Byron 
 to a level with the sorriest versifier. Thus 
 
40 
 
 to judge by modern opinions is an er- 
 ror near akin to that of the French hy- 
 percritics, who take exception to descrip- 
 tions and expressions in Homer, which are 
 repugnant to a higher order of civilization 
 than that which the Father of Poetry is 
 painting, and not according with the no-* 
 tions of delicacy and politeness to which 
 they are accustomed. Anomalies, like 
 those for which our Authour is so harshly 
 stigmatised, ought then to be regarded as 
 belonging to his time to the full as much 
 as the fables from heathen mythology with 
 which he interlaced his Christian epic, or 
 as the falling band in some of the portraits 
 of him that have reached us. These re- 
 flections will account for, while they ex- 
 culpate his Anglo-Latian barbarisms, if I 
 may use that phrase : but this misappre- 
 hension (a very mild word) rises to im- 
 portance in Johnson, who described him- 
 self, and rightly described himself, as 
 " having had more motives to consider 
 " the whole extent of our language than 
 " any other man, from its first forma- 
 
41 
 
 lion* ;" and will therefore justify an inves- 
 tigation somewhat deeper than I have 
 hitherto gone, in order to lay open the 
 reason that prompted our earlier Authours 
 to depart from the prescriptive and ordi- 
 nary forms of idiomatical English. 
 
 When the vast migrations from the 
 North overwhelmed Italy, and destroyed 
 the Roman empire, the injury most to be 
 lamented by distant generations was, I 
 think, the extinction of the Roman lan- 
 guage. I know not any ground for dis- 
 believing, that adequate encouragement to 
 the architect, to the statuary, and to the 
 painter, would fail to produce abundant 
 evidence, that we had little to lament 
 from the Gothic rage, which (some say) 
 fell on temples, statues, and pictures. 
 The destruction of the Latin, as a living 
 speech, is to be regarded in a light far 
 different : that is a loss, which no human 
 interference can retrieve. Its broken re- 
 mains, as they subsist in Spain, in Italv, 
 
 * In his circulated Proposals for editing Shakspeare. 
 
42 
 
 and France, serve only to set off it's supe- 
 riority over the present dialects of Europe, 
 Our own, it is true, with the other Teu- 
 tonic dialects, branches from a different 
 stock ; but the whole are in the compa- 
 rison as a tumultuary croud to a well- 
 trained force, when once put into confu- 
 sion all is lost. While we may invert the 
 arrangement, or throw a sentence from a 
 Roman Authour into the disorder of a 
 routed troop, still every word will readily 
 fall again into its allotted station. This 
 syntactical discipline is combined, more- 
 over, with a melody of numbers, which 
 no less raises our admiration, that it 
 should ever have arrived at such perfec- 
 tion among a people, with whom wars for 
 conquest were so exclusively the public 
 care, that their epic Bard, when chaunt- 
 ing the glories of the immortal City, 
 proudly disclaims all national pre-emi- 
 nence, other than to dictate the conditions 
 of peace, and to excel in the arts of 
 ruling over subjugated countries. He did 
 discreetly : in poetry the Romans were, 
 
43 
 
 for the better part, the echoes of their 
 Grecian masters : only one of their Ora- 
 tours has come down to us, and he sucked 
 at Athens : and as to the fine arts, with 
 the exception of architecture, they appear 
 to have nearly abandoned them ; it might 
 be in despair. 
 
 Yet, after the long term of almost two 
 thousand years, we are still gratified by 
 the tuneable flow of Roman metre ; and 
 we can ascertain by the ear, and without 
 difficulty, the direct gradations of refine- 
 ment in Latin poetry. The rough lines of 
 Ennius fix at once his early date ; and the 
 sonorous yet artless modulation of Lu- 
 cretius is plainly distinguishable from Vir- 
 gil's more dextrous construction and more 
 mellifluent cadence. How unlike this to 
 the verse of the various nations who now 
 people Europe, which, it is most probable, 
 is verse only to those with whom these 
 metrical sounds are native. The recital 
 of a French poem, it is observable, gives no 
 pleasure to an English ear; and, unless 
 the poetical accent of the northern and 
 
44 
 
 congenerous tongues correspond, it is not 
 unlikely, that the uninformed classes of 
 the community would confess, that their 
 untutored ears were incapable of catching 
 any succession of harmonious sounds from 
 the poetry of their neighbours : insomuch, 
 that if any of these languages should cease 
 to be spoken, their rhythm, and the musi- 
 cal concord of their verse, might, in after- 
 ages, be as irrecoverable as it is in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, the Commentators on 
 which are not agreed, whether the whole 
 were delivered to the Israelites in deter- 
 minate numbers; or whether certain of 
 their sacred books have metrical arrange- 
 ment, a sort of prose cadencee ; or whether 
 parts of them have not some settled 
 scheme of versification, while the remain- 
 der of the same compositions was written 
 in plain prose. 
 
 An apt conclusion is to be drawn from 
 this digressive illustration of the large 
 claims, which the Latin has on our admi- 
 ration, both for the graces of its numbers 
 and for its significant perspicuity ; the re- 
 
45 
 
 suit of the unrivalled regularity of its in- 
 flections, and consequent subjection to 
 grammatical rules. This conclusion isj 
 that, in the earnest attention which the 
 antients obtained, when they were first 
 drawn from their recesses, nothing could 
 be more natural than that learned men 
 should be eager to assimilate their un- 
 formed, irregular, and imperfect language 
 to that of Livy and Cicero, of Terence and 
 Virgil. Every eye was then curiously 
 intent on these monumental exemplars of 
 true taste in composition, as well as of the 
 extended compass of human intellect ; and 
 while men of talent and erudition were 
 occupied with the higher object of enlarg- 
 ing and improving the popular conceptions 
 and faculties, by multiplying transcripts 
 and by expounding them, they would in- 
 evitably grow emulous of the many excel- 
 lencies in Greek and Roman literature, 
 and affect correspondent appellations and 
 formularies, as well as idioms and con- 
 structions, that would give to their own 
 
46 
 
 pages the impress of learning ; and while 
 it adorned them would add to their cur- 
 rency, and pass on the readers of those 
 times as greatly contributing to the au- 
 thority of their writings*. As might 
 therefore be expected, the works alike of 
 critics, oratours, poets, and philosophers, 
 were, with rare exceptions, overrun for 
 a length of years after the revival of an- 
 
 * The most judicious of French critics has remarked 
 of his countryman, Ronsard, a poet of the same date with 
 the Earl of Surrey, Spenser, and Sir P. Sydney, " Ron- 
 " sard avoit le genie eleve, et de grands talens pour la 
 * Poesie : mais il semble que l'art n'ait servi qu'a corrom- 
 •? pre en lui la nature, au lieu de la perfectionner. En 
 " effet ses vers sont pleins de licenses outre'es, et Inflection 
 " qu'il eut de les charger d'une erudition fatigante et 
 " mal-manag^e, les a rendu peu intelligibles." Boileau; 
 (Euvres, i, 54; Dresden, 17 67. 
 
 See what the younger Racine has observed of Ronsard 
 to the same purpose, and of the attempt in the sixteenth 
 century of the French Poets to reconcile their versifica- 
 tion to the dactylic measures of the Greeks and Romans ; 
 Mem. de V Academie des Inscriptions ; torn, xv, p. 191, 
 et 211 . Alberti is said to have vainly laboured to effect 
 the same in Italian. 
 
tient learning, with unidiomatic and li- 
 centious innovations taken from the Greek 
 and Latin. 
 
 These dead languages might have been 
 made to enrich very successfully even 
 u the comprehensive English energy" ce- 
 lebrated by Lord Roscommon, if the en- 
 deavour to increase our vocabulary had 
 been repressed and regulated in its exer- 
 cise by a cautious and temperate use. The 
 misfortune was, that when the long-lost 
 volumes of antiquity were again unrolled, 
 this practice, with the usual fate of no- 
 velties, was carried to an excess. This 
 race of scholars seems to have supposed it 
 not to be possible to overcharge their 
 works with classical philology, " apishly 
 " Romanizing, as if a learned grammati- 
 " cal pen would cast no ink without 
 " Latin." I avail myself of Milton's 
 words, while I embrace a wider circuit of 
 application. 
 
 Not to insist, that Latin was for a long 
 duration of time the common idiom of the 
 European Literati ; it is said to have been 
 
48 
 
 through his command of it, that Sir 
 Thomas Move's fame was spread so widely 
 over the continent. Bacon was well 
 aware, that his reputation as a philosopher 
 must be limited to this island, unless his 
 work was cloathed in a Roman dress, 
 which he accordingly felt a parent's soli- 
 citude to provide for his production on 
 the Advancement of Learning. And 
 Milton, when vindicating to the world at 
 large the execution of Charles, complains of 
 the disadvantage that he lay under in ex- 
 pressing- himself, from the necessity of 
 employing a language not his own *. 
 
 With the disposition then so generally 
 prevalent, to fill our Teutonic diction with 
 verbal innovations, and to infuse Latin 
 modes of speech, it is somewhat remark- 
 able, that Sir John Cheke, who was counted 
 the learnedst of Englishmen, says Milton, 
 should have inculcated other notions of 
 such intrusions. Probably, he foresaw, 
 
 * " In extranea prsesertim, qua utor necessario, lingua, 
 . " et persjepe mihi ne^aaquam satisfacio." 
 
 Def° Sec* 1 . 
 
49 
 
 that, with the character, much of the sub- 
 stance would be lost; and to stop the 
 multiplication of these adulterations, as 
 well as to restore the vernacular tongue to 
 its just estimation, he set himself to a 
 version of the Gospels, in which he la- 
 boured to use exclusively words derived 
 from the Saxon*. A Letter from him, 
 preserved at the end of Hohy's Translation 
 of Castigliones Courtier, which had been 
 submitted in manuscript to Ckeke's cor- 
 rection, I will give at length, as a literary 
 curiosity. Beside his instructions relative 
 to the properest style to follow in English 
 composition, it exhibits an example of the 
 reformed Orthography, which he recom- 
 mended for adoption. 
 
 " To HIS LOTTING FRIND MaYSTE.R 
 
 " Thomas Hoby. 
 
 " For your opinion of my gud 
 " will vnto you as you wriit, you can not 
 " be decerned : for submitting your do- 
 
 * See his Life by Strype, p. 213. 
 E 
 
50 
 
 •'< inges to mi iudgement, I thanke you: 
 " for taking this pain of your translation, 
 " you worthilie deseru great thankes of all 
 ft sortes. I haue taken sum pain at your 
 " request cheflie in your preface, not in 
 " the reading of it for that was pleasaunt 
 " vnto me boath for the roundnes of your 
 " saienges and welspeakinges of the saam, 
 " but in changing certein wordes which 
 " might verie well be let aloan, but that 
 H I am verie curious in my freendes matr 
 " ters, not to determijn, but to debaat 
 " what is best. Whearin, I seek not the 
 " bestues haplie bi truth, but bi mijn own 
 " phansie, and shew of goodnes. 
 
 " I am of this opinion that our own 
 " tung shold be written cleane and pure, 
 " vnmixt and vnmangeled with borowing 
 iC of other tunges, wherin if we take not 
 " heed bi tijm, euer borowing and neuer 
 " payeng, she shall be fain to keep her 
 " house as bankrupt. For then doth our 
 " tung naturallie and praisablie vtter her 
 " meaning, whan she bouroweth no con- 
 " terfeitnes of other tunges to attire her 
 
51 
 
 i self withall, but vseth plainlie her own, 
 ' with such shift, as nature, craft, expe- 
 I riens, and folowing of other excellent * 
 < doth lead her vnto, and if she want at 
 6 ani tijm (as being vnperfight she must) 
 6 yet let her borow with suche bashfulnes, 
 c that it mai appeer, that if either the 
 6 mould of our own tung could serue vs to 
 
 * fascion a woord of our own, or if the 
 ' old denisoned wordes could content and 
 6 ease this neede, we wold not boldly ven- 
 ' ture of vnknowen wordes. This I say 
 ' not for reproof of you, who haue scarslie 
 i and necessarily vsed whear occasion 
 6 serveth a strange word so, as it seemeth 
 6 to grow out of the matter and not to be 
 c sought for : but for mijn own defens, 
 
 * who might be counted ouerstraight a 
 ' deemer of thinges, if I gaue not thys 
 6 aecompt to you, mi freend and wijs, of 
 
 * mi marring this your handiwork. But I 
 f am called awai, I prai you pardon mi 
 ( shortnes, the rest of mi saienges should 
 
 * Sic. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 "be but praise and exhortacion in this 
 " your doinges, which at moar leisor I 
 " shold do better. From my house in 
 " Woodstreete 
 
 "the 16. of July. 1557. 
 
 u Yours assured 
 
 " Joan Cheek." 
 
 Notwithstanding the admonitions and 
 example of one so critically skilled in all 
 classical attainments as the Tutor to Ed- 
 zuard VI, another admirer of our Anglo- 
 Saxon Dialect, an Antiquary, who wrote 
 at the commencement of the succeeding 
 century, found himself nearly alone, when 
 he protested against the influx of extra- 
 neous terms and idioms still pouring in by 
 the followers of the new phraseology : 
 
 " Since the time of Chaucer, more Latin 
 " and French hath beene mingled with 
 " our tongue then left out of it, but of 
 " late wee haue falne to such borrowing 
 M of words from Latin, French, and other 
 " Tongues, that it had bin beyond all stay 
 " and limit, which albeit some of vs do 
 
53 
 
 f like well, and think our Tongue thereby 
 ' much bettered, yet do strangers there- 
 c fore carry the farre lesse opinion thereof, 
 
 * some saying that it is of it selfe no lan- 
 
 < guage at all, but the scum of many lan- 
 ' gtiages, others that it is most barren, 
 i and that wee are daily faine to borrow 
 6 words for it (as though it yet lacked 
 i making) out of other languages to patch 
 f it vp w T ithall, and that if wee were put 
 f to repay our borrowed speech backe 
 ' agayne, to the languages that may lay 
 
 * clayme vnto it ; wee should be left little 
 ' better then dumbe, or scarsly able to 
 ' speake any thing that should be sen- 
 
 cible. 
 For mine owne part, I hold them de- 
 ' ceiued that thinke our speech bettered 
 c by the aboundance of our daily bor- 
 6 rowed words, for they beeing of an 
 ' other nature and not originally belonging 
 
 * to our language, do not neither can they 
 ' in our tongue, beare their naturall and 
 
 < true deriuation ; and therefore as well 
 
 (6 
 
54 
 
 " may we fetch words from the Ethiopians, 
 " or East or West Indians, and thrust them 
 " into our Language, and baptize all by 
 " the name of English, as those which wee 
 " daily take from the Latin, or languages 
 " thereon depending ; and here hence it 
 " commeth (as by often experience is 
 'f found) that some English men discours- 
 " ing together, others being present, and 
 " of our owne Nation, and that naturally 
 "speak the English tongue, are not able 
 " to vnderstand what the others say, not- 
 " withstanding they call it English that 
 " they speake*." 
 
 But these heterogeneous admixtures 
 have long become indissolubly blended 
 with the original element of our Language, 
 and have saturated it. 
 
 Lucretius was fully sensible of the diffi- 
 culties that he should have to encounter 
 in disseminating the doctrines of the Epi- 
 curean Philosophy, among the Romans, 
 
 * See Verstegan's Restitution of decayed Intelli- 
 gence ; p. 201. 4 to. 1628. 
 
55 
 
 through the poverty of the Latin in his 
 time * : our dictionary is so copious, 
 that we need fear no loss of ideas from 
 a paucity of words to give them a per- 
 manency. Or if any accession be ever 
 requisite, or expedient, it can only oc- 
 cur in the departments of scientific re- 
 search and physiological discovery. The 
 jargon of the fanciful Paracelsus and his 
 adherents, the mere coinage of their own 
 brains, which for a while encumbered the 
 study of the Hermetic art, is in no wise 
 Superior to the cabalistic terms of the as- 
 trological impostors; and any one, who 
 compares it with the recent nomenclature 
 of improved Chemistry, will feel himself to 
 be justified in maintaining, that the Greek 
 for this purpose may be still laid under 
 contribution with advantage. 
 
 * " Nee me animi fallit, Graiorum obscura reperta 
 " Difficile inlustrare Latinis versibus esse ; 
 " Multa novis verbis prsesertim quom sit agundum 
 " Propter egestatem linguae, et rerum novitatera." 
 
 1.36. Wakefield 1 s edit. 
 
56 
 
 As a further palliation of Milton's 
 Latinized improprieties of expression, it 
 remains to be observed, that the English 
 had not yet settled down into the con- 
 sistency it afterward attained. Instead, 
 therefore, of taxing him captiously, and 
 without any intimation of what would 
 absolve him from the imputation of per- 
 verseness and pedantry, if the Biographer 
 had entered on his task with an ingenuous 
 bent of mind, he would have been led to a 
 conclusion much less rigorous. For an 
 authour of this period to be addicted to 
 Latinism is not enough to entitle us to 
 condemn him peremptorily as a pedant, 
 when he was following, in common with 
 his contemporaries, the example of his 
 predecessors. How did this appear at the 
 time it was written ? is therefore the pre- 
 vious inquiry of every candid Critic, before 
 he concludes that to be perverse or pe- 
 dantic, which in the revolutions of literary 
 taste becomes exploded. We may turn 
 the edge of this reproof back on himself ; 
 
57 
 
 for a more reasonable application of these 
 epithets might be made to him, who, 
 abandoning the practice of his day, deli- 
 berately seeks to himself a name by the 
 singularity of his manner. If, then, 
 Johnson had taken into consideration the 
 fashion of the times, hfi would have un- 
 avoidably mollified this severity of judg- 
 ment, and called us back to view an im- 
 portant stage in the progress of the English 
 tongue ; a stage, which it requires some 
 exertion of our charity to believe, that he 
 could pass without notice, who had com- 
 piled its Grammar and written its History. 
 During the age of Milton, and those 
 immediately preceding, its flux state em- 
 boldened many of our writers each to try 
 his several project in moulding it afresh. 
 For example, Sir Thomas Smith, whom 
 Strype calls " a great refiner of the 
 " English writing/' proposed to break up 
 our Alphabet, and to cast a considerable 
 proportion of its characters in a new 
 shape, on several of which he bestowed 
 
58 
 
 novel and complex powers. It was an- 
 other part of his scheme to have doubled 
 the Vowels, and to have augmented the 
 Letters to twenty-nine ; out of which num- 
 ber he would have taken nineteen from 
 the Latin, four from the Greek, and have 
 kept of the Saxon only the remaining six. 
 Of so ductile a temper did he consider the 
 texture of his native tongue, and so pliable 
 as to be twisted after any new model, like 
 clay in the hand of the potter*. 
 
 While many exerted themselves to trans- 
 fuse into the body of their prose the spirit 
 which thev extracted from the remains of 
 classic genius, others expended infinite 
 pains in a more arduous undertaking, 
 when they strove to supplant our modu- 
 lated and rhyming Couplets by Dactyls 
 and Spondees ; an attempt scarcely less 
 discordant to the tone of the English lan- 
 guage, than the change in the constituent 
 
 * See his Tract, " De recta et emendata Linguae An- 
 glicae Scriptione, Dialogus, Thoma Smitho Equestris 
 Ordinis Anglo Authore, Lutetiae, 1568, 4W* 
 
59 
 
 parts of its words, by the proposed mode 
 of English orthography, which the States- 
 man just mentioned amused his retired 
 hours with sketching out. Spenser, to 
 make the beauties of Latin Poetrv coin- 
 pletely our own, meditated a poem in 
 English Hexameters. Some English 
 Iambics to the memory of Sir Philip Sid~ 
 ney are attributed to his " Mourning 
 Muse." i This flower of English chivalry 
 himself interspersed verse in Roman feet 
 over his heroic Pastoral : and in fete same 
 reign Puftenkam dedie -yt^d a chapter of 
 " The Arte of English Potiie/' to show, 
 " How if all maner of sodaine innouations 
 " were not very scandalous, specially in 
 " the Lawes of any Langage or Arte, the 
 " vse of the Greeke or Latine Feete might 
 " be brought into our vulgar Poesie, and 
 ff with good grace inough." Stanyhurst, 
 accordingly, rendered a part of the iEneid 
 into English, in the very numbers of the 
 Poet of Mantua. But the Mincian Bay 
 could not preserve its verdure on the 
 banks of the Thames. 
 
60 
 
 Neither was TVallis more successful 
 with his English Sapphics : 
 
 " Why' do the" h&he'n furiotisly rige ; and 
 " Why' do the peeple meditate a v£in thing ? 
 
 * Why' do the* kings that are on £arth unite 5 and 
 
 " Princes assemble*." 
 
 Milton's earliest essay to discard the 
 " fair barbarity" of a chiming close, his 
 literal version in unrhymed metre of 
 Horace's Ode to Pyrrha, is another and a 
 curious specimen of the attempt to natu- 
 ralize, in this soil, a new variety of these 
 exotic species of measure. So absolutely 
 were our ancestors fascinated with the 
 charm of classical quantities. This vene- 
 ration, or almost superstitious regard for 
 the relics of antiquity, would not leave 
 their very defects uncopied. No Ballad- 
 monger would now split a word to suit the 
 exigence of his metre ; ending a line with 
 the first, and beginning the next with 
 
 * Wallis's motive for this travesty of the second Psalm 
 vras, " ut appareat, quam facile ferat Latinos numeros 
 " lingua Anglicana " See his Grammar, p. 198, Hollis's 
 edition. 
 
m 
 
 the last syllable. Ben Jonson used this 
 license, and would have vouched prece- 
 dents fetched from Greece and Rome, 
 as a sufficient justification of this violent 
 trespass against the established laws of 
 the accentual combinations in our native 
 versification. Nothing but this passionate 
 fondness could have made them overlook 
 the impracticability of substituting quan- 
 tity for accent with success. 
 
 " In this northern tract our hoarser throats 
 , " Utter unripe and ill-constraiued notes. 1 * 
 
 The attempt could not but miscarry in 
 our tongue, whose strongest characteristic 
 is its abundance of monosyllables. This 
 obstacle could not, I apprehend, have 
 been surmounted, if no other impediment 
 had occurred to the adaptation of Roman 
 Prosody to a Gothic frame of speech. It 
 was the frequency of these and of similar 
 experiments, which must have induced 
 Lilly's complaint, in the Epistle Dedica- 
 tory to his fantastic Romance, so much in 
 
62 
 
 vogue at the court of Elizabeth : " It is 
 " a world to see, how Englishmen desire 
 " to hear finer speech than their Ian- 
 " guage will allow*/' This is highly ex- 
 pressive of the desire among our fore- 
 fathers to innovate on their mother tongue. 
 At the same time it is a confession, which 
 surprizes us should come from so affected 
 an Authour as himself. Or did his better 
 judgment suggest this as an apology for 
 sacrificing to a false taste, and surrender- 
 ing his own sense of propriety to the pre- 
 vailing humour of forcing the stubborn 
 genius of his native language to adventi- 
 tious and corrupt refinements ? Temporis 
 ejus aurihus accomodatum. In a word, we 
 do not appear to have gained any thing like 
 stability till after the Restoration. Waller 
 has a pleasing copy of verses to deplore his 
 own hard fortune, and that of his poetical 
 brethren, because their works could not last 
 long in a tongue that was daily changing. 
 
 * Euphues, or the Anatomie of Wit. 
 
63 
 
 From the above notices, cursory as they 
 are, we may safely infer, that Johnsons 
 censure, to have made it just, should have 
 been accompanied with some enumeration 
 of the alleviating circumstances, which 
 would exonerate Milton from this impu- 
 tation of perverseness or of pedantry , in 
 the obnoxious meaning in which it might, 
 J grant, be truly applied to any one, who 
 should now write the same : but till these 
 circumstances had ceased to operate, this 
 practice ought to have incurred a smaller 
 share of reprehension. 
 
 To pursue these vindicatory strictures 
 yet a little further. Milton's deflecting 
 English words away from their original 
 or accepted sense to a Latin construc- 
 tion, deserves neither praise nor imitation. 
 Still it may be contended, that this practice 
 is not more at variance with the analo- 
 gies of the Anglo-Saxon than a style, like 
 our Critic's^ inflated by Latin synonymes 
 for words which are the proper growth 
 of our own country, and Latinized trans- 
 positions or dislocations of the natural 
 
64 
 
 structure, with other unidiomatical ar- 
 rangements. In the adjustment of his 
 own sentences he was stiff and elaborate, 
 as well as the leader in reviving among us 
 the fashion of working Roman phraseology 
 into an English ground. For where is 
 the page through his numerous writings, 
 which does not present developments pro- 
 minently indicating propensities to " re- 
 " pudiate his vernacular idiom*?" Where- 
 as it might be fairly argued, that Milton* 
 by giving a Latin sense to English words, 
 has denoted rather a reluctance to deviate 
 from English affinities than any desire to 
 lay them aside. Then why, except with 
 the design of depreciation, was it held out 
 as more vicious to incorporate " foreign 
 " idioms" with our native forms of speech, 
 than it is to supersede Teutonic etymolo- 
 gies by substitutes draAvii! from foreign 
 radicals? Bat thus it is : .the vices of a 
 past age astonish us ; familiarized to the 
 vices of om o>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 
 <c atrocitas hanc mihi prse cseteris calamitatem creare, aut 
 " accersisse merito potuerit. Quod etiam uilo tempore 
 * scripsi (quoniam hoc nunc me luere quasi piacuium 
 <c regii existimant atque adeo triumphant) tester itidern 
 " Deum, me nihil istiusmodi scripsisse, quod non rectum 
 " et verum, Deoque gratum esse, et persuaserim turn 
 "mihi, et etiamnum persuasus sim; idque nulla ambi- 
 " tione, lucro, aut gloria ductus ; sed officii, sed honesti, 
 "sed pietatis in patriam ratione sola; nee Reipublicae 
 " tantum, sed Ecclesiee quoque liberandse causa potissi- 
 46 mum fecisse :" &c. &c. 
 
 Defensio Secundapro Populo Anglicano. 
 And he afterward avers, « Hanc intra privates pari- 
 
74 
 
 His Prose Works, it is true, are too fre- 
 quently debased by unseemly, though re- 
 criminatory, asperities on his opponents, 
 in the manner of the age ; and not less 
 acrimonious and vituperative than the vehe- 
 ment effusions which Mr. Burke's terrified 
 fancy, in his declining years, fulminated, 
 without the extenuation of personal pro- 
 vocation, on those who dissented from the 
 political creed he then embraced; but 
 these recriminations and asperities, now 
 the passions that generated them have 
 abated, every one would be pleased to see 
 obliterated. And his pages, I deny not, 
 
 " etes meam operam nunc Ecclesiae. nunc Reipublicae 
 " gratis dedi; mihi vicissirn vel hsec vel ilia prfeter in- 
 46 columitatem nihil ; bonam certe conscientiam, bonam 
 46 apud bonos existimationem, et honestam hanc dicendi 
 44 libertatem facta ipsa reddidere : Commoda alii, alii 
 44 honores gratis ad se trahebant : Me nemo ambientera, 
 44 nemo per amicos quicquam petentem, curiae foribus 
 44 affixum petitorio vultu, aut minorum conventuum ves- 
 ** tibulis hasrentem nemo me unquam vidit. Domi fere 
 " me continebam, meis ipse facultatjbus, tametsi hoc 
 " civili tumultu magna ex parte ssepe detentis, et cen- 
 " sum fere iniquius mihi impositum, et vitam utcunque 
 44 frugi tolerabam." 
 
75 
 
 are, again like Burke's, occasionally disfi- 
 gured by coarse Metaphors ; such as would 
 be hazarded but by few writers in the last 
 or present century. At the same time, 
 the urbanity of the Areopagitica proves 
 how evenly he could guide his pen in ar- 
 gument, when he was not goaded by con- 
 tumelious reproaches and slanderous in- 
 vective, on himself and on the cause he had 
 espoused. He, indeed, must have imbibed 
 a very large share of Johnson's political bi- 
 gotry, who would refuse to acknowlege, that 
 in his Prose, Milton has often embodied 
 the creations of his mind in language not 
 at all inferiour to his reach of thought ; or 
 who will not confess, that these writings 
 abound with vivid and striking imagery, 
 and sometimes with figures bold almost to 
 extravagance. When Sir 'Thomas Brown 
 is said to have soared to an adventrous 
 height, we may without hesitation reply — 
 Milton's imagination towers an eagle's 
 pitch above him. But it could only have 
 been through a strange and unexampled 
 fatality, had the Prose of the great Master 
 
76 
 
 of unfettered Song been found deficient 
 in the gorgeous trappings and embellish- 
 ments, which Genius, cultivated and inven- 
 tive Genius like his, must always have at 
 command. Mr. IVarton, with his open 
 aversion to the political writings, in an 
 unguarded moment, admitted, that " what 
 " was Enthusiasm in most of the puritani- 
 " cal writers was Poetry in Milton. 5 ' 
 It has been observed of a Hero of An- 
 tiquity, that his imperfections flowed 
 from the contagion of the times ; his vir- 
 tues were his own, the spontaneous growth 
 of Nature, or the product of Reflection : 
 and the same observation would hold emi- 
 nently true of Milton, whether we were 
 to apply it to the matter or to the manner 
 of his Prose Writings in English. 
 
 Hitherto these remarks have been chiefly 
 restricted to one imputed defect in Mil- 
 ton's English Prose ; and now to wind up 
 the whole on a broader ground. Its pre- 
 vailing, perhaps its greatest fault, is pro- 
 lixity of sentence ; sometimes accompa- 
 nied with a complication of structure, 
 
77 
 
 which perplexes the meaning too much for 
 the Reader to disentangle it with ease to 
 himself as he passes on. But this evolu- 
 tion or elongation of period was by many 
 then deemed a beauty. He derided an 
 adversary for making " sentences by the 
 " statute, as if all above three inches were 
 " confiscate," and " who, instead of well- 
 " sized periods, greets him with a quan- 
 " tity of thumb -ring posies:" as Cowley 
 called Seneca short- lung 'd, in ridicule of 
 his abrupt and concise system of diction. 
 If the dilated sentence, which stands the 
 second in our Authour's Treatise ofRefor- 
 mation in England, had attracted censure, 
 he would have satisfied himself by appeal- 
 ing to some of Tully's " periods of a mile." 
 And who shall condemn the periodical 
 style, as it has been denominated by a 
 philosophical Critic*? Not they, certainly, 
 who approve the volume, or rather pro- 
 traction of sentence in Clarendon, where 
 the sense is carried on through a length- 
 
 * Harris. 
 
78 
 
 ened contexture of clauses, a labyrinth of 
 words ; so that his History not very sel- 
 dom exhibits the unskilful mechanism of 
 parenthesis included within parenthesis. 
 All his wire-drawn amplifications, all such 
 concatenations of words, must look un- 
 sightly to those, who have been habituated 
 to the shortened and pointed style, and 
 breaks of thought, which have now heen 
 for some years so anxiously studied 
 among us : a practice I presume to have 
 originated here in imitation of Monies- 
 quieu's sententious manner ; itself an imi- 
 tation of the oracular brevity of Tacitus, 
 But if we have not, through the dread 
 of the diffuse, started off into the oppo* 
 site extreme so far, that the continuity of 
 thought is frequently dissolved, it is well. 
 Fallit te incautum pietas tua. — Might not 
 Conyers Middleton, and Sir William Jones, 
 who, it should seem, took Middleton for 
 his model, be instanced as having fallen 
 on a just medium as to flowing, large, and 
 rounded periods ? 
 
 Spratt is but florid and Ciceronian ; and 
 
79 
 
 Cotvley's Prose, however sweet, wants 
 force ; and Temple and Tittotson are of 
 another school. On the whole, then, I 
 have in my recollection no Prose Writer 
 of his own time, who will appear to more 
 advantage when placed against Milton, 
 with all his scholastic imperfections, if we 
 except HohbeSy who stands, I think, with- 
 out a rival among his contemporaries, for 
 a strong, clear, equable, and easy style : 
 a style admirably calculated for philoso- 
 phical disquisition, and which it is to be 
 regretted that Locke, who is not without 
 obligations to him in his metaphysical rea- 
 soning, did not attain. Unless indeed 
 Dryden could be brought into the same 
 sera ; since Dryderts Prose, though not 
 sufficiently free from foreign affectations, 
 is without any question our standard of 
 vigorous, natural, and authentic English. 
 " Criticism, either didactic or defensive, 
 ie occupies almost all his Prose, except 
 " those pages which he has devoted to his 
 iC Patrons ; but none of his Prefaces were 
 " ever thought tedious. They have not 
 
80 
 
 " the formality of a settled style, in which 
 " the first half of the sentence hetrays the 
 " other. The clauses are never balanced, 
 " nor the periods modelled : every word 
 " seems to drop by chance, though it falls 
 " into its proper place *." Praise more 
 just, or more happily conceived, will not 
 easily be found. 
 
 In conclusion : if the decision on the 
 style of Milton's English Prose, in his 
 works of a higher mood, were to be sub- 
 mitted to those alone who do not admire 
 the alluring but vitious Gallicism of Hume 
 and Gibbon, and who are not smitten by 
 the " gay rankness" of our " modern fus- 
 " tianists," I should not feel myself at all 
 solicitous lest the result should be adverse 
 to the opinion I have now ventured to 
 offer : so far, let me be understood, as it is 
 duly appreciated in its relation to the time 
 in which they appeared. They who think 
 otherwise, before they object the names of 
 Hooker, or Barrow, or Taylor, would 
 
 * Johnson. 
 
81 
 
 do well to try if they can select from the 
 writings of these acknowleged masters of 
 our language a finer succession of well- 
 turned periods, at once perspicuous, mas- 
 culine^ and rhythmical, than such as I 
 now adduce from the introductory section 
 to his second Book on the Meason of Church 
 Government, 
 
 f? Surely to every good and peaceable 
 u Man, it must in nature needs he a hate- 
 " ful thing to be the displeaser and mo- 
 " lester of thousands ; much better would 
 " it like him doubtless to be the Messenger 
 " of Gladness and Contentment, which is 
 " his chief intended business to all Man- 
 € - kind, but that they resist and oppose 
 " their own true happiness. But when 
 "God commands to take the trumpet, 
 " and blow a dolorous or a jarring 
 " blast, it lies not in Man's Will what 
 " he shall say, or what he shall con- 
 " ceal. If he shall think to be silent, as 
 " Jeremiah did, because of the reproach 
 
 and derision he met with daily, and all 
 
 G 
 
 a 
 
82 
 
 ' his familiar friends watched for his 
 ' halting, to be revenged on him for 
 ' speaking the Truth, he would be forced 
 6 to confess as he confest ; his word was 
 I in my heart as a burning fire shut up in 
 6 my bones ; / was weary with forbearing , 
 I and could not stay. Which might teach 
 ' these times not suddenly to condemn all 
 ' things that are sharply spoken, or vehe- 
 6 mently written, as proceeding out of 
 ' Stomach, Virulence, and Ill-nature ; 
 ' but to consider rather that if the Pre- 
 i lates have leave to say the worst that 
 ' can be said, or do the worst that can be 
 c done, while they strive to keep to them- 
 ' selves, to their great pleasure and com- 
 6 modity, those things which they ought 
 ' to render up, no Man can be justly 
 ' offended with him that shall endeavour 
 i to impart and bestow, without any gain 
 ' to himself, those sharp but saving words, 
 ' which would be a terror and a torment 
 6 in him to keep back. For me, I have 
 ' determined to lay up as the best trea- 
 
83 
 
 " sure, and solace of a good old Age, if 
 " God vouchsafe it me, the honest Liberty 
 " of free Speech from my Youth, where I 
 " shall think it available in so dear a 
 " concernment as the Church's good. For 
 " if I be either by disposition, or what 
 " other cause, too inquisitive, or suspi- 
 cious of myself and mine own doings, 
 who can help it ? But this I foresee, 
 that should the Church be brought 
 " under heavy oppression, and God have 
 " given me ability the while to reason 
 " against that Man that should be the 
 " Authour of so foul a deed ; or should 
 " she, by blessing from above on the iii- 
 " dustry and courage of faithful Men, 
 " change this her distracted estate into 
 " better days, without the least further- 
 " ance or contribution of those few ta- 
 %i lents which God at that present had 
 " lent me, I foresee what stories I should 
 " hear within myself, all my life after, of 
 " discourage and reproach. Timorous 
 " and ingrateful, the Church of God is 
 now again at the foot of her insulting 
 
 *< 
 
84 
 
 a Enemies, and thou bewailest ; what 
 " matters it for thee, or thy bewailing ? 
 " When time was, thou couldest not find 
 ff a syllable of all that thou hast read, or 
 " studied, to utter in her behalf. Yet 
 ff ease and leisure was given thee for thy 
 *f retired Thoughts, out of the sweat of 
 M other Men. Thou hatlst the diligence, 
 fci the parts, the language of a Man, if a 
 ff vain subject were to be adorned or 
 S 6 beautified ; but when the cause of God 
 Ci and his Church was to be pleaded, for 
 " which purpose that tongue was given 
 ff thee which thou hast, God listened if 
 " he could hear thy voice among his zea- 
 ff lous servants, but thou wert dumb as a 
 ff beast ; from henceforward be that which 
 " thine own brutish silence hath made 
 " thee. Or else I should have heard on 
 ff the other ear; Slothful and ever to be 
 ff set light by, the Church hath now over- 
 U come her late distresses after the un- 
 " wearied labours of many her true ser- 
 " vants that stood up in her defence ; thou 
 " also wouldst take upon thee to share 
 
85 
 
 " among them of their joy : But where- 
 " fore thou ? Where canst thou show 
 H any word or deed of thine which might 
 " have hastened her peace ? Whatever 
 <c thou dost now talk, or write, or look, 
 " is the alms of other Men's active pru- 
 " dence and zeal. Dare not now to say, 
 " or do any thing better than thy former 
 " sloth and infancy*; or if thou darest, 
 " thou dost impudently to make a thrifty 
 " purchase of boldness to thyself, out of 
 ft the painful merits of other Men ; what 
 *' before was thy Sin, is now thy Duty, to 
 " be abject and worthless. These, and 
 " such like lessons as these, I know would 
 " have been my Matins duely, and my Even- 
 " song. But now by this little diligence, 
 " mark what a privilege I have gained 
 " with good Men and Saints, to claim my 
 " right of lamenting the tribulations of 
 
 * infancy.] This is one of Milton's Latin senses : 
 " Possitne eloquentia converti in infantiam" Cicero, 
 Infant still bears this etymological meaning in West- 
 minster Hall. 
 
86 
 
 " the Church, if she should suffer, when 
 " others that have ventured nothing for 
 u her sake, have not the honour to be 
 " admitted mourners. But if she lift up 
 " her drooping head and prosper, among 
 " those that have something more than 
 " wished her welfare, I have my charter 
 " and freehold of rejoicing to me and my 
 ¥ heirs. Concerning therefore this way- 
 " ward subject against Prelaty, the touch- 
 " ing whereof is so distastful and dis- 
 " quietous to a number of Men, as by 
 " what hath been said I may deserve of 
 " charitable Readers to be credited, that 
 " neither envy nor gall hath entered me 
 ff upon this Controversy, but the enforce- 
 " ment of Conscience only, and a pre- 
 " ventive fear lest the omitting of this 
 " Duty should be against me when I 
 " would store up to myself the good pro- 
 " vision of peaceful hours/' 
 
 In this passage his Probity shines out. 
 But I could wish this justificatory eluci- 
 dation of his motives for mixing in the 
 
87 
 
 polemical discussions of his day to be 
 estimated for the merit of the Style : 
 that we should here consider Milton as 
 an Authour only; suspending, if it be 
 possible, our reverence for a Man, to 
 whose dignity of nature these exalted 
 sentiments were congenial, and who made 
 them the principles which actuated his 
 conduct in trying conjunctures, through a 
 life singularly chequered. 
 
 Dec. 5, 18 17. 
 
 THE END, 
 
 CHARLES, WOOD, Printer, 
 Poppin's Court, Fleet Street, London, 
 
Speedily will be Published, by R. Hunter, 
 
 AREOPAGITICA; 
 
 A 
 
 gpettft 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN MILTON, 
 
 FOR THE 
 
 LIBERTY OF UNLICENC'D PRINTING, 
 
 TO 
 
 THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND : 
 
 With 
 
 PREFATORY REMARKS, COPIOUS NOTES, PHILOLOGICAL AND EX- 
 PLANATORY, AND EXCURSIVE ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 
 BY 
 
 T. HOLT WHITE, ESQ. 
 
 " Milton's Areopagitiga is in all respects a Masterpiece/' 
 
 Warbu-bton. 
 
 B D '06