IFV THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON ON ENGLISH POETRY BY RAYMOND DEXTER HAVENS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY Mn^FORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1922 -< COPYRIGHT, 1922 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS SEP "^ >^^^ TO CECILIA BEAUX WHOSE PAINTINGS ARE BUT ONE ASPECT OF HER DEVOTION TO THE TRUE AND THE BEAUTIFUL Homage to him His debtor band^ innumerable as waves Running all golden from an eastern sun, Joyfully render, in deep reverence Subscribe, and as they speak their Milton's name, Rays of his glory on their foreheads bear. GEORGE MEREDITH. / /r.r PREFACE FIFTEEN years ago last spring Mr. C. N. Greenough, now dean of Harvard College, suggested to me Milton's influence in the eighteenth century as one of a number of desirable subjects for a doctor's thesis. Since that time, except for my first three years of teaching and a year and a half during the war, this study has taken all the hours not devoted to professional duties, all my summers, and all of three entire years. I am embarrassingly conscious that this expenditure of time is quite disproportionate to the results; yet, as Michael Wodhull (who had planned to complete his translation of Euripides in "about one year") wrote, a century since, "notwith- standing about eight years have elapsed, during which I cannot charge myself with any gross degree of remissness or inattention, I feel much more inclined to express my fears, lest I should have been too hasty in the publication, than to apologise for my tardiness." The danger in a study of this kind is that the writer shall be as one who walks in a mist, seeing only what is immediately before him. More time for continuous reading, not alone in the poetry but in the philosophy and criticism of the period, together with more attention I -) its history, would, I realize, have made the work broader, richer, 1 .eatier, and in every way more significant. For the title indicates only the principal subject with which the book is concerned, since I have endeavored not alone to study Milton's influence (touching also on that of his more important followers), but to make some historical and critical evaluation of the works he influenced, to trace the course of blank-verse translations and the development of the principal types of unrimed poetry,— such as the descriptive, the epic, and the technical treatise, — to reach a better understanding of the eight- eenth-century lyric awakening, to follow the history of non-dramatic blank verse from its beginnings to the boyhood of Tennyson, and of the sonnet from the restoration of the Stuarts to the accession of Victoria. My method has been to examine, at least cursorily, all the avail- able English poetry written between 1660 and 1837 regardless of its esthetic value or historical importance, and to reexamine with more care all that seemed to have any real significance for my pur- poses. Notwithstanding a constant effort to reduce the bulk of the X PREFACE footnotes, appendices, and bibliographies, such machinery presents an array almost as appalling to read as it was time-consuming to prepare. Yet in a field where assumptions and unsupported asser- tions have been rife and scholarship is still young, there is need of such dry bones of literary history. I am grateful to the authorities and attendants of the Harvard Library for the courteous and generous treatment they have given me throughout many years, for their willingness to buy books I sug- gested, and for their very Kberal purchases of other books through which in a relatively few years they have built up a notable collection of eighteenth-century Literature. I owe much to my former teachers at Harvard, not only for information but for training and inspiration. To Mr. Greenough, who started me on this study, to Mr. Neilson (now president of Smith College), who read my thesis, chapter by chapter, as it was written and made many helpful suggestions, and to Mr. Kittredge, who gave me letters to various English libraries, ordered books I needed, and otherwise aided me, I am especially indebted. None of these gentlemen, however, are in any way re- sponsible for the pages that follow ; for, from the time my thesis was accepted until the rewritten and greatly enlarged work was sub- mitted to the syndics of the Harvard University Press, the only person who has seen any of the manuscript (except Mr. and Mrs. E. H. Hall, who were good enough to read Part I) is my friend and assistant. Miss Addie F. Rowe. Since 191 6 Miss Rowe has devoted all her time to the book, bringing to it rare patience and thorough- ness, together with experience in preparing manuscripts for publi- cation. She has pointed out and helped to remove infelicities of expression, has called my attention to books that I had not seen as well as to Miltonic phrases that I had not noticed, and in one way or another has improved every page. Milton's poetry is cited from W. A. Wright's edition, Cambridge, 1903. I shall be glad to receive corrections or additions from any who will be kind enough to send them. R. D. H. Rochester, New York. CONTENTS PART I THE ATTITUDE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TOWARDS MILTON CHAPTER PAGE I. Milton's Fame in the Eighteenth Century 3 II. Blank Verse and Rime 44' III. Prosody and Diction 54, i PART II THE INFLUENCE OF PARADISE LOST IV. The Characteristics or Paradise Lost and their Relation to Eighteenth-century Blank Verse ... 75 , - V. The Influence before Thomson, 1667-1726 89 VI. Thomson 123 VII. Young 149 VIII. CowpER 161,,. IX. Wordsworth 177 X. Keats 201 XL The Influence outside of Blank Verse: Ossian, Blake, Shelley, Byron 215 THE INFLUENCE OF PARADISE LOST AS SHOWN IN THE MORE IMPORTANT TYPES OF BLANK-VERSE POETRY XII. Meditative and Descriptive Poetry 236 XIII. Epic and Burlesque Poetry 276 The Epic 276 The Burlesque 3^5 XIV. Translations of the Classlcs 323 XV. Technical Treatises in Verse 359 XVI, Philosophical and Religious Poetry 382 Philosophical 382 Religious 402 xii CONTENTS PART III THE SHORTER POEMS XVII. Late Vogue of the Shorter Poems 419 XVIII. The Influence of L'Allegro and II Penseroso . . . 439 XIX. Milton and the Sonnet, with a History of the Sonnet IN THE Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries . 478 XX. The Influence of the Remaining Poems 549 Lycidas 549 CoMus and Samson Agonistes 555 The Translation from Horace . . . . ; 560 The Nativity 565 APPENDICES A. Parallel Passages, showing Expressions probably Bor- rowed from Milton 573 Pope 573 Thomson 583 Young 590 Thomas Warton 595 Cowper 603 Wordsworth 607 Keats 620 B. Poems in Non-Miltonic Blank Verse, 1667-1750 . . . 625 C. Loco-descriptive Poems not known to be Miltonic . . 627 a. Hill-poems 627 b. Other Poems 628 D. Rimed Technical Treatises 632 BIBLIOGRAPHIES I. Poems Influenced by Paradise Lost 637 II. Poems Influenced by L'Allegro and II Penseroso . . 669 III. Poems Influenced by the Remaining Works of Milton 680 A. Lycidas 680 B. COMUS 681 C. The Translation from Horace 682 D. The Nativity 684 IV. Eighteenth-century Sonnets 685 INDEX 699 PART I THE ATTITUDE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TOWARDS MILTON CHAPTER I MILTON'S FAME IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY A FEW years ago one of America's most distinguished citizens wrote, " As to the Paradise Lost . . . I have never read it as a whole, and I doubt whether I have known any other person who has ever done so." These words carry weight, for their author was a gentleman of fine culture and of unusually wide acquaintance among cultivated persons both in academic and in diplomatic circles. Nor is his testi- mony unique. ■ A well-known orator won the smiling approval of a large audience some twenty-five years since, when he referred to Milton's epic as "a poem that every one talks about and no one reads." Conditions may be better in Great Britain and her colo- nies; yet within the last decade an English author has likened Milton to "the colossal image of some god in a remote and rarely visited shrine." ^ It is to be feared that most persons, though willing to concede the greatness of Paradise Lost, regard it as a long, dreary work which no one ever disturbs of his own free will. Of course we are not now concerned with the large class whose reading i^onfined almost exclusively to newspapers and cheap magazines, but with that fit audience which does turn for inspiration, comfort, and joy to Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Tennyson. Even in this select company an admirer of Milton seems to be rare. Most of us, therefore, have no hesitation in agreeing with the assertion, "Milton has never been a popular poet as Shakespeare is popular, never perhaps even as Scott is popular, or as Byron was in his day and generation." ^ Nor do we question Mr. Saintsbury's dictum that, although the eighteenth century "did not thoroughly understand them, it accepted even Shakespeare and Milton. . . . It regarded Dryden . . . very much as we should regard Shake- speare and Milton rolled into one." ^ Towards the middle of that century, to be sure, Milton and Spenser are known to have played a considerable part in the "romantic revival"; but "by the Augus- 1 W. M. Dixon, English Epic and Heroic Poetry (191 2), 201. "^ H. S. Pancoast, Some Paraphrasers of Milton, in Andover Review, xv. 53. ^ Peace of the Augustans, a Survey of Eighteenth-Century Literature as a Place of Rest and Refreshment (1916, a work almost as stimulating and unhackneyed as its title leads one to expect), 91. 4 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON tans," it is agreed, Milton *' was shunned and practically neglected."^ Austin Dobson, whose familiarity with the period is unrivalled, says, in speaking of Mrs. Delany (i 700-1 788), "During the earlier half of her Ufetime, Pope reigned paramount in poetry, and Milton was practically forgotten: during the latter half, people were beginning to forget Pope, and to remember Milton." ^ These views are not only accepted by most students, but, as they agree with what we know of Milton and of the age of prose, there would seem to be no reason for questioning them; yet, since almost any generalization regarding the eighteenth century needs to be closely scrutinized, it may be well to discover on what basis they rest.^ We naturally turn first of all to the editions of Milton's works, and, in order to speak with greater certainty on a highly-complicated matter, we had better confine ourselves to his principal poem. Here a genuine surprise awaits us, for we find that between 1705 and 1800 Paradise Lost was pubHshed over a hundred times.^ The wonder grows when we look at the Faerie Queene, which, we are accustomed to think, had approximately the same number of readers as the epic. If so, they must have borrowed most of their copies, for Spenser's poem appeared only seven times in the same period. Shakespeare, ^ W. L. Phelps, Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement (Boston, 1893), 87. * Miscellanies (2d series, 1902), no. ^ Since the present chapter covers much the same ground as J. W. Good's Studies in the Milton Tradition (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, 1915) and makes use of similar evidence, it seems only fair to indicate the references to Milton for which I am indebted to Mr. Good. I have not, however, specified any of the material used in his book which I had collected before the Studies appeared, — not a little of which, indeed, was in my hands some years before he began his researches. At the same time, the passages to which his name is attached do not show all my obligations to him; for many suggestions which it would be impossible to point out definitely, and which were often remote from the subject he was considering, have come to me as I have read the material that he has so painstakingly collected. * I have left the number indefinite because without a careful, personal examination of each edition it is impossible to say how many there are. Several in my bibliography, which differs considerably from that published by Mr. Good (Studies, 25-7), may be duplicates, while others that should be in it have probably escaped me. A number that Mr. Good omits I found in English and American libraries which he may not have consulted, and the same is presumably true of many of those in his list that are not in mine. But, even if we had a faultless bibliography, there would still be the question as to how much of it ought to be included under the term "editions" or "publications" of Paradise Lost. Do such categories embrace translations, prose versions, adaptations (oratorios, for example), issues containing only part of the poem, and Irish, Scottish, and American editions? Assuming that they do not, and accordingly omitting the six versions in prose and all other adaptations and translations even when accompanied by the original text, as well as all publications outside of the British Isles and all selections (except one of 335 pages devoted exclusively to Milton's epic), and adding thirteen editions from Mr. Good's list that are not in mine, I have 105 separate publications of Paradise Lost in the eighteenth century. MILTON'S FAME 5 to be sure, is in a different category : every family must possess his works even if no one reads them. But what is our astonishment to learn that the eighteenth century was satisfied with fifty editions of his plays! It is true that a number of his dramas appeared sepa- rately; but the most popular of these, Macbeth, was pubhshed by itself only thirteen times, whereas Comus in its original form saw three printings and as adapted for the stage over thirty.^ Further- more, Paradise Lost had the unique honor of being the first poem to be sold by subscription, the first Enghsh poem to appear in a critical edition, the first to have a variorum edition, and the first to be made the subject of a detailed critical study.^ Is it any wonder that when Jacob Tonson, a leading printer of the day, was asked ''what poem he ever got the most by," he immediately named Paradise Lost? ^ Obviously, Milton scholarship was active in the eighteenth cen- tury; indeed, it was much more active, and aside from Masson's monumental Life more fruitful, than it has been since. To prove this, or to give any adequate conception of the extent of the critical attention devoted to Milton, would, however, require not a chapter but a volume. Editions of the poet and essays on his works contain but a fraction of the writings on the subject. Periodicals, histories, biographies, letters, novels, poems, rehgious tracts, and political pamphlets, as well as discussions of Homer, Longinus, the French Revolution, rhetoric, education, marriage, liberty, and even garden- ing, all lead to Milton. Francis Blackburne's Memoirs of Thomas Hollis and Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope are largely devoted to the "mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies," and for the allusions to him in such writers as John Dennis a proper reference would be, "See works passim." Some idea of the unusual attention he was at- tracting may be gained from an examination of a single periodical ^ These figures regarding the number of editions of Spenser and Shakespeare are taken from the printed catalogue of the British Museum, which presumably does not list all the issues published. It may be added that Samson Agonisles, besides being translated into Greek, was foUr times adapted for the stage or for music, and that the version made for Handel's oratorio was published at least nine times before 1800. ^ Tonson's sumptuous folio of 1688 was the second hook to be published in England by subscription, the first was Walton's Polyglot Bible (see Masson's edition of Milton's poems, 1874, i. 19 n.). Patrick Hume's notes on Paradise Lost, which accompanied the 1695 edition, fill 321 closely printed folio pages, and antedate by fourteen years the first critical edition of Shakespeare (Rowe's), which was in comparison a very simple affair. Newton's first variorum edition of the epic appeared in 1749, a second by Marchant was issued in 1751, apparently a third (which I have not seen) by J. H. Rice in 1791, and a fourth by Todd in 1801. There may have been others in 1765 and 1766, — I know only the dubious titles. Addison's Speclalor papers were published in 1712. Further- more, Warton's edition of Milton's minor poems (1785) is one of the earliest of the separately-published critical editions of short English pieces. ^ Spence's Anecdotes (ed. Singer, 1820), 344. 6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON like the Gentleman's Magazine. This, the leading journal of the day, printed eight pieces deaUng with him in both the second and the eighth year of its existence (1732 and 1 738), while in the seventeenth (1747) it gave space to twenty and in the twentieth (1750) to eleven.* These figures are unusual, to be sure ; but from five to seven papers on this supposedly neglected poet frequently appeared in a single year, and the average number was probably greater than any maga- zine devoted to him on the tercentenary of his birth. Beyond question, the attitude of the eighteenth century was quite unlike our own, so unlike that it is hardly possible for us to con- ceive it. Milton's shrine, instead of being, as it is now, "remote and rarely visited," was, like that of Thomas a Becket or of St. James of Compostella in earlier times, closely associated with the life and thought of the day and thronged with persons of all classes, each bearing his gift. In the twentieth century there are few even of Milton's admirers whose feeHng for the poet could be characterized as enthusiasm ; yet this seems to be the fittest word to describe the attitude of Pope's friend Bishop Atterbury, of Cowper, of Thomas Mollis, of the Wartons, and of many of their contemporaries. For some of them, indeed, the term is not strong enough. Leonard Welsted writes, for example, "I have a fondness" for Waller, but "I pay adoration" to Milton.^ Warburton, who himself thought the English epic superior to those of Greece and Rome, must have been sneering at more extreme views when he spoke of "all the silly adorers of Milton, who deserve to be laughed at." ^ This recalls the " Gentleman of Oxford" who feared to criticize one whose popularity was so "immeasurably great, and his Reverence Uttle less than divine." ■* "The divine Milton" is Thomas Hollis's favorite phrase * These forty-seven pieces include articles bearing on the Lauder controversy, with long extracts from Masenius and from Grotius (of whose Adamus Exul ten translations were received in one month, "besides what may come to-morrow") ; a prose "apotheo- sis" of Milton (counted as three pieces, since its parts appeared in three issues); an inscription under Milton's bust; half a dozen poems, including a prologue for Comus; and three Latin translations from Paradise Lost (counted as one, since in one issue of the magazine). " "Remarks on Longinus," 1712, Works (ed. J. Nichols, 1787), 422. Compare an anonymous tribute to Milton {Verses to the Author, "by a Divine," iii Stephen Duck's Poems, 1738, p. 131), • • •. ui « His Lays, mimitably tine, With Ecstasy each Passion move. ' Letter to Richard Hurd, Dec. 23, 1749, in J. Nichols's Illustrations of Literary History (1817), ii. 177 n. * A Neiv Version of the P. L. (Oxford, 1756), preface. Earlier in the preface we are told that Milton is "the greatest Genius among our English Poets," and that "his Poem ... is generally allowed to exceed all others for Sublimity of Thought and Grandeur of Expression." MILTON'S FAME 7 for the man whom he also called "my hero, and the guide of my paths." ^ "Idolators" is the expression used by George Hardinge, who adds, "Few, if any, can out-idolize me." ^ Among these "idol- ators" was Jonathan Richardson the painter, who devoted the "Be- loved Retir'd Hours" of many years to the loving study and service of "One to Whom," he declared, "I am Infinitely Oblig'd." "I, even I," Richardson writes in his pleasant, garrulous way, "while a Youth . . . happening to find the First Quarto [of what he else- where terms "the Best Poem in the World"] . . . was Dazzled with it, and from that Hour all the rest {Shakespear excepted) Faded in my Estimation, or Vanish'd." ^ This recalls the experience of another idolater, Cowper, who " at so ripe an age As twice seven years " "danced for joy" over his discovery of Paradise Lost, a work which he too thought " the finest poem in the world " and the author of which he referred to as "this greatest of men, your idol and mine." " This exaggerated estimate was by no means so rare in the "age of reason" as might be expected. It is to be encountered as early as 1704, when the epic was characterized by a leading critic as "the greatest Poem that ever was written by Man,"^ and as late as 1796, when it was described as "the noblest poem, perhaps, that ever the wit of man produced." ^ Indeed, John Wesley mentions this as a common opinion. "Of all the Poems which have hitherto appeared in the World, in whatever Age or Nation," he writes, carefully weighing his words, "the Preference has generally been given, by impartial Judges, to Milton's Paradise Lost." ' Richard Bentley, who had httle appreciation of the poem, unintentionally confirms this remark when he tries to explain how the work "could pass upon 1 Francis Blackburne, Memoirs of Hollis (1780), 74, 93, 112, and cf. 71, 620. ^ Miscellaneous Works (ed. J. Nichols, 1818), iii. 120. His idolatry was shown in his conduct; for in his first call upon the Swan of Lichfield he "abruptly, and d propos de rien, asked her had she ever heard Milton read? The Paradise Lost was produced, and opened at a venture; the judge jumped upon the table, and read some pages, not to her astonishment only, but to her profound admiration. ... As abruptly, her visitant closed the volume, descended from the table, made his bow, and without a word disap- peared. . . . The next morning a pacquet was transmitted to Miss Seward, enclosing an elaborate critique on the English Homer" (Notes and Queries, 3d series, i. 26). ^ Explanatory Notes on P. L. (1734), pp. clxxix-clxxxi, cxviii-cxix. * For full quotations and references, see pp. 161-2 below. ^ John Dennis, Grounds of Criticism in Poetry ( 1 704) ,54. In the preface to the prose version of Paradise Lost (1745) it is characterized as "the finest Poem that ever was wrote." « Life of Milton, prefixed to Samson Agonistes (Bell's British Theatre, 1797, vol. xxxiv), p. viii. ^ Extract from P. L. (1791), 3. James Paterson, in his Complete Commentary on P. L. (1744, p. i), starts with the assumption that it is "the prime Poem in the World." 8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON the whole Nation for a perfect, absolute, faultless Composition: The best Pens in the Kingdom contending in its Praises, as eclipsing all modern Essays whatever; and rivahng, if not excelling, both Homer and Virgil." ^ Even Dr. Johnson, who dishked Milton's character, opposed blank verse, and ridiculed Lycidas and the sonnets, commended the epic as "a poem which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to per- formance the second, among the productions of the human mind." ^ Goldsmith, too, though he shared many of Johnson's prejudices, had a hand in the preparation of a book which exhausts the vocabulary in praise of the English writer who "seems to have rivalled and ex- celled all other Epic poets." Paradise Lost, according to this treatise, is "wonderfully described, painted with such bold and noble strokes, and deHvered in such nervous language ... so orig- inal and noble in its plan and contrivance, and wrought up with such wonderful art," that "there is a nobleness and sublimity in the whole . . . which transcends, perhaps, that of any other poem." ^ Still more emphatically Philip Neve declared the "genius " of Milton to be "above example, or comparison. . . . His subject, and his conduct of it, exalt him to a supreme rank . . . with which all other poets compare but as a second class." ^ Sometimes no specific work is mentioned by an admirer, but Mil- ton is invoked as the "supreme of Verse," ^ or characterized as "an Author of that Excellence of Genius and Learning, that none of any Age or Nation, I think, has excel'd him," or as "perhaps the greatest [genius] that ever appeared among men." ^ Yet it was unquestion- ^ Preface to his edition of Paradise Lost (1732). 2 Lives of the Poets (ed. Birkbeck Hill, Oxford, 1905), i. 170. Cf. Johnson's preface to Lauder's Essay on Milton's Use of the Moderns (1750) : "Mankind . . . have endeav- oured to compensate the error of their first neglect [of Paradise Lost] , by lavish praises and boundless veneration. There seems to have arisen a contest, among men of genius and literature, who should most advance its honour, or best distinguish its beauties." ^ JohnNewbery's^r/o/Poe/rj on a A'ewP/aw (1762), ii. 318,326. Similarly, Daniel Neal, in his History of the Puritans (1738, iv. 466-7), speaks of Milton's "incomparable Poem ... in which he manifested such a wonderful Sublimeness of Thought, as, per- haps, was never exceeded in any Age or Nation in the World" (Good, pp. 122-3). * Cursory Remarks on English Poets (1789), 141. Later (p. 144) Neve calls Paradise Lost "the greatest work of human genius." ^ Sneyd Davies, Rhapsody to Milton (w. 1740), in John Whaley's Collection of Poems (1745), 182. Cf. Song by Mr. T. (w. 1767), in J. Nichols's Collection (1780), viii. 135: But let me with reverence kneel O'er the grave of the greatest in verse. * Charles Gildon's continuation of Langbaine's English Dramatick Poets (1699), 100; Richard Baron's preface to Milton's Eikonoklastes (1756), p. iv. Some of the other references to Milton in Gildon's works contain extravagant praise : see his Miscellaneous Letters and Essays (1694), 41-4 ("To Mr. T. S., in Vindication of Mr. Milton's Paradise MILTON'S FAME 9 ably Paradise Lost that such writers had chiefly in mind; for the modern heresy of exalting the shorter poems at the expense of the longer was scarcely known in an age which, whatever its deficiencies, at least appreciated the solid things of hterature. The contrary opinion is widely held, to be sure, owing to the attention given to the influence of the 1645 volume upon Gray, Collins, and their contem- poraries; but it is quite unwarranted. Even lyric poets, who natu- rally made more use of the octosyllabics, sonnets, and other short pieces, were as whole-hearted in their admiration of the epic as they were unblushing in adopting its phraseology and diction. During the first forty years of the century, when praise was being lavished upon Paradise Lost, the shorter pieces were seldom mentioned, and at no time do they seem to have exerted an influence at all com- parable to that of the epic.^ Evidence of every kind and from a great variety of sources points to the same conclusion, that from the boyhood of Pope to the death of Cowper the preeminence of Paradise Lost among the works of its author was never seriously questioned.- But, although the shorter pieces did not receive a tithe of the critical consideration or of the extravagant praise that was showered upon the epic, they were enthusiastically admired. Burke called Lost"); Examen Miscellaneum (1702), pp. ii, iii, and first p. 51; Libertas Trlumphans (1708), 6; Complete Art of Poetry (1718), i. 108, 268-9; and Laws of Poetry (1721), 34- See also John Buncombe's Ode to John, Earl of Corke (1757), in his Works of Horace, 1767, ii. 239 (Good, p. 82): Though foremost in the Lists of Fame We matchless Milton place. 1 The total number of poems which I have found to be significantly influenced by the minor pieces before 1742 is only 41, while in the same period 196 were affected by Paradise Lost. The largest number of poems influenced in any decade by any of the , shorter pieces was 75 (those affected by the octosyllabics between 1780 and 1790). In '/ this same period 100 poems showed the influence of the epic. 2 This was pointed out in my Scve^iteenth Century Notices of Milton (Englische Stii- dien, xl. 184-5) > and has been proved in great detail by Mr. Good, who, indeed, goes too far in the opposite direction. The only exceptions I remember among the hundreds of references to the poems that have come to my attention are in a letter from Lord Mon- boddo to Sir George Baker, Oct. 2, 1782, and in the Bee for 1793 (xvi. 276), where Comiis is preferred to Paradise Lost; in the letters of Miss Seward (see p. 501 below), where the best of Milton's sonnets are thought equal to anything he wrote; and in Goldsmith's Beauties of English Poesy (1767, i. 39), where we are told that "a very judicious critic" thought the octosyllabics gave "an higher idea of Milton's stile in poetry" than the epic did. It is interesting to know that Joseph Warton, a great admirer and imitator of the minor poems, arranged Milton's works in the order of their poetic excellence thus, Paradise Lost, Comus, Samson, Lycidas, Allegro, Penseroso (T. Warton's edition of the minor poems, 1785, p. 34); and that Ann Yearsley, the Bristol milkwoman, was "well acquainted" with the epic but ignorant of Milton's having written anything else {Mo. Rev., Ixxiii. 218). lO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Penseroso "the finest poem in the EngUsh language"; ^ Cowper as a boy was "so charmed " with it and its companion piece that he "was never weary of them"; ^ and Hugh Blair thought them "of all the English Poems in the Descriptive Style, the richest and most re- markable." ^ It was these pieces that Gray had particularly in mind when he mentioned their author as " the best example of an exquisite ear" that he could produce/ " If he had written nothing else," said another, apropos of the octosyllabics, he "has displayed such exten- sive powers of imagination, as would have given him a place among the foremost of the sons of Phoebus."^ A similar opinion had been expressed more than twenty years earlier: "His Juvenile Poems . . . are suflScient to have set him among the most Celebrated of the Poets, even of the Ancients themselves; his Mask and Lycidas are perhaps Superior to all in their Several Kinds . . . the Allegro and Penseroso are Exquisite Pictures."^ Nathan Drake went even farther: ^'L' Allegro ed II Penseroso are the most exquisite and accu- rately descriptive poems in his own, or any other, language, and will probably for ever remain unrivalled." ^ John Aikin said much the same, ranking the octosyllabics as "perhaps the most captivating pieces of the descriptive kind that all poetry affords";^ while Christopher Smart, in speaking of Dryden's and Pope's odes for St. Cecilia's day, threw all "perhaps's" to the winds and affirmed, "Neither is there to be found two more finished pieces of Lyric Poetry in our Language, L 'allegro and II penseroso of Milton ex- cepted, which are the finest in any." ^ Miss Seward, who " lisped " these companion poems "when only in her third year," and who often delighted herself by repeating Lycidas from memory, was " al- most" of George Hardinge's opinion, that "the best of Milton's sonnets [are] equal to any thing he has written." ^^ As she held that he had but one superior in the world, this is high praise for the sonnets. 1 Letter to Matthew Smith, c. 1750, in Prior's Burke (5th ed., 1854), 35. 2 Letter to William Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782. 3 Lectures on Rhetoric (1783), ii. 375. * Observations on English Metre (w. 1760-61), in Works, ed. Mitford, 1858, v. 233. ^ "T. VJ.," in Old Maid, no. 12 (Jan. 31, 1756): Drake's G/eawer (181 1), ii. 381. ^ Richardson, Explanatory Notes (1734) , pp. xv-xvi. The similar praise to be found in Toland's and Fenton's biographies of Milton, published in 1698 and 1725 respec- tively, is given on p. 424 below. ^ Literary Hours (3d ed., 1804), ii. 89. ^ Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807), 124. ^ Preface to his Ode for Musick on St. Cecilia's Day (c. 1755), reprinted in Poems (Reading, 1 791), i. 39. 1" See E. V. Lucas, A Swan and her Friends (1907), 21; Miss Seward's Letters (Edin., 1811), i. 66; and p. 501 below. MILTON'S FAME II But long before Miss Seward and her friends essayed the lyre, in fact while Dryden was still living, the juvenile poems had been de- clared ''incomparable"; before 1728 Comus was called "the best [masque] ever written ... in the Praise of which no Words can be too many"; as early as 1729 there were some who felt for Lycidas "the same Veneration, and Partiahty, which is paid to the most accompHsh'd Works of Antiquity," and in 1 756 some who held it " one of the most poetical and moving elegies that ever was wrote." ^ It will be clear later, when we see the great number of poems modelled upon the shorter pieces and the frequency with which phrases were taken from them, that these utterances by no means exaggerate the feehngs of a large part of the public. Of course there were not a few who, like Johnson, thought Lycidas and the sonnets absurd and were indifferent to the remaining minor poems; but, on the other hand, the commendations that have been quoted fail to give any adequate conception of the widespread, enthusiastic admiration which the poems aroused. Regarding Paradise Lost we have seen that a remarkable unanim- ity of opinion prevailed. There must have been those who did not care for it, but they either Kke Chesterfield kept discreetly silent,^ or else like Bentley made themselves ridiculous in the eyes of their fel- lows. It is astounding that scarcely one of the innumerable eight- eenth-century allusions to the poem speaks of it with the in- difference, dislike, or flippancy which are almost the rule to-day. Nor can it be urged that this praise is a perfunctory acceptance of a conventional opinion, for it is usually more enthusiastic and spon- taneous than it is judicial. Still less is there warrant for believing that these admirers were willing to pay the epic any tribute save that of reading it; for their familiarity with it — with even the later books — and the frequency with which they quote from it entirely disprove any such charge.^ " Who has wo/ read . . . Paradise lost, and Paradise Regained?" exclaimed a reviewer in 1796," a remark 1 For references and other quotations, see pp. 423) 422, 426 n. i, 427, below. ^ See below, p. 24. 2 Addison, for example, writes, "I have drawn more quotations out of him [Milton] than from any other" {Spectator, no. 262); and Lord Monboddo says, "I • • • shall . . . quote him oftener than any other English writer, because I consider him as the best standard for style, and all the ornaments of speech, that we have" {Origin and Progress oj Language, 2d ed., 1786, iii. 68 n.). John Constable, in his Reflections upon Accuracy of Style (1731, pp. 14-16), quotes from Paradise Lost four times in three suc- cessive pages; Daniel Webb, in Observations on Poetry and Music (1769, pp. 14-18), quotes from it six times on five successive pages; and Thomas Sheridan draws almost all the illustrations for his Lectures on the Art of Reading (1775) from the same work. Instances of the kind might be multipUed indefinitely. * Mo. Rev., enl. ed., xxi. 226. 12 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON that, in contrast to the one with which our chapter opens, mirrors the difference between the twentieth- and the eighteenth-century attitude towards Milton. Not, of course, that every one thought his epic " the greatest poem in the world." Some modestly claimed for it only a preeminence among English works. Gilbert Burnet, for example, who was en- tirely out of sympathy with Milton's pohtical activities, qualified his statement that Paradise Lost "was esteemed the beautifulest and perfectest poem that ever was writ" by adding, "at least in our lan- guage." ^ And such seems to have been the general opinion. The Spectator papers, it will be remembered, make no attempt to prove Milton's primacy among British bards; they assume it at the outset in the words, "As the first place among our English poets is due to Milton." ^ So, also, does the Lay-Monastery, when it speaks casu- ally of " our great Milton, whose Poem, which is justly now acknowl- edg'd to be the most admirable Production of British Genius." ^ Expressions to the same purport, which are to be met with con- stantly throughout the century and seem to have been rarely ques- tioned,^ are the more important because it is generally thought to-day that Pope and Dryden were at this time regarded as the greatest Enghsh poets. The Edinburgh Review was nearer the truth when it declared in 1808, "That he [Pope] is not of the class of Milton and Shakespeare is indisputable ; and, notwithstanding the two volumes, ^ History 0} my Own Time (ed. O. Airy, Oxford, 1897), i. 284. This part of the History was written about 1700 {ib. pp. xxvii, xxxi n.). In Jure Divino (1706, book vii, p. 14 n.) Defoe praised the ' Masterly Genius ' displayed in Paradise Lost, and wrote, " Milton'' s Pandemonium, is allow'd to be the deepest laid Thought, most capacious and extensive that ever appear'd in print." Defoe may have come to know Paradise Lost at the dissenting academy he attended four or five years. 2 No. 262. ' No. xxxii, Jan. 27, 1713. Observe that the writer speaks as if Milton had written but one poem. So, too, does William Sewell, in the first version of his Life of Philips (1712), p. 3. ^ Cf. Henry Pemberton's Observations on Poetry (1738, p. 80), where Milton is termed "our greatest poet"; the Muse's Complaint (by "C," in Scots Mag., 1742, iv. 166), which speaks of him as "chief of modern bards"; Charles Graham's Etdogium (Universal Mag., 1785, Ixxvii. 98), which declares, "No poet since has equal'd him in song"; the "List of Dramatic Poets" appended to Thomas Whincop's Scanderbeg (1747), where Paradise Lost is called "the finest Piece in the English Language" (noted by Good, pp. 127-8); Catharine Macaulay's Modest Plea for Copy Right (i774, P- 23), where it is described as "a Poem, whose merit is of such magnitude, that it is impossible for a genius inferior to his own to do it justice" (Good, pp. 255-6) ; and the preface to Samuel Woodford's Paraphrase upon the Canticles (1679), where Dryden's praise, "one of the greatest . . . Poems . . . this Age . . . has produced," is repeated, and Wood- ford adds that if the work had been rimed "it had been so absolute a piece, that in spight of whatever the World Heathen, or Christian hitherto has seen, it must have remain'd as the standard to all succeeding Poets." MILTON'S FAME 1 3 in which Dr. Warton thought it necessary to prove this truism, we doubt whether any critic, even during the flattery of his own age, ever thought of placing him so high." ^ What, then, did the Augustans, 'during the flattery of their age,' think as to the relative merits of Waller,- Dryden, Pope, Shake- speare, and Milton? In view of the complacency of the neo-classi- cists, and of the apparent narrowness of esthetic sympathy shown in their remarks about the roughness of English verse before "Mr. Waller refined our numbers," this would seem to be an easy question to answer. Surely the masters of the couplet had httle admiration ^ 2d ed., xi. 409. Cf. John Duncombe's ode to the Earl of Corke (see above, p. 8, n. 6), where "matchless Milton" is "foremost in the Lists of Fame," though Pope will long "the Muse's Annals grace." "We still prefer the extravagant beauties of Shake- speare and Milton to the cold and well-disciplined merit of Addison and . . . Pope," remarked Horace Walpole (letter to Elie de Beaumont, March 18, 1765). Even John- son thought that in the proposed erection of monuments in St. Paul's cathedral Milton's "should have the precedence" over Pope's: "There is more thinking in him and in Butler," he adds, "than in any of our poets" (Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill, ii. 239). Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric, which were published in 1783 but written much earlier, grants only that "within a certain limited region, he [Pope] has been outdone by no Poet" (ii. 369); and William Belsham writes {Essays, 2d ed., 1799, ii. 506), "Though the warmest admirers of Pope have never exalted him to the rank of the greatest poet, he has often been stiled the best versifier in the English language." Belsham allows him to be "the most polished and correct versifier," but not the one "affording the highest degree of delight," since he "does not sufl&ciently conceal his art." Expressions like that of Lord Middlesex in his poem to Pope (Chalmers's English Poets, xii. 135), "Like Milton, then, though in more polish'd strains," or that of A. Betson, who calls Pope "the most perfect Poet we ever had in this Nation" {Miscellaneous Dissertations, 1751, p. 86, and cf. pp. 88-91), are apt to be misleading. They do not imply that Pope is the greatest of English poets, but that he is the most regular, the one freest from faults. There were few leading neo-classicists who did not realize that something more than this negative virtue was needed for great poetry. * The question "Whether Milton and Waller were not the best English Poets? and which the better of the two?" was answered in the Athenian Mercury for January 16, 1691/ 2, as follows: "Milton was the fullest and loftiest, Waller the neatest and most correct Poet we ever had. . . . Mr. Waller, tho' a full and noble Writer, yet comes not up in our Judgments to that, — Mens divinior atque os — Magna Sonaturum, as Horace calls it, which Milton has, and wherein we think he was never equalled." When a similar question was raised in the British Apollo for 1708 (vol. i, no. 25), that oracle gave high praise to Waller, but declared, Milton do's to Nobler Flights aspire, With Virgil's Beauty and with Homer's Fire. In Every Image, true sublime, appears. And Every Thought, The Stamp of Phoebus wears. Sprung from the God, Divine are all his Lays, And claim by true Desert, the Never dying bays. William Coward, in his Licentia Poetica (1709), discusses "Homer, Horace, Virgil, Mil- ton, Waller, Cowley, Dryden, etc." as "the principal antient and modern Poets." Cf. Addison's Account of the Greatest English Poets (1694); A. Betson's Miscellaneous Dis- sertations (1751), 86-90; Defoe's remark quoted on p. 15 below; and the passage from Collins, p. 454 below. 14 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON for poetry in every way so unlike their own as was the blank- verse Puritan epic. Yet we have seen the dangers of a priori arguments as to what the eighteenth century must have thought, and we remem- ber Addison's Spectator papers, and Dryden's famous distichs, which begin, Three poets, in three distant ages born. Indeed, if we are familiar with Dryden, we recall his visit to the blind poet and his dramatization of the epic, which he praised cordially, terming it "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced." ^ His friend Nathan- iel Lee boldly adapted the following Hnes from the same poem within thirteen years of its pubHcation: They 've blown us up with Wild fire in the Air . . , Caps, Hats and Cardinals Coats, and Cowls and Hoods Are tost about — the sport the sport of winds — Indulgences, Dispences, Pardons, Bulls, see yonder! Preist, they fly — they're whirl'd aloft. They fly, They fly o'er the backside o' th' World, Into a Limbo large, and broad, since call'd the Paradise Of Fools.2 Nor was Addison's praise limited to his celebrated critique. As early as 1694, in his Account of the Greatest English Poets, he devoted thirty lines to Milton, and later imitated two of his poems; ^ he had much to say about Paradise Lost in his Discourse on Ancient and Modern Learning, in the Tatler, and in the Spectator before and after the publication of his formal criticism; he commended Allegro in the Spectator, and agreed with a friend that of all masques Comus was " the best ever written." ^ What makes his extended examination of r the poem particularly significant in the present connection is the fact i that it was written by the leading neo-classic critic of the time and / was addressed to the neo-classicists. Addison succeeded in proving to his contemporaries that Paradise Lost was a correct poem accord- ing to Augustan standards, that it conformed to the laws laid done for the epic and lost nothing by comparison with Homer and Virgil. Thanks to the popularity of the Spectator and to his own reputation, his papers had a strong influence ; they were questioned only by the * Works (Scott-Saintsbury ed.), v. 112. See also v. 116, 124; xi. 162, 209-10; xii. 300-301; xiii. 17, 18-20, 30, 38, 39, 117; xiv. 143-4, 201-2 ("I dare not condemn so great a genius as Milton"), 214-15. 2 Caesar Borgia (1680), near the end of the last scene; cf. P. L., iii. 487-96. Mr. G. L. Kittredge called my attention to this very early and striking borrowing. ^ See pp. 104-5, 422, below. * See p. 422 below. MILTON'S FAME 1 5 more romantic admirers of Milton, and seem to have been univer- sally accepted as defining the classical attitude towards England's greatest classic poet. It was not, however, to the Spectator that the other leading writers of the time owed their first acquaintance with Paradise Lost. Gay's humorous imitation of it, Wine, appeared four years before Addi- son's critique,^ while Defoe, Prior, Pope, and Swift each gave evi- dence of a knowledge of the epic before 1709. The biting satire and the distrust of things grand and romantic which one associates with Swift make him almost the last person from whom to expect praise of a lofty and imaginative poem in blank verse; yet he not only de- clared himself "an admirer of Milton," but annotated an edition of Paradise Lost for the use of Stella and "Mrs." Dingley, and in his writings showed famiharity with the entire work.^ After the Dean himself, the Augustan writer who would seem to have been least likely to appreciate the epic is Daniel Defoe. Yet so early as 1706 Defoe had composed three poems in a verse roughly modelled upon that of Paradise Lost, and had asked, "Who can read Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Milton, Waller, or Rochester, without touching the Strings of his Soul, and finding a Unison of the most charming Influence there? "^ The company in which Milton is here placed, and the omission from it of Shakespeare, Dryden, and others, should not be overlooked. Pope's frank expressions of admiration and his less frank but more numerous borrowings form too large a subject for discussion here ; suffice it to say that he appears to have been more widely acquainted with the complete body of Milton's poems than any other man of his time.^ As for "Mat" Prior, one would hardly expect to find his Hght, deft pen employed on the cathedral harmo- nies of blank verse except in the way of parody. Yet Prior took the unrimed measure very seriously; he imitated it four times, and in his translations of two lofty hymns of Callimachus with some suc- cess, while in the preface to his Solomon (17 18) he attacked rime ^ Another blank- verse burlesque, Fanscomb Barn (1713), was composed by the neo- classic poetess Anne, Countess of Winchilsea. It cannot be maintained that these parodies argue a low estimate of Milton, for both were suggested by the similar pieces of John Philips, one of the most ardent admirers of Paradise Lost. ^, See indices to the Bohn editions of his prose and poetry, and that to F. E. Ball's edition of the Correspondence (1910-14). Besides these eleven references, there is Swift's part in the Grub-Sireel Jouryial, in the Memoirs of Martinns Scriblerus, and in the satirical commentary that accompanies The Dtinciad, all of which contain allusions to Milton (see pp. 113 n. 2, ii5, below). ' Review of the State of the English Nation, vol. iii, no. 104. For the poems, see pp. loo-ioi below. * See pp. 1 1 2- 1 8, 573-83, below. 1 6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON and declared Paradise Lost to be ''one of the sublimest Pieces of In- vention that was ever yet produced." ^ Much the same opinion was held by the Duke of Buckingham; for his Essay on Poetry, which Dryden and Pope repeatedly praised, ends with a description of the ideal poet, who Must above Tasso's lofty flights prevail, Succeed where Spencer, and ev'n Milton fail.* The Earl of Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, which the classicists held as a classic, contains a plea for blank verse, a tribute to Paradise Lost, and an imitation of it.^ Congreve mentions an "Immortal Song" which is ''As Spencer sweet, as Milton strong." * Lady Mary Montagu, with whom Pope flirted and quarrelled, at- tacked "the thraldom of monastic rhymes" and praised "the beau- ties of each living page " of Milton's poem.^ " The horrid Discord of jingling Rhyme" is also condemned in the celebrated Characteristics of the Earl of Shaftesbury, which strongly influenced Pope and many other writers of the time. Shaftesbury's praise of Paradise Lost is worth quoting. "Our most approv'd heroick Poem,^^ he wrote in 1 710, "has neither the Softness of Language, nor the fashionable Turn of Wit; but merely solid Thought, strong Reasoning, noble Passion, and a continu'd Thred of moral Doctrine, Piety, and Virtue to recommend it." ^ Pamell, whose assistance on the Iliad Pope requited by editing his friend's posthumous works, wrote two poems on the model of Allegro and is said to have been " a careful student of Milton." ^ Curiously enough, Pope's helpers on his Odyssey, William Broome and Ehjah Fenton, who between them translated half the poem, were likewise Miltonians; for, besides using many words and phrases from Paradise Lost in the work they did for Pope, each made an unrimed version of at least one book of Homer, and in addition ^ See also pp. 59-60, 105, below. ^ This is the latest version; the two earlier forms show less appreciation of Milton. Chalmers {English Poets, x. 77-8) quotes Dryden's, Addison's, and Pope's praise of the Essay. 3 See p. 89 below. ^ A Pindarique Ode, humbly ofefd to the Queen (1706), in Works, 1710, iii. 1085 (Good, p. 61). In his Mourning Muse of Alexis (1695, ib. 836) there is a reference to "Comus Feast" (Good, p. 141). * Court of Dulness, in Letters and Works (Bohn ed.), ii. 487-9; cf. Lines written in a Blank Page of P. L. {ib. 523). * Characteristics (3d ed., 1723), i. 276; cf. i. 217-18, and iii. 263-4. To the first of these references my attention was called by C. A. Moore's illuminating paper, Shaftes- bury and the Ethical Poets (Modern Lang. Assoc, Publications, xxxi. 264-325). ^ Diet. Nat. Biog.: and cf. the preface to his Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice (171 7). For the poems, see p. 444 below. MILTON'S FAME 17 Fenton paraphrased part of a chapter of Isaiah in blank verse, wrote a life of Milton, and 'amended the punctuation' of his principal work.^ Another classicist who had a hand in editing the epic was Thomas Tickell, the poet who was the cause of the memorable quarrel be- tween Addison and Pope; ^ while still another of Milton's commen- tators, Jonathan Richardson, whose extravagant praise of his favor- ite poet we have already listened to, was for twenty-two years a friend and correspondent of Pope. Not a little of our knowledge of the bard of Twickenham and his circle comes from Spence's Anec- dotes; yet intimacy with Pope did not prevent the author, Joseph Sperice, professor of poetry and later regius professor of modern his- tory at Oxford, from writing two pieces of blank verse that are clearly Miltonic.^ An earlier occupant of the chair of poetry — an easy-chair in those days — was Joseph Trapp, a man so classical in his tastes that he published his lectures in Latin and found Uttle to admire in poetry written since Roman days. Paradise Lost, how- ever, seemed to him a marked exception, for he said of it: ''Si . Poema Heroicum proprie dictum non scripsit Miltonus; certe Poema optimum scripsit; omni laude dignus, dicam? imo major: Homeri, & Virgilii, non servus Imitator, viam aperuit prorsus novam, & suam; Inventionis foecunditate, Ingenii sublimitate, Rerum Vocumque fulgore ac pondere, Judicii denique maturitate, nee Romero forsan, nee Virgilio, secundus." * This is, however, the least of the tributes that Trapp paid to the poet, for he translated all of Virgil into Miltonic blank verse and all of Milton into Virgilian Latin. One cannot read far in the literature or the history of the early eighteenth century without encountering Bishop Atterbury, the best preacher of the age and according to Addison one of its greatest geniuses, who narrowly escaped execution for his Jacobite activities. ^ See Bibl. I, 1712, 1717, 1727. The 1725 Paradise Lost was supervised by Fenton, whose life of Milton was reprinted in many later editions. ^ Tickell assisted on the 1720 edition. As early as 1707 he had said of John Philips, "Unfetter'd, in great Milton's strain he writes" {Oxford, 1707, in Works, 1854, p. 171). ^ See Bibl. I, 1761, 1762. * PraelecHones Poeticce (1711), 3d ed., 1736, ii. 317-18. In the translation entitled Lectures on Poetry (1742, p. 351) the passage quoted is rendered thus: "If Milton did not write an Heroic Poem, properly so call'd, yet he certainly wrote an excellent one, such as deserves, or rather is above all Commendation. He is no slavish imitator of Homer and Virgil, he opens a Way entirely new, and entirely his own: In Fruitfulness of Invention, Sublimity of Genius, in the Weight and Lustre of his Thoughts and Words, and, lastly, in the Perfection of his Judgment, he is, perhaps, equal to either of them." 1 8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Swift, Prior, Gay, and Addison knew Atterbury well, and Pope proved one of his few faithful friends. " Milton remained to the end of his Ufe his favourite poet," writes his biographer,^ and from one of the bishop's own letters to Pope we may well believe it. "I protest to you," he wrote, "this last perusal of him [Milton] has given me such new degrees, I will not say of pleasure, but of admiration and astonishment, that I look upon the sublimity of Homer, and the majesty of Virgil, with somewhat less reverence than I used to do. I challenge you, with all your partiality, to show me in the first of these any thing equal to the Allegory of Sin and Death, either as to the greatness and justness of the invention, or the height and beauty of the colouring. What I looked upon as a rant of Barrow's, I now begin to think a serious truth, and could almost venture to set my hand to it." ^ Another of the Anglican clergymen whom Pope, a Catholic, numbered among his intimate friends was Bishop William Warburton, who became his literary executor. Besides writing a commentary on Paradise Lost (which he thought superior to the epics of Homer and Virgil), Warburton translated "in imitation of Milton's style" a Latin poem of Addison's, and lauded the minor poems, the Of Education, and the Areopagitica, a famous sentence from which he appropriated for the conclusion of one of his pam- phlets.' Perhaps John Hughes ought not to be included among the Augus- tans, though he contributed to the TaUer, Spectator, and Guardian and persuaded Addison to put Cato on the stage. He was, at any rate, a great admirer of Milton's chief poem and an imitator of his octosyllabics.^ Young, too, is thought of as romantically inclined because the Night Thoughts is in blank verse, but this work did not ^ H. C. Beeching, Francis Alterbury (1909), 227. * Nov. 8, 1717, Pope's Works (Elwin-Courthope ed.), ix. 9-10. Barrow's "rant" is translated on page 21 below. Atterbury did not care for Shakespeare (Beeching's Atterbury, 225). In his inscription on John Philips's tomb in Westminster (see ib. 226), and in his preface to the Second Part of Mr. Waller's Poems (1690), he praised Milton and blank verse. For his plan that Pope should arrange Samson Agotiistes for presenta- tion, see p. 117 below. ' For the commentary, see Works of the Learned, April, 1740, pp. 273-80, and Newton's preface to his edition of the epic (1749, etc.). The poem, Battle of the Cranes and Pigmies (1724), and the pamphlet, A Critical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies (1727), are reprinted in Samuel Parr's Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian (1789), 56-62, 71-140. For his commendation of Milton, see Nichols's Illustrations, ii. 77-82, 177 and n.; and pp. 21, 432, below. * See his edition of Spenser (1715), vol. i, pp. xxvii, xxx, xxxvii, xxxix, xli, Ixviii, Ixxxiii, etc., and his Poems (1735), i. 250,11.91, 317-18,333-4; also the praise of Milton quoted above (page 12) from the Lay-Monastery, of which Hughes was one of the editors. For his imitations, see pp. 442-3 below. I MILTON'S FAME 19 begin to appear until its author had by his satires and his Two Epis- tles to Mr. Pope won recognition as a thorough-going classicist. Even in these heroic couplets he used many phrases from Milton, and in his greatest work the style and diction are derived from the epic, which he greatly admired and frequently quoted from. The author of The Seasons is another writer who is commonly ranked among the romanticists; yet he certainly thought highly of the poetry of his Twickenham neighbor, with whose circle he was intimate. Thom- son's appreciation and imitation of Paradise Lost will receive ex- tended treatment later, but it may be noted here that on a single page of his Winter he praises Pope and declares Milton to be equal to Homer. Another instance of how the Puritan Hon and the Augustan lamb (as the venomous bard would have hked to be thought) lay down - together occurs in the work of an intimate friend of Thomson and Pope, Lord Lyttelton. In one of his "Dialogues of the Dead " (1760) Lyttelton sets Pope and Boileau the interesting task of discussing Milton. ''Longinus," the French critic is made to declare, ''perhaps would prefer him to all other Writers : for he excells even Homer in the Sublime. But other Critics . . . who can endure no Absurdi- ties, no extravagant Fictions, would place him far below Virgil." To which Pope repHes, "His Genius was indeed so vast and sublime, that his Work seems beyond the Limits of Criticism. . . . The bright and excessive Blaze of poetical Fire, which shines in so many Parts of his Poem, will hardly permit one to see its Faults." ^ Lyt- telton's intimacy with Pope enabled him to know what that poet thought of Milton, but we cannot be sure that Boileau held the opinions which he is here made to express. A far greater French writer, however, speaks with an enthusiasm that makes the praise attributed to his countryman seem cold. Writing of "the noblest Work, which human Imagination hath ever attempted," he says (the book is in EngHsh) : "What Milton so boldly undertook, he per- form'd with a superior Strength of Judgement, and with an Imagina- tion productive of Beauties not dream'd of before him. . . . The Paradise Lost is the only Poem wherein are to be found in a perfect Degree that Uniformity which satisfies the Mind and that Variety which pleases the Imagination. . . . But he hath especially an in- disputable Claim to the unanimous Admiration of Mankind, when he descends from those high FHghts to the natural Description of 1 Dialogues of the Dead (3d ed., 1760), 122-3. Lyttelton wrote three pieces in Mil- tonic blank verse and modelled his best poem upon Lycidas (see Bibl. 1, 1728, 1762, c. 1763, and p. 552 below). 20 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON human Things." Voltaire is the last person from whom we should expect this praise, yet it is in his Essay upon Epick Poetry (1727) that the words occur.^ True, as he later took back most of his commenda- tion,^ he may never have meant it; but since he did say it, and may have said something of the kind often while he was in England, there is no escaping the significance or the influence of such a tribute from an eminent foreign poet and critic. Voltaire's opinion tallied so closely with that of the leading Englishmen of the time that he might well have said to them in the significant words which Lyttel- ton gave to Boileau, "The Taste of your Countrymen is very much changed since the days of Charles the Second, when Dryden was thought a greater Poet than Milton!" ^ Clearly, then, the maligned Augustans gave Milton his due. They did more, they joined with other writers of the century in classing him with the great poets of antiquity. If a critic of our time says that Paradise Lost is equal to the Iliad or the Aeneid, the comment indicates little more than enthusiasm; but if a contemporary of Dryden or Johnson made the same remark it meant that the English epic had stood the test of being measured by the highest possible standard, — indeed, by the only standard for great poetry. Few persons to-day care particularly v^^hether or not Paradise Lost is in accord with Longinus on the sublime; but in Pope's day they cared very much, so much, in fact, that they allowed scarcely any author to be of the first rank who did not in the main conform to the prac- tice of the classical writers and the laws laid down by the classical critics.^ That Milton stood this test and was ranked with, if not above, Homer and Virgil, no one can doubt who has read a tithe of the evi- dence that can be brought forward. It will be recalled that as early as 1688 no less eminent an authority than Dryden had said of the epic poets, Homer, Virgil, and Milton, The force of Nature could no farther go; To make a third, she join'd the former two. One doubts whether Dryden really meant this, although he is said to have exclaimed on first reading Paradise Lost, "This man cuts us ^ The quotations are from Miss F. D. White's valuable reprint of the Essay (Albany, 1915), 131-3. 2 See ib. 68-70, 164-5. 2 Dialogues of the Dead, 123. * This helps explain the indifference or the hostility of many to Shakespeare and Spenser, as well as the reason why long and serious poems like The Seasons and Night Thoughts, which were liked by almost every one, were not regarded as great. MILTON'S FAME 21 all out, and the ancients too." ^ But there is no question that Cowper, one of the most devoted students of Homer, was sincere when he repeated Dryden's hues with slight changes a hundred years later.2 We have also seen that Atterbury wrote to Pope that he could almost agree with Barrow's verses, Romans and Grecians yield the bays, Yield, all ye bards of old or modern days! Who reads this nobler work will own Homer sung frogs, and Virgil gnats alone.^ It is to be presumed, too, that the learned Bishop Warburton had _. weighed his words before he wrote: "Milton . . . found Homer possessed of the province of morality; Virgil of politics; and nothing left for him, but that of religion. This he seized . . . and by means of the superior dignity of his subject, hath gotten to the J head of that Triumvirate, which took so many ages in forming."^ We are told that Henry Grove, one of the contributors to the Spec- tator, thought that "for Beauty, Variety, and Grandeur of Descrip- tions, as well as true Sublime in Sentiments," Milton was "greatly preferrable" to Homer; "and tho' he allowed Homer the Praise of a very great Genius, he thought the Iliad would no more bear a Com- parison with Paradise lost, than the Pagan Scheme of Theology with the Christian." ^ Another writer declared, "It is no Compli- ment, but a bare Piece of Justice done to Milton, when we not only compare him to Homer and Virgil, but even prefer him to both those great Poets; because his Genius evidently appears to have been superior to theirs, by the frequent Proofs he gives us of that Power which constitutes a subhme Genius and ... is more conspicuous 1 Richardson's Explanatory Notes (1734), pp. cxix-cxx. ^ See pp. 162-3 below, where it will be observed that Cowper on several occasions expressed his belief in the superiority of MUton to Homer and Virgil. ^ The Latin original was prefixed to the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674) ; this translation is from the Gentleman's Magazine, xxx. 291 (cf. also below, p. 26, n. 5). Thomas Stratford used almost the same words — probably referring to these lines — in the preface to his First Book of Fontenoy (1784?, see Mo. i?CT., Ixxi. 95). Sneyd Davies wrote in 1740 (Rhapsody to Milton, in Whaley's Collection, 1745, p. 182), Such Thought, such Language, that all other Verse Seems trifling (not excepting Greece and Rome) So lofty and so sweet, beyond compare, Is thine. Thomas Green remarked in 1800 that the allegory of Sin and Death "renders the grandest passages in Homer and Virgil comparatively feeble and dwarfish"' (Diary of a Lover of Literature, Ipswich, 1810, p. 192). ^ Divine Legation of Moses (1738), in Works, ed. R. Hurd, 1811, ii. 95. * Works of the Learned, June, 1741, p. 441. 22 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON in him than in any other Poet." ^ Joseph Warton gave poetical ex- pression to the same opinion when he spoke of "those vales of joy" Where Maro and Musaeus sit List'ning to Milton's loftier song, With sacred silent wonder smit; While, monarch of the tuneful throng. Homer in rapture throws his trumpet down And to the Briton gives his amaranthine crown.^ Even the conservative Critical Review remarked that the works of Shakespeare and Milton were "superior to all those of antiquity," ^ and one of the editors of Paradise Lost declared that its author might "be said to be much superior to Homer and Virgil.'' ^ Richardson, accordingly, had ample grounds not only for asserting that Milton "Excell'd All Ancients and Moderns," but for adding, "I take leave to Say so upon Many Good Authorities." ^ There can, then, be no question that from the beginning of the century Milton's greatness was recognized by all, that he was, by pretty general consent, at least the equal of Homer and Virgil, that his epic was extravagantly praised by many, and that each of his shorter pieces was regarded by some persons as the greatest of its kind ever written. The effect upon the public of such an increasing flow of Miltonic adulation must have been very great. So great indeed was it that — by an impish irony which would have dehghted Swift — the most austere and lofty of EngHsh poets became, in a notably artificial and prosaic age, the fashion. There can be no question of the fact. Even Johnson bears unwilhng and scornful witness to it by protesting that Addison "has made Milton an universal favourite, with whom read- ers of every class think it necessary to be pleased." ^ Nor was the idea pecuHar to Johnson; for some years earlier Gibber had affirmed that as a result of the Spectator papers "it became even unfashion- able not to have read" Milton.^ Warburton also, according to 1 Dodsley's Museum (1747)) iii- 284. * To Health, in Odes (1746), 18. Cf. an anonymous poem entitled Milton (Univ. Mag., 1780, Ixvii. 375): Unenvying Greece and Rome their claims resign, And own the palm of Poetry is thine. Thomas Newcomb said almost the same thing in the second stanza of his On Milton's Paradice Lost {Miscellaneous Poems, 1740, p. 17). * xviii. 328 (1764). * William Massey, Remarks upon P. L. (1761), p. iv * Explanatory Notes (1734), P- xiv. ' "Addison," in Lives (ed. Hill), ii. 147 (Good, p. 257). ^ Lives (1753), V. 196 n. (Good, pp. 257-8). MILTON'S FAME 23 Gray, spoke of ''the World . . . obliged by fashion to admire" Milton and Shakespeare; and the dilettante Horace Walpole asked a friend to procure him "a print of Vallombrosa," because of the "passion there is for it in England, as Milton has mentioned it." ^ As late as 1793 John Aikin declared, "A relish for the works of Milton is not only a test of sensibility to the more exquisite beauties of poetry, but a kind of measure of the exaltation of the mind in its moral and rehgious sentiments." ^ Thomas Warton, though unwill- ing to go so far as this, anticipated Tennyson's oft-quoted dictum by asserting, "He who wishes to know whether he has a true taste for Poetry or not, should consider, whether he is highly deHghted or not with the perusal of Milton's Lycidas." ^ "He who professes he has no Taste for Milton,^' remarked still another, "is justly deemed to have no Taste for Polite Literature," * a phrase that recalls Steele's surprising reference to Otway, Milton, and Dryden as among "the most polite Writers of the Age." ^ But Steele had previously im- phed that the loftiest of English poets occupied this anomalous posi- tion; for in one of the early numbers of the Tatler Mr. Bickerstaff visits Sappho, "a fine lady " who, through breaking a fan "wherein were so admirably drawn our first parents in Paradise asleep in each other's arms," has been led to "reading the same representation in two of our greatest poets. . . . All Milton's thoughts," declares the fair chatterer, "are wonderfully just and natural, in this inimitable description. . . . But now I cannot forgive this odious thing, this Dryden." On a later occasion Sappho repeats to some ladies lines from two poets, Sir John Suckling and Milton, who had said "the tenderest things she had ever read" on the subject of love; and in still another issue of the Tatler Milton's lines on wedded love are quoted at a wedding breakfast.^ No wonder Pope remarked, "Our wives read Milton." ^ But even in 1702, when Steele was just be- ginning to write, a would-be wit and critic was represented as slight- 1 See Gray's letter to Wharton, Oct. 7, 1757, and Walpole's to Horace Mann, May 13, 1752 (Good, pp. 183, 219). 2 Letters from a Father to his Son (1800), ii. 269 (Good, p. 138). 3 In his edition of Milton's minor poems (1785), p. 34. ■* John Marchant, in his edition of Paradise Lost (1751), p. viii. ^ This is the more significant because it occurs in the Ladies Library (1714), i. 2-4 (Good, p. 157). ^ Tatler, nos. 6, 40, 79. In the Student (1751, ii. 381), "a giddy young girl" named Flirtilla falls into "a rhapsodic vision" while reading Milton's description of Pande- monium (Good, p. 184); and Elizabeth Rowe speaks of a young lady who was so ab- sorbed in reading Milton in the park as not to notice an approaching admirer {Works, 1796, i. lis). ^ Imitations of Horace, II. i. 172. 24 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON ing Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, and Congreve, but as being "a. great Admirer of the incomparable Millon," whose ^^ Sublime'^ he "fondly endeavours to imitate." ^ The inevitable result of this homage was that it came to require courage to say anything whatever against "the favourite poet of this nation," as John Jortin called him.^ "Whoever," remarked the Monthly Revieiv in 1760, "at this time ventures to carp at . . . Paradise Lost, must whisper his criticism with caution"; ^ and even the great Chesterfield, in admitting to his son, "I cannot possibly read , . . Milton through," was constrained to add, "Keep this secret for me; for if it should be known, I should be abused by every tasteless pedant, and every solid divine, in England." * Presumably there were many who, like Chesterfield, dared not avow their indifference to a work which was regarded not only as "the finest poem in the world" but as a touchstone of poetic taste; yet such persons must have kept their thoughts to themselves, for adverse comments rarely found their way into print. And though some, no doubt, affected a liking for the epic which they did not feel, the genuine enthusiasm of hundreds of writers cannot be questioned. Milton must have been read, for imitations of his style and diction and borrowings from his phraseology are scattered through eight- eenth-century literature Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa. In fact, so many persons really knew the pieces that it was probably not safe to pretend to a knowledge which one did not possess. Even shepherds were observed "poring in the fields" over the epic; ^ and a Bristol milkwoman, Ann Yearsley, whose versifying was encour- aged by Hannah More, was "well acquainted" with the Night Thoughts and Paradise Lost but "was astonished to learn that Young and Milton had written anything else. Of Pope, she had only seen the Eloisa; and Dryden, Spenser, Thomson, and Prior, were quite unknown to her, even by name;" she had read "a few ^ The English Theophrastus, or the Manners of the Age (attributed to Abel Boyer) , 10; pointed out in Dowden's Milton in the Eighteenth Century (British Acad., Proceedings, 1907-8, p. 279). ^ "Milton," in Remarks on Spenser's Poems (1734), 171. ^ xxii. 119. The same idea is expressed by the " Gentleman of Oxford " in the preface to his New Version of the P. L. (see above, p. 6). ^ Letter, Oct. 4, 1752. "I spoke of . . . Paradise Lost,'' wrote Cowper to Hayley, Feb. 24, 1793, "as every man must, who is worthy to speak of it at all." ^ Boswell's Johnson (ed. Hill), iv. 43 n. MILTON'S FAME 25 of Shakespeare's plays." ^ These facts almost make one accept at their face value such assertions as, " Para^we Lo^/ . . , is read with Pleasure and Admiration, by Persons of every Degree and Condi- tion;" - or, "The . . . Poem is in every One's Hand;" ^ or, "Re- markable therefore it is, that Paradise Lost and Young's Night Thoughts are read by all sorts of people. . . . the common people . . . are fond of Milton's poems." ^ So general, in fact, did this fondness become that children were early introduced to the poems. It will be remembered that the Swan of Lichfield "Usped" — if a swan may be permitted to lisp — Allegro and Penseroso "when only in her third year," and that Cowper's enthusiasm dated from his boyhood.^ Ebenezer Elliott could in his sixteenth year repeat the first, second, and sixth books of Paradise Lost "without missing a word";® and a twelve-year-old girl, CaroHne Symmons, was so 'passionately attached' to Milton that to have been the author of his octosyllabics she 'would have declined no personal sacrifice of face or form.' ^ In order that chil- dren might appreciate the beauties of Milton, editions of his poems were prepared especially for them. The popular clergyman. Dr. Dodd, recommended his Familiar Explanation oj the Poetical Works of Milton "especially to Parents, and those who have the Care of Youth; if they are desirous that their Children and Trusts should be acquainted with the Graces of the British Homer. . . . The fair Sex in particular," he added, "will receive great Advantages from it." ^ As early as 1717 a " Collection of Poems from our most Cele- brated English Poets, designed for the Use of Young Gentlemen and 1 Mo. Rev., Ixxiii. 218 (1785). The reading of Paradise Lost was recommended in John Hill's Actor (1755, p. 96) as the ideal training for a player. 2 William Massey, Remarks upon P. L. (1761), p. iii; cf. p. v, "this Book, that is now so universally read." ^ James Paterson, Complete Commentary on P. L. (1744), p. ii. * Robert Potter, The Art of Criticism, as exemplified in Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1789), 184-5, 188. It should be observed, however, that William Hayley, in his life of Milton (2d ed., 1796, p. 226), speaks of him as "more admired than beloved," and that Cowper, in a letter to Hayley (May 9, 1 792) , owns it is " no small disgrace to us English that being natives of a country that has produced the finest poem in the world, so few of us ever look into it. I am acquainted myself," he continues, " with at least a score, who account themselves pretty good judges of poetry too, and persons of taste, who yet know no more of the poem than the mere subject of it." Neither of these men, however, would have been content with much less than idolatry of Milton, and Cowper at least did not have a wide or a representative circle of acquaintances. ^ See pp. 7, 10, above. * Autobiography, in Athenaeum, Jan. 12, 1850, p. 48. ^ Memoir appended to F. Wrangham's Raising of Jatrus' Daughter (1804), 25. ^ Preface (dated 1761), pp. vi-vii. 26 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Ladies, at Schools," ^ included eighteen selections from the epic and one from Samson, together with Dryden's hnes on Milton; and in 1783 appeared The Beauties of Milton, Thomson, and Young, for "the rising youth of both sexes." Nearly half of Poetry Explained for Young People (1802), by the father of Maria Edgeworth, is devoted to Allegro and Penseroso; while still later in the century the great actress, Mrs. Siddons, made an abridgment of the epic for her chil- dren, because she "was naturally desirous that their minds should be inspired with an early admiration of Milton." This was after- wards published as The Story of our First Parents, selected from Para- dise Lost for the Use of Young Persons (1822). A similar work, The Story of Paradise Lost for Children,^ a prose dialogue which included some of the original verse, was deemed worthy of repubhcation in New England, where, it is said, "during the greater part of the nine- teenth century . . . the Paradise Lost was practically a text-book. Children were compelled, as an exercise, to commit long passages of it by heart." ^ Such tasks were not always so distasteful as one might expect. We are told that the war of the angels was the "favourite of chil- dren," and we know that it was on the basis of his own boyhood en- thusiasm for the octosyllabics and the epic that Cowper recom- mended the memorizing of parts of them by another boy.^ It was natural that Milton should be urged upon children if there were many persons, as there seem to have been, who believed with Dr. Johnson that "in reading Paradise Lost we read a book of universal knowledge," ^ and especially if many agreed with a certain editor — ^ The Virgin Muse, compiled by James Greenwood. 2 By Eliza W. Bradburn, Portland, 1830, "first American, from the London edi- tion." Cf. below, p. 36. ^ C. F. Adams, in the New York Nation, Ixxxvii. 600 (1908). According to Mr. Adams, the Puritans of the new world were fifty years behind the mother country in their recognition of the religious epic. "Milton's poems," he writes, "were almost unknown in New England until about the middle of the eighteenth century. There is no well-authenticated case of a copy of Paradise Lost on a Massachusetts book-shelf before that period yet brought to light. From about the year 1750 to the beginning of the nineteenth century there is abundant evidence of growing familiarity." Many Americans now living learned grammar by parsing Paradise Lost. * Potter, Art of Criticism, 13; Cowper to William Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782, and cf. pp. 7, 10, above. "Milton is my favourite," wrote the profligate Lord Lyttelton in the third quarter of the century; "... I read him with delight as soon as I could read at all" (quoted in Thomas Frost's life of Lyttelton, 1876, pp. 3-4). Southey tells us that Paradise Lost was one of the first books he owned {Lije and Correspondence, 1849, i. 86) ; and W. S. Walker was deep in Milton at six years old (i. e., in 1801, see his Poetical Remains, ed. Moultrie, 1852, pp. iv-v). ' "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 183. Johnson probably refers to the first lines of MILTON'S FAME 27 who, to be sure, was recommending a particular edition of the poem as a text-book — that, *'as it exhibits a view of every thing great in the whole circle of Being, it would (besides greatly improving them [schoolboys] in their own language) wonderfully open the capacity, improve the judgment, elevate the ideas, refine the imagination, and, finally, infuse a just and noble relish for all that is beautiful and great in the Aeneid and Iliad." ^ Two men, at least, seem to have shared this opinion. Edmund Burke, whose speeches abound with quotations from Milton, "always recommended the study of him to his son, and to all his younger friends, as exhibiting the highest pos- sible range of mind in the English language." ^ And Richard Baron wrote: "Milton in particular ought to be read and studied by all our young Gentlemen as an Oracle. He was a great and noble Genius, perhaps the greatest that ever appeared among men. . . . His works are full of wisdom, a treasure of knowledge." ^ But, though a boy were brought up in ignorance of Milton, the defect would probably be remedied at the university ; for, according to Robert Lloyd, ' Milton-madness ' was an afifectation Glean'd up from college education.* Even at the beginning of the century at least three Oxford professors of poetry, Joseph Trapp, Thomas Warton, and Joseph Spence, were imitators of Milton; Gray and the younger Thomas Warton lived at the universities, and most of the poet's enthusiastic admirers were college men. The extent of their enthusiasm is shown in the volumes of verse written by members of universities in celebration of various public events. These sumptuous folios and quartos are thickly strewn with octosyllabics and blank verse derived from Milton's work, as well as with phrases taken from it; and one of the coUec- Barrow's Latin verses prefixed to the second edition of Paradise Lost, which were thus translated in the Genlleman's Magazine, xxx. 291 (cf. p. 21 above): Who reads Lost Paradise, the fall Of wretched man, what reads he less than all? All nature's works; from whence they rose; Their fates and ends; these lofty lines disclose. Thomas Marriott says the same thing in his Female Conduct, i759> P- 99 (noted by Good, p. 83) ; and in the preface to the prose paraphrase of the epic we read, "It com- prehends almost every Thing within the Extent of human Knowledge." 1 James Buchanan, First Six Books of P. L., rendered into Grammatical Construction (Edin., 1773), 1-2. * Prior's Burke (5th ed., 1854), 30. ' Preface to Eikonoklastes, 1756 (Good, p. 175). * On Rhyme (written c.1760), in Poetical Works, 1774, ii. 112. 28 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON tions contains as many as twenty pieces which employ the meter, style, and diction of Paradise Lost} It may be partly as a result of this early reading that Miltonic allusions rose so naturally to the lips even of "the general" in the eighteenth century. The word "monody," for instance, which is hardly more common to-day than it was before the appearance of Lycidas, was much used after 1740.^ The god Comus, too, became a recognized deity who existed quite apart from Milton's masque; ^ a "busto" of him, erected in a buffet at Hammersmith, attracted con- siderable attention, and the "temple of Comus" formed one of the most prominent features of Vauxhall.^ In this same resort, further- more, was a statue by the much-admired Roubillac which repre- sented Milton " 'seated on a rock, in an attitude [of] Kstening to soft music,' as described by himself, in his II Penseroso."^ As no place of amusement was more fashionable or popular than Vauxhall, this is as if a Hkeness of the poet were to face the board walk at Atlantic City. More private tributes are to be found in the facts that ten lines from Penseroso were inscribed in a room of the hermitage at Hagley Park,^ that there was "a beautiful Alcove called II Pense- roso " at the end of a garden walk in Surrey,^ and that Jane Porter and her sister were dubbed "L'AUegro " and " II Penseroso." Yet the vogue of the poems was not due entirely to the reading of Milton; for Comus, with abridged text, additional songs and dances, and attractive new music, came to be one of the most persistently popular musical entertainments of the century. At the same time, Samson Agonistes, the octosyllabics, and the version of the Psalms were repeatedly sung in Handel's very popular oratorios; the Song on May Morning and the hymn of Adam and Eve were set to music and "performed";^ Lycidas was presented as a "musical enter tain- 1 See Bibl. I, 1761 {Pietas Oxon.). Two of the other collections of 1761 and 1762 each contain twelve such pieces, and some eighteen or twenty more are listed in Bibli- ographies I and II under the years 1761, 1762,1763. Thomas Warton the younger had a good deal to do with several of these volumes. J. Husbands's Miscellany, published at Oxford in 1731, contains ten poems that are significantly influenced by Paradise Lost and one by Penseroso. ^ See below, pp. 549-55, 680-81. ^ I have collected over twenty passages in which the god Comus is spoken of with apparently no thought of Milton. The latest is in Byron's English Bards, line 650. * Pearch's Collection (1783), i. 329; Austin Dobson's "Old Vauxhall," Eighteenth Century Vignettes (ist series, 1892), 241. * Dobson, ib. 244. ' Joseph Heely, Letters on Hagley, etc. (1777), i. 193 (Good, p. 211). ^ Lotid. Mag., xxxii. 554 (1763). ^ Cf. pp. 430-32 below. For the Song, with music by M. C. Festing, see Miscellany of Lyric Poems performed in the Academy of Music (1740), 61-2; the hymn, "set to musick" by J. E. Galliard, was published in 1728 and 1773. MILTON'S FAME 29 ment" in memory of the Duke of York; ^ parts of Allegro and the Arcades were used as songs in Garrick's opera, The Fairies (1755); and Paradise Lost was arranged for an oratorio at least four times, •once by the great Mrs. Delany for Handel and once as the basis of Haydn's Creation." Considerable interest was also aroused by Fuseli's " Milton Gallery," where paintings for an edition of the poet were exhibited during parts of two successive years (1799, 1800). Eut the most curious of these extra-literary evidences of a general interest in the poet is afforded by Philip de Loutherbourg's "Eido- phusikon." This precursor of the "Johnstown Flood" and the moving pictures, which consisted of cardboard models skilfully illumi- nated by colored Hghts, enjoyed unusual popularity in the years 1781 and 1786 and was warmly commended even by Reynolds and Gains- borough. The culminating scene was "Satan arraying his Troops on the Banks of the Fiery Lake, with the Raising of Pandemonium, from Milton." ^ The vitality of the enthusiasm for Milton in the eighteenth cen- tury is indicated by the storms of protest which broke over the heads of any who dared attack him. Three books in particular roused the fury of the poet's "idolators." The first was the 1732 edition of Paradise Lost undertaken at the suggestion of Queen Caroline by the great classical scholar Richard Bentley, who pretended to believe that the blind poet's assistants, besides misunderstanding his dicta- tion and admitting errors through carelessness, had deliberately in- troduced many changes into the text. "Slashing Bentley," as Pope termed him, accordingly substituted " a transpicuous gloom" for the famous "darkness visible," and bracketed as interpolations the line Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides and the one that follows it, as well as the superb passage which ends, When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia. These last lines, which were termed "a heap of barbarous Words, without any Ornament or Poetical colouring," Bentley would have 1 Lycidas, a Musical Entertainment, the words altered from Milton [by William Jackson], 1767. * See Mrs. Delany's Autobiography and Correspondence, 1861, ii. 280 (letter to Mrs. Dewes, March 10, 1743/4). Mrs. Delany's arrangement and that of Richard Jago (Adam, 1784?) were never sung; but Benjamin Stillingfleet's, set to music by Handel's pupil and assistant J. C. Smith, was printed and twice performed in 1760. Haydn, as Mr. Alwin Thaler points out in his Milton in the Theatre (Univ. of North Carolina, Studies in Philology, xvii. 283-4), used a German rendering of a libretto made by a Mr. Lidley (or Liddell), which was later put back into EngUsh. ^ Austin Dobson, At Prior Park, etc. (191 2), 1 14-16, 280. 30 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON omitted, because Milton ''surely . . . had more Judgment in his old Age, than to clog and sully his Poem with such Romantic Trash." Changes Hke these — and there are hundreds of them — are to-day simply amusing, or amazing, instances of misapplied in- genuity, but on their first appearance they were regarded as a seri- ous matter and called forth immediate protest. The magazines were filled with essays and verses, the booksellers' windows with pam- phlets, satires, and learned refutations of the "sacrilege" to Mil- ton's work. Bentley's name became synonymous with pedantic folly, and is embalmed as such in The Dimciad and in the critical essays and notes that accompany it. Sneers and execrations con- tinued to be directed at his work throughout the century, but within fifteen years popular interest was diverted to a new wonder. This was the charge brought by the Rev. William Lauder that considerable parts of Paradise Lost were simply paraphrases of little- known foreign poets. The accusation, first made in the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1747, reached its fullest development in an Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns, published towards the close of 1 749. If Bentley's emendations had called up a storm of protest, Lauder's writings roused a tempest. Inquiries, protests, denials, reviews, lampoons, and prophecies, in both prose and verse, were poured upon the bloody but unbowed head of Mil- ton's detractor. In the main, however, the charges were not dis- proved until November, 1750, when the Bishop of Salisbury showed that the passages which Milton was accused of borrowing were not in the works referred to but had been taken by Lauder from William Hog's Latin translation of Paradise Lost (1690).^ The attention at- tracted by the forgery is indicated not only by the ten books or pamphlets written upon it, and by the articles, nearly forty in num- ber, which a single magazine devoted to the subject, but by many humbler protests, such as "Verses intended to have been spoken at the Breaking-up of the Free Grammar school in Manchester, in . . . 1748, when Lauder's charge of Plagiarism upon Milton engaged the Public Attention." ^ Upon the detection of the fraud. Dr. Johnson, who had written the preface to Lauder's book, dictated a letter of confession and apology which he compelled the offender to publish over his own 1 Sir John Douglas, Milton vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism (1751). Oddly enough, Lauder had himself, in his translation of Grotius's Eucharistia (1732), made some use of the verse and style of Paradise Lost. 2 John Byrom, Poems (Chetham Soc, 1894), i. 178-92. Byrom's loyalty to Milton is the more interesting because he was not an admirer of blank verse (see ib. 387-93, and, for his controversy with Roger Comberbach on the subject, 411-28). MILTON'S FAME 3 1 name; yet the readiness with which the Doctor believed charges which most persons doubted seems to indicate an antipathy to Milton that is unquestionably present in his life of the poet (1779). In this work, which is marred by gratuitous sneers, misrepresenta- tion of motives, and a willingness to beHeve the worst things that had been said of its subject, Milton's character, political activities, and prose writings are treated with the intense partisanship of a bigoted Tory. The ire of the poet's admirers was immediately aflame, and the biographer received as rough treatment as he had given. Within a year of the appearance of the Life, Archdeacon Francis Blackburne twice published a lengthy arraignment of "the meanness . . . the virulent malignity" exhibited by "the grand exemplar of literary prostitution," in which he thus explained John- son's reasons for writing the biography: "When the Doctor found, on some late occasions, that his crude abuse and malicious criticisms would not bring down Milton to the degree of contempt with the public which he had assigned him in the scale of prose- writers ; he fell upon an expedient which has sometimes succeeded in particular exigencies. In one word, he determined to write his Life." ^ These are harsh words for an archdeacon, and there are harsher in his book ; but they are all less surprising than the exclamation of the sweet- spirited recluse of Olney, "Oh! I could thresh his old jacket, till I made his pension jingle in his pocket." " Nor was Cowper's wrath short-lived, for thirteen years later he refers to "that Uterary cos- sack's strictures" on his idol, and bursts out with, "Oh that John- son! how does every page of his on the subject, ay, almost every paragraph, kindle my indignation!" ^ Indeed, anger at Johnson's biography flamed many a year after Cowper was no more. In 18 18, almost four decades after the appear- ance of the offending work, another writer devoted an entire book to attacking it. This critic found the Doctor's "antipathy so marked, so virulent and unrelenting," his "enmity" so "inexorable," that it was "difficult to conjecture into what vehemence of angry reproach it might have hurried him had it not been bridled by his awe of the pubHc."^ 1 Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton (1780), 131, 148, 22-3. The Remarks first appeared in Blackburne's Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (1780), 533*-84*- 2 Cowper's letter to William Unwin, Oct. 31, 1779; cf. also Jan. 17, 1782, and March 21, 1784. 3 To William Hayley, Oct. 13 and May i, 1792; and cf. Nov. 22, 1793. In a letter to Walter Bagot, May 2, 1791 (cf. also March 18, 1791), Cowper promises a "future letter" in which "Johnson gets another slap or two." * T. H. White, Remew of Johnson's Criticism on Milton's Prose (1818), 29-30. 32 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON The bitterness against Johnson — and it was widespread — is the more remarkable because, aside from Lycidas and the sonnets, Mil- ton's poems received far more commendation from the Ursa Major of literature than one would expect; to the epic in particular he gave extensive and very high praise. All this approbation, however, was swept aside by the devotees of the poet on the ground that the Doctor dared not do less. "He praises Milton," flared Miss Seward, "under the eye of the public as Pistol eat his leek under that of Fluellen. After all, he endeavours to do away, collectively, all his reluctant praise of that glorious and beautiful poem, by observing, that no person closes its pages with the desire of recurring to them. ... A self-evident, I could almost say an impudent falsehood." ^ Clearly, Milton's admirers were not easily satisfied. Is it any wonder that Richard Edgeworth feared lest some persons would "deem it a species of literary sacrilege to criticize any part of" the octosylla- bics,^ when Cowper was so displeased with some remarks made by the great Miltonian, Thomas Warton, that he wrote, "Warton in truth is not much better " than Johnson and " deserves . . . to lose his own" ear because he "has dared to say that he [Milton] had a bad one"? ^ However interesting in itself, such sensitiveness to any criticism of their "idol" would be of little importance if it had been Kmited to a few persons; what gives these controversies their significance is the large number who took part in them. "The question, whether Milton borrow'd from Masenius" wrote an Englishman in Louvain to the Gentleman's Magazine, "concerns, in my opinion, the whole nation";* and the whole nation seems to have taken the matter as its concern. All of which is inconceivable to-day. When 1 Letters (1811), iv. 133. Other criticisms of Johnson's Life will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine, xlix. 492-3 (1779, two letters) , lix. 413-17; Monthly Review, Ixi. 81-92 (1779), Ixii. 479-83; Horace Walpole's letters to William Mason, Oct. 13, 1780, Feb. 5 and 19, 178 1, April 14, 1782 (in the last of these he says that Thomas Stratford "cannot bear the name of Johnson, for his paltry acrimony against Milton"); Lord Monboddo's letter to Sir George Baker, Oct. 2, 1782 (William Knight's Lord Monboddo, etc., 1900, p. 214); Robert Potter's Art of Criticism (1789), 6-19; Philip Neve's Cursory Remarks on English Poets (1789), 113, 134; Thomas Twining's letter to his brother, May 3, 1784 {Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century, 1882, p. 120). Johnson's criticisms of Samson {Rambler, 1751, nos. 139, 140) were refuted by W. J. Mickle and Richard Cumberland {Europ. Mag., 1788, xiii. 401-6; Observer, 1788, no. in). 2 Poetry explained for Young People (1802), p. ix. 3 Letters to Hayley, May i, 1792, and Lady Hesketh, March 6, 1786; and cf . below, p. 57, n. 5. Samuel Darby's pamphlet of forty-one pages, Letter to T. Warton on his Edition of Milton's Juvenile Poems (1785), though not hostile in tone, is another illus- tration of the amount of attention Milton attracted. * xvii. 567 (Good, p. 189). MILTON'S FAME 33 we remember our perfunctory celebrations of the centenaries of Shakespeare and Milton, we can hardly believe that there ever was a time when for four years the most popular magazine of the day printed article after article regarding an alleged literary plagiarism, and when even schoolboys declaimed upon the subject. It is harder still to realize that any large number of persons ever became deeply interested in revisions of the text of a poet sixty years dead. These astonishing tributes to the "immeasurably great" popular- ity of one who expected his audience to be "few" require explana- tion. How did it happen that poems which are to-day the admira- tion of a relatively small number excited, a century and a half ago, the enthusiasm of many? One reason immediately suggests itself, — the religious character of the epic. The avowed purpose of Paradise Lost is to "justify the ways of God to men," and its persistent and noble prosecution of that purpose has made it the greatest religious poem in English. Nowadays this aspect of the work is either over- looked or remembered with little satisfaction. To most of us the ways of Milton's anthropomorphic God are neither justified nor made attractive; we find little in his two major poems that seems distinctively Christian, little of the patient love for erring men and the yearning to help them that breathe in the parables of the prodi- gal son and the good shepherd. But in the eighteenth century, when the more tender aspects of Christianity were emphasized much less than they are now, their absence was little felt; then theology was more important, and to most of the orthodox the Puri- tan justification was satisfactory. The dissenters in particular, who counted Milton peculiarly their own, — as he was, — frequently held his epic second in importance only to the Bible. Among the earhest of his admirers and imitators, as we shall see later, was a group of writers who seem to have caught their enthusi- asm at the nonconformist academy they attended in boyhood ; and not a few of his other "adorers," like John Toland, Richard Baron, Thomas Hollis, did not belong to the estabhshed church. But all, the orthodox Addison, the deistic Thomson, the Catholic Pope, all agreed as to the importance of the moral and reUgious, the con- sciously didactic, element in poetry. A main point in Dennis's criti- cism was "that Religion is the Basis and Foundation of the greater Poetry," ^ and so late as 1797 the Monthly Review spoke of poetry as simply "a happy vehicle for conveying instruction." ^ Addison was 1 Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), 94. 2 Enlarged ed., xxiv. 460. The preacher's life should correspond with his instruc- tion; hence Pope's anxiety that his life be regarded as "the nobler song." "I much 34 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON even willing to mar the perfect conclusion of Paradise Lost by omit- ting the last two lines, in order that the poem might end with the words "and Providence their guide." The rehgious aspects of the epic unquestionably had much to do with the admiration it awak- ened in Dennis, Addison, Thomson, Young, Cowper, and even Wordsworth. It was this side of the work that called forth John- son's highest praise and so deeply impressed Gildon that he censured Addison for discussing the poem as an epic. Paradise Lost, he main- tained, "is not an heroic poem, but a divine one, and indeed a new species." ^ It must be remembered that a large number of the writers of this period were clergymen, and also that men by no means distinguished for their piety were unanimous in thinking that all great hterature teaches religion and morality. For it was at once the weakness and the strength of the eighteenth century that writers and critics of the period did not regard literary beauty as its own excuse for being. Even among the frivolous and the dissipated Para- dise Lost would never have achieved the reputation it did, if it had not been a moral and religious power. Not, of course, that the genu- ine liking which many of the fashionable felt for the poem was due primarily to its lofty ethical value; yet without that they might never have read it at all, and would certainly not have held it in that profound respect which was the basis of its popularity. But, though important even with the frivolous, the religious ele- ment loomed large indeed with the more serious of the gentry and with the middle class. There were thousands of readers upon whom the supreme poetic gifts of Milton were practically wasted, devout persons who regarded his richly-colored epic as little more than a rehgious tract. The humble folk who for a century had been thrilled by Fox's Book of Martyrs and had consumed edition after edition of the despised Pilgrim'' s Progress, were also attracted to Paradise Lost. To make the poem intelligible to them various devices were em- ployed. Annotation, the most obvious expedient, was of course repeatedly used; and some editions, like the Rev. Dr. Dodd's Familiar Explanation (1762), were addressed particularly to the young and the uneducated.^ Omission of classical allusions, in- volved similes, and other difficult passages was tried by John more resent," he wrote to Aaron Hill, Feb. 5, 1730/31, "any attempt against my moral character, which I know to be unjust, than any to lessen my poetical one, which . . . may be very just." See also T. R. Lounsbury's Text oj Shakespeare (N. Y., 1906) , 468- 82. The constant advocacy of Paradise Lost in the Taller and the Spectator may have been part of the campaign of uplift to which those periodicals were devoted. 1 Laws of Poetry (1721), 259. * See above, p. 25. MILTON'S FAME 35 Wesley/ and also, with astonishing results, by "a Gentleman of Oxford." ^ In the last-mentioned product of academic leisure there was an attempt to remove from the poem not only its learning and obscurity but its long sentences and its "roughness," an experiment which led to such nondescript verse as this: Of Adam's Fall, and the forbidden Tree, Whose Fruit brought Sin and Death into the World, With Loss of Paradise and Immortality, To Him and to his Sons — sing, heavenly Muse! But the assistance which the less educated readers found most to their taste was more direct and even more astonishing than these makeshifts. It was a prose version, and, what is more, an English translation of a French translation of the original. In 1729 Dupre de St. Maur published in Paris, and in 1743 reissued with correc- tions, a translation of Milton's epic into French prose, which two years later was put back into Enghsh, probably by the same "Gen- tleman of Oxford." ^ The work was printed ten times, and obvi- ously for religious reasons, since it is made up of this sort of thing: Thus Satan kept talking to Beelzebub, with his Head lifted up above the Waves, and glancing his Eyes from Side to Side: As for his other Parts, he lay extended in a melancholy Condition, floating in Length and Breadth over a vast Space of the Abyss.^ Another attempt, made in 1773, to render the poem intelligible to "persons of a common Education" was James Buchanan's "First Six Books of Milton's Paradise Lost, rendered into Grammatical Construction; the words of the Text being arranged, at the bottom of each Page, in the same natural Order with the Conceptions of the mind; and the Ellipsis properly supphed, without any Alteration in the Diction of the Poem," — this is but a third of the complete title! John Gillies's edition of the poem, "illustrated with Texts of Scrip- ture," pubhshed in 1788 and reprinted in 1793, affords a further in- dication of the number of readers who associated Milton, not with ^ Extract from P. L. (1791). In the first book alone such omissions amount to over 220 lines, and include many of the finest passages. A similar free use of the scissors reduces the first five lines of the second book to "High on a throne, Satan exalted sat." ^ A New Version of the P. L. , in which the Measure and Versification are corrected and harmonized, the Obscurities elucidated, and the Faults removed [book i only], Oxford, 1756 (said to be the work of G. S. Green) . ^ The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, rendered into Prose, with notes from the French of Raymond de St. Maur, "by a Gentleman of Oxford," 1745. At least two prose versions of Paradise Regained were also published, one in 1771 {The Recovery of Man) and the other with Paradise Lost in 1775. * Page 11; cf. P. L., i. 192-6. 36 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Shakespeare and Spenser, but with Bunyan, Fox, and Watts; for the notes consist simply of passages from the Bible. Even so late as 1830 there appeared in Portland, Maine, the Story of Paradise Lost for Children,^ an, innocuous work of the old Sunday-school-library type which has fortunately passed away. The "story," with many quotations from the original, some of considerable length, is drawn from "Mamma," who talks Hke a rhetoric, by EHza, Emily, and William, children of awful goodness and wisdom, all under eleven years of age ! Through such paraphrases as these Milton reached a class of persons who read little poetry of any sort and none of the rank of an epic, yet some of whom must have been attracted from the prose versions to the original. The extent of the influence ex- erted in this way cannot be measured, but no doubt it was in part due to these prose renderings that Paradise Lost was thought to have "contributed more to support the orthodox creed, than all the bodies of divinity that were ever written." ^ But there were reasons other than the religious why Milton's poetry roused more enthusiasm in the days of Pope and of the Wartons than it does now. For one thing, it was much more of a novelty : the dew of its morning was still upon it. Not, of course, that Paradise Lost was new at any time in the eighteenth century ; but it was different, people had not become accustomed to it, and in consequence it had not sunk into the position of respected neg- lect occupied by most classics. Even late in the century a first reading of it often had something of the thrill of discovery. This difference between Milton's work and that of other poets impressed the neo-classicists strongly because their literature, both what they wrote and what they read, was in almost every respect far less like Paradise Lost than ours is. To be sure, Milton's poetry resembles that of the Elizabethans, but about most of this earlier verse his readers knew little and cared less. What struck them as particularly different from their own work was the daring wildness of the epic. It was "read by all sorts of people ... for its extrava- gance," we are told.^ Such terms as "magnificently wild," a "genius ^ By Eliza W. Bradburn. ^ Mo. Rev., enl. ed., 1792, ix. 5 (Good, p. 220). Cf. Huxley's remark apropos of the notion that the universe was suddenly created from chaos: "I believe it is largely to the influence of that remarkable work [Paradise Lost] . . . that this hypothesis owes its general wide diffusion" ("Lectures on Evolution," 1876, in Science and Hebrew Tradi- tion, N. Y., 1894, p. 52). ^ R. Potter, Art of Criticism (1789), 185. Philip Neve (Cursory Remarks on English Poets, 1789, p. 141) praises "the terror excited by the sublimity" of Milton's "design." The wildness and extravagance of the epic had impressed people from the first; it was on this account that Addison devoted his Spectator papers to proving the regularity of the poem. MILTON'S FAME 37 . . . Astonishing as chaos," ^ were frequently applied to its author, who was regarded as a kind of Michaelangelo of verse, less regular than Homer and Virgil but, in the words of Dennis, "more lofty, more terrible, more vehement, more astonishing," and with "more impetuous and more divine Raptures." ^ Collins pictured him High on some cliff, to heaven up-piled, Of rude access, of prospect wild, Where, tangled round the jealous steep. Strange shades o'erbrow the valleys deep.^ Gray praised "that enchanting air of freedom and wildness" in his versification; * and another poet mentioned "splendid Acts" which "require A Milton, or a Muse of Fire." ^ It was of Milton that Isaac Watts immediately thought when he invoked the "Adventur- ous Muse." " Give me," he wrote, Give me the Muse whose generous Force Impatient of the Reins Pursues an unattempted Course, Breaks all the Criticks Iron Chains, And bears to Paradise the raptur'd Mind. There Milton dwells: The Mortal sung Themes not presum'd by mortal Tongue; New Terrors and new Glories shine In every Page, and flying Scenes Divine Surprize the wond'ring Sense, & draw our Souls along.* The same characteristics were emphasized by the figures of speech under which Milton was described. He is an "Eagle, wonderful in his soarings, [who] shews in his very stoops the power of his wing"; he "pours upon us a torrent of images, great and terrible"; or, to versify the figure, Milton is like a Flood, whose Tide, Swell'd with tempestuous Deluge, roars, Which from some lofty Mountain's Side Resistless foams, and knows no Shores.' ^ Robert Merry, Diversity, 1788, in British Album (Boston, 1793), 231; Thomson, Summer, 1569-70. ^ Reflections upon an Essay upon Criticism, 1711, p. 17 (Good, p. 150). ' Ode on the Poetical Character, 55-8. * Observations on English Metre, in Works (ed. Mitford), v. 233. 5 G. T. Ridsdale, Ode, Congratulatory, etc. (Dublin, 1799), 14. ^ Adventurous Muse, in Horae Lyricae (2d ed., 1709), 212. Half of the piece is de- voted to Milton, who is the only poet mentioned. ' Daniel Webb, Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry (1762), 13; Leonard Welsted, "Remarks on Longinus," 171 2, Works (1787), 422; Verses to the Author, "by a Divine," in Stephen Duck's Poems (1738), 129. (/ 38 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON "In his most exalted flights," wrote Leonard Welsted, "... he appears to me as a vast comet, that for want of room is ready to burst its orb and grow eccentric." ^ This last comment, like some of the passages previously quoted, hints that Paradise Lost was not in complete conformity with the neo-classic rules, a charge that was often made and freely admitted even by Milton's admirers. Dennis, who touched upon nearly all aspects of the work, characterized it as "the most lofty, but most irregular Poem, that has been produc'd by the Mind of Man " ; ^ and a writer in the Bee, in 1732, declared Milton to be "a prodigious, tho' an irregular Genius." ^ It may be remembered that when Boileau, in Lyttelton's dialogue, referred to the critics who were dis- turbed by the "absurdities" and "extravagant fictions" of the poem, Pope replied that Milton's "Genius was indeed so vast and sublime, that his Work seems beyond the Limits of Criticism." * This defence, though it sounds strangely romantic, was the one usually offered. Samuel Wesley thought the English Homer "rather above the common Rules of Epic than ignorant of them"; ^ Gray, who was the antithesis of an irregular or formless poet, praised Mil- ton's versification for being "unconfined by any rules but those which his own feeling and the nature of his subject demanded";^ and Watts wrote. Immortal Bard! Thus thy own Raphael sings, And knows no Rule but native Fire.^ Even to Addison Paradise Lost seemed "above the critic's nicer laws," ^ a view that is particularly interesting because the Spectator papers were devoted to proving that the poem conformed to the critic's laws. 1 " Remarks on Longinus," 1712, Works (1787), 405. 2 Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), prefatory "Specimen," sign. bi. 3 i. 449 (1733)- * See p. 19 above. An opinion similar to this is to be found in John Newbery's (Goldsmith's?) Art of Poetry (1762), ii. 348. ^ Life of our Blessed Lord (1693), preface. ® Observations on English Metre, in Works (ed. Mitford), v. 233-4. ^ Adventurous Muse, in Horae Lyricae (1709), 213. * Account of the Greatest English Poets, in Works (Bohn ed.), i. 24. So, too, WilHam Somervile praises Thomson for being "above the critic's nicer law " {Epistle to Thomson, 1730, in Anderson's British Poets, viii. 503-4); and Robert Lloyd writes {On Rhyme, in Poetical Works, 1774, ii. 109), But critics (who still judge by rules, Transmitted down as guides to fools, And howsoe'er they prate about 'em, Drawn from wise folks who writ without 'em). MILTON'S FAME 39 It is probable that Addison and many others really held, in a con- fused way, to both these opinions. They felt Milton's profound classicism and essential correctness; yet they saw that his work was strangely unhke their own and the French classical productions, and could not be completely reconciled with the letter at least of the rules. It is significant of their unconscious dissatisfaction with their own critical standards that most persons liked the irregularities, that they found the wildness pleasantly disturbing. Presumably a good many felt vaguely what one of them wrote, "Accuracy and Correct- ness are without doubt Advantages . . . but still they are not Es- sentials"; ^ and some may have been not far from Dennis's opinion, "The first and grand Rule in the greater Poetry is, that a Poet must every where excite great Passion," or " Enthusiasm." ^ Milton's art was by no means appreciated at this time; his style was thought to be rough, much less finished than Pope's or even Shakespeare's, and he was at times censured for not having "fil'd oft' his Rust" or "learned to poHsh some rudeness in his verses." ^ Yet this very rudeness attracted not a few, and by the majority was accepted as a natural drawback of the poet's fascinating irregularity. It must not be supposed, however, that Milton was thought of as a barbarian. His roughness seemed very different from that of Donne, or of Chaucer and his contemporaries; he was free from the formlessness of Spenser, and his wildness was not the extravagance which many found excessive in the Faerie Queene and the Jerusalem Delivered. The Augustans enjoyed Kterary adventures but wished them to be decorous; they liked a certain amount of the unusual but had no taste for roughing it. Their classicism, though not extreme, went deep. Milton could never have held his great body of readers if he also had not been fundamentally classical, if those who read Paradise Lost had not felt back of its romantic wildness the stand- ards of Homer and Virgil, of Aristotle and Longinus, just as behind the freedom and apparent irregularity of its verse they were con- scious of the regular beat of the iambic pentameter. In the com- bination of classicism with romanticism lay Milton's strength. It was because his work preserved a balance between these conflict- ing elements that it was peculiarly adapted to a period of transition; that is what gave it an almost equal appeal not only to readers 1 Dodsley's Museum (1747), iii. 284. 2 Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), 15. 2 Verses prefixed to Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (2d ed., 1681); Hume's His- tory of England (new ed., 1762), vi. 126. 40 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON of opposing tastes but to the two forces at war in almost all readers. Robert Lloyd has summed up the whole matter in his line, Thus Milton, more correctly wild.^ To their correct wildness the shorter pieces as well as the epic owed much of their popularity. This freedom or irregularity which distinguished Milton's poetry was, as his followers and opponents dimly realized, neither super- ficial nor simply literary, but grew naturally out of his strong love of liberty in all fields. "His political notions," as Johnson informs us, "were those of an acrimonious and surly republican,"^ which is only the Doctor's Tory way of saying that, next to religion, the deepest feeling of the poet who postponed his chief work in order to write political pamphlets was a passion for liberty, a passion that flamed in the sonnets and in the speeches of Satan, that furnished the sub- ject of practically all his prose and the altar upon which were sacri- ficed his property, his eyesight, his best years, and almost his life itself. This love of freedom was another reason for the popularity of the poems; for those who shared it (and they were many in the pe- riod which culminated in the French Revolution), if they were also lovers of verse, came naturally to look upon Milton as the embodi- ment of their ideal and almost as the object of their worship. Thomas HolHs, the motto of whose life might well have been the words he inscribed in one of the books he presented to Harvard Col- lege, "Floreat Libertas," was a Milton enthusiast. He collected notes for an edition of the prose of his favorite author, republished Toland's account of his life, presented many editions of his works to libraries, defended him in the public press, acquired relics and portraits of him (one of which was the only thing he attempted to save from a fire), and gave his bed to Akenside in the hope that it might inspire an ode on the one whom he termed "my hero, and the guide of my paths." ^ To Hollis his hero was preeminently the ^ A Dialogue, in Poetical Works (1774), ii. 11. It was mainly because Paradise Regained was more correctly tame, because it lacked the "magnificent images and romantic descriptions" of the earlier poem, that it was less successful: see Crit. Rev., xlv. 74 (Good, p. 218 n.) 2 "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 156. 3 Francis Blackburne, Memoirs of Hollis (1780), 365-71; 107; 73, 126, 127-8, 154, 167,491; 621-7; 86, 95, 106, 167, 513-14, *583*; 111-12. Instances of Hollis's interest are, indeed, to be found on almost every page of the Memoirs. In Blackburne's words (p. 526), Hollis "was indefatigable in his researches after every memorial of him [Milton] he could hear of." But, according to Richard Fenton (Memoirs of an Old Wig, 1815, p. 127), it was at that time "the rage, not only to write the life of Milton, but to hunt out busts, paintings, prints, nay to trace him through all his different places of residence." MILTON'S FAME 41 "arch-defender of liberty." "It is to Milton, the divine Milton," he wrote, "and such as he . . . that we are beholden for all the mani- fold and unexampled blessings which we now every where enjoy." ^ Indeed, it is possible that, like several of his friends, HolHs was less interested in Comus and Paradise Lost than in the prose writings and the political activities of the Latin secretary of the Commonweal th.^ It was Johnson's misrepresentation of Milton's love of Kberty that called forth the denunciation from HoUis's biographer, Archdeacon Blackburne, who says frankly, "We profess however not to concern ourselves with Milton the poet." ^ One of the books that HoUis was accustomed to present to libra- ries in various parts of the world was Thomas Birch's edition of Milton's prose (i 738) . Birch was a pronounced Whig, and probably expressed his own views when he said in his biography of the poet,'' "As he look'd upon true and absolute Freedom to be the greatest Happiness of this Life, whether to Societies or single Persons, so he thought Constraint of any sort to be the utmost Misery." A revis- ion of Birch's work was brought out in 1753 by Richard Baron, an extremist as regards both religious and political liberty, who also issued a separate edition of the Eikonoklastes (1756). In the preface to the latter book Baron spoke of his author much as Wordsworth did in the sonnet "Milton, thou shouldst be Hving at this hour." "Many circumstances," he declared, "at present loudly call upon us to exert ourselves. Venality and corruption have well-nigh extin- guished all principles of Liberty. . . . One remedy for these evils, is to revive the reading of our old Writers. . . . milton in particular ought to be read and studied by all our young Gentlemen as an Oracle. He . . . combated Superstition and Tyranny of every form, and in every degree. Against them he employed his mighty Strength." The poet Thomson, who was a great admirer of all Milton's works and who wrote a long poem in praise of Hberty, com- bined his two enthusiasms in a preface to the Areopagitica (1738). Another worshipper, Auditor WiHiam Benson, who gave Dobson a thousand pounds for a Latin translation of Paradise Lost, erected the monument to its author in Westminster Abbey, had a medal 1 Memoirs, 236, 93. 2 At any rate, it was the prose works that he usually presented as gifts (see ib. 73, 126, 127-8, 154); and he gave twenty guineas towards the publication of the Eikono- klastes {ib. 487-8). 3 Ib. 514. For Blackburne's attack on Johnson, see above, p. 31. * Prefixed to his edition of the prose works (1738, P- lix). 42 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON struck in his honor, and published a study of his versification/ was also a "devoted Whig"; and so was William Roscoe, who praised and imitated Milton.^ Accordingly, when we find a man of literary tastes, like the elder Nicholas Hardinge, described as a "determined and zealous Whig," we are pretty certain to learn that he was also "a great admirer of Milton." ^ The feelings of all such lovers of liberty are epitomized in HoUis's manuscript note regarding Mil- ton's coat of arms: "Those arms . . . are now in the possession of T. H., & mind him often of Milton & great Actions!" ^ As the century waned and the love of independence grew, bringing with it revolt and unrest of various kinds, there were many who were inspired, not only by the "great actions" of the "Milton of the com- monwealth," but by the unconquerable will . . . And courage never to submit or yield which flame in the speeches and deeds of his arch-rebel. " Give me a spirit," exclaimed Burns, "like my favourite hero, Milton's Satan," and then proceeded to quote four lines beginning "Hail, horrors! hail," which he and many another had doubtless often declaimed to the winds or to tavern companions.^ Shelley also, attracted by Satan's "courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force," reminded his readers that "the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican and a bold inquirer into morals and religion." ^ It will be observed that Shelley here connects Milton not only with political but with religious liberty, and in the eighteenth cen- tury a great many did the same. Almost all of those who have been mentioned as enthusiasts over Milton and liberty were also liberals in rehgion, and in many instances were actively engaged in the fight for rehgious freedom. These men found inspiration not only in the character of Satan but in the life of the poet, in his anti-episcopal ^ Letters concerning Poetical Translations, and Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse (1739). Benson also gave prizes "at all our great schools" for the best verses on Milton (Warton's edition of the minor poems, 1785, p. 368 n.). ^ See below, p. 268, n. 5. ^ Nichols's Illustrations, iii. 6-7. * Written in the margin of page Ixxvii of the Harvard copy of the 1753 Birch-Baron edition of Milton's prose. On page 62 of the same book Hollis wrote, "Reader, observe, reverence this the genuine, full character, of the matchless John Milton!" * Letterto James Smith, June 11, 1787. Cf. a letter to William Nicol, June 18, 1787: "I have bought a pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about with me, in order to study the sentiments — the dauntless magnanimity, the intrepid, unyielding inde- pendence, the desperate daring, and noble defiance of hardship, in that great personage, Satan." ^ Preface to Prometheus Unbound. MILTON'S FAME 43 pamphlets, and in such sonnets as On the New Forcers of Conscience and To Cromwell. With most of them Milton's words and example had more weight, and could be used more effectively in influencing others, because of his reputation for piety. Conservatives are, how- ever, more numerous than liberals, and some men — Warburton, Johnson, and Thomas Warton, for example — were prejudiced against the poet's character and prose writings by their dislike of his rehgious and political activities. "Milton's moral character as a member of society," said Warburton, "was certainly the most cor- rupt of any man's of that age"; yet in the same letter he wrote, "He is the author of three perfect pieces of poetry." ^ It is sur- prising that persons of such strong prejudices were able to retain their admiration or, as in Thomas Warton's case, their enthusiasm for the verse of a man whom as a man some of them cordially dis- liked. The strength of Milton's hold upon the public is shown in his ability to rouse the enthusiastic devotion of the radicals and at the same time keep the admiration of the conservatives. ^ Undated letter to Thomas Birch, Europ. Mag., xi. 439 (1787). CHAPTER II BLANK VERSE AND RIME " This neglect then of rime," we read in the note prefixed to Paradise Lost, ". . . is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem." It was this manifestation of Milton's passion for freedom that attracted far the most attention in the eighteenth century. To us blank verse is an old story, we ac- cept it without question and without enthusiasm; but in Pope's day it was a subject over which men waxed either dithyrambic or vio- lent. No feature of the wildness and irregularity of Paradise Lost was so disturbing, pleasantly or otherwise, as its verse. As the lau- reate Whitehead sang. Some hate all Rhlme ; some seriously deplore That Milton wants that one enchantment more.i One poet was moved to "disgust" by rime,^ whereas many others were of Johnson's opinion that blank verse "seems to be verse only to the eye," and "has neither the easiness of prose nor the melody of numbers." ^ As might be suspected from the Doctor's partisanship, the move- ment towards freedom in verse found much the same advocates and opponents as that towards freedom in political and religious mat- ters. It was the progressives or radicals against the conservatives: the one class, dissatisfied with the limitations of contemporary life and poetry, building largely upon theories and hopes, the other, in- trenched behind the solid accomphshments of the present and the immediate past, finding literature and hfe passing comfortable as they were; the one stressing freedom, breadth, and imaginative sug- gestiveness as the essentials of poetry, the other emphasizing finish, ^ Charge to the Poets (1762), in Plays and Poems, 1774, ii. 298. ^ Robert Andrews (or Robert Colvill?), Eidyllia (Edin., 1757), 9. As early as 1713 "Jingle" was criticized in Tate's Monitor (no. 17, April 6-10) for "always carrying something of Littleness along with it." ^ "Milton," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 193; Johnson quotes the first phrase from a Mr. Locke. Aaron Hill thought blank verse fit for nothing but the brawls of "Faction": see the last half of his Cleon to Lycidas (Works, 2d ed., iv. 295-308), which appears to be the "poem in praise of blank verse" to which Joseph War ton refers in his Essay on Pope, 1782, ii. 192 n. (cf. Modern Language Notes, xxxvi. 247-8). BLANK VERSE AND RIME 45 elegance, and intellectual keenness. Yet these classes were by no means sharply defined or invariably antagonistic; for Gray and some others who admired Milton and agreed with the liberals on most points were opposed to blank verse, whereas many followers of Pope were friendly to it. As to the relative popularity of blank verse and rime, the evidence is abundant but unfortunately conflicting. Two utterances towards the close of the seventeenth century indicate that unrimed poetry was at that time enjoying some vogue as a novelty,^ and so late as 1764 Goldsmith wrote in the dedication to The Traveller that his poem had '' neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it." On the other hand, WilHam Mason was "well aware, that by choosing to write blank verse" in 1772 he "should not court popularity," be- cause he "perceived it was growing much out of vogue"; ^ and the Swan of Lichfield felt that she was unfashionable in thinking un- rimed poetry "much the superior vehicle for the effusions of gen- ius." ^ "It is become a fashion," affirmed W. H. Roberts in 1774, to think that poetry, and blank verse, are inconsistent; ^ or, as Vices- imus Knox, with his eye on Johnson, expressed it, "It is sufficient, in the idea of many, to condemn a poem, that it is written in blank verse." ^ Already, in 1770, the Critical Review had asserted with the finality which is the heritage of such publications, "That good rhime, where it can be properly used, is preferable to good blank verse, is now no longer questioned by critics of true taste." ^ Yet ^ Samuel Woodford, in the preface to his Paraphrase upon the Canticles (1679), prophesied that "in the next [age], even Our now cry'd-up Blank Verse will look . . . unfashionable"; and Samuel Wesley, in the preface to his Lije of our Lord (1693), said that he was "of a different opinion from most others" in not liking blank verse. ^ Preface to his English Garden, in Works (1811), i. 206. The preface was written in 1782. ^ Letters, ii. 237 (Feb. 7, 1789). * Preface to his Judah Restored. ^ "On the Prevailing Taste in Poetry" (Essays, 2d ed., 1779, no. 127). William Benson, who admired Milton as strongly as he disliked blank verse (see pp. 41-2 above), said that, if Paradise Lost had been in rime, "upon the whole it would have been a more agreeable Poem to the Generality of Readers" {Letters concerning Poetical Translations, 1739, p. 61); but I have found no one who agreed with him except Samuel Woodford (see above, p. 12, n. 4), and Thomas Shipman, who declared ("To Roger L'Estrange," Henry III of France, 1678, prefatory), "Miltons Paradice is a work noble, strong and fanciful, but had his humour of contradiction soften'd it into his own sweet Rhime, what a Poem had it been!" ^ xxix. 435 (misunderstood by Good, p. 230). Yet in 1800 the same review said that a translator of Lucretius "perhaps would have acted more wisely in employing blank verse. ... It is more tractable in the discussion of philosophical subjects," declared the reviewer, "and admits a greater variety and beauty of cadence" (new arr., xxviii. 260). 46 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON these opinions really represent little more than the prejudices of in- dividuals or the attitude of a small circle; for, judging by them alone, one would conclude that blank verse was popular in the late seventeenth century and lost ground steadily in the eighteenth, whereas the reverse is obviously the truth. Such remarks do, how- ever, confirm the impression, received from other sources, that the general public preferred rime, a preference further indicated by the publication of five rimed paraphrases of parts of Paradise Lost, and by versions of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Blair's Grave "reduced to couplets." Yet here also there is evidence on the other side, for in 1774 the first canto of the Faerie Queene was "attempted in blank verse," and within ten years was repubhshed with the next three cantos.^ Undoubtedly, however, most readers liked rime, as they do to-day, — no one writes advertisements in blank verse, — and, other things being equal, preferred rimed poetry. But other things were not equal, they seldom are. Augustan poetry, and in particular that composed in couplets, had never been really popular, and by the time Pope ceased writing the men who reached the people and affected hterature vitally were making Httle use of it. On the other hand, after the first quarter of the century the poems most widely and enthusiastically read were those in blank verse. Not until Scott and Byron swept the public off its feet did any rimed work of length gain a hold upon the people equal to that of The Seasons, Night Thoughts, The Grave, Pleasures of Imagination, and The Task? These, with Paradise Lost, were the poems most read; obviously, then, it is only when a critic restricts himself to such Hterature as seems to him most significant that he can speak of the heroic couplet as "the normal and habitual form in which poetry, 1 Furthermore, all of James Hervey's prose "Meditations and Contemplations" and one of Young's "moral contemplations " were published in blank verse by Thomas Newcomb between 1757 and 1764; and the same service was done for Elizabeth Rowe's Devout Exercises of the Heart by Edward Smyth in 1800 (?) and for Ossian by Anthony Davidson in 181 2(?). 2 In the eighteenth century The Seasons was probably more popular than any other poem; and The Grave (1743), which reached a so-called sixteenth edition in 1786, was reprinted, alone or in collections, at least twenty-nine times more by 1825. Somervile's Chace (1735, twelve editions by 1800) and Glover's Leonidas (1737, eleven editions by 1810) were also among the more widely-read poems of the time. It was these works that the Eclectic Review had in mind when, in commenting on Sir William Drummond's expectation that his Odin (1817) would fail because he had written in blank verse, it remarked confidently, at a time when everybody was reading Scott and Byron: "It would, however, be paying the public taste a bad compliment, to imagine that it can prefer the jingling and Hudibrastic rhymes in which our poetical romances, or romantic poems, have been lately written, to that stately and varied march of rhythm, in which our language peculiarly finds itself at ease, and which has been chosen by all our fimest poets, as the fittest mode of expressing their feelings" (new series, 1817, viii. 85). BLANK VERSE AND RIME 47 except on the stage, moved in its serious moments." ^ For the un- rimed poems were not only very popular but very numerous. The first half of the eighteenth century saw some 350, and the next fifty years more than twice as many, not a few being works of con- siderable length. Nor were they limited to forgotten versifiers, for practically every poet of importance from Pope's time to the present has written at least one piece of blank verse. As far as the general public was concerned, the situation was accordingly paradoxical: rime was preferred, but the popular poems were those that did not use it. It is only natural to suppose that such of the principal critics and poets of the time as did not favor blank verse were, both in theory and in practice, more strongly opposed to it than were "the gen- eral." Certainly they would be repelled, as the ordinary reader was not, by the crudity and roughness of contemporary efforts in the measure, many of which were distinguishable from prose only by the capitals at the beginning of the hues. We know there were not a few who would have exclaimed with Dr. Johnson, "When was blank verse without pedantry? "^ and many who shared the opinion of Robert Lloyd, Take it for granted, 'tis by those Milton's the model mostly chose, Who can't write verse, and won't write prose.^ Fastidious writers like Pope and Gray, antagonized by the slovenly and unmelodious imitations of Paradise Lost, naturally concluded, as Henry Neele did a hundred years later, that blank verse was another bow of Ulysses, "an instrument which few know how to touch." * ReaHzation of the difficulties of the measure came late, however. Adam Smith expressed the common opinion when he sneered, "Even I, who never could find a single rhime in my Hfe, could make blank verse as fast as I could speak." ^ But, whether they thought it diffi- cult or easy to compose, men of taste were not attracted by the gen- eral run of pieces written in it by their contemporaries. 1 Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature, 1889, p. 2 (Good, pp. 20-21). 2 " Akenside," in Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 418. ^ To . . . about to publish a Volume of Miscellanies (w. i7S5). in Poetical Works (1774), i. 106. By those who 'choose Milton as a model' Lloyd seems to mean nothing more than those who write blank verse. Cf . p. 78 below. * Neele's Lectures on English Poetry, in Literary Remains (N. Y., 1829), 126. Cf. Crit. Rev., 1780, 1. 50 ("Blank verse is a weapon which none but the generals in our language are able to wield"); Mo. Rev., enl. ed., 1796, xxi. 337 ("To the solemn and dignified tone of blank verse masters only are equal"; see also ib. xxii. 86); Drake's Literary Hours, 3d ed., 1804, i. 49-50. ^ Bee, 1791, iii. 5; see also p. 50, n. 3, below. 48 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Yet to blank verse in the abstract, or when handled by a master, they seem to have been well enough disposed. They could hardly have been insensible to the argument contained in the oft-repeated reminder that Greek and Roman poetry was unrimed, — another in- stance, it should be observed, of the way in which Milton's resem- blances to classical writers gained him admirers. But a greater factor in the popularizing of blank verse was probably the very dominance of rime. Tyranny breeds revolt, and, as the years passed, more and more necks were galled by the yoke of the couplet. Even had there been no great unrimed poetry a reaction must in- evitably have set in, but its advance was hastened, and made more conscious and intelligent, by the vogue of Paradise Lost} Criticize its verse as they might, if people continued to read and to like the poem they were bound in time to feel the beauty of its freer, more varied measures, as well as the prosodical poverty of their own versi- fication; and when these things were once realized the rigidity as well as the preeminence of the heroic couplet was doomed. It was the men of finer ear, usually the better poets, critics, and writers on prosody, who first became conscious of the deficiencies of neo-classic versification; they had given the most thought to the matter and by writing and reading many thousands of couplets had come to weary of them. This is why such leaders of rimed poetry as Dryden, Pope, and Prior evinced dissatisfaction with it at a time when their follow- ers, the ordinary readers, versifiers, and critics, still remained with deaf and dogged complacency in the rut. For in literature, as in clothes, the leaders are giving over a style just when the rank and file have come to adopt it. The heroic couplet probably reached its widest popularity in the years when most poets worthy of the name were turning to other measures. That men of discernment were sup- posed, at least by some writers, to be admirers of blank verse is shown by a poem published in 1733, in which the devotees of "rime and rime only" are classed with those who admired Blackmore's epics and preferred Cibber to Pope. Their opinions are ridiculed in this fashion: Verse without rhyme I never could endure, Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure. To him as Nature, when he ceas'd to see, Milton's an universal Blank to me. Confirm 'd and settled by the Nations voice, Rhyme is the poet's pride, and peoples choice. . . . ^ Nothing is here said about Shakespeare, for dramatic blank verse, as will be shown later, was regarded as quite distinct from non-dramatic. Even Dr. Johnson's play was unrimed. BLANK VERSE AND RIME 49 Thompson, write blank; but know that for that reason, These Hnes shall live, when thine are out of season. Rhyme binds and beautifies the Poet's lays. As London Ladies owe their shape to stays.^ The truth seems to be, therefore, that the general public favored rime but more often read the poems that were without it, whereas more discriminating persons, though well disposed towards blank verse at its best, were disturbed by the crudities of the works written in it; that during the first part of the century blank verse had the advantage of novelty, but after 1 745 the leaders of the newer move- ment in poetry, Gray, Collins, the Wartons, and the rest, made little use of it, although after 1726 it always had the great advantage of being employed in the poems most read by all classes, Paradise Lost, The Seasons, Night Thoughts, and The Task. The obvious fact that rime is better adapted to some purposes and blank verse to others was soon realized by all save extremists. "In English Poetry," wrote John Armstrong, "I question whether it is possible, with any Success, to write Odes, Epistles, Elegies, Pastorals or Satires, without Rhime; " ^ and with this opinion, as well as with that of W. H. Roberts, who wished to banish rime entirely from epic, dramatic, and didactic poetry ,3 most persons would apparently have agreed. By universal accord, too, blank verse soon came to be the recognized medium for religious works, and, notwithstanding the vogue of Pope's Homer, for translations of the classics.* It was also much used in meditative and philosophical poems, and, owing to the popularity of The Seasons, it became the usual vehicle for long de- scriptions of nature. Thus it was that rime came to be excluded to a great extent from long, serious poems, and in this way tended to lose the admiration and even the respect of many thoughtful readers. By the more ardent champions of blank verse it was regarded as a somewhat trivial and childish ornament suited only to hght songs, satires, and occasional pieces. Such poems "it raises . . . ," said Young, "but sinks the great; as spangles adorn children, but expose men." ^ Hugh Blair, in his pleasantly conventional and hence widely popular Lectures on Rhetoric, agrees with " those who think that Rhyme finds ^ James Bramston, The Man of Taste, 7-8. The entire poem is ironical. 2 Sketches (1758), 33. ^ Preface to his Judah Restored (1774). * Even Pope and Parnell had to defend themselves for using rime in their translations of Homer: see p. 118, n. i, below, and Parnell's preface to his Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice (171 7), sign. A 4. ^ Conjectures on Original Composition (2d ed., 1759), 84. 50 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON its proper place in the middle, but not in the higher regions of Poetry." ^ There seem to have been many such, particularly in Scotland; for two other leading critics north of the Tweed, Lord Kames and Lord Monboddo, who agreed on little else, united in con- demning rime. *' Sportive love, mirth, gaiety, humour, and ridicule," said the former, "are the province of rhyme. The boundaries . . . were extended in barbarous and illiterate ages . . . but taste . . . improves daily; and . . . rhyme . . . will in time be forc'd to abandon its unjust conquests." ^ Monboddo regarded the " trouble- some bondage " as '* no more than a barbarous ornament." ^ Thomas Twining gave expression to a widespread sentiment when he wrote, "To me, a work of length in the rhymed heroic of Pope, etc., is in- sufferably monotonous and cloying to the ear;" ^ and towards the close of the century William Belsham spoke of the couplet as "un- able ... to stand the comparison with blank verse," which "of all the different kinds of verse known in English poetry ... is un- doubtedly entitled to be first mentioned as first in dignity and im- portance." ^ As these are not the prejudiced utterances of partisan poets, but the carefully-weighed conclusions of scholars, several of 1 Lecture xxxviii (printed 1783, but first delivered c. 1760). Blair thought rime "unfavourable to the sublime, or to the highly pathetic strain. An Epic Poem, or a Tragedy," he said, "would be fettered and degraded by it." ^ Elements 0} Criticism (6th ed., Edin., 1785), ii. 176, and cf. 160-63. * Origin and Progress of Language (Edin., 1774), ii. 386. On the other hand, Adam Smith, another of the Edinburgh group, "had an invincible contempt and aversion for blank verse, Milton's always excepted" {Bee, 1791, iii. 5, and cf. p. 47 above). John- son, on learning how Smith felt, exclaimed, "Had I known that he loved rhyme as much as you tell me he does, I should have hugged him" (Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill, i. 427-8). * Country Clergyman oj the Eighteenth Century (1882), 120 (letter to his brother, ^^y 3, 1784). In 1752 the Monthly Review (vii. 140), declared: "Blank verse is the proper cloathing of the sublime ... it seems limited and confined if ornamented with this jingle. The battles of gods and speeches of heroes are nobly suited to this form of expression; and as they do not want the gaudy furniture of rhime, their splendour is in some degree eclipsed by it. It is, on the contrary, just otherwise in subjects in them- selves low and mean; which require all the graces and ornaments which can be thrown upon them." Again, in 1758 (xviii. 277), it expresses a similar conviction: "Where the subject of a Poem is extensive, and lofty in its nature, or where the greater passions, as Terror, and Pity, are to be excited . . . Rhime may, with great propriety, be dis- pensed with." Cf. John Armstrong {Sketches, 1758, p. 33), "Blank verse . . . is . . . fittest for works of any considerable Length"; an anonymous writer in the Bee, xvi. 272 (Aug. 21, 1793), who regarded it "as the only species of verse, which in our language is suited to works of considerable length;" and Robert Lloyd {On Rhyme, in Poetical Works, 1774, ii. 114), But tho' each couplet has its strength, It palls in works of epic length. ^ Essays (2d ed., 1799), ii. 500, 495. The first edition (1789) says substantially the same thing. BLANK VERSE AND RIME 5 1 whom were men of wide influence, critical opinion appears in this classical century to have been more partial to the use of blank verse for long poems than it is in ours. At times the partiaHty seemed Ukely to be carried farther still, for there were not a few who agreed with Gildon that *'rhime is injuri- ous . . . even in the shorter poems." ^ Milton himself may have been their warrant for this view, since in his own sweeping con- demnation of "the jinghng sound of like endings" he declared "the troublesome and modern bondage of riming" to be "no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre. . . . some both Itahan and Spanish poets of prime note," he adds, "have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works . . . as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight." Echoes of this preface to Paradise Lost, or direct quotations from it, appear so frequently throughout the cen- tury as to indicate that it had considerable influence and was adopted literally and in full by many. The idea that rime was un- necessary even for the most airy or trivial pieces not only was ac- cepted but was put into practice. One bard composed several odes, a monody, and a tale in unrimed octosyllabic and pentameter lines,^ and others wrote sonnets, Pindaric odes, and stanzas in blank verse.^ Lyrics without rime — usually, like Colhns's exquisite Ode to Evening, in the meter of Milton's translation of Horace's ode to Pyrrha — were not uncommon after 1 740.'* Critics and writers on prosody also assailed rime. John Mason, ^ Laws of Poetry (1721), 69. Cf. the Examen Miscellaneum (1702, attributed to Gildon) , the preface to which is interesting because the poems that follow it are pseudo- classic productions by such men as the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Rochester, and Waller. The editor, who quotes from MUton's attack on rime, holds the "boldness" of using blank verse to be "something necessary in order to reform our vitiated Tast of Poetry, which often palates wretched Stuff dress'd up in Rhime, that it wou'd nauseate if depriv'd of the jingle; which once laid aside, the true Beauties of Poetry wou'd be more our Study." The Vision, one of the poems in the volume, employs "that false jingling Chime" until the Muse appears and throws aside "barbarous Rhime" (p. 51, first pagination). ^ Robert Andrews (or Robert Colvill?), Eidyllia (Edin., 1757). ' See Thomas Fletcher's Eternity {Poems, 1692, pp. 53-63); James Ralph's Mtises Address to the King (1728," a Pindaric ode in blank verse ") ; Paul Rolli's Works, consist- ing of Odes in Blank Verse, etc. (1735); Roger Comberbach's Translation of an Ode of Horace (1754 or 1755); Joseph Strutt's Elegiac Poem in different Measures, mthout Rhime (1779) ; also below, pp. 560-65, and, for blank-verse sonnets, Bibl. IV, bef. 1715 (Monck), 1767 (Downman, Huddesford), 1774 (Dunster), 1777 (Polwhele), 1778 ("Gentleman of Oxford"), 1784 (Tytler), 1787 (Whitehouse), c. 1790 (Drake), 1802 (White). * For poems in the unrimed stanza of Milton's translation, see Bibl. Ill C. 52 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON minister, teacher of elocution, and able writer on verse, regarded it as "one of the lowest Ornaments and greatest Shackles in modern poesy;" ^ and Johnson's critic, Robert Potter, wrote, *' Rhyme . . . has, after I have been reading blank verse, appeared to me trifling, tinkling, and childish . . . and must, I think, in every kind of writ- ing have such an effect on manly ears accustomed to the dignity of blank verse. . . . Rhymes and point are fit only for children." ^ Strangely enough, some of the rimesters themselves shared these ex- treme opinions. As early as 1691 one wished that he had ''broken a barbarous custom and freed [himself] from the troublesome and modern bondage of Rhiming;" ^ while another, in 1775, expressed the belief that "Rhyme rather debases and enervates than gives any real beauty and strength to a Poem. This Tyranny of Rhyme . . . hath been the cause of many, not inconsiderable, errors." ^ But it were a weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable task to try to register all the assaults made upon "jingle" in the century supposed to be devoted to it. One more, however, deserves to be noticed, the Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), which is the more inter- esting because its author also wrote the Night Thoughts and in his satires and his Two Epistles to Mr. Pope had shown no small skill in handling the heroic couplet. In this work of his old age Young de- nounced rimes as "childish shackles, and tinkling sounds," declaring blank verse to be "verse unfallen, uncurst; verse reclaim'd, rein- thron'd in the true language of the gods; " Pope, he asserted, had done Homer an "ignoble wrong" by the '^effeminate decoration" of rime; it was as if he had "put Achilles in petticoats a second time." "Must rhyme then, say you, be banished?" he queried; "I wish the nature of our language could bear its intire expulsion ; but our lesser poetry stands in need of a toleration for it." ^ It may be urged, on the other side, that Dr. Johnson and others were as violently opposed to blank verse as these men were to rime; but such was not the case. There were almost none who denied that the freer measures were better adapted to the stage and, in the hands of a master, to a few of the more lofty types of poetry. Even the 1 Essay on the Power of Numbers (1749), 13-14. 2 Art of Criticism (1789), 15-16, 203. ^ William Wollaston, The Design of Ecclesiastes, preface. * The anonymous author of Bath and it's Environs, pp. vi-vii. Cf. also Edmund Smith's Poem on the Death of John Philips (1708?), 2, 5-7; Lady Mary Montagu's Court of Dulness; and Ashley Cowper's Poetical Epistle to Daniel Wr-y {Norfolk Poetical Miscellany, 1744, i. 166-70; noted by Good, p. 71). ^ Second ed. (1759), 58-60, 84. Mr. Good (pp. 65, 90, 93, 160-66, 202-7, 230-35, etc.) quotes many other eighteenth-century utterances regarding rime and blank verse, and as many more of equal interest might be gathered. BLANK VERSE AND RIME 53 most dogmatic assertion we have met with as to the superiority of rime is qualified by the clause, " where it can be properly used " ; and Johnson himself did not wish Paradise Lost changed.^ The quarrel between rime and blank verse was long, inconclusive, and apparently futile. Scarcely any of the eighteenth-century dis- cussions of the subject have, for a modern reader, any value save the historical; and, as neither side triumphed or suffered defeat, though each had to give up certain untenable positions, the whole contro- versy might seem to have been to no purpose. Yet in reaUty it was profitable, for it was a campaign of education. Few may have been convinced by the arguments of their opponents, but the discussion was provocative of thought and in the end all were the wiser, for each side came to a better understanding not simply of the meter it opposed but of the one it favored. The greatest accomplishment was, indeed, a gradual clarifying of ideas in regard to prosody, a bringing to the consciousness of both readers and versifiers the exist- ence of problems, difficulties, and possibilities that few had realized at the beginning of the century. ^ See p. 45 above; and "Milton," in Johnson's Lives (ed. Hill), i. 194. CHAPTER III PROSODY AND DICTION "The poets from Dryden to Johnson," writes Mr. Saintsbury, "knocked a real sense of regular rhythm into the English head." ^ Some of the poets and theorists of this period, and many in that which followed, were also knocking into their own and other Enghsh heads a sense of irregular rhythm, a realization, to quote the same authority, of "the transcendental union of order and freedom" which makes the versification of Shakespeare and Milton what it is.^ The undertaking has proved to be an exceedingly difficult one, so much so that there are thousands of English heads into which the idea has not yet penetrated. Besides such minor tasks as reviving the lost art of the lyric and remodelling the sonnet, to the eighteenth century was given the work of adapting the cathedral harmonies of Milton's organ and the crack of Pope's whip-lash to the music of everyday life. Is it any wonder that it staggered and often fell under the load? So little, however, do we understand the difficulties of others, so slow are we to reaUze that the heights on which we were born were achieved by our forefathers only after long and painful struggles, that to some the eighteenth century may seem to have had a light burden, a simple, definite task which any one with a fair amount of insight and poetical power could have accompHshed easily enough. Most of us see no reason why the blank verse of the Idylls of the King and the couplets of Endymion should not have been written by Thomson or Pope. As Mr. Saintsbury puts it, "Few people . . . understand what English prosody really is; how entirely it differs from that of every other known language as a result of its blended character; and how very long and difficult the evolution of the new compound was." ^ It seems incredible that for many years most 1 Peace of the Augustans (1916), loi; cf. History of English Prosody (1908), ii. 458-9. ^ Peace of the Augustans, loi. ^ lb. What is said about prosody in the pages that follow owes much to T. S. Omond's English Metrists in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1907) and to Saintsbury's English Prosody. Yet I have depended primarily, not upon these two works or similar studies, but upon the poetry and remarks on versification by eight- eenth-century writers. PROSODY 55 poets did not realize what constitutes blank verse, "the only dif- ference" between their rimed and unrimed work being, in the words of one of them, " that the rhjone is wanting; while the verse is con- stituted in such a manner, that the ear has a right to expect it." ^ Poets and critics of eminence were alike unconscious, or but vaguely- conscious, that there should be any other difference. The unrimed translations of Roscommon and Addison and the Irene of Johnson betray no knowledge of other requisites,^ and as late as 1778 a poet and essayist of James Beattie's rank assumed that by changing one riming word in each couplet Pope's Homer could be made into blank verse !^ According to Bysshe, "Blank verse is where the Measure is exactly kept without Rhyme," * and by "measure" he meant the strictest neo-classic versification. Many writers published as "imi- tations of Milton" productions that show no traces of the prosody of Paradise Lost but are either unrimed couplets or prose cut into ten- foot lengths; while others, dissatisfied with these pieces but failing to see where the fault lay, adopted, on the "safety first" principle, all the distinctive features of the epic, — its style, diction, prosody, and phrasing. Furthermore, "the sense of regular rhythm" was so effectively "knocked into the Enghsh head" that scarcely any other rhythm could get in, with the result that the introduction of hypermetrical syllables (trisyllabic feet) , the inversion or slighting of stresses, and the shifting of the pause to all parts of the Hne, features which are the soul of beauty in verse, came to seem inharmonious, as indeed they were frequently declared to be. Even poets who were willing to follow Milton slavishly did not often succeed in maintaining through many successive lines the fundamental feature of his prosody, the substitution of the free musical paragraph for the line as the unit of verse. They had been writing separate fines so long that they could not rid themselves of the habit. In truth, harmony was confined within narrow bounds in the days when laws for Hterature were laid down by ponderous lawyers, lexicographers, and divines, — heavy eaters and drinkers and men of excellent sense in the main, but with little feehng for music or for elusive lyric graces. Instead of "piping 1 W. H. Roberts, Judah Restored (1774), p. xx. 2 Nor does James Ralph's unrimed Night (1728), though blank verse receives high praise in the preface. ' Essays on Poetry and Music, 382. Samuel Woodford, in the preface to his Para- phrase upon the Canticles (1679), printed as poetry a passage from the Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence, and asked if it were not as much blank verse as Paradise Lost was. * Art of English Poetry (4th ed., 1710), 35, first pagination. S6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON down the valleys wild," the devotees of unshorn Apollo clicked their high heels on a narrow, straight cement walk, on either side of which bristled a tall hedge of thorn. They occasionally broke through the barriers and wandered for a time in the green pastures that lay be- yond, but in the main they kept much to the path in which they ex- pected and were expected to walk. How narrow this path was and how thick the "dont's" bristled on the hedge, we who live in days when poetry seems to have no laws at all can hardly realize. Even Pope was not strict enough to please the self-constituted authorities, who paid little heed to the irregularities actually existing in poetry, but spun their rules, as the spider does his web, out of their own inner consciousness. These men thought poorly of stanzas of "intermixed rhyme" like the Spenserian, and, for serious poetry, of practically all verse except the octo- and the deca-syllabic. They brought all hypermetrical syllables into line by elisions like "t' admire" and contractions like "vi'let" and "fab'lous"; "lovest," they said, must in verse be "lov'st"; the "ill-sounding Gaping call'd . . . Hiatus^'' they con- demned even in such expressions as "thy lambicks," and decreed that the e in "the" should always be dropped before a following vowel. ^ The cesural pause, all agreed, should come near the middle of the line, never after the first, second, eighth, or ninth syllable, and there should be another pause at the close of the line. Inversion of accent (the substitution of a trochaic for an iambic foot) was allowed unwillingly and only to a limited extent, even in blank verse. Glover is said to have prided himself on having none at all throughout the weary length of his popular unrimed Leonidas; ^ and Pemberton, who commended this monotony, "corrected" the trochaic lines that he quoted from Paradise Lost.^ "Heroick measure," according to Dr. Johnson, is "pure . . . when the accent rests upon every second syllable through the whole line. . . . The repetition of this sound or percussion at equal times, is the most complete harmony of which a single verse is capable." On this account the Doctor pronounced some of Milton's finest lines "remarkably unharmonious " ; yet, be- cause of the difficulty and monotony of the "pure measure," he was forced to admit the "mixed," in which," as he explained, "some variation of the accents is allowed . . . though it always injures the * Bysshe, Art of English Poetry (1710), 10-13, first pagination. ' Saintsbury, English Prosody, ii. 493-4; cf. Chalmers, English Poets, xvii. 11. ^ Observations on Poetry (1738), 130-34. On page 131 he writes, "The emphasis or accent falling upon the foremost of the two syllables in any foot, except the first, . . . or two syllables placed together in the same foot, which must both of necessity be pro- nounced short, will certainly destroy the harmony of the verse." PROSODY 57 harmony of the line considered by itself." ^ William Mitford, the his- torian of Greece and also one of the best eighteenth-century proso- dists, declared that inversions were rarely found in the third and fourth feet, even more rarely in the second, and never in the fifth; the one in the second foot of the line "Of man's first disobedience" he thought might be "pleasing perhaps to some . . . and not to all." ^ "The English heroic [meter] requires the fourth syllable to be emphatic, and the two concluding feet to be perfect iambics," af- firmed the Monthly Review.^ Even Isaac Watts, who invoked the "Adventurous Muse " and lauded Milton as " our DeUverer from the Bondage," was unwilUng to accept all the liberty allowed him. "Scarce any other place in the verse," he wrote, "besides the first and the third, will well endure a trochee, without endangering the harmony, spoiHng the cadence of the verse, and offending the ear." To be sure, Milton "has not been so nice an observer of this matter; but it is granted, even by his admirers, that his numbers are not always so accurate and tuneful as they should be." Watts also agreed to the generally-accepted rule that "a line should never end with a word which is so closely connected in grammar with the word following, that it requires a continued voice to unite them; therefore an adjective ought scarce ever to be divided from its substantive." One line in ten, he held, should end with a full pause; accordingly he censured Milton for his "unreasonable run of the sense out of one Une into another," as a result of which "it becomes hardly possible for the ear to distinguish all the ends and beginnings of his verses," * a comment which shows that Watts wished each line to be distinct, as in the heroic couplet. The frequent omission of the initial unac- s^ cented foot, which gives much of the charm to Allegro and Penseroso, \ was, in the opinion of Goldsmith, Pemberton, and Scott of Amwell, "displeasing to a nice ear"; and the poet's ear was frankly pro- nounced "bad" by his romantically-inclined editor and imitator, Thomas Warton.^ Is it any wonder, then, that "a Gentleman of ^ Rambler, no. 86. Johnson's Irene, which is in unrimed couplets, probably repre- sents his conception of blank verse. 2 Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Language (ad ed., 1804), 108, 101-2. ^ Enlarged ed., xxiv. 56 (1797). * Horae Lyricae (2d ed., 1709), preface, p. xx; Miscellaneous Thoughts, 1734, nos. Ixxii-lxxiii (Works, 1810, iv. 618-22). ^ Goldsmith, Beauties of English Poesy (1767), i. 39; Pemberton, Observations on Poetry (1738), 114 n.; Scott, Critical Essays (1785), 97; Warton's edition of Milton's minor poems (1785), 207 (it is significant that the remark does not appear in the second edition). In the preface to the 1809 edition of Horae Lyricae Watts declared: "Some of his [Milton's] Numbers seem too harsh and uneasy. I could never believe that Roughness and Obscurity added any thing to the true Grandeur of a Poem." 58 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Oxford" "corrected and harmonized" the "measure and versifica- tion" of Paradise Lost,^ that Pope did the same with Shakespeare's plays, and that such a metrical masterpiece as the Spenserian stanza found almost no admirers? These narrow and unyielding conceptions of prosody were, as has been said, well-nigh universal even among writers of blank verse and admirers of Milton. Nor were they held modestly as mere opinions or as records of the prevailing practice : they were thought to be as certain as truth itself, as changeless as right and wrong. "The fore- going Rules," wrote Bysshe, "ought indispensibly to be foUow'd . . . the Observation of them . . . will produce Harmony; the Neglect of them Harshness and Discord." ^ But the rules were not only inflexible and often wrong: they were also harmful in the de- finiteness and minuteness of their regulations. Even if they had in the main been sound they would have crushed all the freedom and life out of poetry; for to say that a pause or an inversion of accent can come only in a certain part of a line, or that an adjective cannot end a line if its noun immediately follows, is to take the charm and individuahty from versification and leave it purely mechanical.' That is exactly what Cowper and others accused Pope of having done: But he (his musical finesse was such, So nice his ear, so delicate his touch) Made poetry a mere mechanic art, And every warbler has his tune by heart.'* "Did he not," asks Henry Headley, "stretch his prerogative too far, by reducing them [poetical numbers] to perfect mechanism? of rhyme has he not made a rattle, and of verse a play-thing?" * ^ See p. 35, n. 2, above. * Art of English Poetry (4th ed., 1710), 5, first pagination. ^ To use Mr. Saintsbury's admirable simile, "The Popian line is indeed so thor- oughly 'standardised' — its parts are, like those of a cheap watch, made so perfectly interchangeable, that in its mere prosodic influence there is hardly any secret effect left possible {English Prosody, ii. 457). * Cowper, Table Talk, 652-5. ^ Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry (1787), introd., p. xxi. A more just state- ment is that of the Critical Review (1788, Ixv. 51) : "Perhaps, the example of Pope has produced an effect on our poetry, similar to that of Titian in the province of painting. Both were men of undoubted genius, and both possessed the higher excellencies of their art in an eminent degree: but their followers, who had neither so much imagination nor judgment, were captivated with that softness and harmony of colouring, which strikes the observer at first sight; and without giving themselves time to distinguish nobler beauties, made that the immediate object of their pursuit, which is at best but a second- ary qualification. The taste, however, of the age is at length gradually recovering itself from this extreme of vicious refinement . . . [and is returning to] the grander and more simple style of Spenser and Milton." PROSODY 59 Yet it is doing Pope the flattering injustice of exaggerating his in- fluence to attribute to him all or even the major part of the "stand- ardization" of verse. Bysshe's book, which was pubHshed before the "wicked wasp of Twickenham" had shown his sting, and which formulated the belief held by most persons in the century following Milton's death, was far more mechanical and rigid than Pope's practice. The little bard was simply the supreme manifestation of a movement that was flourishing vigorously before his birth. If we are to understand the eighteenth century, we must realize that the neo-classic conception of harmony in versification was not the theory of a few prosodists or the practice of a few poets, but some- thing which in the course of several generations had penetrated so deep into the very blood of Englishmen that they not only believed but felt it; we must see that they had become so accustomed to the regular beat of the heroic couplet that anything else seemed to most of them as dissonant and crude as Wagner and Whitman at first ap- peared to the Victorians. Like the Philipinos, to whom the tom, tom, tom of a drum is music and the mingling and contrasting har- monies of a symphony orchestra are discords, many neo-classicists agreed with Johnson in finding " the most complete" if not the only prosodical harmony in "the repetition of this . . . percussion at equal times." They had grown so accustomed to scanning with their fingers, like schoolboys, to stressing every other syllable and pausing at the end of every line, that Milton's free musical para- graphs naturally left them bewildered and out of breath.^ Persons were not all of the same mind, however, in 1721 any more than in 192 1. In Pope's day there were not a few, as we have seen, who chafed under the rules and wearied of the monotony, "the brisk insufiiciency and commonness," of the heroic couplet. Not only is evidence of this to be found in the increased popularity of blank verse and of the lithe, informal octosyllabic (the favorite meter of Prior and Swift), but there are also frank expressions of dis- satisfaction with the neo-classic prosody. One of the earUer and more interesting of these is in the preface to Prior's Solomon (1718), where we read: "Heroic [measure] with continued Rhime, as Donne and his Contemporaries used it, carrying the Sense of one Verse most commonly into another, was found too dissolute and wild, and came very often too near Prose. As Davenant and Waller corrected, and Dryden perfected it; It is too Confined: It cuts off the Sense at the end of every first Line, . . . produces too frequent an Identity in the Sound, and brings every Couplet to the Point of an Epigram. ^ Cf. Isaac Watts, quoted below, p. 103. 6o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON . . . And as it tires the Writer while he composes, it must do the same to the Reader while he repeats; especially in a Poem of any considerable length. . . . He that writes in Rhimes, dances in Fet- ters." Blackmore, the author of thousands of couplets, urged run- over lines and varied pauses "to avoid Monotony and Uniformity in finishing the Sense, and giving a Rest at the End of every Couplet, which is tedious and ungrateful to the Reader." ^ Dryden was still alive when the complaint was made that the critics "allow none but Iambics, which must by an identity of sound bring a very unpleasing satiety upon the Reader. ... A great many rough Cadencies, that are to be found in . . . the admirable Paradise Lost,''' continues the anonymous writer, "are so far from Faults that they are Beauties, and contribute by their variety to the prolonging the pleasure of the Readers." ^ Pope had not yet published a poem when Isaac Watts asserted, "It degrades the Excellency of the best Versification when the Lines run on by Couplets, twenty together, just in the same Pace and with the same Pauses. . . . the Reader is tir'd with the tedious Uniformity, or charm'd to sleep with the unmanly Softness of the Numbers, and the perpetual Chime of even Cadences." ^ The idea of Bysshe and other "popular versifiers," that "the chief excel- lence of poetry" lies in rime and a "flowing smoothness of verse which is now very common," was scouted by Charles Gildon, who held that " a verse composed of five /aw5/c5 . . . must want, by the uniformity of cadence, that variety that produces . . . harmony . . . and therefore Dryden and Milton, the greatest masters of Eng- lish versification, have frequently given us two or three short quanti- ties together." ^ But the spread of the rebellion against prosodic regularity is too large a subject to be followed adequately here. Two utterances of unusual interest may, however, be noted. The first is a remark by Gray (who named Milton as "the best example of an exquisite ear" he could produce), that "the more we attend to the composition of Milton's harmony, the more we shall be sensible how he loved to vary his pauses, his measures, and his feet, which gives that enchant- ing air of freedom and wildness to his versification." ^ Daniel Webb, 1 "Essay upon Epick Poetry," Essays upon Several Subjects (1716), 112. ^ Poems on Affairs of State (1697), preface. ^ Preface to the 1709 edition of Horae Lyricae, p. xx; cf. his Miscellaneous Thoughts (1734), no. Ixxiii. * Laws of Poetry (1721), 63; cf. his Complete Art of Poetry (1718), i. 292-302. ^ Observations on English Metre, in Works (ed. Mitford), v. 233. This was said apropos of Allegro. Cf. John Foster's Essay on Accent and Quantity (2d ed., Eton, 1763), 67-8: "There is indeed no kind or degree of harmony, of which our language is PROSODY 6 1 though forgotten to-day, made considerable impression upon his own age and is still worth reading because of the vigor of his repeated at- tacks upon the orthodox prosody. "Of all the modes of versifica- tion," he writes, "... the Latin distich, and modern couplet are the greatest levellers. There is no liberty, no continuance in their movements." ^ "The perpetual returns of similar impressions," he declares elsewhere, "lie like weights upon our spirits, and oppress the imagination. Strong passions, the warm effusions of the soul, were never destined to creep through monotonous parallels; they call for a more liberal rhythmus; for movements, not balanced by rule, but measured by sentiment, and flowing in ever new yet musical propor- tions." Webb objected to the regularity of Pope's pauses, and praised the beauty of "those sudden breaks or transitions in . . . verse." He quoted from the Essay on Man, with the comment, "Every ear must feel the ill effect of the monotony in these hues;" and in criticising Addison's Cato he explained, "The monotony of the couplet does not proceed, as has been imagined, from the repeti- tion of the rhymes, but from a sameness in the movement of the verse. . . . Mr. Addison, accustomed to the secure Monotony of the couplet, had neither the genius to bear him thro', nor courage to attempt the unbounded variety of the Miltonic measures." ^ There is danger that we may think of these men, and of other objectors to neo-classic regularity, as champions of the fullest pro- sodic freedom, a conclusion by no means justified. In literary as in religious evolution, there are always those who think themselves emancipated and who do favor great liberty up to a certain point; but beyond that point their minds close and prejudice and convention- ality reign. Isaac Watts, who on the same page in which he rejoiced in deliverance from the bondage of rime proceeded to forge new fet- ters, is an illustration of these half-liberated minds; and so is Wil- liam Benson, who, though he regarded the varying of the pause as "the Soul of all Versification" and approved of inversion of accent, was yet strongly opposed to blank verse.^ Nevertheless, even if capable, which may not be found in numberless instances thro' Milton's writings; the excellency of whose ear seems to have been equal to that of his imagination and learn- ing." "No Poet modern or antient more consulted Harmony," affirmed Hesiod Cooke (Proposals for Perfecting the English Language, 1729, in Original Poems, 1742, p. 305). ' Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry (1762), 18-19. » Observations on Poetry and Music (1769), 113; Remarks, etc. (1762), 6, 20, 7, 12-13. According to Omond (English Metrists, 31-2), "Webb's ideas seemed upsetting to his contemporaries. . . . The frequent references to his books show that they made their mark on men's minds." » Letters concerning Poetical Translations (i739)> 39i 45. 5°. 72, 78-80. See also the opinions of Mitford, Goldsmith, Scott, and Warton, on p. S7 above. 62 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON there were few who either understood or desired the full freedom offered them in Lycidas or Paradise Lost, many poets, like most writers on versification, feeling the limitations of the heroic couplet and of the orthodox ideas of prosody, strove for greater liberty and variety. But, some one asks, if these men liked both rime and freedom, why did they not unite the two in a more supple, flowing pentameter couplet? Rime does not necessarily imply end-stopped lines, with a pause near the middle and alternate accents : why not combine Mil- ton with Pope? The answer is probably threefold. In the first place, most writers of that day never thought of combining the two. The eighteenth century was far less eclectic than the twentieth, less likely to take one thing from one poet and another from another. Miltonic blank verse, for example, was not used in plays or Shake- spearean in poems; the off-hand style and easy versification of Eudibras were frequently imitated in Butler's own meter, but never, so far as I know, in decasyllabics. When Scott of Amwell wrote de- scriptions of nature in heroic couplets, he took Pope's Windsor Forest as his model; when he treated similar themes in blank verse he followed Thomson. In the second place, most eighteenth-century writers lacked the skill to transfer the Miltonic prosody — which few of them really understood — to the couplet. To us this seems easy enough to do, because it has been done for over a century; but if Thomson, Glover, and the rest could hardly keep their blank verse from slip- ping back into unrimed couplets, they certainly could not have achieved the prosody of Paradise Lost when bound by the fetters of rime. The experiment was made, but — here is the third part of the answer to our question — the results did not please. Isaac Watts "attempted in Rhime the same variety of Cadence, Comma, and Period, which Blank Verse Glories in as its peculiar Elegance," ^ but the world was not interested in his experiments or in any similar ones. Richard Blackmore, *'the knight of the burning pestle," held that " the Poet should often run the Second Line into the Third, and after the manner of the Latines, and Milton, make the Stop in the Beginning or Middle of it; this will vary the Sound . . . [and] re- lieve the Ear." ^ But there were few who agreed with him. The feeling of the eighteenth century about the matter was expressed by a thoughtful critic in the Monthly Review: " In verse where there are rhimes, we naturally expect the pause at the end of the hne ; when it ' Preface to Horae Lyricae (1706). See below, p. 103. ' "Essay upon Epick Poetry," Essays (1716), 112. DICTION 63 chances to fall otherwise, the injudicious reader destroys it, and con- founds the sentence, by adhering to the jingle; while the reader of more taste sacrifices the rhime to preserve the pause. It is evident they are things quite contrary to one another, and incompatible. The writer therefore who determines on rhime, must be so far a slave to it, as to fetter himself to a sameness of cadence." ^ Even Cowper, who understood prosody as few others of his time did, said that the "breaks and pauses" of blank verse "are graces to which rhyme is not competent; so broken, it loses all its music; of which any person may convince himself by reading a page only of any of our poets anterior to Denham, Waller and Dryden." ^ But to this as to almost every form of prosodic narrowness Mil- ton's influence was ultimately opposed. As the appreciation of his art grew and ears became accustomed to his constantly -varying ca- dences, his " transcendental union of order and freedom," these qual- ities came to be demanded in rimed as well as in blank verse. The end-stopped couplet had to "grow or go," and under the influence of the "mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies" and his followers it grew until it was transformed. Indeed, the deeper we look into the subject the more are we inclined to agree "with its historian : He [Milton] is one of the very greatest facts of English prosodic history ... he supplies infallibly, though no doubt undesignedly, all or almost all that is necessary to correct the faults of that time. . . . Moreover, he does something for English prosody at large which had to be done at some time. . . . His blank- verse paragraph, and his audacious and vic- torious attempt to combine blanks and rhymed verse with paragraphic effect in Lycidas, lay down indestructible models and patterns of English verse-rhythm, as distinguished from the narrower and more strait-laced forms of English metre. ... It was long before it [' the doctrine and the secret of Milton '] was understood — it is not universally understood or recognised even now. But it was always there; and as enjoyment and admiration of the results spread and abode, there was ever the greater chance of the principle being discovered, the greater certainty of its being put into perhaps unconscious operation by imitation.' The diction of the neo-classicists was, both in theory and in prac- tice, almost as restricted as their prosody. We constantly meet the same adjectives attached to the same nouns and followed by the same verbs, a uniformity that was due partly to the narrow field to which poetry had confined itself, but oftener to mere convention- ality. The adjectives, which are particularly stereotyped, seem 1 vii. 139-41 (1752). * Preface to his Homer. 3 Saintsbury, English Prosody, ii. 355-6. 64 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON commonly to be introduced simply to fill out the lines. Truth, pro- priety, precision, and inevitability were the most that was sought for in the selection of words. The reader is rarely "stung with the splendor" of an unexpected word, and color and imaginative sug- gestiveness in diction were so long ignored that the language of poetry became as thin as it was sharp. As a result of this and other causes, many words frequently em- ployed by Milton and the Elizabethans had dropped so completely not only from poetry but from all other usage that their meaning was no longer understood. No criticism of Spenser and Milton was so often made as that of employing unusual and obsolete words,^ and unquestionably such words did furnish the most serious hindrance to the understanding and enjoyment of these poets. Yet this very strangeness of diction fascinated as well as repelled, and was often a source of subconscious pleasure to many who sensed only annoy- ance; it was, indeed, another element in that wildness which formed an important part of Milton's attractiveness. We feel it much less than the Augustans did, because, owing largely to the reading of Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser for the past two hundred years, our vocabulary has come to be far richer than theirs and actually nearer to that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1742, for example. Gray mentions ''beverage," "mood," "array," "way- ward," and " smouldring " as obsolete words in Dryden.^ About the same time Peck names among Milton's "old" words "minstrelsy," "murky," "carol," "chaunt," and among his 'naturalized' Latin words "humid," "orient," "hostil," "facil," "fervid," "jubilant," "ire," "bland," "reluctant," "palpable," "fragil," and "ornate." ^ "Self-same" and "hue" seem to have been rare;* and in 1778 "bridal," "gleam," "hurl," "plod," "ruthless," "wail," "way- ward," and "woo" were declared to be "now almost peculiar to poetry," though "once no doubt in common use." ^ That most of Milton's admirers found his "quaint Uncouthness ^ Leonard Welsted, for instance, in his Dissertation concerning the Perfection of the English Language, 1724 {Works, 1787, p. 123), speaks of "an uncouth unnatural jargon, like the phrase and style of Milton, which is a second Babel, or confusion of all lan- guages; a fault that can never be enough regretted in that immortal Poet, and which if he had wanted, he had perhaps wanted a Superior"; and the great lexicographer, who rejoiced in his own sesquipedalian locutions, says that Milton "wrote no lan- guage" but "a Babylonish Dialect" {Lives, ed. Hill, i. 190-1; Johnson borrows these phrases). Cf. Isaac Watts's criticism, p. 103 below. ^ Letter to Richard West, April 8(?), 1742. ^ New Memoirs of Milton (1740), 107, iio-iii. * John Scott, Critical Essays (1785), 63; Mo. Rev., enl. ed., x. 276 (1793). ^ James Beattie, Essays on Poetry and Music, 237; see also p. 116 below. DICTION 65 of Speech" pleasing is proved by the frequency with which they copied his diction in their own poems. "In order to write like Milton," it was said, "little more is required than to select certain peculiar, now exploded, words ... as nathless, caitiff, erst, ken, gov- ernance, (fee." ^ "Without abundance of such words as these [dulcet, gelid, umbrageous, redolent], a friend of Pope's wrote satirically, "a poem will never be esteemed truly Miltonic." ^ Yet Pope himself confessed to making use of the diction of Paradise Lost in his Homer, and he might well have extended his confession to include the other poems in which he borrowed from the 1645 volume.^ The truth is that poets who really admired Milton could hardly help feeUng, as they read his richly-colored Hnes, the tameness, the dearth of pic- turesqueness and individuahty, of their own language. Nor was it the epic alone that impressed them as unusual in diction; for the vocabulary of the minor poems was in a different way quite as unlike their own, and from the time of Pope's earhest pieces left an unmis- takable mark on Enghsh verse. So frequent, indeed, are the echoes of Milton's minor poems in the work of the Wartons and Mason that at times one can hear Uttle else. As a result, the criticism most often made of these men, as of Gray, ColUns, the sonneteers, and most of the poets of the lyric awakening that began about 1740, was con- cerning their use of "obsolete words out of Spenser and Milton." It is no mere coincidence that the men who turned from satire, wit, and the artificial pastoral to the lyric and the poetry of real na- ture were the men who were seeking for fresher and less hackneyed words. A new art requires new tools as well as a new spirit. Not that all artists are at first conscious of this requirement. Many poets employed Milton's diction, as they did his style and meters, from the habit of slavish imitation so general in the eighteenth century; yet if they had taste and penetration they realized as soon as they donned the new garment how drab and shabby the old one had been. The debt to Milton and Spenser was, of course, not limited to bits of gold lace or embroidery clearly taken from their gorgeous vest- ments. When a man who has always worn the Quaker costume adopts a colored tie or a derby hat, the step to a striped suit and pointed shoes is an easy one; and, similarly, when a writer or a reader has once become accustomed to unusual phraseology, he is likely to develop a sensitiveness to the imaginative and sonorous 1 Mo. Rev., xii. 159 (1755). * Grub-Street Journal, Feb. 5, 1730 {Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street, no. 5). Cf. the Guardian, no. 78 (by Pope); and James Ralph's Night (1728), p. vii. ^ See below, pp. 1 15-16, and Appendix A. (£ THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON value of language, and to seek increasingly for an expression of his meaning which will be not only adequate but picturesque, haunting, magic, exquisite, magnificent, or otherwise memorable. English poetry from Pope to Keats shows a steadily-increasing attention to the connotative, the imaginative and poetic, value of words, a change that is due largely to the influence of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.^ It would, however, be misleading to represent Milton's influence upon diction as entirely beneficial. The strongly Latinic, learned, and grandiloquent vocabulary of his epic, though admirably adapted to Pandemonic councils and the rebelHon of archangels, was a dan- gerous model for mediocre bards who were dealing with prosaic themes. Unfortunately, also, the most influential of his early fol- lowers exaggerated his lofty and unusual Latinisms, or at least did not modify them when dealing with very different subject-matter. As a result, bombast and blank verse became almost synonymous, and most renouncers of rime made themselves ridiculous in their at- tempts to walk upon stilts.^ Nor can it be denied that Thomas Warton and some of the other imitators of the minor poems often showed less poetic discrimination than boyish delight over a new toy, m their use of pj^^^^^ ^j^^^ ^.^^ ^^^ g^^g ^^^y. Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.^ 1 Since Spenser was read less than the other two poets and seemed more antiquated and remote, his diction was used more consciously than theirs, by fewer writers, and in more definite imitations of his manner. Shakespeare's language seems to have at- tracted a still smaller degree of attention and, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, to have had less influence than one would expect. Yet no one can speak with anything like certainty in these matters until extensive researches have been made into the entire subject of poetic diction, a neglected field in which the many recent concordances are of invaluable service. ^ The Monthly Review, for example, maintained in 1804 (enl. ed., xliv. 428, 425)that "blank verse requires a certain majesty of diction, and is debased by low and vulgar expressions," and that "'incomprehensible' is not a word so proper for this measure [the Spenserian stanza] as for Miltonic blank verse." "I am no great friend to blank- verse for subjects which are to be treated of with simplicity," Fox wrote Wordsworth (May 25, 1801, Harper's Wordsworth, i. 418). And so late as 1810 Chalmers {English Poets, xvii. 12) regarded words like "forestall, uncomfortable, acquiescence, obtuse, exemplified, meritorious, absurdity, superfluous, timber, assiduity, elegantly, authori- tative, supercede, convalescence, circumscription," as " too familiar" for an unrimed epic. Yet Lord Lyttelton rejoiced in Glover's discovery that "hard Words, and affected Phrases, are no more necessary in this sort of Metre [blank verse], than in Rhime, and that if Milton himself had been more sparing of them, he would not . . . have spoil'd the Style of so many of his Successors, who have chose to imitate him chiefly in this Point" (Common Sense, April 9, 1737). ^ Johnson, quoted in Boswell's Johnson (ed. Hill), iii. 158 n. DICTION 67 Milton's numerous followers in the sonnet were, indeed, widely and justly criticized for what Coleridge termed " their quaint phrases, and incongruous mixture of obsolete and Spenserian words," ^ language which undoubtedly injured the popularity of the genre. An especially undesirable feature of this tumid diction was the use of periphrases, such as "glossy kind" or "plumy race" for "birds," or "the sable rock inflammable" for "coal," or "frequent the gelid cistern" for "take a cold bath." These objectionable and often ab- surd circumlocutions were generally admired and used, by writers of blank verse in particular. Indirectly they owed much to Milton, not because he was addicted to them himself, but because his fol- lowers employed them in the hope of capturing the sonorous gran- deur and aloofness from common things to which his epic owes much of its beauty. The influence of Paradise Lost was unquestionably away from simple directness and towards the high-sounding and the elaborate. Yet the relish for inflated Latinisms and periphrases which Milton's usage fostered, if it did not originate, would never have fastened itself upon poetry if there had not been in the air a genuine and general love of grandiloquence, a love which is plainly revealed in the Swan of Lichfield's letters and the prose of Johnson, Burke, and Gibbon. Still another force that made strongly for unnaturalness of diction was the constant dread of being prosaic.^ Nothing shows the un- poetic nature of the eighteenth century more clearly than this fear, which, based as it was on the realization that there was no essential difference between the prose and much of the verse of the period, led to the creation of mechanical and adventitious differences. In con- sequence, writers who had courage to give up the most obvious of ^ " Introduction to the Sonnets," Poems, 2d ed. , 1 797, p. 73. Cf . Crit. Rev. , new arr. , xxi. 151 (1797), where contemporary sonnets were assailed for not using "the genuine language of simple . . . nature." ^ Parnell asked (in a dialogue prefixed to his Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice, 1 71 7, A 4) if a blank-verse translation of Homer would be "remov'd enough from Prose, without greater Inconveniences "; and Alexander Kellet wrote in 1778 (see Crit. Rev., xlvi. 457), "In an age of ignorance an expedient turned up, that so obviously distinguished prose and poetry, as to lay claim for a time to constitute the essential of the last; and this was the Gothic invention of rhyme." The general understanding of the matter was voiced in the preface to James Buchanan's First Six Books of P. L. (Edin., 1773, p. 4), where we read, "Rhime, without any other assistance, throws the language off from prose; but, in blank verse, the poet is' obliged to use inversion, as well as pomp of sound, and energy of expression, in order to give harmony and variety to his numbers, and keep his stDe from falling into the flatness of prose." The same idea is expressed in John Aikin's Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807, p. 118), and in Sir William Jones's Design of an Epic Poem {Works, 1807, ii. 433). On the entire subject, see my Poetic Diction of the English Classicists {Kittredge Anniversary Papers, Boston, 1913, pp. 435-44). 68 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON ^J these distinctions, rime, felt constrained to substitute for it a style stiffened with strange words arranged in an unusual order. The widespread conviction that, if an unrimed work was made suffi- ciently unhke prose, it would be good blank verse illustrates again how completely the measure was misunderstood. This vicious diction, "the Miltonic dialect" as it was called, is to be found as late as The Task (1785), and occasionally in the work of Tennyson's early contemporaries, or even in our own day ; ^ but its force was largely spent by the middle of the century. As more blank verse was written and read, people came to understand it better and to distinguish what was essential from what was peculiar to Milton; at the same time poets were gaining greater mastery of it, making it more and more supple in style and natural in language, till in Tintern Abbey no trace of evil influence from Paradise Lost is to be found. Yet Milton had by no means ceased to affect the language of poets. Wordsworth quoted his practice as authoritative in diction, and often copied it, while Keats, a lover of words, appropriated not a few from the epic, the masque, and the monody. The usage of these men may well remind us that in diction, as in all other matters, Milton's example, notwithstanding its undesirable aspects, was on the side of freedom. It would certainly have grati- fied him to know that much of his popularity was due to the inspira- tion which lovers of liberty of every kind found in his life and works, that his influence was a potent force towards enfranchisement in political, religious, and literary fields. But any assertion as to Milton's influence must be taken partly on faith until more evidence for it has been offered. Even the testi- mony which has been presented regarding his popularity is of the more external sort, consisting largely in an enumeration of editions and in opinions and controversies about the poems. The great proof of his vogue, as well as of his influence, will be found in the succeed- ing chapters, which will trace through the poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the unmistakable evidences of his style, diction, prosody, and subject-matter. For the closeness with which his various poems were copied is almost incredible: no one to-day would think of writing a serious poem modelled obviously and in detail after the Blessed Damosel or the Hound of Heaven, much less SiheT Allegro. But it was not so in the days of our forefathers. With them imitation flourished openly and universally. They Hked it, and referred frankly to Mason's and Warton's "imitations of Mil- ton" without a thought of disparagement, just as Gray compli- ^ A familiar instance is the "reeking tube and iron shard" of Kipling's Recessional. IMITATION 69 merited West on his "very picturesque, Miltonic, and musical" Ode to May} Reviewers referred to the "happy imitation of the Mil- tonic style" in Crowe's Lewesdon Hill; they were pleased with Drummond's Odin for its general resemblance to Paradise Lost, and praised Cowper as "perhaps the most successful" imitator of Mil- ton.^ One popular writer even maintained that imitation was a higher art than original writing: "'Tis easier to strike out a new Course of Thought, than to equal old Originals, and therefore it is more Honour to surpass, than to invent anew. Verrio is a great Man from his own Designs, but if he had attempted upon the Cartons, and outdone Raphael Urbin in Life and Colours, he had been acknow- ledged greater than that celebrated Master, but now we must think him less." ^ Every successful poem was imitated, — Dryden's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, Pope's Dunciad, Philips's Cyder, Gray's Elegy, Collins's Ode to Evening, and many others; while the Faerie Queene alone furnished the model for hundreds of pieces. Even the greatest writers in some of their highest flights were clearly imitating. The eighteenth century produced few finer poems than Thomson's Castle of Indolence, yet even in language it is an imitation. William Mason, besides following V Allegro and II Penseroso about as closely as he could in his // Bellicoso and // Pacifico, wrote Musaeus, a Monody, in imitation of Milton's Lycidas, and apparently no one objected, not even his intimate friend the fastidious Gray, who re- vised all three poems for him.* Indeed, the detecting of imitations seems to have been one of the pleasures our ancestors derived from reading verse. The additional testimony of the following chapters is, however, not needed to show that only by gross self-righteousness and igno- rance can we accuse the eighteenth century of neglecting Milton. On the contrary, its enthusiasm for him was something that we can hardly understand. His life and his works furnished reading and topics of discussion as inexhaustible and as unescapable as the weather. In truth, a contemporary of Johnson or Cowper would have found it exceedingly difficult to avoid the poet whom he is ^ Letter to West, May 8, 1742. 2 See Mo. Rev., Ixxviii. 308; and below, pp. 170, 307. In 1790 the Critical Review (Ixix. 156) praised John Roberts's Deluge for being "no unhappy imitation of Milton's forcible and classic style." ' Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics i$th.ed.,iyss), 15-16; quoted in R. S. Crane's Imitation of Spenser and Milton (Univ. of North Carolina, Studies in Philology, 1918, XV. 195-206), where the whole subject is discussed. * See an undated and unaddressed letter "from Mason," in Gray's Letters (ed. Tovey), i. 187, n. 3; also one from Gray to Mason, June 7, 1760, ib. ii. 140, n. 5. JO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON charged with slighting. If he went to the theater, he was likely to witness a production of Comus, or at least to pass a "busto" of the god in the lobby, and he might hear Sheridan recite from Paradise Lost; if he preferred music, there were several popular oratorios drawn from Milton's poems; if he fled to the "movies" of the day, Pandemonium confronted him; if he chose to wander through Vaux- hall, he passed under the "temple of Comus" and encountered a statue of the blind bard as II Penseroso. He went to church only to hear the religious epic quoted, and returned to find his children committing passages of it to memory. His son had probably caught the Mil tonic madness at college; at any rate, the "Pietas et Gratu- latio " volume, which the fond parent preserved in full leather binding because of his offspring's academic verses, contained little Enghsh poetry that was not Miltonic. If his friends were clergymen or lawyers, they were hkely to be Hterary and have ideas on blank verse or be writing letters to the Gentleman's Magazine on Paradise Lost; if they were ardent republicans, they made him listen to pas- sages from the Areopagitica, if dilettantes they spouted Allegro. If he picked up a magazine, Miltonic blank verse stared him in the face, and he would turn the page only to encounter Miltonic sonnets and octosyllabics or an essay on the indebtedness of Paradise Lost to the Iliad; the letters to the editor were likely to deal with some Mil- tonic controversy then raging, and the reviews discussed poems "in imitation of Milton" and editions of the poet's works. If he turned to books it was no better, even though he chose his reading carefully; for poetry, essays, biographies, volumes of letters, works on theol- ogy, language, and literature, were sure to quote, imitate, or discuss "the greatest writer the world has ever seen." If he fled London for Edinburgh, he ran into a "nest of ninnies" on the subject of Milton among both poets and critics; if he turned to Bath, there was Lady Miller's coterie prattling phrases from the minor poems, if to Lichfield, he encountered its famous Swan Between her white wings mantling proudly and rowing her state with Miltonic feet. In remote Devonshire and Cornwall there were Richard Polwhele and his group of sonneteers and scribblers of blank verse, while in remoter Wales lurked Mil- ton's follower John Dyer. No village was free from the contagion; and if he sought peace in the country, he came upon II Penseroso alcoves, upon travellers reading Paradise Lost by the roadside, ploughboys with copies of it in their pockets, and shepherds, real shepherds, 'poring upon it in the fields.' Even among the poor and MILTON'S VOGUE 71 the uneducated it was the same : not only ploughboys and shepherds, but threshers, cotters, cobblers, and milkwomen read and imitated the poet who expected his audience to be "few." If he finally crossed the Channel in search of a refuge, he would do well to avoid Italy; for at Vallombrosa and Fiesole travellers were declaiming "Of man's first disobedience," and at Florence the Eng- lish colony was publishing volumes of patent imitations of the poet whom he was trying to escape. Nor would he be better ofi in other countries, for cultivated Frenchmen and Germans would be sure to speak to him of his nation's epic and its influence upon their own poetry, and would probably quote from Addison's critique. There were, of course, many parts of the continent and some remote places in Great Britain where Milton's voice was not heard, but the only EngHshmen who were certain of getting beyond its reach were the Alexander Selkirks lost on "some unremembered isle in far-off seas." Other writers may have dominated, or have seemed to dominate, English literature more completely than Milton did, but on closer scrutiny their influence will be found to have been limited to rela- tively short periods of time and to comparatively small, though it may be very important, fractions of the pubhc. More than this, most of them failed to rouse at the same time the profound admira- tion and the enthusiastic devotion which were felt for the author of Paradise Lost, Comus, Penseroso, and the Areopagitica. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that from Pope's day to Wordsworth's Milton occupied a place, not only in EngHsh literature but in the thought and Hfe of Englishmen of all classes, which no poet has held since and none is likely to hold again. PART II THE INFLUENCE OF PARADISE LOST CHAPTER IV THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST AND THEIR RELATION TO EIGHTEENTH- CENTURY BLANK VERSE Blank- VERSE poems have long since become so much a matter of course that we accept them as we do matches, telephones, trains, or religious liberty, without much thought. It does not ordinarily occur to us that these things ever had a beginning or that they were once subjects of wonder, doubt, and strife. To-day, when blank verse is the recognized medium for long poems, the one in which many of the pieces we like best are written, we have difficulty in realizing that as late as 1785 men of the ability and position of John- son and Goldsmith could hardly speak about it calmly. But, though it is generally assumed that this kind of verse has always existed, the average lover of poetry would be put to it to name half a dozen examples that he has read which were published {^ before Tintern Abbey. He knows of The Seasons, The Task, Night Thoughts, and perhaps a few others; but he knows very little of them, and is obliged to confess that to him blank- verse poetry means the nineteenth century and Milton. Nor is this all; for of the half- dozen poems he can mention not one was written before Paradise Lost. Did Milton compose the first unrimed poem? Most of us are quite sure he did not; we assume that blank verse is as old as the couplet, which, as we know, goes back to Chaucer. When, however, we are asked to name some early blank verse we hesitate. A scholar will rememljer that Surrey's translation of parts of the Aeneid (1557) is supposed to be the first unrimed English poem, and he may recall Gascoigne's Steele Glas (1576) ; but if he can name any other blank verse off-hand he will do well.^ The pieces that he does remember, moreover, he may never have read; and even if he has gone through them it is unlikely that they have left any definite impression on his mind, — they mean little or nothing to him. In other words, there are few persons living to-day who really know any non-dramatic ^ For a list of blank-verse poems published before Paradise Lost, with some account of them, see J. P. Collier's Poetical Decameron (1820), i. 54-8, 88-145, "• 231. 'J^ THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON blank verse written before 1667. Paradise Lost is, to all intents and purposes, our earliest unrimed poem. If such is the case now, when the literature which flourished from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth has so many admirers, what must have been the situation in an age that was in Cimmerian darkness regarding nearly every English work written before its own time? Very few of the contemporaries of Dryden had ever read or even heard of any blank-verse poem in English except Paradise Lost; and Milton himself had written, "This neglect then of rime ... is to be esteemed an example set, th.e first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem." ^ Isaac Watts had the same idea in 1734, when he said, "Mr. Milton is esteemed the parent and author of blank verse among us;" ^ and Johnson, when writing his hfe of Milton forty-five years later, could remember but two un- rimed poems before Paradise Lost, and one of those he had only heard about.^ Undoubtedly the critic who wrote in 1793, "Milton introduced a new species of verse into the English language which he called blank verse," ■* expressed the all-but-universal opinion. But, it will be objected, these men had the drama, — Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Lee, Otway, Dryden, and plenty of others; blank verse was perfectly famihar to them. True, blank verse was perfectly fa- mihar to them, and it would seem to have been a simple matter to transfer this verse from the plays to poems. Yet no one did it; in- deed, no one seems even to have thought of doing it. The fact is that to the eighteenth century dramatic blank verse was one thing and poetic blank verse an entirely different thing. Even so late as 18 14 C. A. Elton declared, "Of blank verse there are two species. . . . The Epic and Dramatic measure have little more in common than the absence of rhyme;" * and WilHam Crowe's Treatise on English Versification (1827) has a chapter "Of Blank Verse" and another "Of Dramatic Verse." Many of the greatest and most popular plays of the later seventeenth century were unrimed, -^ Lee's Rival Queens, Mithridates, and Caesar Borgia, Otway's Orphan and Venice Preserved, the tragedies of Southern and Rowe, as well as Dryden's All for Love and most of his Spanish Friar and Don Sebastian; yet I have found only nine poems written between 1605 and 1700 that 1 "The Verse," prefixed to the fifth issue of the first edition of Paradise Lost. The italics are mine. * Miscellaneous Thoughts, no. Ixxiii {Works, 1810, iv. 619). ' Lives (ed. Hill), i. 192. * Bee, xvi. 272 (Aug. 21, 1793). So Thomson spoke of Philips as "the second" who "nobly durst" to sing "in rhyme-unfettered verse" (Autumn, 645-6). * Specimens of the Classic Poets, vol. i, p. xiii. CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST ']'] follow Milton's example. Dryden, at the very time he urged aban- doning the couplet on the stage, apparently thought that Paradise Lost would be much better 'tagged.' ^ I have examined hundreds of blank-verse plays of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and have yet to find one that is at all Miltonic; but, as will be shown later, there are comparatively few- unrimed poems of these centuries that are not influenced by Paradise Lost. The dramatic blank verse was, so far as it was imitative at all, Shakespearean or Jonsonian,^ the non-dramatic was usually Miltonic. Almost the only poem that is likely to have derived its style and prosody from the drama is Blair's Grave, and this was also influenced by Paradise Lost} The most striking instances of the absolute separation between the two kinds of verse are to be found in the works of such men as Thomson, Glover, Mason, and Mallet, who wrote both kinds. By way of illustration, here is a typical passage from Glover's drama Boadicia (1753) and one from his epic Leonidas (1737): Go, and report this answer to Suetonius. Too long have parents sighs, the cries of orphans, And tears of widows, signaliz'd your sway, Since your ambitious Julius first advanc'd His murd'rous standard on our peaceful shores. At length unfetter'd from his patient sloth, The British genius lifts his pond'rous hands To hurl with ruin his collected wrath For all the wrongs, a century hath borne. In one black period on the Roman race.* He said. His seeming virtue all deceiv'd. The camp not long had Epialtes join'd, By race a Malian. Eloquent his tongue, But false his heart, and abject. He was skill'd To grace perfidious counsels, and to cloath In swelling phrase the baseness of his soul, Foul nurse of treasons. To the tents of Greece, Himself a Greek, a faithless spy he came. Soon to the friends of Xerxes he repair'd, The Theban chiefs, and nightly consult held.^ ^ Aside from turning parts of it into rime in his State of Innocence and Fall of Man, he says in the "Essay on Satire" prefixed to his translations from Juvenal (Works, ed. Scott-Saintsbury, xiii. 20), "Neither will I justify Milton for his blank verse ... for ... his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent." 2 The use of MUtonic blank verse in translations of Greek tragedies and other classic dramas is a not unnatural exception (see pp. 346-51 below). ' See pp. 383-5 below. * Boadicia, act i. * Leonidas, ii. 224-33. 78 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON If we realize that to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poets blank verse in a drama was an entirely different thing from blank verse in a poem, and that to them there was but one unrimed poem, Paradise Lost, we shall better understand the powerful influ- ence which this work exerted. Blank verse meant verse that was Miltonic, and ''Miltonic verse" usually meant little more than blank verse. Two poems published in the London Magazine in 1 738, for example, are said to be "attempted in Miltonic verse," ^ which must mean blank verse, for the pieces have no more suggestion of Paradise Lost than has Addison's translation, Milton's Style Imitated, where the imitation is limited to the absence of rime.^ In the follow- ing lines by Edmund Smith "Miltonian verse" means simply blank verse : Oh! might I paint him in Miltonian verse. . . . But with the meaner Tribe I 'm forc'd to chime, And wanting Strength to rise, descend to Rhyme.' If a writer grew tired of the couplet or desired a freer measure, there was, accordingly, but one thing for him to do, — follow Para- dise Lost. And it is not to be wondered at that, in following his model, he usually copied many characteristics which were merely the personal pecuHarities of Milton and hence had no necessary connec- tion with blank verse. He did not distinguish between the two things. As a result, blank-verse poems usually stood by themselves, with their style, diction, and prosody little affected by those of either the drama or the couplet. This curious state of affairs led the same man to write Popean couplets on one day and Miltonic blank verse containing no suggestion of Pope on the next.^ To us such a complete separation is hard to understand. Why should not a poet merely have taken a hint from Milton and written his own blank verse? Why not have combined the diction of Pope with the pros- ody of Milton? It seems perfectly easy. But we forget that the truisms of to-day are the discoveries of yesterday; we forget how slowly and painfully the world came to ideas which we imbibed naturally in childhood; we forget Columbus and the egg. Yet even when a man did think of writing poems in blank verse of 1 vii. 44: Hymn to the Morning and Hymn to Night. ^ See pp. 104-5 below. ' Poem on the Death of John Philips (1708?), 2. So John Nichols {Illustrations, 1817, i. 664) speaks of one who "has left the Miltonic measure, and falls with graceful ease into rhyme." See also p. 47 above. * Compare, for example, Fenton's riming of the first, fourth, nineteenth, and twenti- eth books of Pope's Homer, with his translation of the eleventh book of the Odyssey "in Milton's style"; or Prior's rimed paraphrase of the thirteenth chapter of i Corin- thians with his unrimed version of the two hymns of Callimachus. CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 79 his own he was unable to do it well. There were not many who tried it in Dryden's or Pope's day/ and those who did produced unrimed couplets like these: Unpolish'd Verses pass with many Men, And Roms is too Indulgent in that Point; But then, to write at a loose rambling rate, In hope the World wiU wink at all our faults. Is such a rash, ill-grounded confidence, As men may pardon, but will never praise. Consider well the Greek Originals, Read them by day, and think of them by night.^ If Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, author of the famous Essay on Translated Verse, could do no better than this, is it any wonder that the ordinary, struggUng poet made no attempt to strike out for himself, but slavishly followed in Milton's tracks? To break away from Paradise Lost and yet not at the same time fall to the dead level of Roscommon's translation, that is, to write what we may think of as everyday blank verse, was a task so dif- ficult that EngHsh writers were one hundred and fifty years in ac- complishing it. One thing which held them back was their fear of being prosaic.^ If even at this late day we are not entirely free from the impression that poetry and rime are almost synonymous, how much more strongly must this feehng have been with those who were bred under the dominance of the heroic couplet. Most blank verse seemed hardly more Hke poetry to hundreds of the contemporaries of Dryden, Pope, and even Johnson than do the measures of Walt Whitman or Amy Lowell to many readers of to-day. Yet Milton's unrimed Hnes did impress nearly everybody as poetry. They were made so, it was commonly supposed, by certain original characteris- tics or devices which Hfted them above prose and separated them sharply from stanzaic or couplet verse. Without the stiffening of these characteristics, it was thought, blank verse could not stand. Many versifiers therefore copied them blindly, others scattered them through their prosaic Hnes as a cook may mix raisins and sugar into bread dough to make it seem like cake, and still others adopted them almost unconsciously. ^ Such pieces of non-Miltonic blank verse published between 1667 and 1750 as I have come upon are listed in Appendix B, below. * Roscommon's translation, Horace's Art of Poetry (1680), p. 18. Most of Milton's predecessors in non-dramatic blank verse did no better; nor did Walter Pope (see below, p. 90, n. 3), or the "Gentleman of Oxford," whose original blank-verse "argu- ment" is even worse than his unrimed New Version of F. L. (cf. p. 35 above). 3 See pp. 67-8 above. 8o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON To trace the influence of Paradise Lost, therefore, we have only to discover these outstanding characteristics which were thought to distinguish it aHke from other poetry and from prose, and to search for them in later poetry. They seem to me to fall into nine main classes: — ^ 1. Dignity, reserve, and stateliness. Paradise Lost is as far removed from conversational familiarity in style or language as any poem could well be : Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, tiU one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse. 2. The ORGAN TONE, the sonorous orotund which is always asso- ciated with Milton's name: ^ Against the throne and monarchy of God. Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. O Prince, O Chief of many throned powers, That led the embattled Seraphim to war. thou that, with surpassing glory crown'd, Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god Of this new World.^ 3. Inversion of the natural order of words and phrases, one of Milton's many Latinisms: Them thus employ 'd beheld With pity Heaven's high King. Ten paces huge He back recoil'd. Me, of these Nor skill'd nor studious, higher argxunent Remains.* ^ There is a somewhat similar list in Francis Peck's New Memoirs of Milton (1740, pp. 105-32), a curious hodge-podge that contains a good deal of valuable information. A brief examination of Milton's style will be found in the Spectator, no. 285. 2 Cf. Bowles's Great Milton's solemn harmonies . . . Their long-commingling diapason roll. In varied sweetness {Monody on Warton, 121-5); Tennyson's "God-gifted organ-voice of England" {Milton, 3); and Wordsworth's "Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea " (sonnet on Milton, 10). ' i. 42, 49, 128-9; iv. 32-4- * V. 219-20; vi. 193-4; ix. 41-3- CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 8 1 a. An inversion that is particularly Miltonic is the placing of a word between two others which depend upon it or upon which it de- pends, as a noun between two adjectives, a noun between two verbs, a verb between two nouns, etc. For example, " temperate vapours bland," "heavenly form Angelic," " unvoyageable gulf obscure," "gather'd aught of evil, or conceal'd"; Finn peace recover 'd soon, and wonted calm. Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before.^ 4. The OMISSION OF words not necessary to the sense, one feature of the condensation that marks Milton's style: Though all our glory extinct, and happy state Here swallow'd up in endless misery. And where their weakness, how attempted best, By force or subtlety. Extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round.^ 5. Parenthesis and apposition. These two devices, similar in character, — since apposition is a kind of parenthesis, — were also probably due in a considerable degree to Milton's fondness for con- densed expression. Familiar examples are: Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew. Their song was partial, but the harmony (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense) Others apart sat on a hill retired. Thus saying, from her side the fatal key, Sad instrument of all our woe, she took. Where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold. Sable-vested Night, eldest of things, The consort of his reign. The neighbouring moon (So caU that opposite fair star).' ^ V. 5; ix. 457-8; X. 366; V. 207, 210; ii. 703. 2 i. 141-2; ii. 357-8, 1047-8 3 i. 469, 472; ii. 552-7, 871-2, 894-s, 962-3; iii. 726-7. Cf. also ii. 769, 790-91- 921-2; iii. 372-84; iv. 321-4. 82 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON 6. The USE OF one part of speech for another. Other poets have resorted to this practice, but none so often as Milton.^ a. Sometimes a verb or an adjective is employed in a participial sense, as Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill.* h. Now and then an adjective is used as a verb: May serve to better us and worse our foes.' c. Occasionally a substantive is made to take the place of a verb, as when trees ^^ gemmed" their blossoms, or sea-monsters "tempest" the ocean, or Satan '^voyaged" the deep.* Participles from such noun-verbs appear in the expressions "fueWd entrails," "his con- sorted Eve," "roses bushing round." ^ d. More frequently verbs seem to be used as nouns, though it is often hard to say whether the word in question is a verb or a clipped form of substantive: "the great consult began"; Satan "began . . . his roam"; "without disturb they took alarm"; "the place of her retire." ^ e. One interchange of the parts of speech that was a favorite with Milton and his followers is the use of an adjective where an adverb would ordinarily be employed. Because of the distorted order it is often impossible to tell whether the word in question is intended to be an adjective or an adverb ; but at any rate ordinary prose usage would employ adverbs in such cases as these, "with gems . . . rich emblazed," "grinned horrible," "his grieved look he fixes sad," "his proud step he scornful turn'd." ^ /. As common, if not more so, is the use of an adjective for a noun. This device is sometimes very effective, the vague suggestiveness of a general expression being far better for Milton's purposes than the more definite word with its human associations would be, — when, for example, he speaks of chaos as "the palpable obscure" or "the vast abrupt," of a trumpet as "the sounding alchemy," of the sky as "Heaven's azure" or "the vast of Heaven." * Other instances are " this huge convex of fire," " dark with excessive bright," "Satan with ' It is hard to say how much of this is due to his fondness for the shortened forms of words. For example, in "made so adorn iov thydeUght" (viii. 576), does he mean "adorned" or does he intend to use the verb as an adjective? '' ix. 845. 3 vi. 440. * vii. 325, 412; X. 471. * i. 234; vii. 50; ix. 426. 6 i. 798; iv. 536-8; vi. 549; xi. 267. ^ i. 538; ii. 846; iv. 28, 536. * ii. 406, 409 (cf. Raleigh's Milton 1915, pp. 228-9), S^?; i- 297; vi. 203. CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 83 his rebellious,'' "on smooth the seal" plays, "quit The dank," "tend- ing to wild," "putting off Human, to put on Gods." ^ 7. Vocabulary. Through his wide and constant reading, his unusual familiarity with the classics, his admiration for Chaucer and for Spenser, Shakespeare, and other Elizabethans, Milton had ac- quired an unusual vocabulary, which shows itself even in his prose works. In Paradise Lost he naturally made frequent use of still other unfamiliar words to describe the exceptional persons and places with which he dealt; for ordinary language is not only inadequate but too definite and too connotative of commonplace things to pic- ture archangels, chaos, hell, and heaven. These persons and places Milton with great art suggests to us through the atmosphere and sound of the poem, and in order to create this atmosphere and to obtain harmonies that produce this sound he had to depart from the ordinary vocabulary. For these reasons his diction would be marked in any age; but in the time of Pope and Johnson, when the poetic vocabulary was unusually limited and when many old words that are common to-day were obsolete, it must have seemed strange enough.^ The words in Paradise Lost that would have sounded unusual to the average intelligent reader of the late seventeenth or early eight- eenth century fall into four main classes, the general effect of each of which, it will be observed, is to give splendor, as well as a certain strangeness or aloofness, to the poem: a. Archaic words found in Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, or their contemporaries, but obsolete in the eighteenth century, such as "erst," "grunsel," "welkin," "frore," "lore," "grisly," "ken," "areed," "avaunt," "behests," "wons," "emprise." ^ Since, how- ever, any eighteenth-century writer who uses such words may have derived them from Spenser or Shakespeare or possibly Chaucer, they count for Httle in tracing Milton's influence. b. Unusual words from the Greek or Latin. Under this head Peck, in 1740, noted "dulcet," "panoplie," "sapience," "nocent," "congratulant," "attrite," "insanguin'd," "sequent."'' Latin words, whether common or uncommon, appealed strongly to Milton. c. Words in general use but employed by Milton in senses obso- lete in the eighteenth century. To such words he usually gives 1 ii. 434; iii. 380; vi. 414 (cf. i. 71); vii'. 409, 440-1; ix. 212, 713-14. * We know that it did : see above, p. 64. 3 i. 360, 460; 11.538,595,815; iii. 622; iv. 821, 962 (two); vi. 185; vii. 457; xi. 642. * New Memoirs of Milton, iio-iii. Cf. P.L., i. 712; vi. 527 (and 760); vii. 195; ix. 186; X. 458, 1073; xi. 654; xii. 165. 84 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON the meanings they had in Latin or Anglo Saxon. For example, "the secret top Of Oreb" (L., retired); "a singed bottom all in- volved With stench" (L., wrapped in); "tempt" an abyss (L., attempt); "his uncouth way" (A. S.. unknown); "the buxom air" (A. S., yielding); "habit fit for speed succinct" (L., girt up); "unessential Night" (L., unsubstantial); "comes unprevented" (L., unanticipated); "argument" (L., theme); " sagacious oi his qusirry " (L., keen-scented); "turn My obvious breast" (L., in front of).^ d. Words required or suggested by the subject, as ambrosial, chaos, adamant or adamantine, ethereal, void, abyss, umbrageous, embattled, amarant or amaranthine.^ 8. The introduction into a comparatively short passage of a CONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF PROPER NAMES that are not neccssary to the sense but add richness, color, and imaginative suggestiveness : And what resounds In fable or romance of Uther's son, Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond; Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia. Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can, And Samarchand by Oxus, Temir's throne, To Paquin of Sinaean kings, and thence To Agra and Labor of Great Mogul, Down to the golden Chersonese, or where The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since In Hispahan, or where the Russian Ksar In Mosco, or the Sultan in Bizance.^ 9. Unusual compound epithets, formations probably borrowed from Homer, and much more frequent in Comus than in the later poems. Typical examples are "sail-broad vans," "high-climbing hill," "arch-chemic sun," "half-rounding guards," " night-warbUng bird," " love-labour'd song," " seven- times- wedded maid," "sky- tinctured grain," "three-bolted thunder," "Heaven-banish'd host," 1 i. 6-7, 236-7; ii. 404-5, 407, 842; iii. 643; ii. 439; iii. 231; ix. 28; x. 281; xi. 373-4. 2 Milton has "ambrosial" 13 times, "chaos" 25, "adamant" or "adamantine" 11, "ethereal" 25, "void" 15, "abyss" 19, "umbrageous" i, "embattled" 5, "amarant" or "amaranthine" 2. ' i. 579-87; xi. 388-95 (this roll of names continues for sixteen more lines). Cf. also i. 392-521, 576-9; ix. 77-82, 505-10; X. 431-6, 695-706, etc. CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 85 ''shape star-bright," "joint-racking rheums," " double-founted stream." ^ Three other characteristics of Paradise Lost, though worth men- tioning because they are generally overlooked, are so common in earlier poetry as to be, in my opinion, of no value in determining in- fluence. One of them, which must have pleased Milton's ear (since it occurs frequently in all his poems) and which may have had some- thing to do with his puns,^ is the intentional repetition of a word or a phrase : And feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce- So he with difiiculty and labour hard Moved on: with difficulty and labour he.' A second feature of Milton's style which is also to be found in the work of his predecessors is the use of an uninterrupted series of WORDS in the same construction, — participles, adjectives, verbs, substantives, etc.: Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved. Exhausted, spiritless, aflBicted, fall'n. But apparent guUt, And shame, and perturbation, and despair, Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile.* Such series are not frequent in Paradise Lost, however, and might be used independently of Milton. A third characteristic of Paradise Lost which might perhaps ap- pear in any writer whether he knew the epic or not, but which is apt to gives lines a Miltonic ring, is the use of adjectives in -ean or -ian from proper nouns. Some examples are Memphian, Ausonian, Atlantean, Serbonian, Cerberean, Trinacrian, Ammonian, Phil- istean, Cronian, Cathaian, Memnonian, Bactrian, Plutonian, Dictaean, Thyestean. ^ ii. 927; iii. 546, 609; iv. 862; v. 40, 41, 223, 285; vi. 764; x. 437, 450; xi. 488; xii. 144. Laura E. Lockwood's Milton Lexicon (N. Y., 1907). PP- 667-71, lists all the words hyphenated in the original text. 2 See, for example, iv. 181 ("at one slight bound high overleap'd all bound"), v. 583-4 ("the empyreal host Of Angels, by imperial summons call'd"), vi. 383-4 ("to glory aspires. Vain-glorious"). 3 ii. 598-9, 1021-2. Cf. also ii. 618-25; iii. 188-93, 446-8, 645-6; v. 146, 791-2; vi. 244-5. Ii^ iv. 639-58 and x. 1086-1104 passages of some length are repeated. * ii. 185 (cf. iii. 372-s, v. 898-9); vi. 852; x. 112-14. Cf. also ii. 618-28, 947-5°; iii. 489-93; iv. 344; V. 772; vii. 502-3. 86 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON It is not through oversight that nothing has been said of Milton's prosody. Master as he was of all the resources of verse, he was less an innovator in "numbers" than in other things. Every important characteristic of his versification which is capable of being defined, isolated, and catalogued is to be found in the plays of Shakespeare and the lesser Elizabethans. Peculiarities of Paradise Lost that seem to be due to its prosody will, when examined more closely, be seen to he in other categories. True, Milton's verse is in general less flowing, less conversational, and more exalted than that of the dram- atists, but does not this difference spring from the nine quahties we have just been examining? The remarkable freedom, flexibility, and variety that characterize his prosody he secured by constantly using run-over lines, by moving the cesural pause from one part of the line to another, by inverting the metrical accent through the substitution of trochaic for iambic feet, by shghting one or more of the metrical accents in nearly every line, and by shifting the location of those he slighted. Yet, as all these devices are used by Shakespeare, they are of no assistance in tracing Milton's influence. The features of Paradise Lost that have been listed include by no means all of its characteristics, but they are all I have found to be useful in detecting the influence of the poem. In fact, a number of them are by themselves of no account. A work may be dignified and reserved, may contain unusual Greek or Latin words or unusual compound epithets and make frequent use of parentheses and ap- positives, and yet not be Mil tonic; but if we are sure on other grounds that it has been influenced by Paradise Lost the presence of these qualities will show the extent of the influence, and if we are doubtful their presence will help settle the matter. The frequency with which they occur is naturally an all-important matter. An oc- casional inversion, an adjective used now and then for an adverb or a noun, a few words employed in obsolete senses, these may be found in almost any poem and hence are of no significance. To give a piece the Miltonic ring they must be fairly common. But does the presence of these qualities, however frequently they occur, necessarily prove the influence of Paradise Lost ? May they not have been derived from other poems or have been hit upon by some writers quite independently? Some of them may have been, and are therefore, as has been said, of shght value in estabhshing in- fluence. A considerable number, however, — and it is upon these that the burden of proof rests, — cannot in the eighteenth century very well have been derived from any source but Paradise Lost. True, the same qualities may occasionally be found in the other poetry CHARACTERISTICS OF PARADISE LOST 87 with which the Augustans were familiar, but they are not so com- mon as to make any impression or have any influence. Besides, since rimed and unrimed poetry were so far apart, Miltonic charac- teristics when they occur in blank verse were probably derived from blank verse, that is, from the writings of Milton or his imitators; and what likeher source could there be than the widely-read and univer- sally-admired work which every one regarded as the model for all unrimed poetry ? It must always be remembered that many earher writers who are familiar enough to us, poets who have furnished inspiration and guidance to nearly every singer from Keats to Bridges, were in the eighteenth century either unknown or unregarded. Aside from Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, most English writers be- fore Dryden meant little or nothing to the contemporaries of Pope and Johnson.^ Chaucer and Donne they knew to some extent, but mainly as curiosities; Ben Jonson they talked about, and Beaumont and Fletcher they occasionally read; but the work of none of these men made much impression on them, for in order to exert an influ- ence a poem must be both familiar and popular. Furthermore, much of the literature they really knew they made very Httle use of, for in Augustan times poetry ran in a narrow groove which few cared either to widen or to get out of. Writers did not seek the strange and unusual, they did not Uke novel effects. They had much to say of Homer and Pindar, but copied them very little; when it came to writing they followed one another or contemporary Frenchmen. Horace and Virgil, to be sure, they did admire and follow; but they did not imitate Pindar, they imitated Cowley's imitation of Pindar. True, during the latter half of the century interest in the life and literatures of earlier times and other peoples greatly increased ; yet even then the models upon which poetry was written remained much the same, — there was still the school of Pope, the school of Milton, the school of Spenser. The relative importance of these groups had changed, but there were no new names. Thomas Warton, for ex- ample, notwithstanding his famiharity with literature ranging from the twelfth century to the seventeenth, wrote verses Uttle affected by any one who lived in this long period except Spenser. One might expect to find lyrics modelled after those of Carew, Suckling, or Herrick, sonnets that copied those of the Elizabethans, fantastic con- ceits from Donne, a new Canterbury tale, a medieval debate or romance. Instead, we have poems usually more romantic in subject and treatment than those of the Augustans, but still following the 1 See below, pp. 480-82. 88 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON same models and still scarcely touched by any work of Shakespeare's contemporaries or predecessors except the Faerie Queene. Fortunately for our present purposes, the eighteenth-century writers show little of the complexity and subtlety of influence which mark more recent Uterature. If the broad knowledge, the eclectic tastes, the love of unusual effects, that belong to the nineteenth cen- tury had been equally characteristic t)f the eighteenth, the present study would have been vastly more difficult and its results far more vague, unsatisfactory, and inconclusive. CHAPTER V THE INFLUENCE BEFORE THOMSON, 1667-1726 It was thirteen years after the appearance of Paradise Lost before the publication of another poem without rime.^ Except for being in blank verse, this piece gives no evidence of Milton's influence, but five years later, in 1685, some lines which do show it appeared from the same pen. Milton was fortunate in his first follower, who was no other than the Earl of Roscommon, nephew of the Earl of Strafford. Roscommon was not only a person of rank, but a poet highly esteemed in Augustan circles; his life was written by John- son and his verse appeared in all the great collections of English poetry pubUshed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His reputation, however, always rested largely upon one work, a poetical Essay on Translated Verse (1684). This famous piece, though written in couplets, contains a strong plea for discarding rime, and in the second edition (1685) concludes with twenty-seven lines in acknowledged imitation of Paradise Lost. Here are the first ten: Have we forgot how Raphaels Num'rous Prose Led our exalted Souls through heavenly Camps, And mark'd the ground where proud Apostate Thrones, Defy'd Jehovah! Here, 'twixt Host and Host, (A narrow but a dreadful Interval) Portentous sight! before the Cloudy van, Satan with vast and haughty Strides advanc'd. Came tow'ring arm'd in Adamant and Gold. There Bellowing Engines, with their fiery Tubes, Dispers'd Ethereal forms. The contents and diction of this passage were undoubtedly derived from Paradise Lost, but the style was not, nor was the prosody, for in most of the Unes one expects rime and is somewhat disturbed by its absence. This means that Roscommon had freed himself but slightly from the end-stopped Unes, the regular, equal stresses, the few internal pauses (and most of those near the middle of the lines) , which mark the heroic couplet. ^ This work, Horace's Art of Poetry (1680), was quoted on p. 79 above. The idea of discarding rime was undoubtedly derived from Paradise Lost. 90 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON On the other hand, Milton's unusual versification was what par- ticularly attracted one of Roscommon's contemporaries, Samuel Say, and led him to some unusual ideas of prosody which he exem- pHfied in blank-verse translations of four of Horace's epistles (1698) and later set forth in two essays, one On the Numbers of Paradise Lost} Most of Say's pieces are, like this passage, comparatively simple and natural in style : Or in some Grove retir'd Thou walk'st Unseen; in Contemplation high Rais'd up above the World, and seest beneath, Compassionate, the Cares and fond Designs Of restless Mortals, always in pursuit Of what they always have; stUl heaping up Stores to be us'd, yet never use their Stores." Occasionally, however, there will be a line as Miltonic as. But if Behind You loiter far, or strenuous run Before.' The early influence of Paradise Lost wsis, however, by no means limited to blank- verse poetry; it was, indeed, more obvious in the interminable rimed epics of Sir Richard Blackmore. Of this writer it may be said that few men of so little consequence have been abused by so many illustrious pens. Dryden, Pope, Swift, Gay, Garth, Sedley, Steele, and many lesser men each had his fling at the physician-poet, who long remained a target for the shafts of his literary brethren.^ As late as 1762 Robert Lloyd referred to his Heroic poems without number, Long, lifeless, leaden, lulUng lumber,* ^ This essay, the earliest work of its kind (written in 1737), is published with one On the Harmony, Variety, and Power of Numbers, whether in Prose or Verse, and with some unrimed lyrics suggested by Milton's translations from Horace (see pp. 563-4 below), in Poems and Two Critical Essays (written in 1698, but not printed till 1745), 139-71, 95-136, 1-26. 2 To Thomas Godfrey iih. 24). ^ Epistles of Horace, i. 2 {ih. 17). It was in 1698 that the astronomer, Walter Pope, published his Moral and Political Fables, done into Measured Prose intermixed with Ryme. I have not seen the work; but, according to Mr. Saintsbury {English Prosody, ii. 499) , " the quality of its blank verse appears to be pretty accurately designated in the title," a remark that certainly applies to The Wish, which Pope issued the year before. * Many of these poetical tributes are quoted in Birkbeck Hill's notes to Johnson's life of Blackmore, or are referred to in the Dictionary of National Biography. An entire volume of satirical "Commendatory Verses" appeared in 1700 and was reprinted in 1702. The most amusing of the Blackmore squibs is Gay's rimed catalog of the works of "England's arch-poet" {Verses under the Picture of Blackmore), which is erroneously included among Swift's poems (cf. Pope to Jervas, Nov. 14, 1716). ' On Rhyme, in Poetical Works (1774), ii. 114. Cf. the elder Thomas Warton's Poems (1748), 20. BLACKMORE 91 lines that contain more truth than satire, for Blackmore had neither inspiration nor taste, but jingled along with complete self-confidence in the monotonous jog-trot of an overworked cab-horse. He was capable not only of writing an epic with the title Eliza, but of putting into it lines like these: The Spaniard's Nose receiv'd the Fauch ion's Edge, Which did in sunder cut the rising Bridge. The Blood that follow'd part distain'd his Breast, And trickling down his Throat ran inwardly the rest.^ A partial excuse for such deficiencies is to be found in the circum- stances under which the poems were composed, their author being a busy, middle-aged London doctor, the physician to King William, with little time for literature. *'For the greatest part," so he in- formed his readers, his first epic "... was written in Coffee- houses, and in passing up and down the Streets," because he had "little leisure elsewhere to apply to it." ^ This work. Prince Arthur, an Heroick Poem in ten Books (1695), was followed by three others, King Arthur (1697) in twelve books, Eliza (1705) in ten, and Alfred (1723) in twelve, besides many pieces of a less heroic character, some in prose, some in verse. In the preface to King Arthur Blackmore terms Milton "a very Extraordinary Genius ^^ and acknowledges having made "a few allusions" to some of his ^'Inventions," ' — a very modest confession of many unmistakable plagiarisms. As a matter of fact, the first three epics (which differ Httle except in the names of the characters) are under a considerable debt to Paradise Lost, since they employ Satan and his followers, together with the archangels of heaven, for their supernatural machinery. The plan of each poem is much like that of the Aeneid. At the be- ginning, Satan, jealous of the prosperity of the hero (or the heroine), summons a council in hell and lays the matter before the peers. After various spirits have made speeches, it is agreed to send one of the number to stir up trouble for the principal character of the poem, who, however, by the aid of Uriel and other angels passes victori- ously through all the plots and gory battles. These councils in hell form the most Miltonic feature of the epics, for, although there may be several of them in a single poem, the characteristics of the speak- ers afid of their proposals are invariably taken almost without ^ Page 106. ^ King Arthur, p. v. 3 lb. xiii. Blackmore praised Milton in his Nature of Man {Collection oj Poems, 1718, p. 193; of. Good, p. 63). His Pindaric Hymn to the Light of the World seems, particu- larly at the beginning, to attempt the lofty style and diction of Paradise Lost. 92 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON change from the great assembly in Pandemonium. In Eliza, for example, the principal debate of the fiends proceeds as follows : Chemosh arose, a Prince of great Renown, No bolder Chief assail 'd th' Almighty's Throne; Scarce greater Deeds by Satan's Arms were done. Deform'd with Seams and Ignominious Scars, From ghastly Wounds receiv'd in Heav'nly Wars; Above the Demons that compos'd the Crowd, The Potentate, Majestick Ruin, stood. . . . He ceas'd: Then Baal did with Choler swell, A fiercer Spirit was not found in Hell . . . And thus th' Infernal Dyet he address'd. . . . Tho' disappointed oft, I still declare For bold Attempts in Arms, and glorious War. . . . He ceas'd, and Dagon rose, a Prince serene. Of Aspect mild, and of a winning Mein. . . . He still preserv'd a wond'rous pleasing Air, Graceful in Torment, in Perdition, fair. . . . Thus he began, Seraphs, I speak my Mind With Deference due to Spirits more refin'd; Of clearer Judgment, and of greater Weight, More able in the Business of the State. ... Why should we fruitless War and Strife repeat? Can all our Force Omnipotence defeat? ^ But these Stygian councils are only one of Blackmore's many bor- rowings from Milton. In King Arthur there is an account of Satan's flight through chaos to the earth ; ^ in Eliza the entire history of his revolt and of the battles in heaven is given, and there are allusions, in other connections, to the use of cannon in the celestial warfare and to the wounds inflicted by "Victorious Michael's Steel"; ^ while in Prince Arthur Christ appears in a triumphal chariot to end the war of the angels, Satan's ''faded Splendor and illustrious Scars" and the storm of fire that pursued him to hell are mentioned, there is another description of the Miltonic chaos with an account of the strife be- tween the atoms, a reference to angels' crowns wreathed with gold and amarant, and one to Sin and Death, as well as other borrow- ings.* Furthermore, when Blackmore deals with supernatural char- acters his diction is decidedly Miltonic. Empyreal, adamant, adamantine, massy, refulgent, cerulean, tartarean, are words that occur frequently, and the use of adjectives in -ean or -ian derived ^ Pages 12-16 passim. ^ Page 150. ^ Pages 205-8, 11,2. * Pages s, 8 (cf. King Arthur, 152), 36-7, 43, 47. Note also page 22, where a huge fury suddenly contracts her size, as do the demons in Pandemonium; and page 243, where Satan assumes the appearance of a beautiful young angel. The names of Black- more's angels are taken from Paradise Lost. DENNIS 93 from proper nouns becomes almost a mannerism with him. In one place he has six in seven lines/ and he is never long without one. Not only do we have Cyclopian, Herculean, Bolerian, Dobunian, Catuclanian, Ottadenian, Durotrigian, and hundreds more of the same kind, but we meet such unexpected manufactures as Vulcan- ian, ^tnean, Ithacian, Arragonian, Nassovian (from Nassau), Pightlandian, and Laplandian. Although Blackmore wrote too rapidly and knew too little of Paradise Lost to follow it closely,^ a careful reading of his works would probably reveal a number of verbal borrowings. The few I have noticed are dubious.^ On the whole, however, when it is remembered that the epics are in rime, that they began to appear only twenty-eight years after the publica- tion of Paradise Lost, and that they are anything but dignified or sublime in style, it will be seen that their debt to Milton is consider- able. The first great protagonist of Paradise Lost was not Addison but the forgotten John Dennis. As the enthusiasm which the poem roused in this sturdy inventor of stage thunder cropped out in all his critical writing, one is not surprised to find it affecting his verse. That it did so he was himself the first to point out; for he explained in the preface to his Court of Death (1695, an irregular ode on the death of Queen Mary), " In the writing these Pindarick Verses, I had still Milton in my Eye, and was resolv'd to imitate him as far as it could be done without receeding from Pindar's manner." The at- tempt to combine Milton and Pindar as models probably arose from Dennis's desire for sublimity, the quality in poetry that he admired above all others and the one for which he persistently but vainly strove in his own productions. As the style and prosody of Paradise Lost are hardly transferable to a rimed ode, he could borrow only words, phrases, and ideas, but all of these he took. The Court of Death describes a visit to the lower world and to a Stygian assembly much like that held in Pandemonium, over which Death, who shakes *'a dreadful Dart," presides.* Such expressions as "Empy- rean Lyre," "Adamantine Chains," "Silence was ravish'd as she sung," "their formidable King the great Consult began," "the ^ King Arthur, pp. 56-7. 2 The invention of cannon, for example, he attributes {Eliza, p. 11) to the celestial angels instead of to Satan's forces. ^ "The Eternal's Co-eternal Son" (Eliza, p. 4, cf. P. L., iii. 2); the picture of God's throne shining "with excessive Brightness" (Prince Arthur, p. 43, cf. P. L., iii. 380); and the account of filling the sun, originally a "spungy globe," with light, — "The thirsty Orb drinks in the liquid Beams" (ib. 38, cf. P. L., vii. 361-2). * Section vii. 94 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON griesly Terror spoke," "Discord . . . Thro all her thousand Mouths," show the debt to Milton's phrasing,^ "Through the reigns of William and Anne," observes Johnson, "no prosperous event passed undignified by poetry." ^ Dennis had already broken into song on three public occasions, and four others were to arise to call forth his efforts. Between his earlier and his later productions, however, there is one significant difference, — the earUer are pindaric odes, the later are without rime. It is convenient to speak of these last pieces as written in blank verse, although the meter of none of Dennis's work really deserves that name. Like Roscommon, he either disregarded or did not understand the funda- mental principles of Milton's prosody, and in consequence most of his lines are nothing but heroic couplets without the rime. It is not improbable, indeed, that one reason for his discarding rime was to save himself trouble. There seems to be nothing Miltonic about his earliest attempt at blank verse, The Monument (1702), in which the death of King William is lamented through sixty pages, or about his last unrimed eulogy. On the Accession of King George (1714). Between these panegyrics came his poems on Blenheim and Ramel- lies (1704, 1706), which together fill nearly one hundred and seventy pages with bombastic platitude, and recall Dryden's regret over another EngHsh victory because of the amount of bad verse it would call forth. In style, language, syntax, and prosody neither of these efforts shows much Miltonic influence, though inversions are fre- quent, adjectives are occasionally used for adverbs, and some un- usual words and borrowed phrases are to be found. ^ Few passages are even so much like Paradise Lost as this : The French were all of Gallick Troops the Flow'r, Experienc'd and Victorious were their Chiefs, Soldiers and Chiefs inur'd to vast Success: And claiming Right to Conquest and Renown, ^ Sections ii, vi, ii (of. P. L.,\v. 504, and Cotnus, 557-60), v (cf. P. L., i. 798), vii (of. P. L., ii. 704), X (cf. P. L., ii. 967). 2 "Prior," in Lives (ed. Hill), ii. 186. ^ A few of his obvious borrowings from Milton are: "swinging slow with hoarse and sullen Roar" {Blenheim, in Works, 1718, i. 160, cf. Penseroso, 76); "Italia! Ah how fall'n, how chang'd from her, Who" (ib. 176, cf. P. L.,i. 84-5); "raise my advent'rous Song" {ib. 196; cf. P. L., i. 13); "Instruct me, Goddess, for Thou only know'st" {ib. 196, cf. P. L.,i. 17-19); "Collected in himself, awhile he stood" {Ramellies,ib. 235, cf. P. L.,ix. 673); "as a Flock of tim'rous Fowl" {ib. 245, cf. P. L., vi. 856-7); "the mid- most Regions of the Air" {ib. 245, 256, cf. P. R., ii. 117); "the stedfast Empyrean" {ib. 255, cf . also 299, and P. L., vi. 833, iii. 57) ; "Down tow'rds the Earth she wheel'd her airy Flight" {ib. 256, cf. P. L., iii. 739-41). Four lines of Blenheim {ib. 213) are devoted to the praise of Milton. DENNIS 95 From long Possession; with their dearest Blood Resolv'd their lofty Title to defend. By long Success presumptuous grown and vain.i The Battle of Ramillia not only is in blank verse but makes use of the Miltonic machinery. It opens with a council of infernal spirits summoned by Satan to his palace (hung between the moon and the earth) to devise means of thwarting the progress of Goodness and Queen Anne. The long and insulting speech of "Hell's black Ty- rant" is roundly answered by Discord, who offers to go to the aid of King Louis; her plan is accepted and the assembly dismissed. This gathering recalls the council in Pandemonium, but is closer to the one described in the second book of Paradise Regained, where the meeting-place is similar. Still more like Milton is the scene in heaven with which Dennis's fourth book opens, for here the Eternal Father calls the attention of the Son to the machinations of the evil one and sends an angel to thwart them.^ It is doubtful whether these poems were ever much read; cer- tainly they are quite unreadable to-day, — dull, tumid, false, lacking in grace and fluency as well as in the Augustan virtues of wit and finish. Yet Dennis was the most extensive writer of blank verse be- tween Milton and Thomson, and, with the exception of Addison, probably did more than any other one man to establish the reputa- tion of Paradise Lost. The councils of fallen spirits that found favor with Blackmore and Dennis also play an important part in two pieces which were pub- lished the same year, 1702, under the same name. The Vision. One of these is in rime till the appearance of Urania, who, casting aside "that isihe jingling Chime" describes an assembly in Pandemonium of the fallen angels mentioned in Paradise Lost, at which Behal pro- poses, as he does in Paradise Regained, to ruin man through lust.^ This Vision is anonymous, as the second might about as well be, for the poet's name is given as "M. Smith." The author imagines that he is carried through the Miltonic chaos (where he observes the ^ Blenheim, ib. 190-91. ' Cf. P. L., ill. 56-415, V. 219-90. The fourth and ninth books of the Gierusalemme Liberata, which Dennis admired, describe scenes in heaven and hell, but his work is not so close to them as to the similar passages in Paradise Lost. Furthermore, his diction when he deals with the supernatural is decidedly Miltonic. Translations from the Gierusalemme into Miltonic blank verse, with inversions not in the original, are intro- duced into his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, 1704 {Works, ii. 436, 448-50; and compare the translation from Homer on 453 with P. L., vii. 410-12). 2 Charles Gildon, Examen Miscellaneum (1702), 51 ff., first pagination; cf. P. R., ii. 150 ff. See above, p. 51, n. i, where an attack on rime is quoted from the same volume. 96 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON war of the atoms), past the gates of hell *'of nine-fold Adamant" (guarded by Sin, the 'offspring of Satan's brain'), to a great palace where the evil spirits are assembled. After "Silence was bid," The awful Monarch from his Seat did rise, And having roul'd about his Baleful Eyes, He said Great Princes, Virtues, Dominations, Pow'rs; Once Potentates of Heav'n; no longer ours: Such the Almighty's Thunder prov'd, unknown, TUl we attempted the Imperial Throne Of Heav'n. Tho great, yet Glorious was our Fall . . . But more. Ambitious Minds like mine 'twill please To Reign in Torment, then to serve in Ease.' Is it any wonder that Mr. Smith feared he should be called "a Plagiary, for taking some Hints from Milton"? ^ The first Milton enthusiast seems to have been John Philips, who when still a schoolboy Hked to sit and read Paradise Lost while his long hair was being combed.^ At Oxford he "studied" his favorite poet "with Application, and trac'd him in all his successful Transla- tions from the Ancients. There was not an Allusion in his Poem, drawn from the Thoughts, or Expressions of Homer or Virgil, which he could not immediately refer to." * The fruits of this devo- tion are to be seen in a parody which was published anonymously in 1 701 with the title Imitation of Milton,^ but which four years later appeared over the author's name as the Splendid Shilling. This short piece quickly became popular and long remained so. By 1720 it had been printed, either by itself or in miscellanies, as many as nine times, and had been lauded in the Tatler by Addison as "the finest burlesque poem in the British language." ^ Later in the cen- tury Goldsmith wrote of it, "This is reckoned the best parody of Milton in our language: it has been an hundred times imitated, without success." ' It was also praised by Cowper and Crabbe, and was twice translated into Latin.* This is the beginning: ' Pages 23-49. The author — who proves to be the Rev. Matthew Smith, a non- conformist minister of Mixenden, Yorkshire — uses such words as "appetency," "adamantine," "lucid," "orient," "refulgent." 2 "To the Reader." A council of devils in William Shippen's rimed Moderation Displayed (1704) may also owe something to Milton. ' Diet. Nat. Biog. * Life [by George Sewell], 1712, p. 3. * Charles Gildon, Neiv Miscellany of Original Poems (1701), 212-21. The Imitation is also somewhat like Horace's second epode. ^ No. 249, Nov. II, 1 710. ' Beauties of English Poesy (1767), i. 255. 8 The Task, iii. 455-6; The Borough, xi. 9. The Latin versions are Thomas Tyr- whitt's Splendens Solidus (in his Translations in Verse, Oxford, 1747, the text being PHILIPS 97 Happy the Man, who void of Cares and Strife, In Silken or in Leathern Purse retains A Splendid ShUling; he nor hears with Pain New Oysters cry'd, nor sighs for chearfnl Ale; But with his Friends, when Night[l]y Mists arise, To Juniper's, or Magpye, or Town-Hall repairs. An idea of how Miltonic the style is may be gathered from these lines near the end : My Galligaskins that have long withstood The Winter's Fury, and encroaching Frosts, By time subdu'd, (what will not time subdue!) A Horrid Chasm disclose, with Orifice Wide, discontinuous; at which the Winds Eurus and Auster, and the dreadful Force Of Boreas, that congeals the Cronian Waves, Tumultuous enter with dire chiUing Blasts. It must not be thought that any slight upon Paradise Lost was intended by the parody; Philips's humor was simply the playfulness of an admiring friend. His attitude towards "his darling Milton" ^ is expressed in no uncertain terms in a later poem : Oh, had but He that first ennobled Song With holy Raptures, like his Abdiel been, 'Mong many faithless, strictly faithful found; Unpity'd, he should not have wail'd his Orbs, That roll'd in vain to find the piercing Ray, And found no Dawn, by dim Suffusion veU'd! But He — However, let the Muse abstain. Nor blast his Fame, from whom she learnt to sing In much inferior Strains, grov'ling beneath Th' Olympian HiU, on Plains, and Vales intent. Mean Follower.'' All of his poems, furthermore, as he himself points out in every case but one, are "in imitation of Milton." ^ They include a tumid piece on the battle of Blenheim (1705), which is no worse than such poems usually are; Cerealia (1706), a Miltonic parody devoted to the praise of ale, which, though published anonymously and not printed over Philips's name until 1780, is in all probability his; * and Cyder almost identical with that of the Splendens Nummus in Edward Popham's Selecta Poemata, Bath, 1776, iii. 101-7), and an anonymous Nummus Splendidus appended to the Latin translation of Gray's elegy made by Christopher Anstey and W. H. Roberts in 1778. 1 Sewell's Life, 3. 2 Cyder, i. 785-95- 2 See the full titles of the Splendid Shilling and Cerealia, and the third line of Cyder. * John Nichols {Collection of Poems, 1780, iv. 274 n.) refers to a copy of the 1706 edition in the Lambeth Ubrary "in which the name of Philips was inserted in the hand- 98 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON (January, 1707/8), a georgic in two books, which treats in detail of the care of orchards and the making of cider.^ In style and diction all his works are alike, for the exaggerated Miltonisms which he in- troduced into the Splendid Shilling for the sake of humor Philips never shook off. Indeed, he probably regarded them as beauties, or at least as essentials to blank verse, although to the modern ear they make all his verse sound like parody. The following description of the making of cider, which is t3^ical of his principal work, will show how grotesque some of his "imitations" are: Now exhort Thy Hinds to exercise the pointed Steel On the hard Rock, and give a wheely Form To the expected Grinder: Now prepare Materials for thy Mill, a sturdy Post Cylindric, to support the Grinder's Weight Excessive, and a flexile Sallow' entrench'd. Rounding, capacious of the juicy Hord. Nor must thou not be mindful of thy Press Long e'er the Vintage; but with timely Care Shave the Goat's shaggy Beard, least thou too late In vain should'st seek a Strainer, to dispart The husky, terrene Dregs, from purer Must.'* Philips's debt to his "darling" was not limited to style and dic- tion. The opening of Cerealia is clearly based on that of Paradise Lost, and there are many phrases, like "buxom air," "impresses quaint emblazon'd," "bedropt with gold," "with speed succinct," and "bold emprise," taken from the same source.' In Cyder, Mil- tonic borrowing begins with the fourth hne and riots throughout the poem. Besides saying that a river "drew her humid Train," and speaking of the "volant Touch" of a musician and of "Pearl and Barbaric Gold," •* Philips introduces whole lines from Paradise Lost: writing of Abp. Tennison," and adds, "It was published by T. Bennet, the Bookseller for whom Blenheim was printed." The style, diction, and prosody are Philips's, the subject-matter suggests the Splendid Shilling and Cyder, and the poem reveals a familiarity with Milton unusual at that time. 1 To Philips have also been attributed The Fall of Chloe's Piss-pot [Jordan], first printed in the London Magazine for February, 1754; and Ramelies, published anony- mously in 1 706 and reprinted as Philips's in Alexander Harrach's John Philips (Kreuz- nach, 1906, pp. 111-21). Neither piece, however, shows the prosody, the language, or the style of Philips. Dr. Harrach also reprints (pp. 96-110, and see 64-71) The Sylvan Dream, or the Mourning Muses (1701), because on the title-page of the British Museum copy the name "John Philips" is written. But there is no other reason (except a pos- sible borrowing from Comus, see below, p. 429, n. i) for thinking that this dull, conven- tional work, partly in heroic couplets and partly in Pindarics, is from the pen that wrote the Splendid Shilling and Cyder. '^ Cyder, ii. 78-90. 3 Cf. P. L., ii. 842, v. 270; ix. 34-5; vii. 406, x. 527; iii. 643; xi. 642. * i. 205 (cf. P. L., vii. 306); ii. 424 (cf. P. L., xi. 561); ii. 657 (cf. P. L., ii. 4). PHILIPS 99 Adventrous I presume to sing; of Verse Nor skill'd, nor studious. Till, with a writhen Mouth, and spattering Noise, He tastes the bitter Morsel, and rejects Disrelisht. If no Retinue ... Dazle the Croud, and set them all agape. Berries, and Sky-dy'd Plums, and what in Coat Rough, or soft Rind, or bearded Husk, or Shell. Maladies, that lead to Death's grim Cave, Wrought by Intemperance, joint-racking Gout, Intestine Stone, and pining Atrophy. ^ There were some who did not relish the Philipian variety of Mil- tonic language and style. Blackmore assailed the 'harsh numbers,' ''uncouth Strains," and 'tortured language' of Bleinheim;^ while Pope declared, "Philips, in his Cyder, has succeeded extremely well in his imitation of it [Milton's style], but was quite wrong in en- deavouring to imitate it on such a subject." ' Johnson, who ad- mired the Splendid Shilling, wrote, "Whatever there is in Milton which the reader wishes away, all that is obsolete, peculiar, or licen- tious is accumulated with great care by Philips." ^ Yet such adverse judgments were rare. The poet's biographer had "never heard but of One" faultfinder; ^ and even Johnson inserted into his Hfe of Edmund Smith a quotation which speaks of Philips as " that second Milton, whose writings will last as long as the English language, generosity, and valour." ^ His acknowledged works were, indeed, very popular. Not only did the Splendid Shilling have an unusual vogue, but Bleinheim reached its sixth edition in 1720, Cyder its fourth in 1728, and the three together saw what was called the tenth edition in 1744.^ If they have not fulfilled a contemporary 1 i. 4-5 (cf. P. L., I. 13, and ix. 41-2); i. 447-9 (cf. P. L., x. 566-9, said of eating fruit in each case); i. 741-4 (cf. P. Z,., v. 355-7); ii. 53-4 (cf. P. Z,., v. 341-2); ii. 471-3 (cf. P. L.,xi. 467-88). 2 Advice to the Poets (2d ed., 1706), 10. Note that Philips's title is Bleinheim, not Blenheim. ' Spence's Anecdotes (ed. Singer, 1820), 174. * "Philips," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 318. Charles Gildon declared (Laws of Poetry, 1721, p. 321) that, except for the Splendid Shilling, Philips "never did any thing . . . worth looking on." ' Sewell's Life, 27 (the one critic was Blackmore). Cyder is criticized, though per- haps humorously, in a passage in Gay's Wine, 1708 (lines 114-20 of the Muses' Library edition) , which praises Bleinheim. * Lives (ed. Hill), ii. 7. ^ Some of these editions were not ehtirely new; the first issue of Cyder, for example, formed part of the Whole Works (1720). Within four months of the publication of lOO THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON prediction that they would ''live ... as long as Blenheim is re- member'd, or Cyder drunk in England," ^ two of them, Cyder and the Splendid Shilling, continued to be read at least to the end of the cen- tury. The Critical Review declared in 1762 that the two poems were "sufficient to eternize the memory" of their author;^ and on the appearance of The Task the Gentleman's Magazine hailed Cowper as "perhaps, without excepting even Philips, the most successful of the imitators of Milton." ^ Not only did an Italian translation of Cyder go through two editions (1749, 1752), but the original poem was edited with an imposing array of "notes provincial, historical, and classical" in 179 1, and as late as 1804 a critic of good standing wrote that it still maintained "a respectable place among compositions of its class." ^ This popularity makes Philips a much more important writer than has been realized. Although far from being a great poet, he was influential : to his example are to be referred most of the un- rimed burlesques, the technical treatises, and the humorous poems on liquor that were popular in the eighteenth century. Further- more, as the only widely-read writer of blank verse before Thomson, he helped to endow the new measure with what none of his contem- poraries were able to give it, popularity. Milton, Roscommon, and Dennis had gained respect for it, and lesser men had made the public somewhat accustomed to it, but most of their productions found few readers and fewer admirers. Philips did much to bring blank verse "out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses," and through his influence on Thomson he became a figure of unquestionable signifi- cance in the development of English poetry. The blank verse produced by Daniel Defoe fell as far short of Cyder, Gay's imitation of it, Wine, appeared (see pp. 107-8 below); and during the following year, 1709, some unknown- bard put forth Milton's Sublimity asserted in a Poem occasioned by a late celebrated Piece entituled Cyder. This curious and confused production criticises Philips for debasing Milton's verse, the writer (whose sanity is open to question) apparently not reaUzing that, since his poem also is in Miltonic blank verse and his theme far from exalted, he is doing the very thing for which he blames Phihps. He refers in the preface to "the fam'd Author of that idoliz'd piece, Cyder," and adds, "I do not think there is any Work extant, that hath alarm'd the World more than his; and bin I may say, some years so much the talk and hopes of the Publick." ^ Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics (5th ed., 1753), 225. ' xiv. 154; see also ib. xxxv. 54 (quoting from W. H. Roberts's Poetical Epistle to Christopher Ansley, 1773), and Mo. Rev., enl. ed., vii. 22 (1792), x. 272 (1793), xxx. 393 (quoting from Lady Manners's Review of Poetry, 1799). Henry Baker in 1723 termed Philips a "celestial bard" who sang of cider "in lines immortal" {Invocation of Health, in Anthologia Hibernica, 1793, i. 226). 3 Ivi. 235. * John Aikin, Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807), 144. DEFOE lOI exemplifying that harmony for which he praised poetry ^ as his Hfe failed to embody the truth which he fervently invoked in song; yet it is of greater interest than are many more melodious productions. Its significance lies not so much in its author's reputation as in af- fording an instance of an essentially journalistic and unpoetic writer who, so early as 1705, admired the cathedral harmonies of blank verse sufficiently to imitate them to some extent, and in the fact that his crude poems were written not for a small circle or as a private experiment but for publication in a newspaper. The Review. The necessity of providing copy quickly for his periodical may have been Defoe's reason for abandoning the troublesome bondage of riming; for, though he sneers at those who "will miss the Jingle, and like the Pack-Horse that tires without his Bells, be weary of the Lines for Want of the Rhjone," he admits that one of his pieces, which fills three pages, was 'the birth of as many hours.' ^ Many of his lines are hardly verse at all; but it will be seen from those quoted below that he tried, by clipping past participles ("contaminate"), by using verbs for nouns ("dispose"), and particularly by inverting the word-order, to get something of a Miltonic effect: Immortal Truth, thou Counterpart of God, Immense, and like him Bright, tho' Undiscern'd Tell us, Why Mortal Frauds assault thy Throne, Assume thy Likness, and thy Face Sublime So aptly Counterfeit? Why masked they strive To pass for thy bright Self? How Crime and Guilt Of Hell conceiv'd, and from the Place Surnam'd Contaminate, can Heaven it self Invade. . . . Not high assembl'd Crowds of Tyrant Men, Who boast the vast Dispose of Mortal Power, Shall thy Unbyass'd Resolutions fright .^ ^ See his Review, vol. iii, no. 104 (Aug. 31, 1706). It is in this connection that he commends MUton (see p. 15 above). 2 lb. no. 61. The poem On the Fight at Ramellies is in the same number; the last sixteen lines of it are rimed. ' Hymn to Truth, in the Review, vol. ii, no. i (Feb. 27, 1705). See also the lines in Supplement, no. 5 (January, 1705), appended to volume i of the Review. My attention was called to these poems, and to the reference to Milton, by Mr. A. L. Bouton of New York University, to whose knowledge of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century prose I am otherwise indebted. Through C. A. Moore's Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets (Modem Lang. Assoc, Publications, xxxi. 277-8) I have learned of two wretched unrimed poems published in 1711 by Henry Needier, "the first actual literary follower of Shaftesbury." The more important of these pieces is a deistic attempt to prove the existence of God from the works of creation, the other is entitled To the Memory of Favonia {Works, 2d ed., 1728, pp. 135-9, 198-200). Needier quotes from Paradise Lost on pages 66 n., 67, 70-71 n., 73 n. I02 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Defoe's Review was not the only periodical in the early eighteenth century to publish blank verse, for between 1708 and 171 1 more than sixty examples of it appeared in the British Apollo} Many of the questions and answers which make up this prototype of Notes and Queries are in verse, the style and meter of the questions being copied in the answers. The Apollo contains a few references to Paradise Lost, as well as several phrases borrowed from it,^ and practically all the unrimed questions and replies have some echoes of the Miltonic style and diction, the subUmity of which the con- tributors often made painful efforts to copy. Apparently the writers were convinced that to escape being prosaic it was necessary to get as far as possible from ordinary speech, for one bard actually referred so grandiosely to making malt that he was understood to mean farming ! ' Yet, although the pieces are written in the sorriest doggerel, the frequent use of blank verse for such purposes in a periodical so popular that it went through four editions is of con- siderable significance. Although Isaac Watts is known to-day only as a writer of hymns, his collected works fill six huge tomes. Among the most popular of his productions was the Horae Lyricae, originally published in 1706 and reprinted for the sixteenth time in 1793. This volume contains eight poems in an easy, flowing blank verse which as a rule shows little influence from Paradise Lost. A few lines from True Courage will show what Watts's unrimed poetry is like : He that unshrinking and without a Groan Bears the first Wound may finish all the War With meer couragious Silence, and come off Conqueror: for the Man that well conceals The heavy Strokes of Fate he bears 'em well.'' Frequently, however, the style stiffens and becomes more formal and heroic, with the result that we have passages like this: And his Throne Mortal Access forbids, projecting far Splendors unsufferable and radiant Death. With Reverence and Abasement deep they fall Before his Sovereign Majesty, to pay Due Worship.* * See below, Bibl. I and Appendbc B, 1 708-11. * For two references, see vol. i, nos. 25, 113. The phrase "ever during Dark" (from P. L., iii. 45) is in vol. i, quarterly paper no. i; "Disastrous Influence shed" (of. P. L.,\. 597) is in vol. i , supernumerary paper no. 8; "Earth, self-ballanced in Ambient Air" (from P. L., vii. 242, 89) and "paassy" (P. L., i. 285, 703, etc.) occur in vol. ii, no. 104. ' Vol.ii,no. 18, and supernumerary paper no.4. * Horae Lyricae (2d ed., 1709), 191. * To Mitio {ib. 2 70) . The heroic poem. The Celebrated Victory of the Poles over Osman WATTS 103 Here are the inverted word-order, the diction, and something of the sonorous pomp which distinguish Paradise Lost. Another poem in the same volume ^ shows the "vast Reverence" Watts had for Mil- ton, though he declares, ''The Length of his Periods, and sometimes of his Parentheses runs me out of Breath. ... I could never believe that Roughness and Obscurity added any thing to the true Grandeur of a Poem; nor will I ever affect Archaisms, Exoticisms, and a quaint Uncouthness of Speech, in order to become perfectly Miltonian. 'Tis my Opinion that Blank Verse may be written with all due Ele- vation of Thought in a modern Stile." ^ It is to Watts's credit, in- deed, that he dropped many Miltonic characteristics that were not suited to his purpose, but kept the run-over lines and the constant shifting of the pauses which many of his contemporaries disregarded. So partial was he to these features of Milton's prosody that he even introduced them into the heroic couplet. "I have attempted in Rhime," he announced, "the same variety of Cadence, Comma and Period, which Blank Verse Glories in as its pecuHar Elegance." ^ The result was poetry like the following, an ugly duckling that gave little promise of the suppleness and grace the freer couplet was to develop : Then our Zeal Blaz'd and burnt high to reach th' Ethereal Hill, And Love refin'd like that above the Poles Threw both our Arms round one another's Souls In Rapture and Embraces. Oh forbear, Forbear, my Song! this is too much to hear, Too dreadful to repeat; such Joys as these Fled from the Earth for ever! * Watts was one of a group of men and women who admired Para- dise Lost. Prefixed to the third edition of his Horae Lyricae (17 15) are two unrimed poems, both written in 1706, one of which, by Joseph Standen, speaks thus of the rebelhous angels: Incarnate Fiends! outragious they defy'd Th' Eternal's Thunder, and Almighty Wrath Fearless provok'd, which all the other Devils Would dread to meet. The other prefatory poem is by Watts's first cousin and life-long friend, Henry Grove, one of the contributors to the Spectator. This {ih. 229-38) , is more Miltonic; but, as it is the only piece of the kind that Watts wrote, the passage given above is more typical. ^ Quoted above, p. 37; and see pp. 38, 425. * Horae, 1709, preface, pp. xx-xxi. ^ Horae, 1706, preface, p. [x]. * Funeral Poem on Thomas Gunston (composed 1701), Horae, 1709, p. 327. I04 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON piece is not Miltonic, but another of its author's short productions is.^ Grove and Watts received their early education at a noncon- formist academy kept by Thomas Rowe, where they had as school- mates Samuel Say, whose essays on Milton and imitations of him we have already noticed, and John Hughes, one of the first poets to copy the minor poems.^ Furthermore, another Thomas Rowe, a nephew of the teacher and a friend of Watts, translated one of Horace's odes into the verse of Paradise Lost, and his wife, "the famous, ingenious, and justly admir'd Mrs. Singer," wrote one confessed imitation of Milton, two others in which the indebtedness is equally clear, and considerable non-Miltonic blank verse. ^ It should be no- ticed that this group was made up of dissenters, that all but two of the men were ministers, all but one of unusual piety, and that the only one of the seven who was not particularly interested in religious matters, John Hughes, was the only one who did not write blank verse. There can be no question that in these cases, as in many others, Milton's Puritanism and the religious nature of his principal poem had not a little to do with the admiration he received. In the first sixty years after the pubHcation of Paradise Lost blank verse was most often employed (outside of the drama) for transla- tions of the classics. This is not to be wondered at, since the Eng- lish epic was obviously patterned after those in Greek and Latin, which were themselves unrimed. In these early metrical para- phrases, however, Milton's style and prosody frequently had little or no place. They do not, as we have seen, enter into the first un- rimed poem published after his epic (Roscommon's version of the Ars Poetica, 1680), nor are they to be found in Thomas Fletcher's brief translations from the Aeneid, which came twelve years later .^ But they do appear in the adaptations of Horace made by Samuel Say and by Thomas Rowe, and they are frankly acknowledged in a piece which Addison brought out in 1704, Milton's Stile Imitated, in a Translation out of the Third Aeneid. This poem, which shows a de- ^ See Bibl. 1, 1709. ^ See pp. 90 above and 442-3 below. ' See Bibl. I, 1708 w., 1704 ?, bef. 1710?, and App. B, 1729-39. Mrs. Rowe's devotional books had a remarkable sale throughout the eighteenth century. ^ See below, Appendix B, 1692. Fletcher had previously translated the first book into heroic couplets {Poems, 1692, pp. 65-119), a performance which he afterwards deeply regretted. "There is nothing which I can so hardly forgive my self," he wrote in the preface, "as that I took such pains to make it worse than I needed. I mean, by confining my self to Rhime, when blank Verse, as it would have been more easie, so I am perswaded it would have been more natural. . . . Rhimes ... do but emasculate Heroick Verse, and give it an unnatural Softness. In Songs, Pastorals, and the softer sorts of Poetry, Rhimes may perhaps be not unelegantly retain'd; but an Heroe drest up in them looks like Hercules with a Distaflf." TRANSLATIONS 105 cided tendency to fall into couplets, is a poor imitation, but verbal borrowings at times bring it close to its model.^ It is nearest "Mil- ton's stile" in the following passage: 'Tis said, that thunder-struck Enceladus GroveUng beneath the incimibent mountain's weight, Lies stretched supine, eternal prey of flames; And, when he heaves against the burning load. Reluctant, to invert his broiling limbs, A sudden earthquake shoots through all the isle. And Aetna thunders dreadful under-ground. In view of the admiration for Paradise Lost which Addison later expressed in the Spectator papers, it seems only natural that he should have imitated it; but we are surprised to find "Mat" Prior, "the earliest, as he was one of the most consummate, masters of EngHsh famihar verse," doing the same thing. Prior's versions of two of the lofty hymns of CalUmachus are so highly condensed as to be abrupt, but his blank verse is much better than what Addison or most other men of the time wrote. Prosodically it is marked by a large proportion of the weak endings that distinguish Shakespeare's later manner but are rare in Paradise Lost. His use of blank verse was not Hmited to translations, for three of the poems recently dis- covered at Longleat are without rime, — a brief, crudely-expressed prophecy, a six-line paraphrase from Virgil's fourth Georgic, and a "Prelude" with the beginning of a tale from Boccaccio. In the first two of these far from successful ventures there is little if any trace of Milton's style, but in the last one there are marked signs of it, as the following interesting assault upon neo-classic rules will show: Of the noblest Heights and best Examples, Ambitious, I in English Verse attempt. But not as heretofore, the line prescrib'd To equal cadence, and with semblant Sounds Pointed, (so Modern Harmony advises) But in the Ancient Guise, free, uncontroll'd, The Verse, compress'd the Period, or dUated, As close discourse requires, or fine description. Such Homer wrote; such Milton imitated.^ ^ Compare, for example, the description of Mt. Etna in eruption, The bottom works with smothered fire involved In pestilential vapours, stench, and smoke, with Milton's Unes {P. L., i. 236-7); and note the use of "orient beams" (of. P. L., ii. 399, iv. 644, vi. 15), "he back recoiled" (of. P. L.,vi. 194), "on the grundsiledge" (cf. P.L.,i. 460). * Prelude to a Tale from Boccace, in Waller's edition of Prior's Writings (Camb., 1907), ii. 339. For the other two pieces, see pp. 318, 334, of the same volume. Another I06 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON We have already made the acquaintance of the critical Oxford professor of poetry, Joseph Trapp, who, not content with champion- ing Paradise Lost, turned it into Latin.^ In 1703 Trapp began a translation of the complete works of Virgil, the first to be made in blank verse. The character of this decidedly Miltonic version — which was not finished till 1731, and which, strangely enough, en- joyed a considerable popularity, reaching its fourth edition in 1755 — may be judged by comparison of the following lines with Addi- son's rendering of the same passage: 'Tis said, the Bulk of huge Enceladus Blasted with Light'ning, by This pond'rous Mount Is crush'd; and jEtna, o'er him whelm'd, expires Flame from it's burst Volcano's: And whene'er He shifts his weary Side, Trinacria all Groans trembling, and with Smoke obscures the Sky.* The first part of Trapp's Aeneid was not published till 17 18, four years after Nicholas Brady, author of a famous metrical version of the Psalms, had brought out the first book of his translation.* "When dragged into the world, [it] did not live long enough to cry," Johnson said of this work,* which neither he nor the writer on Brady in the Dictionary of National Biography had ever seen. Theirs was no great loss; for Brady's version is inferior to Trapp's, and is inter- esting principally for its many lines with weak endings, for such off- hand phrases as "Peace Let's rather make," "two of our Gang," Andromache "the Relict" of Hector,^ as well as for being generally conversational and hence on the whole but slightly Miltonic. An anonymous Verbal Translation of Part of the First Aeneid, which came out in 1726 (the year Brady finished his rendering) and ex- tended to only two pages, is more literal and still less Miltonic.^ To the unrimed and uninspired versions of parts of the Odyssey and Iliad which Elijah Fenton and William Broome published in 1 71 7 and 1727 respectively a special interest attaches, not only be- cause these are the earliest renderings of Homer into blank verse, but because their authors also turned half of the Odyssey into couplets of the poet's expressions of dissatisfaction with the closed couplet is given on pp. 59-60 above. ^ See p. 17 above. His Latin version appeared in two volumes (1741, 1744). * Aeneis, iii. 728-33; cf. above, p. 105. ^ A year before, in 1713, he had published as a "specimen " the first hundred lines of book i, as Proposals for Publishing a Translation of Virgil's Aeneids in Blank Verse. * "Dryden," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 453. ' iv. 132-3, iii. 809, 422. " Miscellaneous Poems by Several Hands, published by D. Lewis, 1726, pp. 307-9. PARODIES 107 for Pope. Their rimed and unrimed translations are entirely unlike, the one being as unmistakably pseudo-classic as the other is Mil- tonic; yet in the books that Fenton rimed for Pope there are not a few words and phrases taken from Paradise Lost, a circumstance which will surprise no one who knows that he wrote a life of Milton, edited his epic, and used its meter and style in a paraphrase of a chapter from Isaiah.^ The first poem to popularize blank verse was, as we have already observed, a parody, the Splendid Shilling (1701), the success of which naturally led other writers to attempt the same easy path through humor to fame. The only unexpected thing about these imitations, eight of which appeared before 1725, is that they came so slowly. The first one. Gay's Wine (1708), does not mention the Splendid Shilling, but refers to Philips's Cyder as if that alone were its source.^ There can be no question, however, of its indebtedness to the earlier burlesque, and, as will be seen from the following lines, to the epic which both poems parody: Bacchus divine, aid my advent'rous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar: Inspir'd, sublime, on Pegasean wing, By thee upborne, I draw Miltonic air.' The poem exhibits not only the obvious indications of "Miltonic air," — inverted word-order, parentheses, and the use of adjectives for adverbs, — but also a fondness for unusual words in -ean or -ian.^ Like Philips, Gay seems to have thought well of the work he paro- died, for the number of verbal borrowings from widely separated parts of Paradise Lost indicate a familiarity with that poem which could hardly have resulted from indifference or dislike.* Wine is a ^ See Bibl. I, 171 2. For the use Broome made of Lycidas and the octosyllabics, see pp. 426, 445-6, below. 2 See lines 114-20 (Muses' Library ed.), where Bleinheitn also is mentioned. 3 Lines 12-15; cf. P. L., i. 13-14. * For example, Pegasean, Titanian, Celtiberian, Heliconian, Lenaean, Oxonian, Ariconian, Phcebean, sylvestrian, Croatian, Centaurian, scymmetrian, Dircean. ^ Here are a few of them: So mists and exhalations that arise From hills or steamy lake dusky or grey Prevail, till Phoebus sheds Titanian rays, And paints their fleecy skirts with shining gold. The upheaved oak, With beaked prow, rides tilting o'er the waves. Drive hence the rude and barbarous dissonance Of savage Thracians. (Lines 50-53, 67-8, 171-2; cf. P. L., v. 185-7, xi. 745-7, vii. 32-4.) Compare also the passage quoted in the text with P. L., i. 13-14. I08 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON jovial piece and, although the humor is somewhat heavy, can still be enjoyed; it certainly furnished a suitable entrance into the world of letters for its lazy and lovable author, who owed his reputation to a burlesque pastoral and a comic opera and who jested even in his own epitaph. The other parodies that followed in the wake of the Splendid Shil- ling are of little importance and of less worth. One which resembles PhiHps's work in confessing its burlesque imitation of Milton and in being devoted to the joys of drinking, is by the Countess of Winchil- sea; ^ three others belong with the large body of indecent literature published at the time. Some sHght interest, however, attaches to translations of two mock-heroic Latin poems of that period. The first of these, Edward Holdsworth's Muscipula (1709), which de- scribes "with the purity of Virgil and the pleasantry of Lucian" a plague of rats and the invention of a mouse-trap, was a favorite in the eighteenth century, appearing alone or in collections some thir- teen times (four the first year) and apparently being turned into English eight or nine times. At least three of these translations are unrimed burlesques of Paradise Lost, — those published in 1709 (by Daniel Bellamy), 1715 (by an unknown writer), and 1749 (by John Hoadly); the last two are really amusing. The translation, "in imitation of Milton's style," of Addison's Latin battle of the cranes and the pigmies, made in 1724 by Bishop Warburton, Pope's friend and literary executor, is significant as a concrete illustration of the friendly relationship existing between the two supposedly hostile schools of poetry; for Warburton, who often expressed his admira- tion for Paradise Lost, no more showed a poor opinion of blank verse by making humorous use of it than did the author of the Splendid Shilling.^ If these parodies have lost much of the humor they once had, it is in part because the epics, translations of the classics, and other even loftier flights which they burlesqued no longer attract the attention they once did. It will be remembered that these were years when Blenheim and RamilHes, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, were furnish- ing bards with lofty themes, when pseudo-sublime Pindaric odes were in great favor, when Blackmore was busy penning "heroic poems," when Dryden was translating Virgil, Pope Homer, and Prior Callimachus. And there were even more ambitious attempts 1 Bibl. 1, 1713- 2 Warburton's poem contains a number of phrases borrowed from Paradise Lost. For the burlesques and mock heroics noticed above, and many later parodies, see pp. 315-22 below. POEMS ON HEAVEN AND HELL 109 than these, for between 17 14 and 1726 a number of writers chose the most exalted of all subjects, making heaven, hell, and chaos their scenes of action and the Almighty himself one of their characters. Their success is considerably greater than would be expected, prob- ably because the poems are all frank and close imitations of Paradise Lost; for obviously many difficulties and dangers connected with the Miltonic manner are avoided when it is employed on Miltonic matter. The first of these essays in the sublime ^ seems to have been Prae- existence, a Poem in Imitation of Milton, which, originally published in 1 7 14, was reprinted in 1740 and 1800 and obtained a wide circula- tion through being included in "Dodsley's Miscellany." ^ Even if it is, as Gray declared, "nonsense in all her altitudes," ^ yet the ''non- sense" is couched in some of the best blank verse written during the period. The poem opens with the return of the angels from victory over Satan, and describes their reception by Milton's schoolmaster Deity, who tells them of the world that is to be created. The earth, curiously enough, is to be a place of punishment, where the less sin- ful of Satan's followers may have a second chance. In style and diction the piece is quite as Miltonic as in subject-matter; yet it escapes the pitfalls of tumidity and dull prose into one or the other of which most contemporary blank verse fell, and at its best is not without dignity and nobility of utterance. The coming of the Deity is thus described : Out flows a Blaze of Glory; for on high Tow'ring advanc'd the moving Throne of God, Vast and Majestick; on each radiant side 1 Unless we include Samuel Wesley's rimed Hymn on Peace to the Prince of Peace (1713), because of such verbal borrowings as Th' Etherial Mold Purg'd off its Dross, and Shone with Native Gold, The Father's Co-eternal Son, Or Mantling Vine's, on Mossy Couches laid, Near the soft Murmur of some bubling Spring With Angel-Guests Discourse (lines 31-2, 42, 66-8; cf. P.L.,ii. 139-41, iii. 2, iv. 258-60, and Comus, 276, 294). Wesley quotes three lines from Paradise Lost on his title-page. See also pp. 38, 45 n. i, above, and p. 429, n. i, below. ^ Edition of 1748, i. 164-78. A poem with the same title — presumably the same work — was printed at Newcastle in 1768, with the note that it was "written in the last century, and now carefully revised by D. Mountfort." ' Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, West, etc. (ed. P. Toynbee, Oxford, 1915), ii. 91. Although Gray was writing about the first edition of the "Miscellany" (1748), Mr. Toynbee's notes seem to refer to some other issue, and hence are confusing. no THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON The pointed Rays slope glittering, at the foot Glides a full Tide of Day, that onward pours In liquid Torrents through the black Abyss.^ The other end of the story of our universe, the terminus ad quern which loomed large in the thought and reading of religious persons in the eighteenth century, is taken up in an anonymous and undated piece, The Last Day, which must have appeared about the same time as Prae-existence?' It seems to be a production which its few readers were not unwilling to let die, for apparently only the first book was published. In this book the Deity summons his angels about him to announce the destruction of the world and sends Elijah to warn mankind to repent. Here is part of the description of the heavenly assembly : Full of himself, amidst The ample Concave, the Almighty sate. Sate unapproach'd; below the Hierarchal States, Ten thousand thousand Demigods await His Motion, he his Scepter gently bowing In Signal of Permission, strait assume The immortal States with Reverence due, their Thrones Order above Order, in bright Array Like radiant Constellations.' A similar work, The Last Judgment of Men and Angels, brought out in 1723 by Thomas Newcomb, is of importance solely because of its size; for until 1787, when Glover's Athenaid like a wounded snake dragged its slow length through thirty dreary books, it seems to have been the longest unrimed poem in English. Yet this splendid folio, with its 12,350 lines, dropped into oblivion without causing a ripple to reach the shores of literary history; and no wonder, for, since Newcomb makes every character declaim a vague, lofty speech several pages in length on every possible occasion, the work is both tiresome and hard to follow. The long opening scene in heaven, in which a Puritan Deity commands his angels to destroy the world, is followed by various councils to which Satan summons Belial, Moloch, and their peers in order to thwart this design. A war be- ^ Lines 42-7. Such expressions as "the vast Obscure," "th' Empyraum vast," "th' impyral Mould," "th'^f/ierea^MoMW" (lines 15, 80, 113, 204) , are characteristic of the diction of the poem. 2 Another anonymous work on the same subject, which I have not seen. Description of the Four Last Things, viz., Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven, in Blank Verse, ap- peared in a second edition in 17 19. 3 Page 9. On page 19 is a not unpleasing description of " the delightful Banks of the River Mola, near Bansteed in Surrey," part of which recalls Paradise Lost, i. 781-8, iv. 680-88. NEWCOMB 1 1 1 tween the two forces is ended, as in Paradise Lost, by the coming of Messiah, who from a flaming chariot hurls thunderbolts upon the rebel angels. Then follows the destruction and renovation of the world, after which, again as in Milton, an angel shows Adam a lengthy vision. As if this were not enough, the prosody, diction, and style of the work are frankly Miltonic, and a large number of phrases are unblushingly transferred from the earher work.^ Al- though the following passage is not so close to Paradise Lost as are most others, it will give some idea of the verse, — which is far better than one would expect, — as well as of Newcomb's feeUng for the broad aspects of nature : Thus spoke our common Parent! while the Eve Hasting apace all down the Western Sky- Led on the Twilight; that, a browner Veil Of Darkness shadowing all the Vales below, Parent of downy Slumbers!* ^ Here are a few instances. After casting their chaplets on the pavement before the Deity (i. 120-21, cf. P. Z,., iii. 349-52), the angels sing: "Thee, Father, first they name, Immense, Supreme" (i. 181, cf.P. Z,., iii. 3 7 2-3). The assembly of heathen deities that convenes at Satan's call (vii. 404-533) is closely modelled on Milton's enumeration of the same evil spirits as they rise from the lake of fire (P. L. , i. 392-521) ; the description of Satan's "faded Majesty" (ii. 603-46) is from Milton {P. L., i. 589-608); so is the scene in which Satan casts his "baleful Eye" upon his followers and thus addresses them, Warriors, Thrones, Angels, the Boast so late of yonder Skies; Chuse ye these Billows then, whereon to lay Your weary'd Limbs after the cruel Toil Of Battel? (viii. 604-6, 619-23, cf. P. L., i. 56, 315-21); and so are his reference to Azazel (whom he mentions by name in vi. 348), A Cherub (who by right that Station claim'd) Unfurl'd the heav'nly Ensign (ii. 257-8, cf. P. L., i. 533-6), his apxjstrophe to hght, Hail sacred Light! whose fair and beauteous Beam More gladly I revisit, wandring long Beneath the nether Shades (iv. 1-3, cf. P. L., iii. i, 13-15), and his description of hell as a place Just serving thro' the Darkness to reveal Sad Scenes of Sorrow (xii. 518-19, cf. P. L., i. 63-5). Some of the shorter phrases borrowed are "the Lapse of murmuring Streams" (i. 803. cf. P. L., viii. 263); "from Morn to Eve, from Eve to dewy Morn" (ii. 381, cf. P. L., i. 742-3); "pensive Steps, and slow" (x. 875, cf. P. L., xii. 648); "dark thro' Excess of Light" (xii. 144, cf. P. L., iii. 380); "varied alone with soft or solid Fires" (xii. 508, cf. P. L., i. 228-9, said of hell in each case). ^ x. 915-19; cf. X. 775- xi. 35 passim. Some years later Newcomb published four other works in Miltonic blank verse : Part 0} Psalm cxlviii after the Manner of Milton (PP- 339~42 of his Miscellaneous Collection of Poems, 1740; see also ih. 17-20, 218-19, 112 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Still another religious work that not only makes use of the lan- guage and style of Paradise Lost, but borrows many phrases from it, is William Thompson's Poetical Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job, in Imitation of the Style of Milton (1726).^ About the time this work appeared Thomas Curteis (1690-1747) published some fifteen pages of verse, which he reissued in 1728 as Eirenodia, a vague, ecsta- tic performance for which ''the great Milton" furnished the "pat- tern." It describes scenes in heaven, portrays the earthly Hfe of the Prince of Peace! from the Jessaean stem Self- infinite descended! and, after enlarging on the greatness of Fair Albion, compend of the wondrous globe Terrene, ends with a picture of the last judgment. Curteis has unqualified praise for Milton, the ''brightness" of whose "diction" he particu- larly admired and, as may be seen from the following lines, closely imitated : Massy globes, Continuous or excav'd, annoy no more The serried ranks compact, with havoc dire.^ Most of the writers we have thus far considered are minor, al- most minus, poets who are deservedly forgotten. If the reader feels that it matters little by whom they were influenced, he should at On Milton's P. L. and On Milton's Bust in Westminster- A bbey) ; Mr. Hervey's Meditations and Contemplations (1764, but two of the six pieces had appeared in 1757); The Retired Penitent, a Poetical Version of one of Young's Moral Contemplations (1760); The Death of Abel (from Salomon Gessner, "attempted in the stile of Milton," 1763). ^ Some of Thompson's pilferings are from Milton's minor poems, as "dapple dawn" (p. 3, of. Allegro, 44), "the Eye-lids of the Morn Opening" (p. 16, of. Lycidas, 26). A few of his other borrowings are, "shedding soft Influence, with orient Beams" (p. 2, of. p. 6, and P. L., vi. 15, vii. 375); "with choral Symphonies" (p. 2, of. P. L.,v. 162); "sure Pledge of rising Day (p. 3, cf. P. L., v. 168); "scowls o'er the bleak Landskip Snow or Hail" (p. 6, cf. P. L., ii. 491); a description of the ostrich "fledg'd with Pens," whose eggs "burst" With kindly Rupture, and disclos'd put forth The callow Brood (p. 10, cf. P. L., vii. 419-21); or of the huge creature that Wallowing unweildy, enormous in his Gate .... to his Mind Firm Peace recover'd soon and wonted Calm (p. 18, cf. P. L., vii. 411, V. 209-10). The preface expresses profound veneration for Milton and violent antipathy to rime. 2 R. Freeman's Kentish Poets (Canterbury, 1821), ii. 126, 134, 127. Curteis's praise of Milton and his attack upon rime are on pages 120, 129-30. POPE 113 least think of them as straws that reveal a breeze from a new quarter, which, gathering in volume, was about to strike the keen and glitter- ing spars on which Alexander Pope stretched his sails. To be sure, the artificiality of Pope's verse suggests not so much a winged boat as a swift, sharp-prowed launch, with the "put, put" of its exhaust corresponding to the incisive regularity of the heroic couplet; hence one may argue that this particular craft would scarcely have felt the wind at all. It would, indeed, be hard to find any poetry more un- like Paradise Lost and Lycidas than The Dunciad and the Epistle to Arbuthnot. The differences are not hmited to style, prosody, dic- tion, and the like, but extend to verse-form, subject-matter, types of poetry used, and even to the men themselves and their conceptions of literature and life. As a result, admirers of the one are seldom able to do justice to the poetry of the other, and it is naturally as- sumed that Pope himself did not appreciate the work of Milton. This assumption may be correct, for the real thoughts and tastes of "the wicked wasp of Twickenham" are hard to fathom; ^ but at least he had read the earlier poet carefully. Indeed, many a person who has prided himself on his enjoyment of Paradise Lost and thought Pope had no conception of what true poetry is, has not pos- sessed a tithe of the scorned bard's knowledge of Milton. Evidence of this knowledge is of many kinds and is found in every possible place. First of all, explicit references to Milton abound in Pope's poems, letters, prefaces, footnotes, and in the record of his conversations.^ One of the most interesting of these references is in ^ For instance, though he translated Homer and edited Shakespeare, one cannot be certain that he cared particularly for either poet. ^ Besides writing an epigram on Bentley's edition of Paradise Lost (which, according to the preface of Newton's edition, he had examined throughout with care), Pope men- tioned Milton ten times in his poetry (see Abbott's Concordance), the best- known pas- sage being in his Imitations of Horace (II. i. 99-102) : Milton's strong pinion now not Heaven can bound, Now, serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground; In quibbles, angel and archangel join, And God the Father turns a school-divine. There are also references to Milton in Windsor Forest, 7-10, the Epistle to Arbuthnot, 319-20, the satirical essays prefixed to The Dunciad {Works, Elwin-Courthope ed.,iv. 73. 85), and in Pope's footnotes to the same poem (e. g., ii. 92, iv. 4,112, 247, and the note to the appended "Declaration," Works, iv. 227; in many of these notes borrowings from Milton are pointed out). Paradise Lost is quoted appreciatively in letters to Caryll, Blount, and Digby (Works, vi. 177, Dec. 21, 1712; vi. 380-81, Oct. 21, 1723; ix. 75, July 20, 1720); and Lycidas in a letter to Trumbull (ib. vi. 6, March 12, 1713). Particularly interesting is Pope's correspondence with Jonathan Richardson, the Milton enthusiast, who consulted him about the Explanatory Notes on Paradise Lost which he was preparing {Works, ix. 492-509), and to whom Pope sent a sonnet begin- ning "Fair mirror of foul times," which had been discovered in Chalfont and attributed 114 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON a letter to Caryll, to whom he writes, " I keep the pictures of Dryden, Milton, Shakspeare, &c., in my chamber, round about me, that the constant remembrance of them may keep me always humble." ^ Much more convincing than this dubious humility, however, is the indisputable evidence from the words, phrases, and lines which Pope transferred from Milton's verse to his own. In The Dunciad alone he used such expressions no fewer than thirty times and in the Iliad fifty-six times. The extent of these borrowings — there are over one hundred and ninety of them^ — is surprising in view of the differ- ences not only between the two men but between the meters they employed. Poets who admired Paradise Lost commonly took phrases from it, but they used them almost exclusively in their blank verse. Not until we reach Thomas Warton do we find a writer who introduced Miltonic phrases into rimed poetry so frequently as Pope did, and perhaps no one else has ever employed so many in the heroic couplet. Furthermore, Pope's borrowings are not crowded into a to Milton {History of the Works of the Learned, 1739, ii. 107-8). In the course of the acquaintanceship indicated by these letters, which extended over a period of twenty- two years (1722-44), there must have been considerable discussion of Richardson's favorite poet. From Pope's conversation as recorded in Spence's Anecdotes (ed. Singer, 1820, index and pp. 197-8) nine references to Milton have been preserved, of which the following is the most interesting: "Milton's style, in his Paradise Lost, is not natural; 'tis an exotic style. As his subject lies a good deal out of our world, it has a particular propriety in those parts of the poem: and, when he is on earth, wherever he is describing our parents in Paradise, you see he uses a more easy and natural way of writing. Though his formal style may fit the higher parts of his own poem, it does very ill for others who write on natural and pastoral subjects" {ib. 174). In the notes to the Iliad, Paradise Lost is either quoted from or referred to thirty-two times (i. 9, 97, 478; ii. 255, 44°) 552, 939, 950, and "Observations on the Catalogue"; v. 164, 422, 517, 928, 971; vi. 245; vii. 48,526; viii. 16, 88, 364; xiii. 384; xiv. 296, 395; xv. 17, 86, 252; xvi. 194, 354, 904; xvii. 564; xxii. 114; xxiv. 417); and there is one citation from Samson Agonistes (vi. 329). In one of the notes (xiv. 395) thirty lines from three books of the epic are introduced. The notes to the Odyssey are by Broome and, it is interesting to observe, contain few references to Paradise Lost. Pope's own postscript to the Odyssey, however, has a paragraph on Milton, who is also mentioned three times in the preface to the Iliad. In the last of these passages, "any one who translates Homer" is urged "to consider him attentively in comparison with Virgil above all the ancients, and with Milton above all the moderns." Finally, it is probable that Pope had a hand in some of the twenty or more pieces in the Grub-Street Journal that deal with Milton. These pieces are either reprinted or referred to in Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street (1737), i. 19-24, 42-5, 129, 167, 168; ii. 96-9, 102-3, 133, 182-3 (4 pieces), 222, 245, 254-5 (2 pieces), 257-62 (2 pieces), 292, 308, 323; those merely referred to in the Memoirs may be read in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1. 377-8, ii. 571-2, 658-9, 690-1, 753-4, 840-1, 905-6. The Journal, to quote Mr. Elwin, "was set up in Pope's interest, and ... he was 'suspected of having projected it, and was at least a frequent contributor'" (Pope's Works, viii. 268, n. i). See below also, p. 115, n. 5. 1 Works, vi. 145, June 25, 1711. In a letter to Richardson he speaks of himself as "a worse writer by far than Milton" {ib. ix. 506, June 17, 1737). * See below, Appendix A. POPE 115 few pieces, but are scattered throughout his work, being found in at least twenty-five poems. It is also significant that, while practically- all of the early pilferers from Milton made use of his epic only (few persons at that time having any appreciation of the minor poems 0, yet Pope used the shorter pieces in his early and later work, and, except in The Dunciad and the Homer, borrowed from them quite as much as he did from the epic. Lines or phrases from nearly all of them appear in his verse, — from Allegro, Penseroso, Comus (there are nineteen from Comus), Lycidas, the Nativity, from three of the sonnets, and even from Arcades and the Vacation Exercise. Nor is it fair to suggest, as Thomas War ton did, that he was "conscious that he might borrow from a book then scarcely remembered, with- out the hazard of a discovery, or the imputation of plagiarism." ^ On the contrary. Pope praised the volume and lent it to at least one of his friends.^ It is striking that a poet so deficient in lyric power should be found among the earliest admirers of these lyric master- pieces, and should be the first writer to make much use of them,* as well as the first to show familiarity with the great body of Milton's work.^ In the preface to his Iliad Pope wrote, "Perhaps the mixture of some Graecisms and old words after the manner of Milton, if done without too much affectation, might not have an ill effect in a version of this particular work, which most of any other seems to require a venerable antique cast." He does not say here that such words have been introduced, but in the postscript to the Odyssey he frankly ac- knowledges that "in order to dignify and solemnize these plainer parts . . . some use has been made ... of the style of Milton. A just and moderate mixture of old words," he adds, "may have an ^ Even Dennis, who borrowed freely from Paradise Lost, appears to have quoted from them only once, and Philips not at all (cf. below, p. 423, notes 5, 6). 2 In his edition of Milton's minor poems (1785), p. ix. Warton says it was through his father, the elder Thomas Warton, that Pope came to know the poems, and adds, "We find him soon afterwards sprinkling his Eloisa to Abelard with epithets and phrases of a new form and sound, pilfered from Comus and the Penseroso." As a matter of fact, Pope knew these poems long before 171 7, when his Eloisa appeared; and the "sprink- ling" that Warton observed is to be found in the Pastorals and Windsor Forest, which were published the one eight and the other four years before the Eloisa epistles. ^ Sir William Trumbull (see his letter to Pope, Oct. 19, 1705, Pope's Works, vi. 1-2). * Except, to be sure, Robert Baron, whose work was of no consequence (see pp. 427- 8 below). ^ He borrowed not only from ten of the minor poems and from the epic, but from Paradise Regained and Samson. Every book of Paradise Lost yielded one or more con- tributions to his work, and one book gave as many as 25. Pope's copy of Bentley's edition of the epic showed that he had carefully considered the suggested textual emendations and marked such as appealed to him (Newton's ed., preface). Il6 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON effect like the working old abbey stones into a building ... to give a kind of venerable air." From these remarks the reader might ex- pect to find considerable Miltonic diction in the translation, but he would be doomed to disappointment. To be sure, such words as "refulgent," "refluent," "resplendent," "translucent," "adaman- tine," "massy," "ethereal," do occur, though infrequently;^ and there are unusual words like "circumfusile," "intorted," "oracu- lous," "obtend," ~ besides common words employed in their original meaning's, as "th' effusive wave" (poured out), "the narrative old man" (fond of telling stories), "stoops incumbent" (bending or resting over), "implicit" (entwined), "depending vines" (hang- ing).^ Yet these are not "old words," and to us, at least, have nothing of the effect of "old abbey stones." We should remember, however, that a large number of words which are perfectly familiar to-day, and many of which were common in Shakespeare's time, seemed to the Augustans strange and antiquated. "Bridal," "gleam," "host" (in the sense of army), "hurl," "ruthless," "wail," and "woo " were spoken of as late as 1778 as "once no doubt in com- mon use." ^ This shows how difficult it is to determine what Pope meant by "old words after the manner of Milton." We may get light, however, from a satirical article contributed to the Grub-Street Journal, which says that " another method of imitating Milton is to make use of antiquated words, scarce any where else to be met with, such as dulcet, gelid, umbrageous, redolent, &c." ^ As these adjectives are all from the Latin, it may be that by "antiquated" Pope meant "antique." In any case, his language was probably loose and his thought somewhat vague ; but he seems to have had in mind words, 1 For example, v. 2, 348, vii. 128, x. 350, 534, etc.; v. 51; v. 549, ix. 570, 634; x. 434, xvii. 105; X. 473; vii. 112, ix. 287, 567, etc.; v. 150, 351, etc. 2 iii. 541, 555, X. 642, xxii. 88. "Disparted," "discumbers," "adherent," "welters" (v. 468, 474, 547, xiv. 155), and many more might be added. ^ xxii. 490 (cf. V. 412, "from his . . . mouth effus'd the briny tide"); iii. 80 (also Iliad, iii. 200); v. 63; ix. 514 (also Iliad, xxiii. 823); v. 88 (and cf. xiii. 131). Note also "decent hand" (xiii. 273), and "vest succinct" (xiv. 83). As the concordance to Pope's works does not include his translations of Homer, it is difficult to sa.y how many of these unusual, Miltonic words there are or how often they occur, but the total number is considerable. They are scattered, however, through thousands of lines, so that they produce scarcely any effect. In the part of the Odyssey entrusted to Fenton, on the other hand, one is distinctly conscious of the loftier, more formal, and more Miltonic diction. * James Beattie's Essays on Poetry and Music, 237; cf. 238, and p. 64 above. * Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street (1737), i. 22. Two of the words are mentioned in the same connection in the Art of Sinking in Poetry (Pope's Works, x. 372), and similar advice is given in the Guardian, no. 78 (which is by Pope) , although the section in question was omitted when the essay was reprinted as the fifteenth chapter of the Art of Sinking. POPE 117 derived in the main from Greek or Latin, which were unusual at the time and which nowadays, if we noticed them at all, we should term poetic. Some of them were probably not taken from Milton, but were merely of the kind that his usage had sanctioned. However it was, the employment of these uncommon words by so conservative a writer as Pope shows how appreciably Milton was enlarging the poetic vocabulary. While the bard who " lisp'd in numbers " was still a child of twelve or thirteen he composed four thousand lines of an epic on the puis- sant Alcander, prince of Rhodes. "There was Milton's style," he told Spence, "in one part" of this poem; but, as the remaining parts were modelled upon Spenser, Cowley, Homer, and others, the work was presumably rimed and was affected by Paradise Lost only in subject-matter, diction, phrasing, and possibly "machinery." ^ This juvenile performance, which was later destroyed, is of no great signifi- cance except as showing at how early an age Pope began to admire Milton. Nor can much stress be laid upon Atterbury's plan (to which his imprisonment put an end) of having Pope adapt Samson Agonistes for the stage.^ There is, however, another of Pope's un- finished projects that deserves more attention than it has yet re- ceived. This work, undertaken when its author was at the height of his powers, was, like the boyish piece, to have been an epic. It was to deal with Brutus, the mythical founder of Britain, and was, he told Spence, "more than half" done because "all exactly planned." Yet only these few lines seem to have been composed, and until recently even these were lost : The Patient Chief, who lab'ring long arriv'd On Britain's coast and brought with fav'ring Gods Arts Arms & Honour to her Ancient sons: Daughter of Memory! from Time Recall; and me w"» Britains Glory fird, Me far from meaner Care or meaner Song, Snatch to the Holy Hill of spotless Bay, My Countrys Poet, to record her Fame Say first w' Cause? that Pow'r h . . .' This blank verse is not specially Miltonic. There are some inver- sions, to be sure, particularly in the first, fifth, and sixth lines; but 1 See Spence's Anecdotes, 24-5, 276-9, and Ruffhead's Lije of Pope (1769), 25-7. 2 We are told that it was to have been divided into acts and scenes and presented by the king's scholars at Westminster. See Atterbury's letter referring to an earlier con- versation (Pope's Works, \x. 49, June 15, 1722), and Newton's Paradise Lost (2d ed., 1750), vol. i, p. biii. ^ Discovered by E. D. Snyder and quoted with variant readings in his note on "Pope's Blank Verse Epic," Journal 0} English and Germanic Philology, xviii. 583. Il8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON the passage is too brief to admit of any certainty regarding such points (about which Pope himself was doubtless far from clear) as the prosody, diction, and style of the work and their probable in- debtedness to Milton. But was an unrimed epic written early in the eighteenth century by a poet who had already made extensive use of Paradise Lost likely to have escaped such indebtedness, particularly when, in direct violation of Boileau's dictum, its author had taken for his ''machinery" not pagan gods but the Almighty and the good and bad angels of the Puritan work? If, therefore, the deformed, sickly body could have retained its equally deformed though resolute spirit for a few years more, — ' much less than ten ' would have been enough, he told Spence, — we might have had the supreme tribute from the leader of the Augustans to the last of the Elizabethans.^ In view of the surprising extent of the influence Milton exerted on Pope, one turns expectantly back to Dryden, but only to find a totally different state of affairs. Dryden's admiration for Paradise Lost was frequently and generously expressed,^ but it had slight ef- fect upon his work. He never wrote an unrimed poem, and he bor- rowed but a phrase or two from Milton; ' yet he did what has never been attempted since, he turned the loftiest of epics into a spectacu- lar play. It was this undertaking that led to the meeting between the last of the giants of the Renaissance, old, blind, and "fallen on evil days," and the brilliant and highly successful leader of the new literary school. To Dryden's request for permission to make a rimed drama of the epic Milton replied, "It seems you have a mind to Tagg my Points, and you have my Leave to Tagg 'em." ^ ^ Before the appearance of Mr. Snyder's article our knowledge of Pope's plan came from two sources, Spence's Anecdotes (pp. 288-9, from a conversation with Pope in 1743), and Ruffhead's Life (1769, pp. 409-23), which was compiled from the poet's own papers now in the British Museum. This projected epic gives interest to Percival Stockdale's story {Memoirs, 1809, ii. 44) that, when Pope was asked why he had not made a blank-verse translation of Homer, he replied that "he could translate it more easily into rhyme." Had he experimented with blank verse? The passages in The Seasons which have been attributed to him are probably Lyttelton's (see G. C. Ma- caulay in the Athenaeum, Oct. i, 1904, p. 446, and in James Thomson, 1908, pp. 243-4). 2 See above, p. 14 and n. i. ' Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1691, p. 157) points out the similarity of these lines to a passage in Samson Agonistes: Unmoved she stood, and deaf to all my prayers, As seas and winds to sinking mariners. But seas grow calm, and winds are reconciled {Aureng-Zebe, act i, in Works, Scott-Saintsbury ed., v. 212; cf. Samson, 960-62). The seventh line of Veni, Creator Spiritus, "O source of uncreated light" {ih. xi. 193), recalls the opening of the third book of Paradise Lost. * See my note in The Review (later The Weekly Review), New York, June 14, 1919. DRYDEN 119 The result of the tagging, The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, an Opera (1677), is a very curious production, such a line as O Prince, O Chief of many throned powers, for example, appearing as Prince of the thrones, who in the fields of light.* Great condensation was necessary on Dryden's part, since he crowded into his five brief acts considerable new as well as much of the old conversation, besides all the important happenings of the epic. In consequence the great Vallombrosa simile is reduced to Our troops, like scattered leaves in autumn, lie.^ The sophistication, the conventionality of expression, the "points" and antitheses of which the bewigged Restoration wits were fond, characterize the inhabitants of Dryden's hell and of his Eden. The fallen angels, for instance, in leaving the lake of fire, Shake off their slumber first, and next their fear;^ Eve replies to Adam's wooing, Some restraining thought, I know not why, Tells me, you long should beg, I long deny ; < while Adam, assuring her that he expects to live "still desiring" what he still possesses (her love), declares that at their union "roses unbid" Flew from their stalks, to strew [the] nuptial bower . . . And fishes leaped above the streams, the passing pomp to view.* Such grotesque features are obvious enough and have been noticed by most readers, with the result that admirers of Dryden have been at a loss to explain how that appreciative and skilful artist came to make such a feeble and absurd adaptation of a great work. The dif- ficulty has been increased by the plausible remark of Sir Walter Scott, whose comment prefixed to the standard edition of the play has been read more often than the work itself: "The costume of our first parents, had there been no other objection, must have ex- cluded the State of Innocence from the stage, and accordingly it was certainly never intended for representation." ^ Yet, in view of the prominence which Dryden gives to scenery and mechanical devices, * Act i {Works, V. 126; cf. P. L., i. 128). * Act ii, scene ii {ib. 140). 2 Ib. (cf. P. L., i. 302-3). * Act iii {ib. 142-3). * Ib. 127. ^ Ib. 95. I20 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON it will be clear that the situation is exactly the reverse of what Scott thought it, and that Milton's 'tagged verses' really serve as little more than a frame- work for an elaborate musical spectacle. With Dryden the action and verse are subordinated to mechanical con- trivances, and many of the lines may have no other function than to carry the story and gain time for the scene-shifters.^ But either no one cared to spend the large sum necessary to stage the piece, or pos- sibly Milton's political activities were not yet forgotten; at any rate, it was never given. It it had been, the honor which fell to Addison of being the popularizer of England's greatest poem might, though in less measure, have been Dryden's. We have now followed the influence of Paradise Lost up to 1726. We have found several rimed poems, notably those of Blackmore, which employ the supernatural machinery of the epic; some others, like those of Pope, which take words and phrases from it; and ap- proximately one hundred and fifty-five pieces in blank verse, all but about sixty-six of which make use of its style. For an age that deUghted in imitation and held an exalted opinion of Milton, this is 1 The frequent and detailed stage directions indicate many changes of scene, and, in the opportunity they afford for producing striking effects through costly mechanical contrivances, recall the elaborate masques of the period, upon one of which £2400 was expended. Here are some of the directions: "Betwixt the first Act and the second, while the Chiefs sit in the palace, may be expressed the sports of the Devils; as flights, and dancing in grotesque figures: And a song, expressing the change of their condi- tion" (end of act i, ih. 133). — "Raphael descends to Adam, in a cloud. . . . They ascend to soft music, and a song is sung. The Scene changes, and represents, above, a Sun gloriously rising and moving orbicularly. ... A black Cloud comes whirling from the adverse part of the Heavens, bearing Lucifer in it; at his nearer approach the body of the Sun is darkened" (act ii, scene i,ih. 133, 136). — "A Night-piece of a pleasant Bower: Adam and Eve asleep in it. ... A Vision, where a tree rises loaden with fruits; four Spirits rise with it, and draw a canopy out of the tree; other Spirits dance about the tree in deformed shapes" (act iii, ih. 146-7). — "The Cloud descends with six Angels in it, and when it is near the groimd, breaks, and on each side discovers six more" (act iv, ih. 151). — "The Scene shifts, and discovers deaths of several sorts. A Battle at Land, and a Naval Fight. . . . Here a Heaven descends, full of Angels and blessed Spirits, with soft Music, a Song and Chorus" (act v, ih. 175-6). Intended stage presentation is also indicated by the attention which Dryden gives to music, dancing, and songs, and by his plan of omitting the transformation — impos- sible in the theater — which Lucifer makes in his appearance before meeting Uriel (see P. /,., iii. 634-44; Dryden's Lucifer simply puts on "a smooth, submissive face," act ii, scene i, ih. 136). Furthermore, in the Stale of Innocence it is not, as in the Bible and in Milton, the serpent who tempts Eve, since in the theater this idea would be hard to carry out and probably ludicrous; it is Lucifer in his own shape. The "costume" of our first parents, which to Scott presented an insurmountable difficulty, could easily have been managed, as it has been to-day in moving pictures of the story. Clearly, Dryden did not intend the characters to appear in puris naturalihus ,iox ,hes\Ats having them exhibit no consciousness of nudity after the fall, he introduces into a vision in the third act a woman who is "habited like Eve." THE STATUS OF BLANK VERSE 121 not extensive borrowing. Besides, although we have encountered a number of eminent writers in this survey, we have found very few Miltonic poems with which even scholars are familiar, and, except for the Splendid Shilling and Cyder, none that appear to have at- tracted much of any attention even in their own day. Thomson, for example, refers to Cyder as the first poem after Paradise Lost to discard rime.^ Furthermore, few of these early followers of Milton exhibit whole-hearted allegiance to his measure. Their productions seem as a rule to have been experiments, and not entirely satisfac- tory ones at that, for they were seldom repeated more than once or twice. Writers like Dennis or the editors of the British Apollo, who return frequently to the new meter, appear to have done so to avoid the trouble of riming. It was not the hostility of the Augustans to blank verse in the ab- stract that stood in the way, for we have seen that even Pope used the measure and that most of his friends were favorably inchned towards it. To what, then, was the neglect due? To the poems themselves which Milton's followers wrote. These almost without exception lack inspiration and interest of any kind. Most of them are translations, hollow panegyrics, religious moraHzings, or bur- lesques, and their verse, usually colorless and dull, falls either into unrimed couplets or into sheer prose. We find them unreadable and leave them unread, and there is every indication that the contem- poraries of Pope and Addison did the same. In point of expression they are at their best when their subjects are most exalted, that is, when farthest from ordinary hf e ; for the ablest verse is to be found in translations of the classics, and in pieces like Prae-existence and the Last Day, which have practically the same subject-matter as Paradise Lost. The Splendid Shilling, to be sure, had shown how effectively Milton's style and diction might be employed for humor- ous purposes; but this knowledge was of little account, for most writers had even less occasion to use the burlesque than the epic. Up to 1726 Cyder afforded almost the only instance of the serious treatment of an unpretentious topic in blank verse; and yet, though its success might be expected to have inspired imitation, it seems in the first seventeen years after its publication to have influenced only two pieces, one an attack upon it and the other a parody. That is, no one appears to have been willing to follow Philips in using blank 1 Autumn, 645-7. At the end of the century even so good a scholar as Thomas Warton was ignorant not only of Philips's predecessors but of his contemporaries and immediate successors; for he tells us in his edition of Milton's minor poems (1785, p. x) that blank verse "after its revival by Philips had been long neglected." 122 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON verse seriously for everyday subjects. Most writers, rolling tamely in the rut of neo-classicism, never thought of doing so, others may have agreed with Pope that it was ''quite wrong" to employ Milton's style for such themes, and many presumably doubted their ability to handle topics of the kind in a measure not yet domesticated. For Milton's example, together with the praise of Roscommon, Dennis, Addison, and similar critics of rank, had made blank verse respected, admired, — and shunned. Paradise Lost was so remote, so unlike other poetry, that men stood in awe of it; they did not know how to adapt its lofty language, involved style, and strange irregular prosody to their humbler and less imaginative themes. In a word, blank verse seems to have been regarded in 1725 much as the telephone was in 1875, as a remarkable toy which it was interesting to experiment with but of which only a few enthusiasts expected to make any real use; or, to choose an illustration from the field of lit- erature, its position in 1725 was similar to that of vers litre in 1900, - — it could no longer be called a novelty but was by no means a popu- lar meter. Cordially disliked and vigorously assailed by many, warmly admired and eloquently defended by others, Milton's mea- sure, like Whitman's, seemed so ill adapted to the purposes and methods of most poetry that there was apparently little prospect of its coming into general use. Very few, to be sure, had so high an opinion of Leaves of Grass as Pope's contemporaries had of Paradise Lost, but in each case there was general doubt whether the new meter could be effectively employed by any save the master who invented it. There was certainly no reason why the partisans of the couplet should be alarmed if a period of sixty years produced only one hun- dred and fifty unrimed poems, nearly half of which did not extend beyond a few lines. Indeed, at the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century neo-classicism was seated firmly on the throne of public opinion with the closed couplet as its scepter; English num- bers were being, if they had not already been, refined to the highest possible point, and sacrifices were constantly offered before the altars of Reason, Propriety, and Elegance, whose supremacy no one seemed seriously to question. CHAPTER VI THOMSON 1 When the fortunes of English verse seemed to be thus comfortably settled for some time to come, there appeared in the London book- shops a thin shilling folio of sixteen pages, one of which announced in large type, "Winter, a Poem, by James Thomson, A.M." The work gave rise to little comment, but must have found not a few read- ers, since it was reprinted within three months and passed through two more editions before the year was out. Encouraged by this re- ception, the author issued in the following year, 1727, a companion poem, Summer, in 1728 a third. Spring, and in 1730 the completed Seasons. The work came eventually to include 5,541 lines, but the germ of the whole and all its significant features are to be found in the 405 lines of the original Winter, which may fairly be termed "an epoch-marking work." Yet, as is often the case, the marking was done so quietly that no one seems to have been conscious of any- thing unusual about the poem. Even Thomson himself, a few months before composing it, wrote to a friend, "I firmly resolve to pursue divinity as the only thing now I am fit for," and after it was partly finished referred to it as "only a present amusement," which he should probably drop before long.^ Nor is the real significance of Winter generally understood at the present time. The poem is supposed to be one of the earHest and most important manifestations of what has unfortunately been termed the " beginnings of the romantic movement " ; but such " be- ginnings " may be found at almost any time and place one chooses to look for them, and all who know Thomson best are agreed as to his essential classicism. The importance of the use of blank verse in The Seasons has often been emphasized, but without suflicient reali- zation of the number of unrimed poems that preceded it or of its dififerences from them. As regards nature poetry also Thomson's ^ Since 1907, when this chapter was first written, a number of what seemed to be its more novel points of view have appeared in G. C. Macaulay's James Thomson {English Men of Letters, 1908). The delay has, however, enabled me to take advantage of various suggestions in that sound and discriminating study. 2 Letters to Dr. Cranston, April 3, and September, 1725, Poetical Works (Aldine ed. 1847), vol. i, pp. xvi, xxiii. 124 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON contribution has frequently been misunderstood; for, though he is a figure of the first importance in this field, he did not create the taste by which he was appreciated. The feeling for the beauty of the ex- ternal world revealed in Lady Winchilsea's Nocturnal Reverie, Gay's Rural Sports, Shaftesbury's Characteristics, and other works pub- lished before 1726 has been pointed out by various scholars; and it is noteworthy that a genuine love of nature is apparent in Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, Dyer's Grongar Hill, and John Armstrong's descrip- tion of winter, all of them pubHshed, or composed, in the years 1725 and 1726, when Winter was being written. Accordingly, while Thomson is the most important nature poet before Wordsworth, he was by no means the first writer of his time to feel, or the first to give effective expression to the feeHng, that 'night and day, sun, moon, and stars, likewise a wind on the heath, are all sweet things.' The principal significance of The Seasons lies in its popularity. Blank verse as good as Thomson's had been written before Winter appeared ; Philips had employed it for familiar themes, and Watts had arrived at a style, diction, and prosody much nearer to those in vogue to-day than what the Scottish poet made use of. Yet English literature went on unchanged. Poetry far more romantic, with a finer feehng for nature expressed in nobler, more lyric verse, — pieces, that is, not unlike the "Songs of Innocence " or the best of the "Lyrical Ballads," — might conceivably have been written in 1725; but they would almost certainly have left as few traces on the cen- tury which gave them birth as did Blake's work and Thomson's own Castle of Indolence. The Seasons accomplished two things of the high- est importance. It showed how real nature could be dealt with effec- tively in poetry, and how blank verse could be successfully devoted to the treatment of everyday subjects; but it did both by virtue of its popularity, by being enjoyed by all, the people as well as the poets. It might have contained twice as many faults and half as many excellences as it did and still, had it remained equally popular, have lost none of its historical significance. What was needed was success, and Thomson's success was due in part to his Limitations and in part even to his very faults.^ It was only a road which "got some- where" that would have been followed, one that seemed both to readers and to poets clearly to lead well up towards the summit of ^ Wordsworth held that what the eighteenth century principally admired in Thom- son was "his false ornaments," which "are exactly of that kind . . . most likely to strike the undiscerning" {Prose Works, ed. Grosart, 1876, ii. 119). Miss Reynolds's remark is better, "A touch more of subtlety, of vision, of mystery, of the faculty divine, and Thomson might have waited for recognition as Wordsworth did" {Nature in Eng- lish Poetry, 2d ed., Chicago, 1909, p. loi). THOMSON 125 Parnassus. Less obvious ways, that wound past shyer flowers, or through valleys overflowing with a more haunting melody of birds, or by cliffs affording wider views of the might and mystery of "old ocean's gray and melancholy waste," would to us be more alluring; but in Pope's day their beauty would have been seen by few, and without the sanction of popular approval they would have been little used. For the eighteenth century did not share our interest in lovely by-ways that lose themselves in woods. The cult of the minor poet had not yet risen; revivals of perverse but powerful writers, or of rapturous but formless and obscure ones, were unknown. It was a period when bards were unusually willing to follow a leader, and this was true not only of the Augustans but of those who were stirred by vague feehngs which they hardly understood and to which they were unable to give poetic voice. The enthusiasm and rapidity with which Thomson's example was followed illustrates how ready poets were for a clear path into new fields. In the sixty years before Winter appeared there were only some hundred and fifty unrimed pieces, whereas over a hundred were printed in the fifteen years (1731-45) that followed the completion of The Seasons and about seventy in the next five years. Among the poems that came after 1726 were a number of the most widely-read works of the century, Somervile's Chace (1735), Glover's Leonidas (1737), Young's Night Thoughts (1742-6), Armstrong's Art of Pre- serving Health (1744), and Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination (1744). Thomson is, of course, not responsible for all the blank verse published between 1731 and 1750, but he had some effect on most of it, and without his example many of the pieces that employed it, particularly the longer works, would never have been written. Fur- thermore, his influence had only begun to make itself felt by 1750, for it persisted well into the nineteenth century, even after the shores of England had slipped forever from the straining eyes of Byron and Keats and the bay of Spezzia had closed over the restless heart of Shelley. The vogue of The Seasons was far greater than is generally real- ized. Winter went through four editions the year it was published, and was reprinted in 1728, 1730, and 1734; Summer reached five sep- arate editions, Spring three, Autumn one; the collected Seasons was printed three times in 1 730 and forty-seven times more before the end of the century, besides being included in twenty-two editions of the poet's works: that is, it was published in whole or in part no less than eighty-eight times in the seventy-four years after it was first printed. Nor did its popularity cease then. Four editions 126 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON appeared in each of the years 1802 and 1803, five in 1805, and, counting those included in the works and the three printed in Amer- ica, there were forty-four in the first two decades of the century.^ It was some seventy years after the first of the ** Seasons" was writ- ten that Coleridge, seeing a much- worn copy of the poem lying on the window-seat of an obscure inn, exclaimed, ''That is true fame! " ^ Tributes to the poem are so embarrassingly abundant that there is room to quote only a few of the later ones. In 1774 the author of the Sentimental Sailor declared that Thomson's "matchless song" would last as long as ''the circling seasons still appear." ^ In 1781 the Critical Review remarked, "The beauties of spring have already been so amply described, and so nobly treated by Thomson, that few readers will bring themselves to imagine that any other writer can treat this subject with equal force, elegance, and propriety." * This comment occurs in a review of an anonymous poem on spring, the author of which "adores" the "amazing heights, by thee [Thomson] alone attain'd." ^ The Monthly Review asserted in 1793 that, to be effective, descriptive poetry needed to be "written by a master hand, little inferior to Thomson himself," and six years later mentioned certain requisites without which "the finest passages in Homer, Vir- gil, Milton, and Thomson, would excite no emotion." ® In view of these commendations and the opinion of James Grahame — himself no mean nature poet — that Thomson's descriptions have "a genius and felicity which none of his followers need ever hope to equal," ' it is not strange that John Aikin affirmed in 1804, " The Seasons . . . yields, perhaps, to no other English poem in popularity." ^ One is somewhat surprised, however, to find HazKtt remarking fourteen years later that Thomson was "perhaps, the most popular of all our poets, treating of a subject that all can understand, and in a way that ^ These figures are taken mainly from the Caxton Head sale catalogue (No. 556, Feb. 19, 1912, which lists "nearly 150 different editions " of The Seasons), with addi- tions from the British Museum catalogue, and some from the Cambridge History of Eng- lish Literature (English ed., x. 446-7). An episode in Autumn was developed into "a legendary tale " {Philemon and Lavinia) by David Mountfort in 1783; Gleanings from Thomson, or the Village Muse, appeared about 1800 (see Mo. Rev., enl. ed., xxxi. 323), and a professed imitation so late as 1808 (see Eur op. Mag., liv. 218). 2 Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, 1818 {Works, 1902, v. 88). ' Quoted, Mo. Rev., li. 342. * lii. 201. ^ Quoted, ib. 203. ^ Enlarged ed., xii. 222, xxLx. 337; cf. vi. 455. ^ Preface to his British Georgics (Edin., 1809). * Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807), 164. In the Cabinet of Poetry (ed. S. J. Pratt, 1808), which professes to include "only the best and most exquisite pieces," Milton occupies one whole volume (351 pages), Thomson 184 pages, and Pope 144. THOMSON 127 is interesting to all alike." ^ Mr. Dennis's assertion that The Seasons "was to be found in every cottage, and passages from the poem were familiar to every school-boy," - is borne out by the facts that in 1761 Michael Bruce ''employed himself at leisure hours in transcribing large portions of Milton and of Thomson," ^ that Burns declared his fellow-countryman to be one of his "favourite authors," * and that a certain H. I. Johns, who was born in 1780, "while quite a lad . . . com- mitted to memory nearly the whole of Thomson's Seasons," for "Thomson was his idol, and to his impassioned and glowing descrip- tions of Nature he ascribed, in no small degree, his love of the coun- try and his taste for elevating studies." ^ It is accordingly no more than the truth to say, with Mr. Seccombe, "From 1750 to 1850 Thomson was in England the poet, par excellence, not of the eclectic and literary few, but of the large and increasing cultivated middle class"; ^ or with Mr. Saintsbury, "No poet has given the special pleasure which poetry is capable of giving to so large a number of persons in so large a measure as Thomson." ^ Such a popularity as this must have had far-reaching effects, which can be estimated only in a general way and many of which are hardly to be traced. In the field of poetry this influence was all the more marked because The Seasons appeared before either blank- verse or descriptive pieces had established themselves. Had it been published twenty-five years later, its vogue might possibly have been as great but its influence on hterature would not have been a tithe of what it was. Furthermore, to quote again from Mr. Saintsbury, Thomson "has the peculiar merit of choosing a subject which ap- peals to and is comprehensii)le by everybody; which no one can scorn as trivial and yet which no one can feel to be too fine or too esoteric for him. And though he treats this in the true poetical spirit of making the common as though it were uncommon, he does not make it too uncommon for the general taste to rehsh." ^ In conse- ^ Lectures on the English Poets, 1818 {Works, 1902, v. 87). About the same time one William Wight prophesied, in his lines for the anniversary of Thomson's birth {Cottage Poems, Edin., 1820, pp. 8-9), that the "warblings" of his "heaven-taught lyre" would "but with Nature's self expire." ^ Age of Pope (1894), 91. ^ Memoir, in Works (ed. Grosart, Edin., 1865), 16-17. * Letter to John Murdoch, Jan. 15, 1783. ^ W. H. K. Wright, West-Country Poets (1896), 275. So late as 1827 Henry Neele declared in his Lectures on English Poetry {Literary Remains, N. Y., 1829, p. 123), "Thomson is the first of our descriptive poets; I had almost said, the first in the world." • Diet. Nat. Biog. '' Ward's English Poets, iii. 169. * lb. 170. 128 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON quence he was eagerly read by the simple cottager, the prosperous merchant, the fashionable lady, and the college don, while poets of all kinds paid tribute to him, — the sophisticated and artificial Pope, the spontaneous Burns, the delicate Collins, and the massive Words- worth. It may be interesting and not altogether profitless to speculate as to what would have been the development of blank verse without The Seasons. No later work could have taken its place, since both in subject-matter and in treatment it pleased all sorts and conditions of men better than any other poem of its century did, and since, aside from Paradise Lost, the only other unrimed work that enjoyed an extensive popularity was the Night Thoughts, which did not begin to appear till 1742, and in which even at this late time Young might not have relinquished his lifelong devotion to the couplet had it not been for the influence of the Scottish poet. Of course Thomson did not work alone. Enthusiasm for Paradise Lost, which was increasing rapidly between 171 2 and 1745, could not fail to affect poetry, and Thomson's immediate predecessors had done no slight service in famiharizing both writers and readers with the new measure. Twenty-five years earher such a work as Winter could hardly have been composed at all, nor would the English public have been ready to receive it. The probabilities are, therefore, that without The Seasons unrimed poems would have increased slowly in number and that now and then one of length would, like Cyder, have achieved some popularity. Yet it is hard to tell how far-reaching would have been the effect if the general use of blank verse had been delayed twenty years. How is it that Thomson came to do what none of his contempora- ries seemed capable of? The explanation is probably that Winter, which determined the character of all the "Seasons," was a Scottish work, was hardly more an expression of the literary England of its day or a product of the normal evolution of English poetry than was Leaves of Grass one hundred and twenty-five years later. It is Scot- tish throughout, it was written by a Scot, it was suggested by Scot- tish verses, it pictures Scottish scenes.^ Like the American work, it was the outcome of a different environment, of a somewhat different race and literary tradition, from that which found expression in the ^ While composing the poem Thomson wrote to his friend Cranston (September, 1725?): "There [in Scotland] I walk in spirit, and disport in its beloved gloom. This country I am in, is not very entertaining; no variety but that of woods, and them we have in abundance; but where is the living stream? the airy mountain? and the hang- ing rock? with twenty other things that elegantly please the lover of nature?" {Poetical Works, 1847, vol. i, p. xxii). THOMSON 129 London literature of its time. Thomson had been reared in a wild Scottish country. He had, to be sure, spent ten years at the Univer- sity of Edinburgh; but the northern capital was then separated from the southern by a long, arduous journey and by marked divergences in almost every aspect of life and thought. "Broad Scots," which Thomson never lost, was then universal in Edinburgh ; men were less formal and finished but sturdier as well as more natural than in London; and pieces like the Gentle Shepherd and the winter poems of Riccaltoun, Thomson, and Armstrong (all written between 1724 and 1726) show, when contrasted with the satires of Pope, Swift, and Young, or with the lighter verse of Prior and Gay, that poetry was closer to life in the northern metropolis than in the southern. Since the days of the Stuarts, EngUsh Kterature had been drawing more and more away from the people. By attaching itself to the court circle and, like the court, becoming dominated by artificial French standards, it had to a great extent come to be the diversion of a leisured coterie that set an exaggerated value upon regularity, pre- cision, elegance, and wit. These quahties, it goes without saying, did not then, as they do not now, particularly interest the average reader, who, though he may well have enjoyed the clever satire and the shrewd, tersely-expressed observations on life that mark neo- classic verse, nevertheless missed many things which his forefathers had found in poetry. That such was the true state of affairs is shown by the eagerness with which he turned to the periodicals, sentimen- tal drama, and fiction of the day, to the redactions of old romances, and to Milton. The attitude of the people is strikingly illustrated in the enthusiasm with which tljey greeted The Seasons. Here at last was contemporary poetry adapted to their taste, something that ap- pealed to their imagination, their love of the real country, as well as to their national pride and their sentimentaHty. Hitherto there had been a great gulf not only between blank verse and the fashionable poetry of the day, but between both kinds of verse and the taste of the large body of readers. Something had been done towards filhng this gulf, but the process promised to be a slow one; when suddenly an outsider, following his natural bent with little realization of its divergence from the habit of his new neighbors, bridged the chasm. But though scarcely more of a revolutionist than Johnson, — for he loved his ease and in general, even on most literary subjects, thought much like other men, — the bard ''more fat than bard be- seems" did in some matters raise a banner of mild revolt. He looked forward to finding at Hagley, his friend Lyttelton's estate, "the muses of the great simple country, not the little, fine-lady I30 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON muses of Richmond Hill." ^ To the second edition of Winter he added a vigorous preface assailing the literature of his time as a "wintry world of letters, . . . the reigning fopperies of a tasteless age" made up of "forced unaffecting fancies, little glittering pretti- nesses, mixed turns of wit and expression, which are as widely differ- ent from native poetry as buffoonery is from the perfection of human thinking." He urged poetry to "exchange her low, venal, trifling, subjects for such as are fair, useful, and magnificent," and to "exe- cute these so as at once to please, instruct, surprise, and astonish." This "choosing of great and serious subjects " was, he thought, a first step towards a much-needed "revival of poetry," and in his opinion nature afforded the best of themes because of its " magnificence " and "inspiring" quaHties, because it "enlarges and transports the soul." Hence, he concluded, "the best . . . Poets have been passionately fond of retirement, and sohtude. The wild romantic country was their delight." - These were vigorous words to pen when Pope, Swift, and Gay were at the height of their powers. They were prob- ably called forth by adverse criticisms of the first edition of Winter; for there is every indication that Thomson had no idea of reforming English taste when he wrote the poem, since he said of it, "Being only a present amusement, it is ten to one but I drop it whenever another fancy comes across." ^ In this same preface he spoke of nature's putting on "the crimson robes of the morning, the strong effulgence of noon, the sober suit of the evening, or the deep sables of blackness and tempest." Clearly, a poet who flamed thus in the cooler element of prose loved the florid and exuberant, the grand and vague. No wonder he was fond of Hakluyt's Voyages,^ the Faerie Queene, and of works which "up the lofty diapason roll," ^ or that he desired his "numbers" and his theme to be "wildly great." ^ He had a strong and instinctive dis- like for limitations of almost every kind. His fervent imagination was not definite, like Dante's; it delighted, as did Milton's, in large, general effects. It demanded a wide sweep. Such a line as Infinite splendour! wide-investing all ^ is typical of him. 1 Letter to Lyttelton, July, 1743, Works (1847), vol. i, p. Lxxxvii. * I quote from the reprint in J. L. Robertson's admirable Oxford edition of Thomson (pp. 240-41), to which all my references are made. The italics are mine. ' Letter to Cranston, September, 1725?, Works (1847), vol. i, p. xxiii. * See his letter to Mallet, Aug. 9, 1745 (Philobiblon Soc, Miscellanies, 1857-8, iv. 39, first pagination). * Castle of Indolence, I. xli. 362. ^ Winter, 27. ^ Autumn, 1210. Miss Reynolds has an excellent paragraph on Thomson's "dislike of boundaries," in her Nature in English Poetry (1909), 92-3. THOMSON 131 It was inevitable that a poet with these tastes should be deeply- stirred by the most sublime and sonorous of EngUsh poets. Thom- son has high praise for Milton in the first edition of Winter: Great Homer too appears, of daring Wing! Parent of Song! and equal, by his Side, The British Muse, join'd Hand in Hand, they walk, Darkling, nor miss their Way to Fame's Ascent.^ In the second of the "Seasons," Summer, he expressed his feelings with still greater warmth : And every greatly amiable Muse Of elder Ages in thy Milton met ! His was the treasure of Two Thousand Years, Seldom indulg'd to Man, a God-like Mind, Unlimited, and various, as his Theme; Astonishing as Chaos; as the Bloom Of blowing Eden fair; soft as the Talk Of our grand Parents, and as Heaven sublime.^ Thomson also wrote a preface to the Areopagitica, imitated both Allegro and Penseroso, referred to their author several times in his letters, and borrowed not only words and phrases but whole passages from him.3 Since nearly half of these numerous borrowings are from the minor poems, they reveal a close acquaintance, very unusual at the time, with the shorter as well as the longer works; and, as some of them occur in Thomson's juveniha, it is clear that his familiarity with Milton dates from an early and impressionable age. The language and style of The Seasons also, as one would expect, give abundant evidence of admiration for Paradise Lost. They do more: they indicate an essential kinship between the two poets on many vital matters. For example, the author of The Seasons liked the grand style and strove to write in it. Part of his admiration for Paradise Lost must have been due to its lofty aloofness of expres- sion, to the organ tone which he apparently tried to catch in the oro- tund and often splendidly impressive climaxes to which he was fond of working up. Milton's largeness of utterance will be heard in single lines, like Had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep; or in such passages as these : ^ Lines 289-92. ^ Quoted from the first edition (1727), pages 47-8; the passage corresponds to lines 1567-71 of the latest text. ' See below. Appendix A. For passages in Thomson's letters which refer to Milton, see Macaulay's Thomson, 24 ("Evil is their good," cf. P.L., iv. no), 54 (Milton's 132 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON The vegetable world is also thine, Parent of Seasons! who the pomp precede That waits thy throne, as through thy vast domain, Annual, along the bright ecliptic road In world-rejoicing state it moves sublime. Hence, in old dusky time, a deluge came: When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arched The central waters round, impetuous rushed With universal burst into the gulf, And o'er the high-piled hills of fractured earth Wide-dashed the waves in undulation vast. Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds, A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe. ^ The sonorousness of such resounding lines is sometimes increased by the Miltonic device of introducing unusual proper names which have an imaginative appeal: Whence with annual pomp, Rich king of floods! o'erflows the swelling Nile. From his two springs in Gojam's sunny realm Pure-welling out, he through the lucid lake Of fair Dambea rolls his infant stream. . . . .... and all that from the tract Of woody mountains stretched thro' gorgeous Ind Fall on Cormandel's coast or Malabar; From Menam's orient stream." One passage of the kind is of particular interest because the first part of it was clearly suggested by a purple patch in Paradise Lost: The huge incumbrance of horrific woods From Asian Taurus, from Imaus stretched Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds; Give opening Hemus to my searching eye. And high Olympus pouring many a stream! Oh, from the sounding summits of the north, The Dofrine Hills, through Scandinavia rolled "Hail, wedded love," is quoted), 55 ("the mind is its own place" is cited, without quo- tation-marks, from P. L., i. 254). In the preface to the second edition of Winter Milton is mentioned and the expression "the sober Suit of the Evening" (of. "civil-suited Morn, Penseroso, 122) is used. 1 Summer, 1008, 112-116; Spring, 309-16. See also Spring, 70-77; Summer, 175- 84, 651-2; Winter, 94-117. The following lines {Summer, 90-94) illustrate how Thom- son, owing partly to the jerkiness of his style, sometimes failed in his attempts at the orotund : Prime cheerer, Light! Of all material beings first and best! EflSux divine! Nature's resplendent robe, Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt In unessential gloom! * Summer, 804-27. THOMSON 133 To farthest Lapland and the frozen main; From lofty Caucasus, far seen by those Who in the Caspian and black Euxine toil; From cold Riphaean rocks, which the wild Russ Believes the stony girdle of the world.^ There are some respects in which the Scottish bard even outdid his master, what was with the earher poet a native manner fre- quently becoming with the later one an exaggerated mannerism. In the following typical passage, for instance, naturalness of expression, as well as the flow of the verse, has been lost through excessive and inartistic inversions and the use of adjectives for adverbs: Here wandering oft, fired with the restless thirst Of thy applause, I solitary court The inspiring breeze, and meditate the book Of Nature, ever open, aiming thence Warm from the heart to learn the moral song. And, as I steal along the sunny wall. Where Autumn basks, with fruit empurpled deep, My pleasing theme continual prompts my thought.'' There may be as many distortions of the normal word-order in Para- dise Lost as in The Seasons, but they seem less frequent because they are better adapted to the epic style and because Milton introduces them more skilfully. It will be observed that in the passage quoted the adjectives which take the places of adverbs are likely to be out of their normal order, and that some of them, like "solitary" in the second hne, are used not so much adverbially as appositively. Ex- cept in such instances appositives are not common in Thomson, nor are parenthetical expressions.^ Thomson's use of words is no less Miltonic than his style. Adjec- tives, besides being, as we have seen, constantly employed as ad- verbs, are occasionally used as nouns. We find, for instance, "the blue profound," "that full complex," "the pure cerulean," "the blue immense," "the blue serene," "the breezy void," "the solitary vast," "the . . . Kcentious proud," and "whatever fair [i. e., beauty] 1 Autumn, 782-93; cf. P. L., iii. 431-2. A passage in Thomson's Liberty (iii. 226- 56), from which the following lines are taken, contains many proper names: To where the frozen Tanais scarcely stirs The dead Maeotic pool, or the long Rha In the black Scythian sea his torrent throws. ^ Autumn, 668-75. Note such chiasmic inversions as "To the quire celestial Thee resound" (Summer, 190). * I have noticed parenthetical expressions in Summer, 1627 (cf. line 995 of the 1730 edition); Autumn, 732, 889-91, 900-901, 1204; Winter, 410, 667, 926. 134 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON High fancy forms." ^ Adjectives are made into verbs in such expressions as "Spring . . . Greened all the year," "whatever greens the spring," "to . . . serene his soul," "savaged by woe," "truth . . . Elates his being," "the . . . ray Russets the plain." ^ Verbs and substantives interchange places in the phrases "in sad presage," "a sweep of rivers," "the chide of streams," "one wide waft," "oaks . . . tuft the . . . mounts," "by hardship sinewed," "a . . . calm Fleeces unbounded ether," "the swain Disastered stands," "tempest the . . . brine." ^ In The Seasons, as in Paradise Lost, intransitive verbs are sometimes made transitive, and vice versa. The Nile, for instance, "devolves his maze," and a tongue is described as " devolving . . . A roll of periods " ; similarly, we have "dejects his . . . eye," "gazing the inverted landscape," "meditate the blue profound," "meditate the book," "protrudes the bursting gems," and, as examples of transitive verbs used intransitively, "insect armies waft Keen in the . . . breeze," and lightning "dis- closes wide." ^ In this matter of interchanging the parts of speech Thomson is, except in using adjectives for adverbs, more conservative than his master, but in the number of his unusual compound words he leaves him far behind. He makes these in almost every conceivable way: by combining adverbs with participles, as in "idly-butting," "idly- tortured," "seldom-meeting," "soon-descending," "ever-cheating," "ill-submitting"; ^ adverbs (or adjectives used as adverbs) with ad- jectives, as in "wildly-devious," "fair-diffusive," "richly-gorgeous," or with verbs, as in " full-exerts," " wide-hover," " thick-urge," " gay- twinkle";^ nouns with participles, as in "woodbine- wrought," "fever-cooling," "life-sufficing," "jargon- teaching," "stench-in- volved," "forest-rustling," "wisdom- tempered," "folly-painting," ^ Slimmer, 1248 (cf. P. L., ii. 980), 1785; Autumn, 1097, 1356; Winter, 693; Au- tumn, 126; Winter, 804 (cf. P. L., vi. 203), 322; Spring, 1139-40 (cf. P. L., ix. 608, xi. 717, etc.). 2 Spring, 320-21; Autumn, 1260; Spring, 870; Summer, 1081; Autumn, 1336-7; Hymn, 95-6. ' Summer, 1050 (cf. P. L., vi. 201, P. R., i. 394, etc.); Autumn, 712, 1267; Winter, 271; Spring, 915; Summer, 1468; Autumn, 958; Winter, 278-9, 1016 (cf. Liberty, 'iv. 142, and P. L., vii. 412). * Summer, 816; Autumn, 16-17; Summer, 1066, 1247 (cf. P. L., viii. 258, etc.), 1248 (cf. Comus, 547, and Lycidas, 66); Autumn, 670, 1311; Spring, 121-2 (cf. P. L., ii. 1042); Summer, 1138. Somewhat similar is the use of "preys," instead of "preys upon" with an object, in "The . . . eagle . . . preys in distant isles" {Spring, 759-65). ^ Spring, 801, 1044; Summer, 26; Winter, 50, 210, 957. * Summer, 80, 851, 1622; Spring, 1120; Autumn, 173; Winter, 141, 788. THOMSON 135 "snow-fed," or with adjectives, as in "dew-bright," "blood-happy," "plume-dark," or even with other nouns, as in "household-kind," "torrent-softness," "monarch-swain," "Parent-Power," "reaper- train," "labourer-ox." ^ Most common of all is the combination of an adjective (as a rule used adverbially) with a participle (com- monly the present), as in "white-empurpled," "fresh-expanded," "various-blossomed," "mellow- tasted," "sad-dispersed," "mute-im- ploring," "nice- judging," "white-dashing," "dire-clinging," "deep- ' fermenting," "fierce-conflicting," "swift-gliding," "new-moulding," "hollow-blustering," "new-creating."^ As both present and past participles are used in these words, and as the adjectives are related to the participles in different ways, there is greater variety in such compounds than is at first realized; yet their number can hardly fail to impress even the casual reader, for a single line sometimes con- tains two, and five successive lines occasionally have as many as four.^ But the feature of Thomson's diction that is likely to attract most attention is his use of uncommon words derived from the Latin. He has, for example, "vernant," "clamant," "prelusive," "amusive," "infusive," "diffusive," "effulgent," "effulged," "effulgence," "detruded," "sublimed," "convolved," "convolution," "exani- mate," "efflux," "distent," "emergent," "relucent," "turgent," "luculent," "conjunctive," "incomposed," "effused," "infracted," "auriferous," "sequacious," "ovarious," "innoxious," "flexile," "illapse," "magnific," "concoctive," "empurpled," "agglomerat- ing," "incult," "relumed," "constringent." * Thomson also follows Milton in giving to a word a meaning or an appHcation which it had in Latin or Greek but has lost in English. Thus we find such ex- pressions as the farmer "incumbent o'er" the plough, "the liberal ^ Summer, 461, 668, 836, 1544; Autumn, 1206; Winter, 151, 377, 615, 995; Sum- mer, 86; Autumn, 456, 869; Spring, 772, 985; Summer, 494, 546; Autumn, 225; Winter, 240. '^.Spring, no; Summer, 477; Autumn, 5, 705; Winter, 263; Spring, 163, 408, 912; Autumn, 875; Winter, 13, 159, 196, 951, 989, 1044. ^ See, for example, Spring, 1059; Winter, 210, 437; Spring, 381-5. * Spring, 82 (cf. P. L., x. 679); Autumn, 350; Spring, 175, 216 (also Summer, 1660), 868; Summer, 1229 (also Autumn, 657, 882); Spring, 190 (also Summer, 135, 635, Autumn, 38, etc.); Summer, 1519 (the New English Dictionary gives no instance of "effulge" before 1729, — Thomson's Bn7a«m'a and Sa,vsige's Wanderer); Autumn, 25 (also Winter, 643, etc.; cf. P. L., iii. 388, v. 458, vi. 680); Spring, 568, 827 (also Summer, no), 837 {a\%o Summer, 343, Autumn, 1183, cf. P. L., vi. 328); Autumn, 839; Spring, 1052; Summer, 92; Spring, 145, 263; Summer, 162; Autumn, 693; Winter, 710; Summer, 1776, 491 (cf. P. L., ii. 989), 509 (also 1256), 604, 648, 1713; Autumn, 875, 1 161; Summer, 980, 1262; Autumn, 134 (cf. P. L., v. 773, x. 354), 408, 674, 766, 884; Winter, 4gi {aiso8sS),6gg. See also Macaulay's r/!o»wo», 157-9. 136 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON air" (abundant), "the crude unripened year," "the eflfusive South," the "lapse" of a stream, the "horrid heart" of a lion, a pool "re- verted" by its bank, "the latent rill," "Essential Presence" (God), "unessential gloom," "the opponent bank" (opposite), eaglets "ardent with paternal fire," "the informing Author" (God, who works within), "the outrageous flood" (violent), "will preventing will" (anticipating), "the sordid stream" (muddy), "bounteous" milk, "diffused" (of a person), walking "in cheerful error," storks "in congregation full, "mountains "invested with a keen . . . sky," "frequent foot," a river "constrained" between two hills, "the in- flated wave," " frost-concocted glebe " (cooked or solidified), "obse- quious " reindeer (obedient).^ It will be seen that these peculiarities of diction not only are of the same kind that Milton employed, but are frequently the same words put to the same uncommon uses. Other words which Thomson seems to have borrowed from the mas- ter are "mossy-tinctured," "low- though ted," "massy," "shagged," "dappled," "weltering," "darkling." ^ Any such analysis as this must, however, fall far short of giving an adequate impression of the language and style of The Seasons. It cannot show how frequently the characteristics occur, and it must overlook much that cannot be tabulated but that materially affects the general impression. The fact is that, if there is a pompous, con- torted way of saying a thing, Thomson is likely to hit upon it; that of two words he prefers the one of Latin origin and of two Latin words that which is less common. CalUng things by their right names and speaking simply, directly, and naturally, as in conversa- tion, seems to have been his abhorrence. The stories of Musidora and "the lovely young Lavinia" are closer to real country life than the language and style in which they are told are to ordinary speech ; ^ Spring, 41 (cf. the . . . beech that o'er the stream Incumbent hung," Summer, 1363-4, "night incumbent o'er their heads," Wittier, 924, and P. L., i. 226), 98, 142 (cf. Lycidas, 3), 144 (cf. "effusive source," Summer, 1732, "large effusion" of rain, Spring, 176, and P. L., vi. 765), 160 (cf. P. L., viii. 263), 265 (cf. the "horrid loves" of animals, 830, and P. L., ix. 185, etc.), 407, 496, 557 (cf. P. L., v. 841); Summer, 94 (cf. P. L.,u. 439); Spring, 666, 760, 860 (cf. "Informer of the planetary train," i. e. God, and "Poetry . . . informs the page With music," Summer, 104, 1753-5), ^°7^ (cf- P- L., ii. 435, vii. 212, X. 232), 1 1 23 (cf. Nativity, 24); Summer, 386, 679; Atitumn, 517 (cf. Samson, 118), 626 (cf. with P. L., iv. 239, vii. 302, and cf. "erroneous race," Isaac Newton, 199, with P. L., vi. 146), 859, 882 (cf. P. L., i. 208, iii. 10, vii. 372); Winter, 6, loi, 166, 706 (also Autumn, 7), 854 (cf. P. L., vi. 783). 2 Spring, 381 (cf. P. L., v. 285, Comus, 752); Autumn, 967 (cf. Comus, 6); Spring, 840 (also Summer, 669, Autumn, 1244, etc., and cf. P. L., i. 285, ii. 878, etc., eleven times in all), 910 (cf. Winter, 281, and Comus, 429); Summer, 48 (cf. Allegro, 44, of the dawn in each case), 265 (cf. P. L., i. 78, Lycidas, 13); Autumn, 753 (also Winter, 536, andcf. P. Z,., iii. 39). THOMSON 137 and, widely as these artificial pastorals differ from the homely tale of Michael's sheepfold, Thomson is nearer to Wordsworth in what he says than in how he says it. Instead of "You steal silently along the dale overhung with woods," he writes, There along the dale With woods o'erhung . . . You silent steal.^ Such a sentence, and contortions of EngHsh like The winding vale its lavish stores, Irriguous, spreads,'* would not be objectionable now and then; but what can be said in defense of passages like these ? A voice, than human more, the abstracted ear Of fancy strikes. Then too the pillared dome magniiic heaved Its ample roof; and luxury within Poured out her glittering stores. The canvas smooth, With glowing life protuberant, to the view Embodied rose.^ Furthermore, Thomson has a penchant for words which are to-day particularly disliked, such as "swain," "glebe," "gehd," "lucid," "vernal," "verdant," "umbrage," "mead," "verdure," "the fair," "the muse." He also delighted in unnatural and inflated circumlo- cutions, like "the household feathery people" (hens); "the copious fry" or "the finny race" or "the glittering finny swarms" (fish); "the furry nations," which include "the docile tribe" (reindeer) that live amid "the heapy wreath" or "the white abyss" commonly called snow.^ For birds he had more than fifteen periphrases, speak- ing of them in one place as "the plumy burden" that "winnow the waving element." ^ His masterpiece in circumlocution, however, he reserved for the volcano, The infuriate hill that shoots the pillared flame.« ^ Spring, 909-14. ^ lb. 494-5. ' Summer, 543-4; Autumn, 134-8. * Winter, 87, 877; Spring, 395; Autumn, 922; Winter, 811, 854, 81S, 819. 5 Spring, 747-8. The other names I have noticed are "the plumy people," "the gay troops," "the tuneful nations," "the coy quiristers," "the glossy kind," "the fear- ful race," the muse's "brothers of the grove," "the soft tribes," "the feathered youth," "the aerial tribes," "the weak tribes," "the wanderers of heaven," "the plumy race," "the tenants of the sky" {Spring, 165, 584, 594, 597, 617, 689, 703, 711, 729; Summer, 1121; Autumn, 986; Winter, 80, 137, 138). See also Spring, 753, 772, 789; Winter, 242. * Summer, 1096. 138 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON This is all bad, very bad. Indeed, the turgid diction and the dis- torted, pompous style of The Seasons are largely responsible for the current underestimate of the poem. These qualities are the more ob- jectionable because they are used in picturing simple country life; for, according to our twentieth-century feeling, nature poetry ought above all other kinds to be natural. Our ancestors, however, held quite the opposite opinion. They used nature in poetry, as in paint- ing and architecture, for purely decorative purposes; as they con- ventionalized leaves and flowers for ornamental borders and the capitals of columns, so they conventionalized the landscapes with which they adorned their poems. It was chiefly in nature poetry, whether rimed or not, whether written before 1726 or after, that "poetic diction" flourished. One would expect, therefore, to find it in The Seasons. What makes this the more likely is that Thomson wrote in blank verse. The new measure, which was not yet established, still seemed to many mere prose; hence to be acceptable it needed every pos- sible enrichment. The ''swellings" of style and luxuriance of lan- guage in which Philips and Thomson indulged are in part, therefore, a kind of paste jewels used to ofifset the severity of their unadorned measure. Much like this motive is that to which John Aikin called attention in 1804. "The writers of blank verse," he remarked, "have been so sensible of their near approach to prose in the ver- sification, that they have been solicitous to give their language a character as different as possible from that of common speech. This purpose, while it has favoured loftiness and splendour of diction, has also too much promoted a turgid and artificial style, stiffened by quaint phrases, obsolete words, and perversions of the natural order of sentences." ^ Another reason why "loftiness and splendour of diction" were, in the minds of Thomson and his contemporaries, inseparable from good blank verse is that these qualities were strongly marked in the only unrimed poetry for which they had any regard, that of Milton and Philips. From Milton, as we have seen, Thomson not only took many of the actual words and phrases that he employed, but ac- quired the habit of using inversions, pompous Latinisms, strange compounds, and other uncommon expressions that lay at the bottom of his turgidity. But his debt was even greater than this, for in general he came under the spell of the luxuriance, splendor, and sonorous vagueness of Paradise Lost. Milton had naturally much of the Elizabethan gorgeousness, and it stood him in good stead ^ Letters on English Poetry (2d ed., 1807), 1 18-19. THOMSON 139 when dealing with a subject in which definiteness was often im- possible and usually undesirable. By means of sound, by the "long-commingling diapason" of his lines (obtained mainly through the use of Latin words) , and in part through a style and diction as lofty and as remote from everyday life as was his theme, he con- veyed a vivid impression of persons, things, places, and acts that are beyond description. This manner of Milton's Thomson adopted without realizing that what was fitting, necessary even, in picturing the wars of archangels and the creation of the solar system became ridiculous when applied to Musidora's bathing or to the shearing of sheep. To write of Vulcan, And in Ausonian land Men call'd him Mulciber, is poetry, but to describe a visit to Italy by saying, The muse gay roved the glad Hesperian round, is absurdity.^ To speak of the angel Raphael as "the winged Hie- rarch," Satan as a "mighty Paramount," and the trumpets used by seraphim as "the sounding alchymy " is both suitable and impressive; but to call birds "the glossy kind" and frozen earth "the frost-con- cocted glebe," or to say that streams "lead the humid maze " instead of "wind," is neither.^ Satan may well have "writhed him to and fro convolved," but why should lambs be This way and that convolved in friskful glee? ^ But, even if the subject of The Seasons had been similar to that of Paradise Losty Thomson, like others, would almost certainly have brought many discords out of Milton's mighty but complicated in- strument. The exquisite ear and supreme art of its inventor enabled him to do things with it which, if attempted by almost any one else, would have resulted in failure. Latinisms appear to come naturally to him, his inversions do not seem distorted or his unusual words far- fetched. Many phrases that sound absurd when transferred to the writings of his imitators are harmonious and beautiful in their orig- inal settings. The expression "vernal bloom," for example, is not good, but who has objected to it in Milton's great lament over his blindness? Much of the tumidity of The Seasons, therefore, arises ^ P. L., i. 739-40; Liberty, i. 2. 2 P. L., V. 468, ii. 508, 517; Spring, 617, Winter, 706, Hymn, 51. ' P. L., vi. 328; Spring, 837 (cf. Summer, 343, and Autumn, 1183, where bees, over- come by sulphur fumes, are said to be "convolved and agonizing in the dust"). This paragraph and the preceding one repeat some things said on pages 66-8, 78-9, 83, above. I40 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON from the attempt of a Phaethon to drive the chariot of the sun. A great deal of Thomson's tumidity came from his adopting without sufficiently adapting Milton's practice. It is not a matter of this or that word, of a few stylistic devices or syntactical peculiarities; it is a question of the general character of the words employed, of the way in which they are used, the order in which they are placed, and the kind of sentences made from them. Thomson's entire concep- tion of the language and style of poetry seems, indeed, to have been moulded by Paradise Lost. There is no evidence that Thomson knew Cyder until 1 730, when in Autumn, the last of the "Seasons" to be written, he referred to Phillips, facetious bard, the second thou Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse, With British freedom sing the British song.i This particular "British song" was, however, widely read, and in the eighteen years between its pubHcation and the appearance of Winter would almost inevitably have come to the attention of one who cared for poetry of the kind. Furthermore, the similarities between the two works make it practically certain that there is some connection between them. Each discards rime, although at the time rime was the rule; each deals with homely country life; each owes much to Virgil's Georgics and to Paradise Lost;^ but, most of all, each makes use of the exaggerated, tumid Miltonisms which Philips had intro- duced into the Splendid Shilling for the sake of parody. The Seasons is more flowing than its predecessor and less stilted and bombastic; but the resemblances to Cyder are sufficiently marked to make it dif- ficult to determine how much Thomson derived from Milton and how much from Philips. In his first two unrimed pieces, and in the few lines we have of an early draft of Winter,^ the style is simpler and more direct and the language more natural than in The Seasons. This would indicate that Thomson deliberately stiffened his later verse; and, as he certainly knew Milton before writing any of these pieces but seems not to have been famihar with the Splendid Shilling whien composing his juvenile burlesque,* it appears likely that in making over the gorgeous Miltonic garment for work-a-day purposes he consciously followed Philips's practice. It may even be that he ^ Autumn, 639-41 (text of 1730). Most later editions substitute "Pomona's" for "facetious." 2 For the influence of Virgil on Thomson, see Macaulay's life, 146-7 n. In the 1750 edition of Thomson's works Lyttelton removed the description of the orgy of food and drink from Autumn (482-569 of the later texts) and printed it as a separate poem, The Return from the Fox-Chace, a Burlesque Poem, in the Manner of Mr. Philips. ' Letter to Dr. Cranston, September, 1725?, Poetical Works (1847), vol. i, p. xxiii. * Lisy's Parting with her Cat, written about 1718. THOMSON 141 did not so much adapt this apparel himself as modify Philips's adaptation. Obviously, Paradise Lost and Cyder would not have exerted such an influence upon Thomson if they had not fallen in with his natural tendencies. He turned to these poems and to the Faerie Queene as inevitably as a flower turns to the sun; ^ yet the use which the flower makes of the sun's rays depends upon its own nature and environ- ment. The same Miltonic light that awakened Thomson fell upon Landor, Keats, and Wordsworth, but in them it produced very dif- ferent results. Thomson used inversions and other Latinisms not simply because Milton did so but because he liked them ; these char- acteristics or similar ones would have marked his poetry had Para- dise Lost never been written. The English epic inspired him, brought out what was latent in him, opened his eyes to many things he would otherwise have overlooked, and showed him how to get effects he de- sired ; but it did not originate his turgidity, it only accentuated and directed it. He was, as we have seen, impatient with the "wintry world of letters" of his own day; he wanted the color, the feeling, and the richness of summer. He wished to banish the drab uniform- ity of neo-classic poetry, to substitute imagination for wit, feeling for brilliance, luxuriance for precision, to appeal to the emotions rather than the intellect, to the heart rather than the head. His de- fects sprang from lack of fineness of taste and from want of skill in handling a strange medium. He failed to distinguish dignity from stiltedness, grandeur from turgidity, loftiness from pomposity; he failed to see that one is not always nearer to poetry by being farther from prose. These limitations were not peculiar to Thomson. Other men of the time. Mallet, Dyer, and Akenside, for example, had them too, though usually to a less degree; for dignity, splendor, and pomp of writing were admired then far more than they are now. In poetry as in dress it was a time of velvet coats, tight neck-bands, and flow- ing, powdered wigs. Henry Pemberton, in 1738, praised Glover's Leonidas for not naming such utilitarian objects as hay and straw, but for describing "the magazines of them in the camp of Xerxes ... by periphrasis, as follows : There at his word devouring Vulcan feasts On all the tribute, which Thessalia's meads Yield to the scythe, and riots on the heaps Of Ceres emptied of the ripen'd grain. . . . * Spenser seems to have had little direct influence upon The Seasons; but his exam- ple, like Milton's, undoubtedly strengthened Thomson's tendencies away from the things for which Pope stood and in general towards ornament and profusion. 142 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON This is a refinement," adds Pemberton, "which seems to have arisen by time. In Homer we often find the commonest things expressed by their plain names." ^ " The style of a didactic poem," Joseph Warton asserted a few years later, "... ought certainly to abound in the most bold and forcible metaphors, the most glowing and picturesque epithets ; it ought to be elevated and enlivened by pomp of numbers, and majesty of words, and by every figure that can lift a language above the vulgar and current expressions." ^ As late as 1785 John Scott, himself a pleasing poet, criticized Thomson for using such a "wretched prosaism" as "to tempt the trout" or "stealing from the barn a straw," and for speaking of birds' "streak- ing their wings with oil" instead of "moistening their plumage with an oleaginous matter." ^ Even Johnson, who hated blank verse and all its works, praised the diction of The Seasons, though he regarded it as "too exuberant." ^ But how could he have condemned it in view of his own pompous Latinisms and the "relaxation of his grav- ity" caused by Shakespeare's use of the words "peep," "blanket," " dun," and " knife " in a tragedy? ^ One contemporary reviewer as- serted that Thomson excelled "in the real sublime, in a strength and justness both of thought and expression^' \ ^ and the critical Swift, though "not over fond of " The Seasons "because . . . nothing is doing," did not mention its turgidity.'^ Many, to be sure, who ap- proved of Thomson's general practice censured some of his expres- sions or thought he went too far.^ Thus we read in Gibber's Lives (1753), "Mr. Thomson's poetical diction in the Seasons is very pe- culiar to him. . . . He has introduced a number of compound words; converted substantives into verbs, and in short has created a kind of new language for himself. His stile has been blamed for its singularity and stiffness . . . yet is it admirably fitted for descrip- tion," since, "though its exterior form should not be comely," it en- ables him to paint nature "in all its lustre." ^ ^ Observations on Poetry, 86-7. ' Critical Essays, 316, 309, 316, 301. 2 Works of Virgil (1753), i. 403-4. ^ Lives (ed. Hill),iii. 300. ^ Rambler, no. 168. * Andrew Reid , Present State of the Republick of Letters ( 1 7 28) , i. 430. The italics are mine. ^ Letter to Charles Wogan, Aug. 2, 1732. * Joseph Warton, for example, granted that "the diction of the Seasons is some- times . . . turgid and obscure," but added inamediately, "yet is this poem on the whole . . . one of the most captivating ... in our language (Essay on Pope, 4th ed., 1782, i. 43). In his blank- verse Enthusiast, which is itself not without turgidity, he praises Thomson as one "who strongly painted what he boldly thought" (Wooll's Biographical Memoirs of Warton, 1806, p. 117; cf. Autumn, 57-64). 8 V. 202-3. Ill the same paragraph there is a reference to "the tow'ring sublimity of Mr. Thomson's stile." THOMSON 143 At this time, as we know, it was an accepted principle that the language of poetry should be widely separated from that of prose, that homely words hke "blanket" or "knife," and 'terms appropri- ated to particular arts,' like "seam" or "mallet," "should be sunk in general expressions." ^ Pope and his contemporaries found Homer and the Bible much too simple and matter-of-fact, and therefore adorned them with tinsel and "raised" them with vague, high- sounding, inappropriate words. Even prose, under the guidance of Johnson, Gibbon, Burke, and their followers, returned to the tradi- tions of rhetorical elaboration, becoming Latinic and structurally in- volved. The Swan of Lichfield thought Hberty "a thousand times preferable to the dispiriting fetters of an unimpassioned connexion," and referred to language which "had every happiness of perspicuity, and always expressed rectitude of heart and susceptibility of taste." ^ That any human being, much less an important Uterary personage, could habitually express herself after this fashion, is far more diffi- cult to understand than is the turgidity of The Seasons. Even among Thomson's contemporaries, however, there were those who objected to his style and diction. Johnson, as we have seen, remarked mildly that it was "too exuberant," and Gibber acknowledged that it had been "blamed for its singularity and stiffness." Guriously enough, John Scott — he who favored "mois- tening their plumage with an oleaginous matter" — wrote that Thomson, "in attempting energy and dignity, produces bombast and obscurity; and in avoiding meanness, becomes guilty of affecta- tion." ^ Lyttelton and his friends were so much disturbed by the diction of The Seasons that in the edition of the poem which his lord- ship, as Thomson's literary executor, brought out in 1750 "great corrections" were made and "many redundancies . . . cut off."* The world, however, preferring the original with its redundancies, justified Patrick Murdoch, the poet's friend and biographer, in de- claring, "Gertain it is, that T[homson]'s language has been well receiv'd by the publick." ^ * Johnson, Rambler, no. 168; "Dryden," in Lives (ed. Hill), i. 433. * Letters, iv. 179; Memoirs of Dr. Darwin (1804), no. ' Critical Essays (1785), 296. * Lyttelton's letter to Dr. Doddridge, quoted in Macaulay's Thomson, 75. See also above, p. 140, n. 2. ' From an undated letter to Andrew Millar, in Wooll's Biographical Memoirs of Joseph Warton, 256-7. Murdoch recommended "my Lord's acquaintances ... to read Milton with care, and the greatest part of their objections would vanish." So late as 1821 Rowland Freeman {Kentish Poets, Canterbury, 1821, ii. 113) quoted the whole of Thomas Curteis's egregiously stilted and distorted Eirenodia (see p. 112 above), because it "has in many parts great merit, and is a very good specimen of the Miltomc style." 144 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON The truth of this assertion is borne out not only by the remarkable vogue of the poem, but by the adoption, with little conscious modifi- cation, of the language, diction, and style of The Seasons on the part of most contemporary writers of blank verse. Even the cold, fastidi- ous Akenside made use of them, and in the unrimed work of Shen- stone, who lacked neither taste nor discernment, their peculiarities are far more conspicuous than in The Seasons itself. To most writers of the time these mannerisms appeared attractive in themselves as well as an essential feature of all pleasing blank verse, since they solved a difficulty which had previously seemed insurmountable, — how to beat into ploughshare and pruning-hook the mighty sword and spear that had been forged for the combats of archangels. Pre- vious writers, it was felt, had not done this, or, if they had, the re- sults were uninteresting, which came to the same thing. Most of these adventurers had been wrecked either in the Charybdis of flat prose, near which protruded the rocks of the couplet prosody, or on the Scylla of epic bombast; the few who escaped had, with the ex- ception of Philips, been lost in the great deep of oblivion. Before 1726, therefore, authors did not know what kind of blank verse to write, or if they did they were unable to write it effectively and for that reason usually left it alone. But as soon as it was generally recognized that Thomson had discovered a good course they promptly followed him, with the result that his vices came to be so firmly fastened upon blank verse that they persisted almost to the end of the century. Indeed, the development of the poetry written in the measure from his time to Wordsworth's is in the main a record of its gradual emancipation from the faults which The Seasons brought into vogue. But it is a mistake to attribute all that is objectionable in Thom- son to the influence of the poetry of his day, since in point of fact his language and style are related to that poetry less as a result than as a cause. They are, as we have seen, in large part the outgrowth of his own natural predilections (which, it must not be forgotten, were of Scottish not English origin) and of the example of Milton. Some- thing much like them, to be sure, is to be found in the work of his predecessors, — in Cyder, the Splendid Shilling, and other bur- lesques, in translations of the classics, in epics, and in works in which the Deity is a character; but, aside from Cyder, such produc- tions obviously form a class by themselves apart from most litera- ture, and many of even these pieces are comparatively free from the exaggerated Miltonisms of later unrimed poems. It is possible, therefore, that if Thomson had adopted a simpler method of expres- THOMSON 145 sion other writers would have done the same and eighteenth-century blank verse would have developed along quite different lines. Such a supposition, however, proceeds on the very dubious assumptions that a more natural blank verse could have been written effectively in 1726, and that, if written, it would have been popular. If Words- worth's simplicity seemed stupidity in 1798, what would it have been thought in 1726? If the strains of Tintern Abbey, Michael, and Alastor fell on deaf ears in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, what chance would Winter, in equally unadorned verse, have had a hundred years earlier? Furthermore, Thomson himself used a more direct and natural form of expression in his first efforts, but appar- ently saw, as every one has seen since, that it was not a success. Who, then, shall say he was not right in deliberately adopting a more ornate manner? ''The blank verse of The Seasons," writes Mr. Beers, "... has been passed through the strainer of the heroic couplet." ^ Admirers of the poem may at first resent this criticism, but they will find more and more evidence of its truth as they examine the prosody of Thomson. He did not have a delicate ear, and probably missed many of the finer harmonies of Milton's verse, which, it will be re- membered, was in 1725 admired far more than it was understood. He repeatedly uses lines of the same marked cadence,^ has pauses in the same places in successive lines, and seems to have given no heed to inversions of accent, if indeed he was conscious of them. At the beginning of a line he, like Pope and the other classicists, frequently has a trochee, but with this exception there are only eleven inver- sions of the stress in the first three hundred lines of Summer? In the same passage there are, as I read it, but eighty run-over lines,* or less 1 English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century (N. Y., 1899), iii. * The oft-noted examples of this habit, And Cancer reddens with the solar blaze, And Egj^t joys beneath the spreading wave, And Ocean trembles for his green domain, And Mecca saddens at the long delay, And Thul6 bellows through her utmost isles, And the sky saddens with the gathered storm {Summer, 44, 821, 859, 979, 1168, Winter, 228), can hardly be used, as Mr. Saintsbury suggests {English Prosody, ii. 479), to emphasize the ends of paragraphs, since the first and last instances quoted occur near the beginnings of paragraphs. Cf . also Summer, 833, and Mr. Macaulay's discussion of the subject in his Thomson, 166-7. ' So, at least, says Leon Morel in his James Thomson (Paris, 1895) , 470. I find even fewer. * According to Robertson's edition, 108 lines are without punctuation at the end. 146 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON than twenty-seven per cent, as against forty-five per cent in Para- dise Lost and about six per cent in the Essay on Man. Much of the prosodic variety of The Seasons comes from a slighting of the stresses, one of which is passed over in nearly every line. The cesura is not managed so well; for, though it falls in or after the first foot more often than it does in Paradise Lost, it is usually near the middle of the line.^ Occasionally Thomson has such a line as Flames through the nerves, and boils along the veins, or Bright as the skies, and as the season keen,^ which might have come from Pope's Essay on Criticism. Much more common, however, are two or three lines that fall into unrimed couplets or triplets, a number of which now and then come together to form a passage like the following: Yet found no times, in all the long research, So glorious, or so base, as those he proved, In which he conquered, and in which he bled. Nor can the muse the gallant Sidney pass, The plume of war! with early laurels crowned. The lover's myrtle and the poet's bay. A Hampden too is thine, illustrious land! Wise, strenuous, firm, of unsubmitting soul.* The truth seems to be that when off his guard Thomson relapsed into writing not metrical paragraphs but separate lines, and that he had to exert himself to vary his pauses and to avoid a slight break after every tenth syllable. The freer prosody was unquestionably what he preferred, but the end-stopped Hne vrith a medial cesura and rare trochaic substitutions was, so to speak, in his blood and in- evitably showed itself. How well he succeeded in freeing himself from it we may see by comparing his juvenile blank verse, in which almost every line stands by itself, with his later work. He did much better than most writers of the time, because he had a clearer under- standing of Milton's prosody and a heartier Hking for it. Thomson's six or eight other unrimed poems — one of which, Liberty, contains nearly thirty-four hundred fines — need not detain ' In the first fifty lines of Summer I find the cesuras occurring as follows : 1-5 (i. e. five times after the first syllable), 2-5, ^-2,, 4-11, 5-12, 6-11, 7-5, 8-2, 9-0. Compare their distribution in the first fifty lines of the Essay on Man: 1-3, 2-7, 3-2, 4-11, 5-18, 6-7, 7-4, 8-4, 9-0. * Spring, 1104; Winter, 703 (cf. 485, 677, 836-7, and Liberty, ii. 24, 26, 31, 37, 40, etc.). ' Summer, 1508-15. The prosody of the preceding forty lines is much the same. THOMSON 147 us long.^ They attracted few readers when they appeared and have had no wilHng ones since. Historians of hterature and biographers of the poet have felt constrained to say something about the pieces and have tried to find something good to say, but it has been wasted labor. Johnson records that he attempted to read Liberty when it came out, but "soon desisted" and "never tried again." ^ Those who have tried again have usually desisted as soon. When Thomson left nature inspiration left him, and in Liberty even the descriptions are tame. Of course the poems contain a number of excellent lines and some good passages ; but on the whole they have very few of the virtues of The Seasons and all of its vices, — the roaring of the Brit- ish Hon, the obvious moralizing, the shallow pessimism, the fulsome commendation of friends, the tumidity, and the contorted word- order. They tend towards flattery and didacticism, and even when they spring in part from a worthy impulse the impulse has not been so deeply felt by their author as to give rise to poetry. Thomson's mind may have been in them, but his heart was not; and his mind, like that of many another bard, was by no means remarkable. It is to be regretted that he did not rise above his fellow-mortals by recog- nizing this fact and by realizing the questionable efficacy of moraliz- ing in verse; but if he had done so he would not have been James Thomson. It is easy to find fault with Thomson's work. His painting of na- ture is never ennobled by intensity of spiritual feeling; he has many tedious passages and more errors of taste both in subject-matter and in expression, and a hasty reading brings these defects into promi- nence. The poem (or extracts from it) is frequently studied for one purpose or another; but since large portions are seldom read for their own sake, and since those who judge it are often more fastidious than robust in their taste and rarely are so famihar with it that the faults no longer obscure the virtues, Thomson suffers much from being damned with faint, patronizing praise. One may even be tol- erably well acquainted with his work and yet remember little save its obvious merits and defects, and consequently may think that the 1 See Bibl. 1, 1713 w., c. 1718 w., 1727, 1729, 1734, 1737; App. B, 1726. The first two are juveniles, the second being an unsuccessful attempt at the mock-heroic. That to James Delacour, which is omitted from most editions of the poet's works, was first printed in the London Magazine for November, 1734, over the signature "J. Thomp- son," and was attributed in Delacour's Poems (Cork, 1778, p. 54) to "J. Thomson, author of the Seasons." Mr. Robertson (Oxford edition of Thomson, pp. 457, 462) gives several reasons for thinking that the Poem to the Memory of Mr. Congreve, which has on slender grounds been attributed to Thomson, is not really his. The abrupt, «jaculatory style seems to me not that of The Seasons. ^ Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 301. 148 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON author always paints with a broad brush and only the beauties which every one sees. But let such a reader return to The Seasons with a fresh and open mind and he will be struck with the closeness of observation it frequently exhibits, its fine feeling for shy loveli- ness in nature and for the "beauty, which, as Milton sings, hath ter- ror in it." He can hardly fail to admire the poet's healthy manliness and human sympathy, the excellence of many of his single lines, and the sonorous pomp, breadth, and Byronic power of his larger pic- tures. He will have a far better understanding of the eighteenth cen- tury after he has come to see these qualities in Thomson and to realize that they are features of a piece which, from the days of Pope and Young, through the dictatorship of Johnson and the increas- ingly romantic times of Gray, Cowper, and Burns, and even to the stirring years of Wordsworth, Shelley, Lamb, and Hazlitt, was the most popular and perhaps the most influential poem in English. CHAPTER VII YOUNG One of the earliest and most important results of Thomson's popu- larizing blank verse was the appearance, in 1742, of the first part of The Complaint, or Night Thoughts, by Edward Young. There is, to be sure, no proof that it was Thomson's example which led his fel- low-poet to use the new measure; but since The Seasons was at the time in the flush of its first popularity, and since The Complaint is very different in character from anything its author had written be- fore, there must have been some connection, and perhaps not a slight one, between the two works. It is Young's good fortune that he is little read. Most lovers of poetry who know the eighteenth century only through anthologies think of The Seasons, the Night Thoughts, and The Task as estheti- cally on the same low plane, an estimate that does great injustice to Thomson and Cowper, who, notwithstanding their defects, had genu- ine inspiration. Young lacked this and had little to offer in its place. The Night Thoughts is one of the dullest and falsest poems that ever achieved fame. It is rhetorical and declamatory in style, unpoetic in both conception and expression, commonplace in thought, sentimental, insincere, and lugubrious in its insistent re- ligion. To the modern reader the hollow theatricality of its parade of gloom is particularly repellent because of the smug piety which is supposed to inspire it. The poem excites no admiration for its author, who, one is not surprised to learn, spent the best part of his life seeking those tinsel trappings which it belittles. The gross flattery contained in the dedications of his works and in his poetic references to persons of influence prepare us to hear that for years he danced attendance on two of the most profligate and unscrupulous noblemen of the time, and that he even stooped to beg aid of the king's mistress for advancement in the church ! ^ There can be no question that the gloom of his poetry is in part due to disappointed ^ For an admirable analysis of Young's character, see George Eliot's essay, Worldli- ness and Other-worldliness. H. C. Shelley's brief for Young {Life and Letters, 1914) seems to me to avoid, or to touch lightly, on everything in the poet's life or writings that would produce an unfavorable impression. I50 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON ambition, and that his scorn of worldly pleasures and honors rings hollow from a man who strove hard to obtain them. Young's first published volume appeared when he was thirty, and from that time until he was fifty-nine he issued a book of verse nearly every year. With the exception of a few stanzaic odes and three tragedies, all these poems are written in couplets of the most pronounced pseudo-classic type. The best of them, and in some re- spects the best of all his work, is Love of Fame, the Universal Passion (1725-8). The seven satires that make up this volume possess a finish, brilliance, and epigrammatic point which render them at times but little inferior to those of the "wasp of Twickenham," which they antedate.^ Quite fittingly, therefore. Young's last work in the couplet consisted of two laudatory "Epistles to Mr. Pope" (1730)- Between the satires and his later writings lies "a gulf profound as that Serbonian bog"; for, after fifty-nine years of life and thirty in the service of the couplet. Young suddenly threw in his lot with the poetical insurgents by renouncing "childish shackles and tinkling sounds" ^ and all that went with them. The Night Thoughts, his most famous production, is in blank verse. No mere change of theme was responsible for his transferred allegiance, but a real change of heart. "What we mean by ' blank verse,' " he wrote at the age of seventy-six, "is, verse unf alien, uncursed; verse reclaimed, re- enthroned in the true language of the gods: who never thundered, nor suffered their Homer to thunder, in rime. . . . Must rime, then, say you, be banished? I wish the nature of our language could bear its entire expulsion; but our lesser poetry stands in need of a tolera- tion for it." 3 Few men of sixty undertake new things, still fewer gain a mastery of them. No wonder, then, that Young never learned to write good blank verse. In his thirty years of practice he had acquired admi- rable dexterity in handling the heroic couplet, but his fingers had be- come so adapted to the material with which they worked that they involuntarily shaped the new product with the old touch. In the early eighteenth century, good blank verse and good couplets stood leagues apart and generally implied quite dissimilar conceptions of poetry, much as the tango and the court minuet are not merely 1 According to Pope's editor (Works, Elwin-Courthope ed., vi. 340 n.), the Essay on Man, which was published anonymously, was thought to be by Young, and the Dublin reprint was advertised with his name. * Conjectures on Original Composition (1759, reprinted by M. W. Steinke, 1917), 58. 3 lb. 58-9, 65. YOUNG 151 different dances but expressions of different civilizations. Young was too old to gain facility in the free, new measure; his verse always tends to be choppy and ejaculatory/ to fall into a series of individual lines or to read like prose. The following is a fair example : Each night we die, Each morn are born anew: Each day, a life! And shall we kill each day? If trifling kills; Sure vice must butcher. O what heaps of slain Cry out for vengeance on us! Time destroy 'd Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt. Time flies, death urges, knells call, heaven invites, Hell threatens: All exerts; in effort, all.* Surely there is nothing of Milton here, or in hundreds of similar lines in the Night Thoughts. Yet there can be no question of Young's familiarity with Paradise Lost or of his willingness to borrow phrases from it.^ "Milton! thee," he exclaimed, "ah could I reach your strain 1 " ^ But there was the trouble, — he couldn't. Even if he had wanted to copy the style and versification of Paradise Lost, he could not have freed himself from the shackles of the couplet. He had written lines and pairs of lines too long to roll on "in full flow, through the various modulations of masculine melody";^ he had been brilliant and incisive too long to become sonorous and majestic. Besides, since the Night Thoughts is a series of versified sermons, its style is probably similar to that Young employed in the pulpit. De- clamatory, ejaculatory, abounding in short rhetorical questions, direct appeals, and exclamatory words and phrases, it is quite unlike the stately involutions of the Miltonic sentence. Hence the influ- ence of the epic upon the Night Thoughts may have been greater than appears at first sight. The extent of a change depends not so much 1 This is due in part to the punctuation. In forty lines of book ix there are 33 marks of exclamation, and in thirteen lines 15 marks of interrogation; in eight Unas of book vii there are 10 marks of interrogation and one of exclamation; and spots no less bristling may be opened to almost anywhere in the work. ^ Night Tlwughts, p. 24. As no edition of Young with numbered lines is easily acces- sible, the references will be to the pages in the Aldine edition of the Poetical Works (1852). ^ This is shown in his epigram on Voltaire in defense of the allegory of Sin and Death in Paradise Lost (see Works, Aldine ed., vol. i, p. xxxiv, n.); in his remark that "these violent and tumultuous authors put him in mind of a passage of Milton, ii. 539" {ih. pp. xxxvii-xxxviii, n.) ; in his prefixing an extract from Paradise Lost (ix. 896-900) to the fifth satire of his Love of Fame, and in definitely referring to an incident in the epic at the close of the sixth satire and again in the Night Thoughts {Works, ii. 95, 132-3, i. 124); but most of aU in his numerous borrowings from Milton (see Appendix A, below). * Night Thoughts, p. 15. ' Conjectures on Original Composition (reprint of 191 7), 58. 152 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON upon where one is as upon how far one has come, and Young had covered no small distance. Remote from Paradise Lost as is much of his lugubrious preachment, it is leagues away from his previous poems and from his blank- verse dramas. Furthermore, although the passages which do not recall Milton constitute the larger part of the Night Thoughts, they are by no means the whole of it. Indeed, it would be as difficult to find ten consecu- tive lines in the poem that have no echo of Paradise Lost as not to find the hundreds of places where that echo is unmistakable. Yet even in these last the resemblance soon fades or disappears, for not many passages of any length are dominated by the Miltonic style and diction. That is, although many passages show the influence of Paradise Lost as plainly as this one, few show it for so many lines : In grandeur terrible, all heaven descends! And gods, ambitious, triumph in his train. A swift archangel, with his golden wing, As blots and clouds, that darken and disgrace The scene divine, sweeps stars and suns aside. And now, all dross remov'd, heaven's own pure day. Full on the confines of our ether, flames. While (dreadful contrast!) far, how far beneath! Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas, And storms sulphureous; her voracious jaws Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey.^ Here are obvious Miltonisms and plenty of them, but they come out more clearly in contrast vdth what we may assume to have been Young's natural, uncontaminated blank verse, — the colorless, rhe- torical prose which he cut up into five-foot lengths for his tragedies : He can't persuade his heart to wed the maid. Without your leave; and that he fears to ask In perfect tenderness: I urg'd him to it, Knowing the deadly sickness of his heart, Your overflowing goodness to your friend, Your wisdom, and despair yourself to wed her; I wrung a promise from him he would try; And now I come a mutual friend to both.^ A comparison of these two quotations shows that the differences between them are due mainly to the presence, in the first passage, of many characteristics distinctive of Paradise Lost. The most obvi- ous of these, inversion, though common throughout the Night Thoughts, is less frequent and much less noticeable than in most blank verse of the time, for the sentences are so short and so broken 1 Page 230. 2 The Revenge (1721), II. i {Works, 1762, ii. 131). n YOUNG 153 that elaborate inversion is impossible.^ But Young seldom writes many lines without involving his words in some kind of knot, to the confusion of the reader. Next to inversion, the most fruitful source of difficulties is the omission of words that are usually expressed. He says, for example, "Enthusiastic this?" instead of "Is this enthusi- astic?", and "All exerts, in effort, all," which seems to mean "Everything exerts itself." How frequent such omissions are at times, and how much obscurity they cause, may be seen from this passage: Because, in man, the glorious dreadful power, Extremely to be pain'd, or blest, for ever. Duration gives importance; swells the price. An angel, if a creature of a day. What would he be? A trifle of no weight; Or stand, or fall; no matter which; he's gone.'' Very often it is parenthetical expressions that impede the reader's progress. Such phrases, whether within marks of parenthesis or not, have an unmistakably Miltonic effect, although they are far more common with Young than with Milton: Or, spider-like, spin out our precious all, Our more than vitals spin (if no regard To great futurity) in curious webs Of subtle thought, and exquisite design; (Fine net-work of the brain!) to catch a fly! The momentary buzz of vain renown! A name! a mortal immortality! Or (meaner still!) instead of grasping air. . . .' Two stylistic features of the Night Thoughts have less significance because they also occur in the work of Milton's predecessors. One is the use of a series of words in the same construction: War, famine, pest, volcano, storm, and fire. Rocks, desarts, frozen seas, and burning sands: Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death. Unraptur'd, unexalted, uninflam'd. Triune, unutterable, unconceiv'd. All regions, revolutions, fortunes, fates.* ' It is rare, for example, to find an inversion so long and elaborate as that in the fourth and fifth lines of the first extract, — "As blots . . . divine," which belongs after "aside." ^ Page 170. ' Page 117. On page 27 there are three in six lines, and on page 212 two in three. * Pages 8,10 (cf. 252, "Seas, rivers, mountains," etc. , and P. L.,n. 621-2), 129, 293, 293- 154 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON The other trait, repetition of a word or a phrase, is much more fre- quent in Young than in Milton, and, as will be seen from these in- stances, is often more elaborate : What pleads Lorenzo for his high-priz'd sports? He pleads time's num'rous blanks; he loudly pleads. For why should souls immortal, made for bliss, E'er wish (and wish in vain!) that souls could die? What ne'er can die, Oh! grant to live; and crown The wish.* The respects in which the language of the Night Thoughts departs from ordinary usage are noted in M. Thomas's admirable study of the poet.^ It may be interesting, as an illustration of how much Young's diction owes to Milton's, to know that every one of these differences is included in the list of characteristics of Paradise Lost which I had compiled before making any study of Young, and before even knowing of the existence of the French work.^ The similarity in language cannot be accidental, for the resemblance does not exist in the poet's earHer writings. *'Tant qu' il se rattacha a I'ecole neo- classique anglaise," writes M. Thomas,^ "Young suivit I'exemple des chefs de cette ecole, ainsi que le prouve une etude attentive de ses premieres oeuvres. Comme Dryden et Pope, il redoute le neolo- gisme ou du moins en use peu. . . . Mais quand on passe aux Nuits, les conditions changent sensiblement . . . il s'octroie une liberte de plus en plus grande a mesure qu'il avance dans son travail." The language of the Night Thoughts diverges most strikingly from that of the poetry of the day in employing unusual words from the Greek and Latin, many of which Young borrowed directly.^ "He seems to think with apothecaries," remarked Pope, "that Album Graecum is better than an ordinary stool." ^ M. Thomas gives " ter- raqueous," "optics" (eyes), "defecate," "feculence," "manumit," "indagators," "conglobed," "fucus," " concertion " ; ^ I have no- ticed "fuliginous," "gnomons," "plausive," "obliquities," "ebul- lient," "elance," "tenebrious," "turbant," "intervolv'd." » Young ^ Pages 17, 179. * Le Poke Edward Young, Etude sur sa Vie et ses Oeuvres (Paris, 1901). ^ See above, chapter iv. * Pages 390-91. ^ Some of them he may have taken from Milton, as "ethereal," "nectareous," "oozy," "magnific": pp. 173 (also 198, 222, 225, 247, etc.), 206, 229, 250. ' Quoted by Thomas, p. 391, n. 5. ^ Thomas, pp. 391-2; Young, pp. 10, 19, 30 (cf. 261, "defecate from sense"), 32 (and 69), 72, 100, 166 (cf. P. L. vii. 239), 196, 267. 8 Pages 25, 28, 62, 191, 221, 244, 254, 261, 264 (cf. P. L., v. 623). YOUNG 155 also follows Thomson and Milton in using some words in their orig- inal but obsolete meanings: "flow redundant, like Meander," "in- cumbent weight," "each option" in the human heart, "obnoxious" to storm, an "animal ovation" (animal joy), "eliminate my spirit, give it range," "ardours" of soul, "ardent with gems," planets "without error rove," the "tacit doctrine" of God's works, "erect thine eye," "night's radiant scale" (ladder).^ Like them, too, he makes new words out of those in common use, as "entenders," "bestorms," "re- thundered," "resorbed," "necromantics," "un- coift," "rationality," "displosion," and "prehbation." ^ M. Thomas calls attention to Young's habit of manufacturing negative words, like "uncreate" and "disinvolve," and especially negative adjectives, like "unabsurd," "unadept," "insuppressive;^ I have noticed "unrefunding," "unprecarious," "unbottomed," "insalu- brious," "unanxious," "unarrived," "unupbraided," "unlost," "unmysterious," "un- terrestrial," ■* and a dozen similar formations. Another characteristic of Paradise Lost frequently met with is what appears to be a dipt form of the participle, particularly from verbs in -ate : " souls elevate," " satiate of his journey," the mind's "corru- gate, expansive make," God's works "how complicate," Scripture "uncorrupt by man." ^ Not the least conspicuous of Young's Miltonisms is his interchange of the parts of speech. Sometimes he forces a verb into service as a noun, as "give thy thoughts a ply," "appall'd with one amaze," "thy nocturnal rove," "an overwhelm Of wonderful," "nature . . . gave A make to man ... A make set upright," "the deep disclose Of . . . nature." ^ Sometimes he reverses the process, as when he speaks of a night "that glooms us," of passions that "tempest hu- man life," of " unprecarious flows of vital joy " ; or when he says that "heaven's dark concave" shall "urn all human race," or the shades of night "antidote the pestilential earth." ^ Participles from such noun-verbs appear in "this escutcheon'd world," "starr'd and plan- 1 Pages 63 (cf. 256, a garden "redundant" in fruit), 174 (cf. 259), 183 (and 184), 187 (cf. P. L., ix. 170, 1094), 220, 243, 244, 256, 258, 264, 267, 276. Cf. Thomas, pp. 392-3. 2 Pages 31, 69, 170, 187, 192, 200, 203, 249, 296. ' Thomas, p. 394; Young, pp. 174, 233, 153, 244, 149. * Pages 162, 202 (and 211), 206, 212, 217, 234, 246, 249, 250, 277. On one page I found four such adjectives in four lines. ' Pages 25 (cf. 250, "things more elevate," 261, "minds elevate," 59, "minds create"), 240, 266, 267, 244. * Pages 27, 234 (cf. 167, "redouble this amaze"), 245, 245, 251 (cf. 27, "Man's make incloses the sure seeds of death"), 272. ^ Pages 26, 140, 202, 162, 265. 156 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON eted inhabitants," ''basin'd rivers." ^ Occasionally an adjective is raised to the dignity of a verb, as when hope "serenes" man's heart, a face "consummates bUss," a thought "shallows thy profound," or footsteps are " foul'd in hell " ; ^ and once in a while a noun sinks into an adjective, as when man is called "the tale of narrative old time."^ Adjectives sometimes serve as adverbs: "muffled deep," "flow redundant," "spontaneous rise," "tumultuous rise," "impet- uous pour," "let loose, alternate . . . rush Swift and tempestu- ous," "new awak'd," "deeply stamps . . . Indelible," "if man hears obedient," "refining gradual," "rich endow'd." * But it is by turning adjectives into nouns that Young most fre- quently ' confounds grammatical functions.' Almost every page has instances as ridiculous as these: "that awful independent on to- morrow," "subtilize the gross into refin'd," " trifle with tremendous " and "yawn o'er the fate of infinite," "th' irrationals," "reason is man's peculiar," "much Of amiable," "the world's no neuter," "the moist of human frame," "the dark profound," "this obscure terres- trial," "the steep of heaven," "the more of wonderful," "the grand of nature," "mind. For which alone inanimate was made," "what of vast," "the sublime of things," "deity breaks forth In inconceiv- ables to men," "the dark of matter," Thy lofty sinks, and shallows thy profound, And straitens thy diffusive.^ As to the compound epithets that are common in Paradise Lost but rare in Young's rimtd pieces, "Ton remarque sans peine que notre auteur en est relativement prodigue dans ses Nuits." ^ Here are a few that he uses: "hair-hung," "breeze-shaken," "dark-prison'd," "heart-buried," "high-flusht," "heaven-lighted," "soft-suspended," "heaven-labour'd," "heaven-assum'd," "wide-consuming," "all- proKfic," "all-providential," "freighted-rich," "sure-returning," "earth-created," "high-bloom'd," "far-travell'd," "hundred- gated," "new-blazing." ^ * Pages 26, 248, 252. 2 Pages 181, 242, 248, 279 (cf. 266, "foul'd with self"). ^ Page 185. * Pages 41, 63, 83, 140 (cf. 165, "tumultuous driven"), 211, 229, 264, 282, 284, 288, 292. ' Pages 25 (cf. 287, "all of awful, night presents ... of awful much, to both"), 78, 98 (cf. 245, "that infinite of space, With infinite of lucid orbs replete"), 173, 180 (cf. P. L., vii. 368), 186, 193, 228, 23s (also 263, and cf. 267, "emerge from thy profound," 280, "the more profound of God," and P. L.,n. 980), 243, 247, 250, 250, 251-2, 252 (cf. 273, "the vast of being"), 255, 283, 292, 248. * Thomas, p. 401. ^ Pages 24, 24, 25, 25, 27 (and 196), 36, 41. 42, 42, 42, 56, 130, iSi, 161, 231, 236, 244, 252, 297. YOUNG 157 In his prosody, as might be expected from his long experience with the couplet, Young departs widely from Milton's usage. Instead of sweeping his readers along with the *' long-commingling diapason" of Paradise Lost, he jolts them over series of exclamations and ejacu- lations. On a page of thirty-four Hues, only five or six on an average are run-over, and in some cases only two or three ; usually not more than seven lines end even with commas, the remaining twenty-two being cut off from their fellows by semicolons, colons, periods, or marks of exclamation or interrogation. The Night Thoughts is over- punctuated, to be sure; some of its points might be dispensed with and commas substituted for fully a third of the rest, to the clarifica- tion of its meaning and the elimination of part of its jerkiness. Yet the punctuation is not altogether to blame; for on the first pages that I open to very few of the full stops (periods and question- or ex- clamation-marks) , with which exactly half the lines end, could be omitted or changed so as to let the sense run over. One feature of Milton's prosody Young did adopt, — the extensive use of those strong pauses within the Une which were anathema to the Augus- tans, and to Young himself so long as he wrote in rime.^ Yet, as these pauses usually occur near the middle of the Une, where (as in the couplets of the day) most of his cesuras fall, and as his lines are usually not run-over, the effect of his prosody is rarely Miltonic. What determined his versification was not the desire for flow, for beauty or variety of rhythm, but his staccato style and his penchant for aphorisms. The Night Thoughts is unusually quotable, and for nearly a century its gnomic fines were in everybody's mouth: Tir'd Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep. Procrastination is the thief of time. All men think all men mortal, but themselves. Blessings brighten as they take their flight. Wishing, of all employments, is the worst. By night an atheist half-believes a God. Death loves a shining mark. A man of pleasure is a man of pains. ^ In thus transferring to blank verse the epigrammatic terseness of the couplet. Young was making more of an innovation than is commonly ^ Instances of these strong internal pauses, which often make a separate sentence of each half-line, will be found on page 151 above. The Monthly Review (1776, liv. 309) declared that in point of versification the Night Thoughts was "more faulty than any other composition of acknowledged merit in the class of English poetry." ^ Pages I, 13, 14, zz, 54, 83, 107, 206. 158 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON realized; for, from the very nature of Milton's prosody and the character of his epic, there are few quotable lines in Paradise Lost, and the same is true of Cyder, The Seasons, and the other unrimed poems of the period. Now quotability, always an asset, was a real step forward at a time when readers had been trained by Augustan poetry to expect it; and writers of blank verse were not slow in tak- ing the hint. Even the conversational Cowper (who likewise had a long preliminary training in rime) introduced many sententious lines into The Task. But it is not through quotability alone that Young helped to bring the couplet and blank verse closer together. His more direct style, his short sentences, his strong medial cesuras and end-stopped lines, his freedom from the elaborate Miltonic involu- tions and inversions, — his very defects, it should be noticed, — were all away from Milton and towards Pope. Little as we may like these features of the Night Thoughts, they were of service in the de- velopment of blank verse. The task of the eighteenth century was to hammer down Milton's style, which, Hke Lucifer's shield, was of ''ethereal temper, massy, large, and round," into something less glorious but more usable, something better adapted to human na- ture's daily needs. In this cause no one did more than Young. For the vogue of the Night Thoughts was tremendous. At least thirty-four editions, pubHshed either separately or in Young's works, appeared in the second half of the eighteenth century, and the poem made something of a sensation when translated into French (Robes- pierre is said to have carried a copy in his pocket during the Revolu- tion), besides having a triumphal progress through Germany.^ Dr. Johnson, who preferred Young's description of night to either Shake- speare's or Dryden's, agreed that the Night Thoughts was "one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage." ^ Burke committed many passages of it to memory,^ and even the fastidious Horace Walpole thought that in the author's "most frantic rhapsodies" there were "innumerable fine things." ^ What heav'n-born Seraph gave thy Muse its fire? queried one bard; ^ another declared, > See Thomas's Young, p. 539; and J. L. Kind's Young in Germany (N. Y., 1906). 2 "Young," in Lives (ed. Hill), iii. 395; Boswell's Johnson (ed. Hill), iv. 42-3, n. 7 (and cf. V. 269-70); cf. also Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes (1786), 58-9. 3 Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism, iii. 489. * Letter to the Earl of Strafford, July 5, 1757. ' C. Graham, in Univ. Mag. (1785), Ixxvii. 98; cf. William Thompson's Sickness, iii. 412-16. YOUNG 159 The starry host put back the dawn, Aside their harps ev'n Seraphs flung To hear thy sweet Complaint, O Young; ^ and many shared this admiration who were unable to express it, — devout souls like Bowles's mother, who revered the Night Thoughts "next to God's own Word." ^ Considerable evidence could, in truth, be adduced in support of Samuel J. Pratt's assertion that "no composition can . . . boast a greater number of readers." ' Nu- merous readers implied some imitators, and these Young had. Even before the last books of the poem had been published, other Night Thoughts J Day Thoughts, and pieces "after the manner of Dr. Young" or "in imitation of" him or "occasioned by" his work were being composed.^ Most of his followers, to be sure, did not acknowl- edge their indebtedness so frankly as this, but writers continued even into the nineteenth century to copy the poem or to be influ- enced by it. These pieces that are patterned more or less after the Night Thoughts do not sound particularly Miltonic, as, for that matter, their original usually does not. Yet Young was far more influenced by Paradise Lost than were most of the men who wrote verse like his, for he had more to unlearn. The author of Conjectures on Original Composition was hardly the man to copy any one. Had he not as- serted as early as 1730, "No Man can be like Pindar, by imitating any of his particular Works; any more than Hke Raphael, by copying the Chartoons. The Genius and Spirit of such great Men must be collected from the whole; and when thus we are possess 'd of it, we must exert its Energy in Subjects and Designs of our own. . , . Nothing so unlike as a Close Copy, and a Noble Original"? * And ^ James Grainger, Solitude, in "Dodsley's Miscellany," 1755, iv. 235. ^ Bowles, Banwell Hill, ii. 80-89. ' Observations on the Night Thoughts (1776), quoted in Crit. Rev. xli. 65. "He was indeed a favourite author from my childhood," Pratt said of Young {ih.); and Samuel Rogers, who was born in 1763, remarked, "In my youthful days Young's Night-Thoughts was a very favourite book, especially with ladies" {T able-Talk, ed. Dyce, 1856, p. 35). * See Bibl. I, 1745 (Davies), 1752 (anon.), 1753 n., 1754 n., 1755 (anon.), 1757-64, 1760 (Newcomb), 1765 ("T. L." and Letchworth), 1775 (anon.), 1791 (Philpot). Two of these are curious, — a stupid blank- verse rendering of James Hervey's prose Medi- tations and Contemplations, and a "poetical version" of one of Young's prose "moral contemplations " (cf. above, p. in, n. 2). James Foot {Penseroso, 1771, preface) says that he used blank verse because Young and "most of the celebrated writers of the present times" used it. Young is cleverly parodied by William Whitehead (see Young's Works, 1854 vol. i, pp. Ixi-lxii) and by John Kidgell {The Card, 1755, i. 241-2). * Preface to his Imperium Pelagi. l6o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON twenty-nine years later, in his Conjectures, had he not again declared, ** It is by a sort of noble contagion, from a general familiarity with their writings, and not by any particular sordid theft, that we can be the better for those who went before us"?^ We have seen that Young knew Paradise Lost well, and in view of the wide gulf between his early and his late verse there can be little doubt as to the ''noble contagion" he caught from it; but the "particular thefts" are so few in comparison with those in the blank verse of his contemporaries (in The Seasons, for example) that he may have been unconscious, or almost unconscious, of them. What Milton did for him was to rouse him, to free him from the shackles of rime, to get him out of the neo- classic rut. Young was wise enough not to slip from one rut into an- other, not to become a slave to his new guide. The vehicle he hacked out for himself, though perhaps a poor thing, was his own, and it was of no little help to those who came later. * Reprint of 191 7, p. 49. I CHAPTER VIII COWPER There were many men in the eighteenth century who knew their Milton as well as our grandmothers knew their Bible, — Gray, Thomas Warton, Philips, and perhaps Pope, besides such minor not- ables, now forgotten, as Jonathan Richardson, Thomas Mollis, Leon- ard Welsted, and George Hardinge.^ Yet it is doubtful if any of these men were better acquainted with Milton's writings than was the poet Cowper. His editor. Canon Benham, asserts, *'He appears to have known Milton nearly by heart"; ^ and he himself wrote, " Few people have studied Milton more, or are more familiar with his poetry, than myself." ^ This familiarity, as we learn from The Task, began in his early years : Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms: New to my taste, his Paradise surpassed The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue To speak its excellence; I danced for joy. I marvelled much that, at so ripe an age As twice seven years, his beauties had then first Engaged my wonder, and, admiring still And still admiring, with regret supposed The joy half lost because not sooner found.* And of Allegro and Penseroso he said, "I remember being so charmed with [them] when I was a boy that I was never weary of them." ^ It was this early love for Milton, combined with an extraordinary ver- bal memory,^ that made him know the poems so well. ^ On the minor writers, see above, pp. 6-7. ^ Globe ed., p. xxv. ' To Clotworthy Rowley, Oct. 22, 1791. * iv. 709-17. ' Letter to William Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782. * See, for example, his letter to Unwin, May i, 1779, "Not having the poem, and not having seen it these twenty years, I had much ado to recollect it"; he then quotes from memory the four stanzas of his Latin translation of Prior's Chloe and Euphelia. Later he tells the same friend (presumably in August, 1786, see Wright's edition of the Corre- spondence, iii. 89), "I did not indeed read many of Johnson's Classics; those of estab- lished reputation are so fresh in my memory, though many years have intervened since I made them my companions, that it was like reading what I read yesterday over again. In a letter to John Newton, Dec. 13, 1784, he recalls Cleopatra's use of " worm" for "asp," though he has not read the play "these five-and twenty years." 161 1 62 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Nor was his feeling the cool, intellectual appreciation that is com- monly given to Milton to-day, but a warm, personal devotion that led him even at sixty to burst out: " I would beat Warton if he were liv- ing, for supposing that Milton ever repented of his compliment to the memory of Bishop Andrews. I neither do, nor can, nor will believe it. Milton's mind could not be narrowed by any thing." ^ He was still more incensed by the harsh treatment his favorite received at Johnson's hands. ''Oh! I could thresh his old jacket," he raged, " till I made his pension jingle in his pocket," ^ — strong words for an author of the Olney Hymns. "I abominate Nat. Le6," he wrote to Hay ley, "for his unjust compliment to Dryden so much at the ex- pense of a much greater poet." ^ He even dreamed of meeting his "idol" and being graciously received by him."* Such a strong, per- sonal admiration was due in no small degree to the religious charac- ter of Paradise Lost and the lofty principles and noble life of its author. Even some of the defects of what he termed "the finest poem in the world," ^ — its narrow Puritanism, its literal interpretation of the Bible, and its Hebraic conception of God, — probably seemed to him virtues. Cowper's devotion was lifelong. Beginning at fourteen, it gave birth to the first of his poems that has been preserved ; and when the shades of melancholy settled over him never again to rise they found him editing and dreaming of his favorite poet. Between the two periods is scattered many a Miltonic item. The well-known hymn, "Jesus, where'er thy people meet," which appeared in his first vol- ume, Olney Hymns (1779), contains a Hne, And bring all heaven before our eyes, taken with the change of only a pronoun from Penseroso. The next year came his Latin translations of a simile from Paradise Lost,^ and of Dryden's couplets on Milton (a modified form of these couplets he afterwards introduced into his Table Talk) ; ^ and three years later followed his tribute in The Task, ^ Letter to Walter Bagot, Oct. 25, 1791. ^ See letters to Unwin, Oct. 31, 1779, and March 21, 1784; to Walter Bagot, May 2, 1791 (in which Johnson is threatened with "another slap or two"); to William Hayley, May 1, 1792 ("Oh that Johnson! how does every page of his on the subject [Milton], ay, almost every paragraph, kindle my indignation!"), and Oct. 13, 1792. ^ Nov. 25, 1792. * Letter to Hayley, Feb. 24, 1793. * Letter to Hayley, May 9, 1792. 8 See his letter to Unwin, June 8, 1780; cf. P. L., ii. 488 ff. ' Lines 556-9: Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard; To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, asked ages more. COWPER 163 Milton, whose genius had angelic wings, And fed on manna. ^ In 1790 the supposed disinterment of Milton's body called from his pen some "Stanzas," two of which are translated from Milton's Mansus.^ The following year appeared the preface to his Homer, containing, along with a number of other references, the words, "So long as Milton's works, whether his prose or his verse, shall exist, so long there will be abundant proof that no subject, however impor- tant, however subHme, can demand greater force of expression than is within the compass of the EngKsh language; " and six months later he wrote to a friend, "My veneration for our great countryman is equal to what I feel for the Grecian; and consequently I am happy, and feel myself honourably employed whatever I do for Milton. I am now translating his Epitaphium Damonis, a pastoral in my judg- ment equal to any of Virgil's Bucolics.'^ ^ The translation he refers to was part of a new edition of Milton, for which he was to turn the Latin and ItaHan poems into English and furnish notes. Through this work he came to know Milton's biographer, William Hayley, with whom he translated the Adamo of Andreini, a poem important only because of its possible influence on Paradise Lost; and he was engaged upon the editing when his dreaded melanchoHa and hal- lucinations returned for the last time. Thus from youth to old age there were never many months when he was not occupied in parody- ing or praising or translating or imitating or editing "this first of poets." ^ The earliest work of Cowper's that we have is a travesty of Para- dise Lost which was probably struck in the mint of the Splendid Shilling: For neither meed Of early breakfast, to dispel the fumes And bowel-racking pains of emptiness, Nor noontide feast, nor evening's cool repast, Hopes she from this, presumptuous, — though perhaps The cobbler, leather-carving artist, might. ^ Strange to say, his masterpiece. The Task, was also begun as a kind of parody on Milton's epic. "The Sofa," which Lady Austen had jestingly proposed to him as a subject, could hardly be the theme of a serious poem; yet he seems to have thought that he might do ^ iii. 255-6. 2 Lines 91-3. * To James Hurdis, Dec. 10, 1791. * Letter to Hurdis, Nov. 24, 1793. ' Verses written in his 17th year, on Finding the Heel of a Shoe (1748), 4-9. 164 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON something amusing by handling it in the involved and dignified style of Paradise Lost. The beginning of The Task certainly recalls passages in Milton's two long poems : I sing the Sofa. I who lately sang Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe The solemn chords, and with a trembUng hand Escaped with pain from that adventurous flight, _ Now seek repose upon an humbler theme. " This appears to be an adaptation of the opening lines of Paradise Regained, I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung By one man's disobedience lost, now sing . . . , with a jocose reference to the "advent'rous song" and to another famous passage in Paradise Lost, Thee I revisit now with bolder wing. Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detain'd.^ A little farther on, in the humorous description of the evolution of the chair, With here and there a tuft of crimson yarn. Or scarlet crewel in the cushion fixed : If cushion might be called what harder seemed . . . ,^ the last line seems to parody the language in which Milton pictures Death, The other Shape, If shape it might be call'd that shape had none.^ There can be no question of the parody in the following passage : The nurse sleeps sweetly, hired to watch the sick, Whom snoring she disturbs. As sweetly he Who quits the coach-box at the midnight hour To sleep within the carriage more secure, His legs depending at the open door. Sweet sleep enjoys the curate in his desk. The tedious rector drawling o'er his head. And sweet the clerk below: but neither sleep Of lazy nurse, who snores the sick man dead, Nor his who quits the box at midnight hour To slumber in the carriage more secure, Nor sleep enjoyed by curate in his desk, Nor yet the dozings of the clerk, are sweet, Compared with the repose the Sofa yields.* ^ P. L., i. 13, iii. 13-14. ^ Task, i. 53-5. ' P. L., ii. 666-7, and cf. i. 227-8. Possibly "as yet black breeches were not" (Task, i. 10) was intended to recall Milton's "as yet this world was not" (P. L., v. 577). * Task, i. 89-102. Compare Eve's words to Adam, "Sweet is the breath of Mom," COWPER 165 The burlesque is not continued beyond these lines, and reappears but once, in the third book, in a good-natured parody of Philips or Thomson.^ For, after a hundred lines of jesting, the poet slips off the sofa for a walk, and rambles on till the work that started upon "any subject" comes to include almost every subject, and the sofa is forgotten. Cowper's enthusiasm for Paradise Lost inevitably made itself felt in his blank verse; yet Milton exerted less influence on TIte Task than on the work of many men— Thomson, for instance — who cared less for him. For this there are several reasons. In the first place, Cowper's native abiHties and inclinations did not lie in stately peri- ods but in easy, flowing, conversational verse, in the description not of sublime but of domestic scenes. The qualities that give charm to his poetry are those which made him a delightful letter-writer and by no means those which produced the lofty and austere beauties of Paradise Lost. These natural aptitudes, furthermore, he had de- veloped in the volume of rimed poems he had just published, the first of which is, characteristically enough, called Table Talk. Then, too, a work undertaken to please a sprightly lady and dispel its author's gloom, a work which deals with tame hares, tea-drinking, winter- morning walks, and the pleasures of the garden and the fireside, is hardly one to employ the style and diction consecrated to the rebel- lion of archangels. To be sure, Philips, Grainger, and even Thomson had used the stately periods of Paradise Lost in the treatment of lowly themes; but Cowper's finer taste and far more delicate literary feeling would never have permitted the enormities these men were guilty of. Such topics as Hberty, religion, war, and slavery, with which the poem has much to do, might properly enough have been discussed in a Miltonic style if the tone of the poem had not been fixed by the quiet pictures of nature and the homely subjects that receive most of the attention, and if Cowper had not preferred to treat even weighty matters in an incidental, conversational manner rather than with the formality required by a loftier strain. For these reasons it is not surprising that The Task contains many passages like the following, which show no influence from Paradise Lost: etc., "But neither breath of Mom . . . nor rising Sun . . . nor grateful Evening . . . without thee is sweet" {P. L., iv. 641-56). Other passages in Cowper that seem to be derived from Milton are noted in Appendix A, below. In lines 14-16 of Yardley Oak there is a reference to Paradise Lost, ix. 1084-1100; and in a letter to Lady Hesketh, Oct. 13, 1798, there is one to Milton's sonnet on his blindness. ^ iii. 446-543 (directions for raising cucumbers). 1 66 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON He is the happy man, whose life even now Shows somewhat of that happier Hfe to come; Who, doomed to an obscure but tranquil state. Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose. Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith, Prepare for happiness ; bespeak him one Content indeed to sojourn while he must Below the skies, but having there his home.^ Verse so easy and flowing, so natural and conversational as this, is rare even near the end of the eighteenth century. It anticipates Wordsworth, and seems to belong to an entirely different age from that which produced Leonidas, the Sugar-Cane, and The Fleece. With Cowper, indeed, we reach the most supple blank verse, the kind best adapted to the ordinary uses of poetry, that was written before Tintern Abbey and Michael.^ Although the passage just quoted is typical of much of The Task, rarely are so many consecutive lines free from any suggestion of Paradise Lost. Ordinarily in this poem, as in the Night Thoughts, one or another feature of Milton's style or diction occurs in almost every paragraph. Yet such characteristics do not usually become marked throughout a number of consecutive Hnes, but only in short passages like these: Hard fare! but such as boyish appetite, Disdains not, nor the palate, undepraved By culinary arts, unsavoury deems. Ocean . . . invades the shore Resistless. Never such a sudden flood, Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge. Possessed an inland scene. Where now the throng That pressed the beach, and hasty to depart Looked to the sea for safety? They are gone, Gone with the refluent wave into the deep. Immortal Hale! for deep discernment praised, And sound integrity, not more than famed For sanctity of manners undefiled. Those Ausonia claims, Levantine regions these; the Azores send Their jessamine, her jessamine remote Caffraria. * vi. 906-14. ^ Besides making blank verse more supple and flowing, Cowper, like Young, helped to give it some of the epigrammatic crispness of the couplet. COWPER 167 Thy rams are there, Nebaioth, and the flocks of Kedar there; The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind, And Saba's spicy groves, pay tribute there. ^ It will be noticed that what most frequently gives these lines their Miltonic ring is the inversion of the normal word-order, from which few sentences in The Task are free. When the inversion is accom- panied by the omission of an auxiliary in a negative sentence, as in "disdains not," "nor conversant," "nor wanted aught within," "nor suspends," "proved He not plainly," "he seeks not," "not slothful he," ^ there is a strong suggestion of Paradise Lost. That particu- larly Miltonic inversion, a word placed between two dependent words or phrases, — "devious course uncertain," "feathered tribes domestic," "a sordid mind Bestial," "for deep discernment praised And sound integrity,"^ — was as attractive to Cowper as to his pred- ecessor. By no means so common, but perhaps as frequent as in Milton (an instance on nearly every page), is his use of an adjective where an adverb would ordinarily be employed, as " spring spontane- ous," "invades the shore Resistless," "cherups brisk," "sedulous I seek," "sipping calm," "disposes neat," "breathe mild," "wheeling slow," "impeded sore," "blazing clear," "sheepish he doffs his hat," "now creeps he slow, and now . . . Wide scampering." * The diction of The Task, as might be expected in a poem published half a century later than Winter and but two years before Words- worth entered college, is more simple and natural than was usual in eighteenth-century blank verse. Cowper's language is, indeed, more conversational than that of many authors who came after him. What makes us think of The Task with The Seasons rather than with The Prelude is its style and contents, not its diction. The strongly Latinized vocabulary that is largely responsible for the turgidity of Thomson and his followers is not a characteristic of Cowper. Occa- sionally, however, he does make use of such unusual words from the Greek or Latin as "vermicular," "recumbency," "arthritic," "re- volvency," "feculence," "peccancy," "vortiginous," "refluent," "sempiternal," "oscitancy," "meliorate," "stercoraceous," "ag- glomerated," "ebriety," "tramontane," "introverted," "indu- ^ i. 123-5; "• 111-20; iii. 258-60, 582-5; vi. 804-7. ^ i. 124; iii. 24; V. 156; vi. 308, 447, 920, 928. ' iii. 3; V. 62, 453-4; iii. 258-9; cf. also v. 119-20, 153, 164 (three instances on one page). < i. 603; ii. 114-15; iii- 9, 367, 39i, 423, 443, 499; iv. 343, 381, 628; v. 48-9. For other instances, see i. 20, iio-ii, 266, 347, 510-11; ii. 103, 374; iii. 563, 579; iv. 291, 293, 343-4, 478-9, 541; V. 7, 24-6 (two instances), 359-6o, 426; vi. 79, 375-6, 723, etc. 1 68 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON rated." "vitreous," "lubricity," "terraqueous," "confutation," "prelibation," "prepense," "ostent." ^ Now and then he employs words in their original though obsolete meanings or applications, as "speculative height" (affording an extensive view), "devotes" (vows to destruction), "obnoxious" (exposed to), "coincident" (agreeing), "soliciting" (trying to draw out, as darts in the side of a deer), "congenial" (kindred), "assimilate" (make similar), "ad- mire" (wonder), "invest" (clothe the branch of a tree), "involved" (enveloped, as in tobacco-smoke), "induced" (drew on, of a chair- cover), "reprieve" (said of preserving shade-trees), "lapse" (said of snowflakes), "ardent" (said of clouds).^ The most vicious of the many varieties of poetic diction that cursed the eighteenth century, the periphrasis, is so infrequent in The Task as to be negligible. Yet such phrases as "the sprightly chord" (harp?), "the sylvan scene" (fields), "philosophic tube" (telescope), "the fragrant lymph" (tea), "clouds Of Indian fume" (tobacco-smoke), "the feathered tribes domestic" (hens), "the fleecy flood" (snow), " the prickly and green-coated gourd" (cucum- ber), "the fragrant charge of a short tube That fumes beneath his nose" (tobacco),^ show a kinship between the poet of Olney and the writers of the first half of his century. "Compound epithets," Cowper wrote in the preface for a second edition of his Homer, "have obtained so long in the poetical language of our country, that I employed them without fear or scruple." Even in The Task they are quite as common as in The Seasons, but, being more "happily combined,"^ are far less noticeable. The first page I open to has three instances (an average number), all in the Thomson vein, — "card-devoted," "homely-featured," "bird- alluring." ^ Save for his frequent use of adjectives for adverbs, Cowper does not often make one part of speech do service for another. Yet in phrases like " all-essenced o'er With odours," "basket up the fam- ily," "well equipaged," "filleted about with hoops," "to buckram 1 i. 30, 82, 105, 372, 684; ii. 72, 102, 120, 499, 774; iii. 304, 463, 472; iv. 460, 533, 633; V. 98, 161, 165, 281, 567, 574, 585; vi. 486. * i. 289 (cf. P. L.,xii. 588-9, P. R., iv. 236); ii. 20, 156,374; iii. 115, 205; iv. 329; vi. 128; iii. 666 (and vi. 169); iv. 472; i. 32, 264; iv. 327; v. 4. ' ii. 78, 107; iii. 229,391; iv. 472-3; v. 62,63; iii. 446; v. 55-6. The last two exam- ples may be intended humorously, as those in iii. 463-543 certainly are. These are all the periphrases I have noted, but there are probably others. * Preface for a second edition of his Homer. ' iv. 229, 252, 263; some editions hyphenate "slow moving" (246). "Spectacle- bestrid," "ear-erecting," "truth-tried," and "cheek-distending" (ii. 439, iii. 9, 56, iv. 488) are instances of Cowper's more marked and less successful combinations. COWPER 169 out the memory,"^ he uses substantives as verbs; while in "garnish your profuse regales," and " the employs of rural life,"^ he turns the tables. In "deluging the dry," "I am no proficient," "spare the soft And succulent," "no powdered pert," "the first and only fair" (meaning God), "in the vast and the minute," ^ adjectives appear as nouns; in "saturate with dew," "emancipate and loosed," "unadul- terate air," "* we have the dipt form of participle that Milton liked. Since Cowper's natural, easy, and somewhat diffuse style is in marked contrast to the brevity and condensation of Paradise Lost, his poem might be expected to contain comparatively few of the parenthetical or appositional expressions that served Milton so well. Appositives, like "he of Gath, GoHath," and No works indeed That ask robust tough sinews bred to toil, Servile employ,* are rare; but parenthetical expressions are thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa. "There 's a parenthesis for you ! " he exclaimed on one occasion, after quoting (for another purpose) four lines from Paradise Lost. "The parenthesis it seems is out of fashion, and per- haps the moderns are in the right to proscribe what they cannot attain to. I will answer for it that, had we the art at this day of in- sinuating a sentiment in this graceful manner, no reader of taste would quarrel with the practice." ^ Many of the parentheses in The Task involve too Httle condensation to seem Mil tonic, but a consid- erable number do recall Paradise Lost; for example, The rest, no portion left That may disgrace his art, or disappoint Large expectation, he disposes neat. Often urged, (As often as, libidinous discourse Exhausted, he resorts to solemn themes Of theological and grave import,) They gain at last his unreserved assent ; Till hardened his heart's temper in the forge Of lust, and on the anvil of despair, He slights the strokes of conscience. ^ ii. 227-8, 667; iii. 98; v. 402; vi. 652. * iii. 551 (cf. his Odyssey, i. 177, ii. 25), 625 (cf. 406). ' ii. 56; iii. 210, 417-18; iv. 145; v. 675, 811. * i. 494; ii. 39; iv. 7SO (cf. v. 465). ' iv. 269-70; iii. 404-6. ' Letter to Bagot, Oct. 25, 1791. I70 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON And now, his prowess proved, and his sincere Incurable obduracy evinced, His rage grew cool.i Cowper's tendency to diffuseness also kept him, as a rule, from omitting words that would be expressed in prose. Yet there are not a few instances like these: "what can they less," "nor this to feed his own," "the gods themselves had made," "happy who walks with Him," "so little mercy shows who needs so much," "who . . . forgets. Or can, the more than Homer," "who will may preach, And what they will," "not slothful he, though seeming unem- ployed," Was honoured, loved, and wept By more than one, themselves conspicuous there. Moral truth How lovely, and the moral sense how sure, Consulted and obeyed, to guide his steps.'' The result of these various departures from ordinary usage is that a reader who is attentive to the matter catches reverberations from Paradise Lost on every page of The Task. These echoes were heard and admired at the time; for the Gentleman's Magazine lauded Cowper as "perhaps, without excepting even Philips, the most suc- cessful of the imitators of Milton." ^ A curious, back-handed com- pliment this seems to us, but the writer probably meant that the blank verse of The Task was among the very best of the century and that it was essentially Miltonic. And these things are true. With the completion of The Task, Cowper, whose mind "abhorred a vacuum as its chief bane," * was already sinking into a fit of his old depression, when one day, happening to take up a copy of the Iliad, he translated a few lines by way of diversion. The experiment suc- ceeded so well that he tried it again, and eventually, in 1791, pub- hshed the whole of Homer in blank verse. One would expect the translation to be as much more Miltonic than The Task as its sub- ject-matter is more heroic and exalted: the epic demanded "heigh style," and what example of lofty blank verse was there to compare with Paradise Lost? Nevertheless, it is with something of a shock that a reader of The Task opens the Homer. For the conversational ease and natural, flowing charm of the early work have given place 1 iii. 421-3; V. 659-66; vi. 531-3. ^ ii. 644; iv. 452; V. 292; vi. 247, 431, 645-7, 889-90, 928; ii. 786-7; v. 672-4. Note also p. 167 above. 3 Ivi. 235 (March, 1786). * Letter to Newton, Dec. 3, 1785. COWPER 171 to a distorted word-order, an involved, jerky style, to inversions within inversions, parentheses crowding appositives, and to adjec- tives, torn from their natural positions, regularly performing the functions of adverbs. It is hard to see how Homer could be made any more Miltonic. My own first thought was that the inversions and the rest were introduced to preserve the word-order and other features of the original; but, on comparing with the Greek the pas- sages that had struck me as most Miltonic, I found this was not the case. The line, " These things pondering in his mind, which were not to be fulfilled," ^ for example, Cowper translates, In false hopes occupied and musings vain.^ "If quickly had not perceived [him] great crest-tossing Hector. He went then through the van armed in shining brass," he renders, Had not crest-tossing Hector huge perceived The havoc; radiant to the van he flew.^ "'For the dearest men are under my roof.' Thus he spoke, and Patroclus obeyed his dear companion," is changed to, For dearer friends than these who now arrive My roof beneath, or worthier, have I none. He ended, and Patroclus quick obey'd Whom much he loved.* "So I spoke, and the soul of swift-footed vEacides withdrew with great strides along the asphodel meadow, glad that I had saidlhis son was famous," is contorted into So I ; then striding large, the spirit thence Withdrew of swift .i^acides, along The hoary mead pacing with joy elate That I had blazon'd bright his son's renown.^ "He knew [me] immediately when he saw me with his eyes, and me he, sorrowing, with winged words addressed," appears as Me his eye No sooner mark'd, than knowing me, in words By sorrow quick suggested, he began.^ ^ In my translations everything else has been sacrificed to literalness and a close adherence to the word-order of the original. * Iliad, ii. 36; Cowper, ii. 44. * Iliad, V. 680-81; Cowper, v. 807-8. * Iliad, ix. 204-5; Cowper, ix. 252-5. ^ Odyssey, xi. 538-40; Cowper, xi. 658-61. * Odyssey, xi. 615-16; Cowper, xi. 749-51. 172 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Is even Pope's version farther from the spirit of Homer than these verses? It may be, of course, that Cowper, while not trying to repro- duce the original word-order of any particular passage, felt that the general use of inversions and of adjectives for adverbs would give the effect of the Greek; but in reality they produce an impression en- tirely unlike Homer's by destroying his simple directness, natural- ness, and rapidity.^ The explanation is probably to be found in Cowper's desire to give his translation epic dignity, in his love for Paradise Lost, and in the false taste of the period with which he was inevitably tainted. When the poet's friends, and the reviewers (who were of a younger generation), objected strongly to these excessive Miltonisms, the translator himself insisted they were not there. ''With respect to inversions in particular," he wrote, "I know that they do not abound. Once they did, and I had Milton's example for it. . . . But on Fuseli's remonstrance against them, I expunged the most, and in my new edition have fewer still. I know that they give dig- nity, and am sorry to part with them." ^ In the "new edition" to which he refers, though he introduced some additional inversions and other Miltonisms, he undoubtedly did remove many of the old ones, and thus made the translation more simple and flowing if less spirited. In that version, published two years after his death, two of the passages given above run thus : I spake, whose praises of his son, the ghost Of swift ^acides exulting heard, And measuring with larger strides, for joy, The meadow gray with asphodel, retir'd. Soon as he beheld He knew me, and in sorrow thus began. ^ The Task and the translation of Homer had done so much to dispel the gloom which was never far from the unfortunate poet that as 1 The diction is often equally objectionable: e. g., "coetaneous," "stridulous," "dis- missed" (of a spear), "salutiferous," "expressed" (of juice), "retracting" (of a cord), "impressed" (of wounds), "in peculiar," "promulge," "revulsed," "conflicted" (as a verb), "acuminated," "afflictive," "necessitous," "chode," "grumous" {Iliad, i. 315; ii. 268; iii. 422, and vii. 320, xi. 459, 685, etc.; v. 469, 1074; viii. 374, 472; ix. 119; ix. 123 and X. 356; xii. 481; xiii. 830; xv. 585; xvi. 15, 1021; xvii. 520; xxiii. 872). ' Letter to Samuel Rose, Feb. 17, 1793. ' Odyssey, xi. 657-60, 746-7. It is the first edition that Southey reprinted, following the advice of all with whom he consulted; likewise it is the first edition of Cowper's Odyssey that appears in Everyman's library. Cowper also translated some of the Aeneid and a few of Milton's Latin poems into blank verse. As might be expected, these trans- lations show more influence from Paradise Lost than does The Task. ' The humorous unrimed skit, To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut (written 1784), is also slightly Miltonic. ■ COWPER 173 soon as the Odyssey was finished he and his friends cast about for a subject of a new poem to occupy his attention. Some one suggested The Four Ages of Man, and he seems himself to have thought of Yardley Oak; but, although he began each poem (both, it should be observed, in blank verse), he carried neither beyond a few pages. The Four Ages is not unlike the dull parts of The Task; but Yardley Oak achieves a much loftier strain, "a combination of massiveness and 'atmosphere'" which Mr. Saintsbury finds unmatched, outside of Spenser and Shakespeare, by any earlier English poet.^ At any rate, no writer of the century composed any nobler piece of blank verse. Nor did the giants of the following age often do better, for Yardley Oak is not unworthy of Wordsworth, whose Yew-Trees it prefigures. Superficial Miltonisms, such as "excoriate forks de- form," "fostering propitious," "I would not curious ask," "the heat Transmitting cloudless," "by the tooth Pulverized of venality,"^ are less marked in Yardley Oak than in the Homer; but there is a full-toned largeness of utterance in such lines as these that make them more profoundly Miltonic than any others Cowper wrote : Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods, And Time hath made thee what thou art — a cave For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flocks That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope Uncrowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm. . . . While thus through all the stages thou hast pushed Of treeship, first a seedling, hid in grass; Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolled Slow after century, a giant-bulk Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed With prominent wens globose, till at the last The rottenness, which time is charged to inflict On other mighty ones, found also thee.^ ^ Peace of the Augustans, 341. I cannot, however, agree with this eminent critic when he says {ib. 339) that "what Cowper might have been as a poet is perhaps only shown" in this piece and The Castaway; for, short as Yardley Oak is, it is not sustained. There are dull passages (e. g., lines 29-32, 45-9, 1 20-24, 137-61), unrhythmical lines (57, 94, 123), and objectionable diction (5, 66, no). The latter part, and particularly the concluding lines, show such a decided falhng-off both in contents and in expression that it looks as if Cowper abandoned the poem because his inspiration had fled, because he found he had nothing to say and could not sustain the lofty tone with which he began. 2 Lines 5, 39, 42, 74, 123. ' Lines 50-68. Lines 14-16 contain a reference to Paradise Lost, ix. 1084-1100; and some of the diction is perhaps Miltonic, — e. g., "meed" (13, cf. Lycidas, 14), "with vegetative force instinct" (34, cf. P. L., ii. 937, vi. 752), "globose" (66, cf. P. L., vii. 357, etc.), and such Latinisms as "latitude of boughs" (21) and "impulse" of the wind (84). Strangely enough, J. C. Bailey, in his excellent edition of Cowper (1905, p. Ivi), 174 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON In 1 79 1, while Cowper was visiting William Hayley, the two men, one of whom was editing Milton and the other writing a life of him, translated the Adamo of Andreini, a probable source of Paradise Lost. Like the original, the translation (by no means a masterpiece) is in short lines, generally of irregular length and without rime. The diction and style, as might be expected of a poem in which God, Satan, angels, Adam and Eve, are the characters, frequently though never strongly recall Paradise Lost. Some idea of the work may be gathered from these lines: Adam, awake! and cease To meditate in rapturous trance profound Things holy and abstruse, And the deep secrets of the Trinal Lord.^ This brief examination of Cowper's writings shows that both in the bulk and in the importance of the poems affected the influence of Milton looms large. The Verses on Finding the Heel of a Shoe, The Task, the poem to the haUbut, the Four Ages, Yardley Oak, the son- nets, the translations of Homer, Virgil, Andreini, and of Milton's Italian and Latin poems, — these pieces, which make up the most considerable and the most important part of Cowper's work, are all unmistakably Miltonic.^ Yet in one of his letters he speaks of "hav- ing imitated no man," and continues: ''Milton's manner was pecu- liar. So is Thomson's. He that should write Hke either of them, would, in my judgment, deserve the name of a copyist, but not of a poet." 3 Cowper was no copyist. The Task and Yardley Oak are entirely his own in style no less than in subject-matter ; no one else could have written them. His relations to Milton were like those we bear to our father and mother. We do not deUberately imitate our parents; we love them, and are in constant close association with them through the years when we receive our deepest impressions, and thus our ideals, our opinions, our acts, are affected by them in a hundred ways of which we are not conscious. So Cowper, who had read the elder poet enthusiastically since liis fourteenth year and re- remarks that the poem "stands alone among his works in being rather akin to Shake- speare than to Milton"! ^ Cowper's Works (ed. Southey), x. 251. The Italian is, Sueglisi Adamo, e lasci Di fruir in bel rapto alte, e Diuine Occultissime cose, E del Trino Signor profondi arcani. Not a little of the diction which seems to be Miltonic is derived from the original. * For the influence of Milton on Cowper's sonnets, see p. 510 below. ^ To John Newton, Dec. 13, 1784. COWPER 175 garded him as "this great man, this greatest of men, your idol and mine," ^ came to feel that blank verse and Paradise Lost were in- separable, that non-Miltonic blank verse was a contradiction in terms. Among the requisites of blank verse he mentions " a style in general more elaborate than rhime requires, farther removed from the vernacular idiom both in the language itself and in the arrange- ment of it." 2 Since these qualities are neither distinctive of blank verse nor essential to it, is not this equivalent to declaring that good blank verse must be Miltonic? Another requirement that Cowper repeatedly stressed as a sine qua non of unrimed poetry was the pause, or pauses, within the Hne and the necessity of constantly shifting them about, a device to which, as he pointed out, Milton's "numbers" were "so much in- debted both for their dignity and variety." These pauses were to be commended, he held, even when they produced an occasional rough line, because such roughness "saves the ear the pain of an irksome monotony. . . . Milton," he continued, "whose ear and taste were exquisite, has exemplified in his Paradise Lost the effect of this prac- tice frequently." ^ In these matters, and indeed in his entire theory and practice of prosody, Cowper seems to have been strongly influ- enced by his favorite poem. He wrote to a friend, " The unacquaint- edness of modern ears with the divine harmony of Milton's numbers, and the principles upon which he constructed them, is the cause of the quarrel that they have with eUsions in blank verse." * And a little earher he had said: "The practice of cutting short a The is warranted by Milton, who of all EngHsh poets that ever lived, had certainly the finest ear. Dr. Warton, indeed, has dared to say that he had a bad one; for which he deserves, as far as critical demerit can deserve it, to lose his own." ^ Yet it was not simply in prosody but in diction as well that Milton was the final authority. Seven times in the course of his Homer Cowper justifies his use of a word by quoting from Milton,® whereas to the language of all other English poets he acknowledges but four ^ Letter to Hayley, Nov. 22, 1793. * Preface to his Homer. If the Thunder Storm — which first appeared in Wright's Life (1892, p. 177) but which Bailey rejects both because of insufficient external evi- dence and because, as he justly observes, it does not sound like Cowper — is really by the poet of Olney, it shows that even his unpremeditated and unrevised verse was dearly Miltonic. ' Preface to his Homer. * To Walter Bagot, Aug. 31, 1786. * Letter to Lady Hesketh, March 6, 1786. ^ Iliad, v. 641, XV. 168, xxiii. 195; Odyssey, i. 178, xi. 19, 139, xxiv. 43. 176 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON obligations.^ Indeed, he had come to regard Paradise Lost as a well- nigh perfect poem, one that furnished in all matters the model of good taste and the standard of good usage. "I am filled with won- der," he wrote to Lady Hesketh when he decided to drop from his Homer "the quaintness that belonged to our writers of the fifteenth century," **I am filled with wonder at my own backwardness to as- sent to the necessity of it, and the more when I consider that Milton, with whose manner I account myself intimately acquainted, is never quaint, never twangs through the nose, but is every where grand and elegant, without resorting to musty antiquity for his beauties." ^ With Cowper, as with Wordsworth, the first and last question was usually, ''What was Milton's usage?" To employ his own words, "The Author of the Paradise Lost [furnishes] an example inimitable indeed, but which no writer of English heroic verse without rhyme can neglect with impunity." ^ He intended neither to neglect nor servilely to follow this inimitable example, and he did neither; but he little realized how subtlely, how variously, and how extensively his admiration for his "idol" had affected his writings. ^ Iliad, vii. 167 (Dryden); Odyssey, viii. 324 (Gray); x. 161, xxiv. 5, 11 (Shake- speare). 2 March 22, 1790. "Borrowing," he wrote to Thomas Park, Feb. 19, 1792, "seems to imply poverty, and of poverty I can rather suspect any man than Milton." ' Preface for a second edition of his Homer. CHAPTER IX WORDSWORTH The influence of Paradise Lost as we have seen it thus far has been abnost exclusively literary. Writers have been attracted not by Mil- ton's message but by his art, not by his character and opinions but by his versification and diction, not by what he said but by how he said it. His admirers have used his tools and tried to imitate his method of handling them, but for the most part they have been in- different to his personality, as well as to his conceptions of poetry and life. The Miltonism of Milton is, therefore, exactly what they have lacked. They could copy his diction, mimic his style, and at times catch something of the roll of his lines ; but the character behind all this, the spirit which animated and the purpose which consecrated it, they did not even strive for. It was not necessary, in most cases it was not desirable, that they should; if Thomson and Cowper, for example, had done so they would have written poems quite unlike The Seasons and The Task. Yet the fact remains that the admirers of Pope, Keats, Tennyson, and Whitman have caught much of the spirit and message as well as the form of their favorites, whereas Milton's followers have found him so unlike other poets that as a rule they have been content with merely reproducing his manner. In one writer, however, these conditions are reversed, and with most significant results. For the familiar evidences of the influence of Paradise Lost — adjectives employed as adverbs or substan- tives, unusual compound epithets, parentheses, appositives, omitted words, and the rest — indicate very inadequately the extent of that influence on the poetry of Wordsworth. Such peculiarities of style and diction do occur here and there, but they are not sufficiently marked to give a noticeable Miltonic ring to any large number of lines. Yet there sounds throughout Wordsworth's verse a note, scarcely heard in the simpler pieces but often unmistakable in the profounder ones, which at times rises till it becomes the dominant tone, almost drowning all others, a note which recalls the lofty sever- ity, the intensity of moral purpose, and the organ tone of the most exalted of English poets. To be sure, this note was natural to Words- worth, and it is impossible to say where temperamental similarity 1 78 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON ends and influence begins; yet similarity of this sort obviously fur- nishes the best possible ground for influence to work upon. It is be- cause Wordsworth was in essentials so much like the earlier Puritan that he admired him so highly, was so susceptible to his influence and so capable of profiting by it.^ The two men were, indeed, as regards the fundamentals of life and poetry, much more alike than is at first apparent. Both were Puri- tans, deeply religious men with high ideals, strong convictions, and a tendency towards narrowness and intolerance. Both were some- what austere and aloof, believers in "plain living and high thinking," absolutely sincere, confident of their powers, and unswayed by popu- lar opinion. Neither possessed a sense of humor or the grace of doing little things with ease, and neither was what is commonly known as "a good fellow"; yet both were fond of romances, tales of impossible adventure, and the poetry of Spenser. Each was devoted heart and soul to the cause of liberty and to England's political welfare, each took a profoundly serious view of poetry, each regarded his life as dedicated to the service of God and his fellow-men. Wordsworth declared, ''Every great poet is a teacher; I wish either to be con- sidered as a teacher or as nothing." - And the purpose of Milton's epic was: "Whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in vertu amiable, or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is call'd fortune from without, or the wily suttleties and refluxes of mans thoughts from within, all these things with a solid and treatable smoothnesse to paint out and de- scribe. Teaching over the whole book of sanctity and vertu. . . ." ' The two men were alike, it should be noticed, in their defects no less than in their virtues. Wordsworth was not repelled, as many have been, by the elder poet's egotism, his exacting nature, or his lack of easy geniality, for he had the same faults himself and thought lightly of them. He regarded Milton as an "awful soul" and admired him on that account. Externally, of course, there were great differences between the two. The lake poet was a kind of Milton in homespun. Milton was an aristocrat with an air of distinction, and in a way a man of the 1 Conversely, it is because Wordsworth was so unlike Spenser that the Faerie Qtieene, for which he had a great admiration, exerted only a slight influence upon him. * Letter to Sir George Beaumont, 1807? {Letters of the Wordsworth Family, ed. Knight, Boston, 1907, i. 331). To Landor's remark that he was "disgusted with all books that treat of religion," Wordsworth replied (Jan. 21, 1824) : "I have little relish for any other. Even in poetry it is the imagination only, viz., that which is conversant with, or turns upon infinity, that powerfully affects me." ' Reason of Church-Government, 1641, in Works (Pickering ed., 1851), iii. 147. ■ WORDSWORTH 1 79 world, whereas in Wordsworth there was something of the rustic. Milton's great learning, wide culture, and intellectual curiosity- caused him to be sought after, and, together with his strong though well-controlled passions, gave vigor, variety, and brilKance to his conversation. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was — at least in his later years — slow, ponderous, and introspective, and perhaps to most persons never a particularly interesting companion. In their verse the two men seem at first glance even farther apart than in their social qualities. The earlier poet chose the sublimest of themes and handled it in the loftiest of styles; the later one usually dealt in a simple way with wild-flowers, birds, his own quiet life and that of the peasants about him. Not only as a poet but as a man each had much in common with the period in which he spent his youth, Milton with the renaissance, Wordsworth with the eighteenth cen- tury. Yet the differences are not essential; for the purposes, the ideals of life, and the conceptions of poetry of the two were surprisingly alike. In fundamentals Wordsworth was closer to the author of Paradise Lost than any other English poet has been. This basic similarity was largely responsible for the profound ven- eration that Wordsworth felt for his predecessor. As the resem- blances between the two men were no less personal than literary, it was natural that the devotion of the later poet to the earHer should be quite as much to the man as to his works. At times, indeed, it would seem as if he revered the man above the poet, for in the son- net "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour," he devoted twelve lines to his favorite's character and two to his verse. We may well pause for a moment over the circumstances that gave rise to this sonnet. Wordsworth had been in France, deeply concerned for the cause of liberty. Returning to his own country, he was depressed by its lack of heroism, by its wealth, its smug ease, its "vanity and parade." In this state of mind he thought of whom? the Greek and Roman patriots? Alfred? Hampden? Cromwell? No, of Milton, — not the poet, but the man among men, the pamphleteer who had given his eyes in liberty's defense. Stirred to his depths, the young patriot cried out: Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic weakh of hall and bower Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; l8o THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay. Nor was this a passing mood. In the same month he wrote, Great men have been among us; hands that penned And tongues that uttered widsom — better none: The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington, Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend; and in still another sonnet of that month he exclaimed, We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.^ These are significant lines: it is the "tongue," or poetry, of Shake- speare and the ''faith and morals" of Milton of which England should be proud. A year later, when fearing the Napoleonic inva- sion, Wordsworth summoned those who, like the Pyms and MUtons of that day, Think that a State would live in sounder health If Kingship bowed its head to Commonwealth.^ Similarly, in his prose Convention of Cintra he refers to England's "long train of deliverers and defenders, her Alfred, her Sidneys, and her Milton." ^ Long before 1802, however, Wordsworth had felt the appeal of Milton's personahty. Even in his idle Cambridge days it had im- pressed him ; for he wrote in The Prelude, Yea, our blind Poet, who, in his later day, Stood almost single; uttering odious truth — Darkness before, and danger's voice behind. Soul awfvd — if the earth has ever lodged An awful soul — I seemed to see him here Familiarly, and in his scholar's dress Bounding before me, yet a stripUng youth — A boy, no better, with his rosy cheeks Angelical, keen eye, courageous look, And conscious step of purity and pride.* 1 "Great men," 1-4; "It is not to be thought of," 11-13. ^ Lines on the Expected Invasion, 7-9. ^ Prose Works (ed. Grosart, 1876), i. 112. * iii. 283-92. I WORDSWORTH l8l In the lines following these, Wordsworth confessed that the only time he was affected by Hquor was when he "poured out Libations" to the "temperate Bard" in the room the latter had occupied as a student. On another occasion, in speaking of the degenerate days of Charles II, he recalled Milton's fearless service to truth: Yet Truth is keealy sought for, and the wind Charged with rich words poured out in thought's defence. . . . And One there is who builds immortal lays, Though doomed to tread in solitary ways, Darkness before and danger's voice behind; Yet not alone, nor helpless to repel Sad thoughts; for from above the starry sphere Come secrets, whispered nightly to his ear; And the pure spirit of celestial light Shines through his soul — "that he may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight." ^ He contrasted Milton's unselfish heroism with the conduct of Goethe, who, in Wordsworth's opinion, "was amusing himself with fine fancies when his country was invaded ; how unhke Milton, who only asked himself whether he could best serve his country as a sol- dier or a statesman, and decided that he could fight no better than others, but he might govern them better." ^ Finally, in one of his prefaces he goes out of his way to make "a public acknowledgment of one of the innumerable obligations, which," he declares, "as a Poet and a Man, I am under to our great fellow-countryman."^ Wordsworth was, in truth, inspired as no other writer has been by the fife and character of this "great fellow-countryman," and it was such inspiration, together with the admiration lying back of it, that made possible the influence which Milton's work exerted upon his own. It is a matter of some importance that Wordsworth's delight in Paradise Lost and the other works of its author began in boyhood days. "The Poet's father," we are informed, " set him very early to learn portions of the works of the best English poets by heart, so that at an early age he could repeat large portions of Shakespeare, Milton, and Spenser;" ^ and Wordsworth himself told Mrs. Davy that Milton's poetry "was earher a favourite with him than that of Shakespeare." ^ Nor is there any question as to the permanence of ^ Ecclesiastical Sonnets, III. iv ("Latitudinarianism"). 2 Caroline Fox, Memories of Old Friends (3d ed., 1882), ii. 41, Oct. 6, 1844. 3 "Advertisement" to the first edition of his Sonnets (1838). The italics are mine. * Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of Wordsworth (ed. Henry Reed, Boston, 1851), i- 34- * "Conversations," etc., Prose Works (ed. Gros'art), iii. 457. 1 82 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON this enthusiasm. One of his friends wrote in 1826, "Spenser, Shake- speare, and Milton are his favourites among the EngHsh poets, especially the latter, whom he almost idolizes." ^ And after his death another said, "Wordsworth's favourite poet was Milton. ... It is curious to observe how Milton's genius triumphed over political prejudices in a mind so strongly imbued with them as that of Words- worth. . . . Perhaps he was almost as much attached to Milton as he was to his own lakes and mountains." ^ A lifelong admiration like this resulted, of course, in an unusual familiarity with Milton's poetry. Not only could he ' repeat large portions of it at an early age,' but when he was thirty-two, so he wrote Landor, he knew all the sonnets by heart.^ Accordingly, Charles Lamb, in giving him a first edition of Paradise Regained inscribed "To the best Knower of Milton," ^ was merely express- ing what is clear enough from Wordsworth's own poems and letters and the reports of his conversation. Crabb Robinson, for example, has left an account of a walk in which "Wordsworth was remarkably eloquent and fehcitous in his praise of Milton": He spoke of the Paradise Regained as surpassing even the Paradise Lost in perfection of execution, though the theme is far below it, and demand- ing less power. He spoke of the description of the storm in it as the finest in all poetry; and he pointed out some of the artifices of versification by which Milton produces so great an effect, — as in passages like this: — "Pining atrophy. Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence. Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums." In which the power of the final rheums is heightened by the atrophy and pestilence. Wordsworth also praised, but not equally, Samson Agonistes. He concurred, he said, with Johnson in this, that it had no middle, but the beginning and end are equally sublime.^ Another conversation is recorded by the poet's nephew: Milton is falsely represented by some as a democrat. He was an aristo- crat in the truest sense of the word. . . . Indeed, he spoke in very proud and contemptuous terms of the populace. Comus is rich in beautiful and sweet flowers, and in exuberant leaves of genius; but the ripe and mellow fruit is in Samson Agonistes. When he wrote that, his mind was Hebraized. 1 J. J. Tayler, Letters (1872), i. 72. * Edward Whately, Personal Recollections of the Lake Poets, in Leisure Hour, Oct. i, 1870, p. 653. 3 See below, p. 529, n. 2. * Works (ed. Lucas, 1905), vii. 912. 5 Diary, etc. (ed. T. Sadler, 1869), Jan. 7, 1836, and see Jan. 26. WORDSWORTH 1 83 Indeed, his genius fed on the writings of the Hebrew prophets. . . . One of the noblest things in Milton is the description of that sweet, quiet morning in the Paradise Regained after that terrible night of howling wind and storm. The contrast is divine.^ In one of his letters Wordsworth noted that Milton's tractate Of Education "never loses sight of the means of making man perfect, both for contemplation and action, for civil and military duties." ^ To Lord Lonsdale he wrote, "I have long been persuaded that Mil- ton formed his blank verse upon the model of the Georgics and the Aeneid, and I am so much struck with this resemblance that I should have attempted Virgil in blank verse, had I not been per- suaded that no ancient author can be with advantage so rendered." ^ "Milton says of pouring ' easy his unpremeditated verse,' " he re- marked to W. R. Hamilton. "It would be harsh, untrue, and odious to say there is anything like cant in this; but it is not true to the let- ter, and tends to mislead. I could point out to you five hundred pas- sages in Milton, upon which labour has been bestowed, and twice five hundred more to which additional labour would have been serviceable; not that I regret the absence of such labour, because no poem contains more proof of skill acquired by practice." * How naturally Miltonic phrases rose to his mind is shown by his writing to Sir George Beaumont, "My creed rises up of itself with the ease of an exhalation, yet a fabric of adamant." ^ But all these evidences of Wordsworth's familiarity with his favorite pale before the testimony offered by his poems. These contain at least one hundred fifty-eight borrowings from Milton, a larger number than has been found in the work of any other poet, with the exception, strangely enough, of Pope.^ It is worth noting that these borrowings are scattered through more than seventy poems, and that they are taken not simply from Paradise Lost, Allegro, and Penseroso, but from Comus, Lycidas, Samson, Paradise Regained, the Nativity, and the sormets. They leave no doubt as to ^ "Conversations," etc., Prose Works (ed. Grosart), iii. 461. Cf. P.R.,iv. 432-8. ^ To John Scott, June 11, 1816. ^ Feb. 5, 1819. * Letter of Nov. 22, 1831. ^ May 28, 1825; cf. P.L., i. 710-11, Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation. ^ This number does not include references to Milton or quotations from his works prefixed to several of Wordsworth's poems. The most comprehensive printed list of such references, quotations, etc., is in Kurt Lienemann's Die Belesenheit von William Wordsworth, [Weimar], 1908. 1 84 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Wordsworth's familiarity with all the more important poetry of his predecessor, and not merely the poetry, for Artegal and Elidure, which "was written ... as a token of affectionate respect for the memory of Milton," ^ is based upon the latter's History of Britain. More than this, many of the phrases that Wordsworth takes are so inconspicuous as to have escaped the notice of his editors. Such ex- pressions as "sober certainty," *' teachers . . . Of moral prudence," "my genial spirits droop," "the . . . vessel . . . Rode tilting o'er the waves," "the vine . . . with her brings Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn" the elm, "reason is her [the soul's] being, Dis- cursive, or intuitive," ^ can have been impressed upon his mind only by many careful readings. Some of the most interesting of his bor- rowings occur, singularly enough, in one of his prose works, the Con- vention of Cintra. Besides mentioning Milton among England's "deliverers and defenders," this piece contains five quotations from his poetry and four references to it, and closes with an extract from his prose.^ Few would expect to recognize this last borrowing, since it is from the History of Britain; ^ but how many would detect a Mil- tonic phrase in "the central orb to which, as to a fountain, the na- tions of the earth ' ought to repair, and in their golden urns draw light ' "? ^ There are certainly not many who would notice anything from Paradise Lost in the sentence, "Wisdom is the hidden root which thrusts forth the stalk of prudence; and these uniting feed and uphold * the bright consummate flower ' — National Happiness." ^ Wordsworth wrote fifty-five poems in blank verse. Most of these, it must be confessed, belong to that desert, unwatered by the springs of imagination and unshaded by the foHage of beauty, which 1 Fenwick note prefixed to the poem. 2 For Wordsworth's use of these phrases, see below, Appendix A. ' Prose Works (ed. Grosart), i. 49, 50, 93, 109, 112 (see p. 180 above), 126, 128, 149, 171, 174. * Works (Pickering ed.), v. 100. Grosart's note (i. 359) is incorrect. ^ Ih. (Grosart), 112; cf. P.L., vii. 361-5, The sun's orb. ... Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. ^ lb. 171; cf. P.L., V. 479-81, So from the root Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More aery, last the bright consummate flower. Neither this borrowing nor the preceding one is pointed out by Grosart or Knight. I owe them, and several other references and quotations, to Mrs. Alice M. Dunbar, of Wilmington, Delaware, who has generously placed at my disposal the extensive col- lection of material on Wordsworth's indebtedness to Milton which she made at Cornell University under the direction of Mr. Lane Cooper. WORDSWORTH 185 stretches its dreary expanse through a large part of his verse. Of these fifty-five pieces there are few that do not show some influence from Paradise Lost, and fourteen are sufficiently Miltonic to be in- cluded in the appended bibliography. Less than half of the fourteen, however, have enough beauty or other importance to detain us. One of this number, one that deserves a much wider circle of readers than it seems to have gained, is the Address to Kilchurn Castle, a poem of only forty-three lines, but nobly conceived and expressed in its author's loftiest Miltonic manner. The organ tone is certainly here: Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest Is come, and thou art silent in thy age . . . Cast oflf — abandoned by thy rugged Sire, Nor by soft Peace adopted; though, in place And in dimension, such that thou might 'st seem But a mere footstool to yon sovereign Lord, Hugh Cruachan, (a thing that meaner hUls Might crush, nor know that it had suffered harm;) Yet he, not loth, in favour of thy claims To reverence, suspends his own; submitting All that the God of Nature hath conferred, All that he holds in common with the stars, To the memorial majesty of Time Impersonated in thy calm decay! Yew-Trees, though even shorter, is much better known. It is similar to the Address in dignity and largeness of utterance, as well as in the subordination of the object seen to the feelings and pictures of the past which it calls up to the imagination. The diction, it will be ob- served, is decidedly Miltonic, and at the same time, because of the dignity of the theme, eminently suitable : Of vast circumference and gloom profound This soUtary Tree! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed. But worthier stUl of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coUing, and inveterately convolved; Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane; — a pillared shade. Of the remaining poems of Wordsworth that call for consideration, two, Home at Grasmere and The Excursion, are parts of a long, un- 1 86 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON finished work, The Recluse, " a philosophical Poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society," ^ to which a third, The Prelude, is the prolog. The significance and imphcations of these well-known facts are apt to be overlooked, since we are bent on regarding Words- worth as a poet of nature and of the quiet lives of simple country folk, and since the passages that we remember from The Prelude are the descriptions of the out-of-doors and of boyish sports and ad- ventures. Yet these descriptions and brief narratives exist not for their own sake, but to help us understand the "growth of a poet's mind": they are illustrations of philosophic truths. The conviction that Wordsworth's true province was the English lakes should not make us forget his own emphatic declaration that "the Mind of Man" was his "haunt and the main region" of his "song." ^ Cer- tainly this was the field of his longest and, to him, most important poems. Such pieces, it goes without saying, would be very different from simple narratives like Michael; they would naturally be learned in diction, dignified and somewhat formal in style, and, if written in blank verse at the close of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century, they would almost inevitably be Miltonic.^ The Recluse and its prefatory poem are not spontaneous warbhngs, but monumental literary works deliberately built up, with definite pur- poses and conscious art. One would expect works dealing largely with nature to be affected by the descriptive poetry of Thomson, the Wartons, Cowper, Hurdis, Grahame, and others; yet Wordsworth seldom referred to these writers and, except for Thomson, was apparently little influenced by any one of them."* Their collective influence, however, and that of their contemporaries was doubtless powerful, as the force of early reading and of the tastes and ideals with which one is surrounded in the formative years must always be. Yet it was unconscious, for 1 "Advertisement" to The Prelude. 2 Lines 40-41 of the extract from The Recluse prefixed to The Excursion. ^ The theories of poetry which Wordsworth exemplified in the Lyrical Ballads and formulated in the preface to the second edition of that work had not a little to do with the simplicity of language and style of Tinturn Abbey and other pieces written at the time. In most of the poems composed after 1800, whether rimed or not, there is a tendency towards a more literary diction and a more formal style, which was in part a return to Wordsworth's natural method of expression (see Whately's remarks on the poet's conversation, quoted below, p. 190 n. i, 196 n. i). * Much is said in The Prelude about books, but nothing that I remember about eighteenth-century poems in blank verse. The "Essay supplementary to the Preface" (Poems, Oxford ed., 948-9), the sonnet "Bard of the Fleece," and the correspondence with Lady Beaumont, Allan Cunningham, and Alexander Dyce {Letters, i. 273, 539, ii. 210, 358-9) do, however, reveal a warm admiration for Thomson and Dyer. At one time Wordsworth even thought of editing some of Thomson's works {ib. ii. 393). WORDSWORTH 1 87 Wordsworth did not regard Thomson, Young, and Cowper as suit- able literary models. ''When I began to give myself up to the profession of a poet for life," he said to Crabb Robinson, "I was impressed with a conviction, that there were four English poets whom I must have continually before me as examples — Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton. These I must study, and equal if I could; and I need not think of the rest." ^ Of these four the first three were not of a kind seriously to affect blank-verse philosophic works such as Wordsworth planned. Nor, it may be, would Milton have exerted much influence had not his style and diction come to be recognized as the most suitable for poems of the sort ; but in view of the course of EngKsh poetry in the eighteenth century, and of Words- worth's admiration for the star-like soul that dwelt apart, the strong- est single influence upon this part of his work would normally be that of Paradise Lost. With these things in mind, we shall not be surprised to find the style of the long unrimed pieces very different from that of the short ones and from what we may think of as Wordsworthian. Of course, written, as they were, not at the beginning but at the end of the eighteenth century, they will not show the pompous language and contorted style of 1726, for between them and The Seasons lay a long development of blank verse. Most of the stylistic peculiarities of Paradise Lost, though present in The Prelude and The Excursion, are not marked. Condensation is frequently gained by the omission of words, parenthetical expres- sions are fairly common, and occasionally a Miltonic apposition such as "Romorentin, home of ancient kings," is encountered; but one may read whole books of either work without meeting a cHpped form of participle or a single adjective used for an adverb or a sub- stantive. Inversion, however, the great mark of the Miltonic style, abounds. Not only is it on every page and in every paragraph, but seldom are five consecutive lines free from it. Furthermore, the in- versions are often meaningless; that is, they add nothing to the beauty or effectiveness of the passage, but appear to be used merely for the sake of the meter or to make the verse seem less like prose.^ ^ "Conversations," etc., Prose Works (ed. Grosart), iii. 459-60. In a letter to Alaric Watts, Nov. 16, 1824, he quoted a passage in the same vein: "I am disposed strenuously to recommend to your habitual perusal the great poets of our own country, who have stood the test of ages. Shakespeare I need not name, nor Milton, but Chaucer and Spenser are apt to be overlooked. It is almost painful to think how far these sur- pass all others." ^ A characteristic which The Excursion and The Prelude share with Paradise Lost but which may not be derived from the earlier work — which might, indeed, so nat- 1 88 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON As a result of these inversions, of the many learned words, and of the condensation caused by the omission of words ordinarily ex- pressed, — notably auxiharies, — Wordsworth's long poems, and particularly The Prelude, are marked by a formality which at its best rises to dignity and at its worst degenerates into stiffness. Here is what may be termed a neutral passage, neither the best nor the worst that might be found : We were framed To bend at last to the same discipline, Predestined, if two beings ever were, To seek the same dehghts, and have one health, One happiness. Throughout this narrative, Else sooner ended, I have borne in mind For whom it registers the birth, and marks the growth. Of gentleness, simplicity, and truth. And joyous loves, that haUow innocent days Of peace and self-command. Of rivers, fields, And groves I speak to thee, my Friend! to thee. Who, yet a liveried schoolboy, in the depths Of the huge city, on the leaded roof Of that wide edifice, thy school and home, Wert used to lie and gaze upon the clouds Moving in heaven; or, of that pleasure tired. To shut thine eyes.^ The influence of Paradise Lost is by no means so marked through- out the long poems as it is in these lines. Yet it is clearly, though not unpleasantly, evident in the style in which a large part of The Prelude and some of The Excursion are written, a style easier and more attractive than that of the extract just quoted, as the follow- ing passage will show : Oh, sweet it is, in academic groves, Or such retirement. Friend! as we have known In the green dales beside our Rotha's stream, Greta, or Derwent, or some nameless rill. To ruminate, with interchange of talk. On rational liberty, and hope in man. Justice and peace.^ urally belong to any poet that, except for Wordsworth's unusual familiarity with Mil- ton, it would not be worth noticing — is the use of a series of adjectives, participles, or nouns in the same construction. Here are a few of the many instances: "Abject, de- pressed, forlorn, disconsolate" {Prelude, v. 28); "Fierce, moody, patient, venturous, modest, shy" (v. 415); "Unbiassed, unbewildered, and unawed" (vi. 41); "Un- chastened, unsubdued, unawed, unraised" (vi. 505); "Great, universal, irresistible" (xi. 17, and see be. 373, xii. 64) ; "Self-reviewed, Self-catechised, self -punished" {Excur- sion, vi. 386-7). 1 Prelude, vi. 255-71. ^ lb. ix. 390-96. WORDSWORTH 1 89 Unfortunately, Wordsworth's inspiration did not keep pace with his desire to write. Often, like a soldier marking time who goes through the motions of walking without getting anywhere, he pro- duced work of the stuffed-bird variety, that has every characteristic of the living thing but one, life. At other times he composed verses which, though awkward, might have been wrought into excellent poetry if they had undergone the laborious revision that some of his best pieces received. The blank verse produced at such times has much in common with the pseudo-Miltonic work of minor eight- eenth-century writers. Passages hke the following, for example, abound in The Excursion: A pomp Leaving behind of yellow radiance spread Over the mountain sides, in contrast bold With ample shadows, seemingly, no less Than those resplendent lights, his rich bequest. Those services, whereby attempt is made To lift the creature toward that eminence On which, now fallen, erewhile in majesty He stood; or if not so, whose top serene At least he feels 'tis given him to descry; Not without aspirations, evermore Returning, and injunctions from within Doubt to cast off and weariness; in trust That what the Soul perceives, if glory lost. May be, through pains and persevering hope, Recovered.! Most of Wordsworth's shorter unrimed pieces that are Miltonic are of this type. A single illustration will probably more than satisfy the reader : And yet more gladly thee would I conduct Through woods and spacious forests, — to behold There, how the Original of human art, Heaven-prompted Nature, measures and erects Her temples, fearless for the stately work. Though waves, to every breeze, its high-arched roof, And storms the pillars rock. But we such schools Of reverential awe will chiefly seek.^ Matthew Arnold's comment that Wordsworth "has no assured poetic style of his own," that "when he seeks to have a style he falls into ponderosity and pomposity," ^ may be the explanation of this kind of verse. Certainly it is true of many eighteenth-century poets 1 iv. 1301-5; V. 297-307. '^ "A little onward lend thy guiding hand," 33-40. ' Essays in Criticism, 2d series (1889), 155-6. I90 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON that when they exerted themselves to write well they grew turgid. But was not Wordsworth's trouble rather that "ponderosity and pomposity" were natural to him and became evident whenever he failed to exert himself, when he wrote without being in the mood for writing, when he handled subjects that had not fired his imagination or about which he did not feel with sufficient intensity? We know that two of his finest things, Michael and Laodamia, cost him a great deal of trouble, and that he wrote excellent sonnets so long as he found them difiicult to write; we also know that his conversation was apt to degenerate into long didactic monologues, and to contain such formal, bookish words that once when he was talking his grand- son exclaimed, "Grandpapa is reading without a book!"^ The faults of The Excursion may, therefore, be the most natural things in it, the defects that impressed all who talked with the poet and that only deep feeling and hard labor removed. Admirers of Wordsworth are Hkely to regard as his most charac- teristic blank verse one that shows practically no traces of Milton's influence, — the kind found in Tintern Abbey, Michael, and in most of the nature passages in The Prelude. It is easy, simple, and direct, but considered merely as style it usually lacks richness, distinction, variety, as well as the finer subtleties of cadence and flow; hence Arnold's complaint that Wordsworth "has no style." Illustrations of it need hardly be quoted, for any one can have them before him by recalling the descriptive passages he Hkes best in the lake poet's un- rimed pieces. It is our familiarity with these descriptions that leads us to think of the style in which they are written as characteristic of the poems as a whole. This non-Miltonic blank verse suffers just as the Miltonic does when the poet in Wordsworth goes to sleep and the pedagog or the preacher takes his pen. What then results is a quantity of prosaic, matter-of-fact lines, sometimes good enough as to thought, but lack- ing the imagination, the intensity of feehng, and the finality of phrasing which would lift them into poetry. Verse of this sort led Tennyson to remark that a typical Wordsworthian line would be "A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman." - But it is impossible to parody a poet who himself wrote, And at the Hoop alighted, famous Inn. That rural castle, name now sUpped From my remembrance, where a lady lodged. 1 Whately, in Leisure Hour, Oct. i, 1870, p. 652. "His mode of talking," says Whately, "sometimes resembled a moral declamation." Cf. below, p. 196, n. i. 2 Hallam Tennyson, Tennyson and his Friends (1911), 264. WORDSWORTH I91 As a preparatory act Of reverence done to the spirit of the place.* A longer extract will show still better how close to prose Words- worth's blank verse often comes : Yet for the general purposes of faith In Providence, for solace and support, We may not doubt that who can best subject The will to reason's law, can strictliest live And act in that obedience, he shall gain The clearest apprehension of those truths, Which unassisted reason's utmost power Is too infirm to reach. But, waiving this, And our regards confining within bounds Of less exalted consciousness, through which The very multitude are free to range. We safely may affirm that human life — But we, I think, may safely affirm with Arnold and Jeffrey that, "as a work of poetic style, ' This will never do.' " ^ It is the preponderance of such blank verse, or of the pseudo- Miltonic variety which prevailed in the eighteenth century, that makes The Excursion as a whole unread and unreadable. One reason why Wordsworth slipped into these prosaic styles is that the later, inferior books of The Prelude, all but the admirable first two books of The Excursion, and nearly all of the poorer short pieces in blank verse were written after the fire of his poetic inspiration had died down, only to reappear fitfully and at long intervals. Furthermore, The Excursion has but little to do with nature, Wordsworth's most certain source of inspiration, but is largely taken up with argument. Now, Wordsworth was not, like Goethe, a great thinker,^ or, like Emerson, a great seer, nor did he possess Dryden's power of rea- soning in verse. The few essential things of life he saw with great clearness and felt with unusual intensity, and because these things possessed a grandeur that touched his imagination and reached to the center of his being he could be deeply poetic when he dealt with them. They were the distilled essence of many hours of quiet reflec- tion, something very different from the philosophical system that he worked out with his reason. Wordsworth wrote one other type of blank verse, as rare in quality as in occurrence. This includes a few hundred lines of his noblest * Prelude, iii. 17, ix. 483-4; Excursion, vi. 89-90. 2 Essays in Criticism, 2d series, 156. The Wordsworth passage is from The Excursion, V. 515-26. ^ Unless it be in his prose discussions of the poet's art. 192 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON utterance, his sublimest description, and his loftiest thought. Here are to be found his most Miltonic passages, and it is here that we best realize how deeply he had drunk at the fountain-head of English poetic blank verse and with what insistence the "voice whose sound was like the sea" kept ringing in his ears. Yet, for the very reason that these passages are imbued with the spirit of Paradise Lost, they are far from being slavish copies of its manner. The following lines, for example, are almost free from the inversions, parentheses, ap- positives, the use of one part of speech for another, and the similar mannerisms that disfigure most eighteenth-century unrimed poems: A single step, that freed me from the skirts Of the bUnd vapour, opened to my view Glory beyond all glory ever seen By waking sense or by the dreaming soul! The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city — boldly say A wilderness of buUding, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth, Far sulking into splendour — without end! Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, With alabaster domes, and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene paviUons bright, In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars — illumination of all gems! Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought, That givest to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion.^ The organ tone in some of Wordsworth's loftier passages, as in those quoted below, is due partly to the Miltonic practice of introducing proper names for their imaginative suggestiveness and sonorous pomp: They — who had come elate as eastern hunters Banded beneath the Great Mogul, when he Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore, Rajahs and Omrahs in his train, intent To drive their prey enclosed within a ring Wide as a province. ^ Excursion, ii. 830-45; Prelude, i. 401-4. To this class also belongs most of Yew- Trees, of Kilchurn Castle, and of the extract from Home at Grasmere prefixed to The Excursion. WORDSWORTH 1 93 Tract more exquisitely fair Than that famed paradise of ten thousand trees, Or Gehol's matchless gardens, for deUght Of the Tartarian dynasty composed (Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous, China's stupendous mound) by patient toil Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help.' It will be noticed that the second extract exhibits less of the man- ner and more of the mannerisms of Paradise Lost. These manner- isms creep not infrequently into Wordsworth's more exalted, just as they do into his more prosaic, blank verse, and for the same reasons. Either his imagination did not glow sufi&ciently to fuse his materials and get rid of the dross, or he did not hammer the Hues long enough to work out the blemishes and perfect the form. Sometimes, as in this passage, the Miltonic largeness of utterance is combined with touches of the Miltonic diction and style in a way surprisingly close to that of Paradise Lost: This is our high argument. — Such grateful haunts foregoing, if I oft Must turn elsewhere — to travel near the tribes And fellowships of men, and see ill sights Of madding passions mutually inflamed; Must hear Humanity in fields and groves Pipe soUtary anguish; or must hang Brooding above the fierce confederate storm Of sorrow, barricadoed evermore Within the walls of cities — may these sounds Have their authentic comment; that even these Hearing, I be not downcast or forlorn! ^ The Miltonic element in Wordsworth's diction is considerable, yet it is easily overlooked. For one thing, it is not expected: we think of the author of The Daffodils, Michael, and Tintern Abbey as a writer of simple, direct poems, often profound and sometimes mag- ical, but dealing in the main with nature and the quiet lives of humble people. The style usually impresses us as natural and flow- ing, so that we assume the language — which we rarely notice — to be equally simple. Then, too, we remember the poet's own declara- tion, "My purpose was to imitate, and, as far as possible, to adopt ^ Prelitde, x. 17-22; viii. 75-81. 2 Lines 71-82 of the passage prefixed to The Excursion (which constitute lines 824- 35 of The Recluse, book i, Home at Grasmere). The extract is not typical, since the frag- mentary Recluse, though less pedestrian in style than The Excursion, is on the whole less formal than The Prelude. Traces of Paradise Lost are slight, but seldom long absent. 194 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON the very language of men." ^ Yet, so far as his blank verse and other more serious work is concerned, this conception of Wordsworth's diction is quite mistaken, since, except in his earlier and simpler poems, his language is distinctly literary and often unduly learned. His Old Cumberla?id Beggar, for instance, although deahng in a simple way with a commonplace subject, contains language like this: All behold in him A silent monitor, which on their minds Must needs impress a transitory thought Of self-congratulation, to the heart Of each recalling his pecuhar boons. His charters and exemptions; and, perchance, Though he to no one give the fortitude And circumspection needful to preserve His present blessings, and to husband up The respite of the season, he, at least. And 'tis no vulgar service, makes them felt.'' True, this passage is not typical of all Wordsworth's poetry, but it is characteristic of a large part of his blank verse, particularly of the more formal and philosophical works like The Excursion and The Prelude. In these poems we are continually meeting such words as "abstrusest," "disjoin," "innocuously," "conglobated," "extrin- sic," "intervenient," "succedaneum," "admonishment," "pre- sage," "prelibation," "extravagate," "colloquies," "arbitrement," "patrimony," "subversion," "perturbation";^ and expressions Hke "preclude conviction," "erewhile my tuneful haunt," "monitory sound," "domestic carnage," "kindred mutations," " inveterately convolved." ^ There would be little objection to these words and phrases if they were merely unusual; the trouble is that they are with difficulty assimilated in poetry and that Wordsworth rarely succeeds in assimilating them.^ Many poets, Swinburne and Francis 1 Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (Poems, Oxford ed., 936). * Lines 122-32. ' Excursion, i. 65 (also iii. 702, ix. 234, and Prehide, i. 44, vi. 297, ix. 397, xii. 132); iii. 58 (also Prelude, viii. 436, xii. 232, and in one other poem), 516, 974; Prehide, i. 545 (and viii. 624,xiii. 218) ;ii. 201, 214; iv. 125 (also vii. 546, x. 77, and in two other poems); V. 36 ("presageful" occurs in the poem beginning "Pastor and Patriot," 4), 245, 503; ix. 470; x. 127, 157, 268 ("sub vert "is used in six places) ;xi. 373(andineight other places). * Prelude, x. 165 (there are seven similar instances of the use of "preclude"), 244, 324 (there are four similar instances) , 356, xiv. 94; Yew-Trees, 18 (see the whole passage quoted on p. 185 above). ' "Words in themselves," as Mr. J. L. Lowes has shown (Convention and Revolt in Poetry, Boston, 1919, p. 193), "... are neither poetic nor unpoetic. They become poetic, or they remain unassimilated prose, according as the poet's imaginative energy is or is not sufficiently powerful to absorb them." Wordsworth usually employed words like those mentioned above when his imaginative energy was low. WORDSWORTH 1 95 Thompson, for example, use stranger words than these and more of them, and of course Shakespeare and Milton employ a much wider vocabulary than Wordsworth did; but these writers introduce un- famiUar expressions for poetical effect, whereas Wordsworth's diction is stiff, bookish, and lacking in imaginative or emotional appeal. Words like those given above attract attention by being uncommon, but serve no good purpose. Worse still, the language of The Excursion and The Prelude is often absurdly ill adapted to the persons who are supposed to be speaking it or to the subjects with which it deals. This is what makes the picnic described in The Excursion such a lugubrious festivity. The party consisted of the Solitary, the Wanderer, the Poet, and the Pastor, — a kind of later Job with his three friends; the Pastor's wife, "graceful was her port"; their daughter, a "gladsome child"; their son and "his shy compeer," boys of "jocund hearts" and with "animation" in their "mien." ^ We know little of what was said at the picnic, but on the previous day "grateful converse" of the fol- lowing variety was carried on : "In your retired domain, Perchance you not unfrequently have marked A Visitor." . . . The Solitary answered: "Such a Form Full well I recollect." The supper, we are told, was merry, but the description of it does not sound exhilarating. All partook A choice repast — served by our young companions With rival earnestness and kindred glee; after which Launched from our hands the smooth stone skimmed the lake, and Rapaciously we gathered flowery spoils. In view of these solemn relaxations, we are not surprised to learn that the abode of the Pastor and his gamesome family was ap- proached by a path of "pure cerulean gravel," and to read of the edifice itself. Like image of solemnity, conjoined With feminine allurement soft and fair, The mansion's self displayed.^ 1 viii. SOI, 496; ix. 431, 475; viii. 572. 2 viii. 58; vi. 95-7, 102-3; ix. 529-31, 532, 538; viii. 452, 4S9-6i. 196 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON Yet the author of these lines wished that his poetry might "keep the Reader in the company of flesh and blood" ! ^ But this is not the worst. Wordsworth is capable of employing language not only unsuitable but at times even bad. Although he said concerning ''what is usually called poetic diction," "As much pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; this has been done ... to bring my language near to the language of men," he used hundreds of phrases that not only were never heard in the language of men but had become extremely hackneyed even in poetry.^ Much better illustrations of the vicious poetic diction of the eighteenth century can be found in his own later work than in the sonnet by Gray which he quotes for the purpose. He speaks, for in- stance, of an actor as "a proficient of the tragic scene"; the stars he calls "heaven's ethereal orbs," sunshine "the solar beam," eyes "these visual orbs," birds "the feathered kinds," a lake a "crystal mere," a stage-coach an "itinerant vehicle," a gun "the deadly tube," an ass "the brute In Scripture sanctified." ^ Even the unob- jectionable words Wales and Welsh he never uses, but employs Cambria and Cambrian in their places seven times; Albion he men- tions five and Caledonia (or Caledon) three times. Occasionally he makes use of elaborate periphrases, as in his account of a sore throat, The winds of March, smiting insidiously, Raised in the tender passage of the throat Viewless obstruction; or when he says the "soil endured a transfer in the mart Of dire rapacity," meaning the land was sold, or We beheld The shining giver of the day diffuse His brightness, meaning we saw the sun shine ; or when he tells us that an old man "had clomb aloft to delve the moorland turf For winter fuel" instead ^ Preface to Lyrical Ballads {Poems, Oxford ed., 936). The pompous absurdity of much of Wordsworth's diction is equally characteristic of his prose and was a marked feature of his conversation. According to Edward Whately, who saw a good deal of him at one time, "Both his sentences and his words were too long and too high-flown to suit the subject he was discussing ... he used the most high-flown language in speaking of the most common-place, ordinary affairs of life" {Leisure Hour, Oct. i, 1870, p. 652). 2 Preface to Lyrical Ballads {Poems, Oxford ed., 936). Blake commented, "I do not know who wrote these Prefaces; they are very mischievous, and direct contrary to Wordsworth's own practice" (Crabb Robinson's "Reminiscences," quoted in Arthur Symons's William Blake, 1907, p. 300). ^ Excursion, iii. 466, 662 (and cf. Pilgrim'' s Dream, 23); iv. 447 (also Evening Walk, 203), 180, 450 (cf. Home at Grasmere, 203, MS.); v. 82 (and ix. 701); Prelude, viii. 544; Home at Grasmere, 266 ("sentient tube" occurs in the Italian Itinerant, 23), 506-7. WORDSWORTH 1 97 of saying he had gone to dig peat, or speaks of "the impediment of rural cares" when he means farm-work.^ From the conventional, hackneyed expressions common in eighteenth-century poetry, the crystal-font-purple-bloom-vernal-breeze sort of thing, Wordsworth is almost entirely free, but he does annoy us by his fondness for "yon," "haply," "albeit," "erewhile," "corse" (for corpse), and the like. All that is objectionable in Wordsworth's diction — the use of learned and grandiose words and of pompous circumlocutions in place of famihar terms — is marked in the blank verse of the eight- eenth century. It is such phraseology that irritates the reader of Thomson, Young, and Cowper and is even more noticeable in the work of their less gifted contemporaries. That Wordsworth should take some features of his diction, as well as of his style and versifica- tion, from the writers who immediately preceded him was only natural. It is easy to forget that he was nearer to these men than we are to him or to Shelley or Byron, nearer to most of them than we are to Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. He was born in 1770, the year in which the Deserted Village was published; he was fifteen when The Task and Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides appeared, and throughout the period in which he was forming his taste and produc- ing his best work it was principally eighteenth-cent\u-y writings that people read. Indeed, aside from Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, hardly any other EngHsh poetry was accessible to them. Only the force of Wordsworth's personaHty and the depth of his convictions kept him from being dominated by his immediate predecessors. Is it Hkely that the older poets affected his diction, except oc- casionally through the borrowing of single words? He was familiar with Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, as well as with many of the seventeenth- and most of the leading eighteenth-century verse and prose writers, and may have taken from one of several sources any of his uncommon words or peculiar uses of words. Yet the mat- ter is not so difficult as it seems; for, since Milton's poetry was more familiar to him than anything else in English literature (except pos- sibly Shakespeare's plays), Milton's use of a word would be the one to Hnger in his memory. Furthermore, Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, the other poets most likely to influence him, would certainly not have turned him towards learned and grandiose terms of Latin origin, but Milton would lead him in precisely this direction. When Wordsworth speaks of an "edifice" or a "habitation," or of "the embowered abode — our chosen seat," or of "stripHngs . . . 1 Excursion, vii. 683-5; "i- 917-18, 540-42; ii. 787-8; vii. 736. 198 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON graced with shining weapons," ^ is he not doing just what was done, what had to be done, in the epic of the fall of man? Many words that are quite unobjectionable in Paradise Lost would sound pom- pous and absurd in The Excursion. But we are not left to surmises in the matter, for one of Words- worth's acquaintances wrote, "His veneration for Milton was so great, that if that poet used a particular word in a particular sense, he would quote his authority to justify himself when his wife or daughter objected to its employment in his own poems." ^ Instances of this habit are to be found in his letters. Writing to Sir George Beaumont, he remarked that, although Bowles disapproved of the word "ravishment," "yet it has the authority of all the first-rate poets, for instance, Milton."^ In another letter he justified the use of "immediately" in verse by noting that it appeared "to have sufficient poetical authority, even the highest," and then quoted from Paradise Lost.^ It is probable, therefore, that "adamantine," "compeers," "darkling," "begirt," "empyrean," "encincture," "fulgent," "effulgence," "refulgent," "gratulant," "griesly," "massy," "ministrant," "panoply," "Tartarean," "terrene," "un- apparent," "vermeil," "welter," and the hke were derived from Paradise Lost. Many words employed in a peculiar sense or in an unusual way he seems also to have taken from Milton: "audience" (of readers), "commerce" (intercourse), "covert" (shelter), "des- cant" (of a bird's song), "essential" (having substance), "in- cumbent" (resting on or bending over), "inform" (form within), "instinct with" (impelled or animated by), "lapse" (of a stream), "oblivious" (used actively), "paramount" (as a substantive), "principalities" (order of angels), "profound" (as a substantive), "punctual" (hke a point), "rout" (a disorderly crowd), "sagacious" (keen-scented), "use" (as an intransitive verb), "vast" (as a sub- stantive), "viewless" (invisible).^ It would, of course, be folly to explain Wordsworth's language altogether by reference to eighteenth-century writers and Milton, that is, to overlook the importance of his own personality. Any poet who is fond of abstract speculation, who is inclined to be for- mal and impersonal, who has httle sensuous richness in his nature, ^ lb. iii. 521; vii. 766-7. He uses "edifice" seven times and "habitation" twenty- two. 2 E. Whately, as above, p. 182, n. 2. ' Nov. 16, 1811. * Te Francis Wrangham, July 12, 1807. * For the occurrence of these words, see pp. 618-20 below, and Lane Cooper's Concordance to Wordsworth (191 1). WORDSWORTH 1 99 and who "wishes to be regarded as a teacher or as nothing," will not employ the vocabulary of Keats ; and if he composes works On man, on Nature, and on Human Life, he will probably use language that is somewhat learned and stately. It would have been so even if the author of The Excursion had never read Paradise Lost; his knowledge of the epic only strengthened his natural tendencies. Not that Wordsworth intentionally imitated the diction of Milton and his followers, but that he adopted more of it than he realized. He was so accustomed to a formal style stiffened with words from the Greek and Latin that he easily slipped into it when he was not on his guard. Except when he was dealing with na- ture or with simple, narrative subjects, he preferred the sound of lines that contained learned words and somewhat pompous phrases; but was it not because of his familiarity with the stately periods and the formal, Latinic diction of Milton and his imitators that such lines pleased him? Wordsworth would himself have been the last person to deny that he was influenced by Milton. He tells us that he was inspired to write his first sonnets by the "soul-animating strains" of his pred- ecessor, and we have seen that he tooks pains to make "public acknowledgment of . . . the innumerable obligations which," he said, "as a Poet and a Man, I am under to our great fellow-country- man."^ He seems, indeed, to have felt that every poet should look to Milton for guidance. At the beginning of his career, it may be remembered, he had been impressed with the conviction that there were four English poets whom he must continually have before him as examples, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton; and in the preface to the 1815 edition of his poems he wrote, "The grand store-house of enthusiastic and meditative Imagination, of poetical, as contradistinguished from human and dramatic Imagination, is the prophetic and lyrical parts of the holy Scriptures, and the works of Milton, to which I cannot forbear to add those of Spenser." Yet he was almost certainly unconscious of the extent to which Milton influenced him. If he thought of the matter at all, he may have reflected that his verse was free from those peculiarities of Paradise Lost which marred eighteenth-century unrimed poetry, — as, indeed, to a large extent it was. Inversion he and his contem- poraries doubtless regarded not as a trait peculiar to Paradise Lost, but as a characteristic of all good blank verse. Then, too, his very resemblance to Milton would have blinded him to his indebtedness, 1 See below, p. 529, and above, p. 181. 200 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON for it is hard to realize how much one owes to a lifelong friend of similar views but greater powers. To be sure, though he may not have known how numerous they were, he must have been aware of the many phrases and of some of the more unusual words that he borrowed; but such things would not have troubled him. He regarded Milton's authority as supreme, at least in diction, and accordingly may have thought that borrowing from him was like taking words from the dictionary. The similarity between his own exalted, orotund passages and those of Paradise Lost he undoubtedly felt and felt with pride. Nor need those of us who look upon Wordsworth as one of the chief glories of English literature be disturbed to learn that he de- rived from another some of the materials and methods he used in the lofty building he erected. Surely one of the uses, and one of the best uses, of great poets is to furnish inspiration and guidance for those who come after them. This is not the least of the important func- tions that Paradise Lost has been performing for the last two and a half centuries. In Wordsworth's case it accomplished its purpose the more easily and effectively because what it offered was similar to what he himself had. Its influence on his poetry does not seem, for example, like Gothic vaulting in a Greek temple, for it did not tend to deflect him from his course, but merely strengthened him in it by showing him how to pursue it. That is why the last of the great Elizabethans became a power with one of the first of the great romanticists, why Wordsworth is the most Miltonic poet since Milton. CHAPTER X KEATS It is generally agreed that Spenser and Leigh Hunt made Keats a poet, but it is not so generally understood that they failed to com- plete their task, that they left him a rather formless, languorous, saccharine, and at times silly poet. He was naturally romantic, de- lighting in color rather than form, in richness rather than restraint, in ideal beauty rather than reality, and craving "a life of sensations rather than of thoughts." These traits were exaggerated by his youth, his admiration for Spenser, and his intimacy with Hunt, and as a result his first volume contains a number of rambling and rather pointless poems, with many rimes of the kisses-blisses sort and but one piece of real distinction. Likewise the second publication, En- dymion, is a luxuriant wilderness, "the author's intention appearing to be," as even the generous Shelley wrote, "that no person should possibly get to the end of it." ^ Fortunately Keats had himself come to realize these defects, and in the preface to Endymion had ac- knowledged that the reader of his romance "must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished." In this same preface the poet expressed the hope of writing another work that should deal with "the beautiful mythology of Greece." This was Hyperion, which was originally conceived as a romance,^ probably rimed and otherwise similar to Endymion, though "more naked and Grecian." But, before he came to write, a new planet swam into his ken which not only changed his plans but affected all his subsequent poetry. This transforming power was Paradise Lost. Keats had known Milton's poetry from boyhood, and had bor- rowed from the minor pieces and even from the epic; but the latter had meant little to him.^ He ' had heard of it by the hearing of the ^ To Charles and James Oilier, Sept. 6, 1819. ^ "The time would be better spent in writing a new Romance I have in my eye for next summer" (letter to Haydon, Sept. 28, 1817). Colvin, in his life of Keats (1918, P- 334)5 suggests that this "romance" may possibly have been the Eve of St. Agnes. ' His lines, You first taught me all the sweets of song . . . Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness; Michael in arms, and more, meek Eve's fair slenderness {Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke, 53, 58-9, written in September, 1816, but referring to a period several years earlier), show little appreciation of Milton's real greatness. 202 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON ear but now his eye saw it.' Blinded by the beauty of the Spen- serians, he had not possessed sufficient maturity to appreciate the consummate art and "severe magnificence of Paradise Lost^' until his attention was called to it by his friends Severn and Bailey, both ardent Miltonians. If, as Mr. de Selincourt thinks, the admiration for Paradise Lost began in the summer of 1817, when Keats was but half through Endymion,^ the epic may have been an important ele- ment in bringing him to a realization of the " mawkishness " of his early work. It seems quite as likely, however, that he had himself begun to feel the weakness of his verse and was half consciously looking for help before writing his second long piece, when at the suggestion of his friends he took up Paradise Lost and found there what he needed. He could hardly have done better. The poem possesses the color, the richness, the imaginative appeal, and the prosodic beauty that he craved, as well as the vigor, the classic re- straint, and the sublimity that his own verse had lacked. He plunged into Milton's work with characteristic enthusiasm and, to use his own word, ' feasted ' upon it.^ ''When I see you," he wrote to Bailey, "the first thing I shall do will be to read that about Milton and Ceres, and Proserpine"; ^ and later he exclaimed, "I am convinced more and more, every day, that fine writing is, next to fine doing, the top thing in the world; the Paradise Lost becomes a greater wonder."'* "It is unique," he declared, "... the most re- markable production of the world." ^ Milton became to him the standard in poetry; for, when weighing Wordsworth's genius, he thought it would be " a help, in the manner of gold being the meridian Line of worldly wealth," to consider "how he differs from Milton."^ ^ Keats's Poems (2d ed., 1907), 489, 437. This very thorough and admirable edition of Keats contains the best discussion we have of the influence of Milton upon any English poet. Though I differ from Mr. de Selincourt on many. points, I am under great obligations to him. So far as I can discover, the only basis fbr the opinion men- tioned above is that in September, 181 7, Keats visited Bailey at Oxford and while there worked on the third book of Endymion, which, according to Mr. de Selincourt, contains phrases that imply a recent study of Paradise Lost (see pp. 437, 439, 440, of his edition). It seems to me, however, that the expressions mentioned are either dubious or unimportant, and that passages which recall the epic quite as strongly as these may be found in Keats's earlier work. The reference to Adam's dream (in a letter to Bailey, Nov. 22, 181 7, not mentioned by De Selincourt) certainly suggests a recent reading of Milton's poem, with which, to be sure, we know that Keats was familiar before 181 6. -- ^ Letter to Reynolds, April 27, 1818. ^ July 18, 1818. Later in the same letter he quoted from Camus. a ^ To Reynolds, Aug. 25, 1819. Ten days before he had used almost the same words in a letter to Bailey. There is another reference to Milton in the letter to Reynolds, and a letter to James Rice of March 24, 1818, is filled with humorous remarks about Milton, Salmasius, and others. * Letter to George Keats, Sept. 17-27, 1819 (this pirt probably written on the 2ist). ^ Letter to Reynolds, May 3, 1818. Earlier in this letter he quoted a line and a half from Paradise Lost (see note i, p. 203, below). KEATS 203 This ''feast" upon Milton, which lasted for a year and a half or two years, profoundly affected the young and unusually sensitive poet. It gave him an admirable familiarity with the work of his predecessor,^ as well as a rare understanding of its spirit,^ and left him, so far as poetry was concerned, another man. The first fruits of the change were shown in the transformation of Hyperion, which was composed while the feast was at its height. For the romance which Keats planned developed into an austere epic, obviously mod- elled upon Paradise Lost} He himself acknowledged the indebted- ness, as we shall see later; but in any case there could be no doubt about it, for the poem is fundamentally Miltonic. Nor is it a ques- tion merely of certain stylistic quaHties, of some unusual words and a few borrowed phrases, but of the entire conception, tone, and handling of the work. Instead of copying Milton's peculiarities, Keats, one might almost say, tried to write a poem as Milton would have written it, and as a result Hyperion is more like Paradise Lost than is any other great poem we have. The debt of The Seasons, great as it is, is limited to expression, — Milton would never have written anything like it; nor is it conceivable that he should have produced The Task or The Prelude. He might have composed Hyperion. To realize how Miltonic the poem is we have only to compare it ■ with other epics. Keats is not at all Homeric; his gods, for example, have almost nothing in common with the very human deities of the Iliad and the Odyssey, nor has he the action^ the swiftness and buoy- ancy, of the Grecian. He leaves an impression, as Milton does in the main, of characters, places, and scenes rather than of events; and he is concerned entirely, as Milton is largely, not with mortals, as are other epic poets, but with gods and demigods. This is of course one reason why both poems lack human interest. The entire action of Hyperion, furthermore, raised as it is above human passions, has the ^ This appears in the words and phrases he borrowed from Milton: see Appendix A, below. His familiarity with passages that do not usually attract attention is significant. In the letter to Reynolds just referred to (May 3, 1818) he quotes, quite casually, Notus and Afer, black with thundrous clouds From Serraliona (P. Z., X. 702-3); and in one to Dilke (Sept. 21, 1818) he writes, "Imagine 'the hateful siege of contraries' — if I think of fame ... it seems a crime to me" (cf. P. L., ix. 119-22). ^ As shown by his penetrating comments on Paradise Lost and its author (see the "Notes" in Forman's edition of his works, iii. 17-30). ^ Any one who thinks that Keats would not consciously have patterned his work after another poem should remember that the versification of Lamia is, in Mr. de Selincourt's words (p. 453), "closely modelled upon the Fables of Dryden." 204 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON largeness, the exalted dignity, the solemnity, the aloofness, which are particularly associated with Paradise Lost. Here are the pic- tures of Saturn and Thea : Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, No further than to where his feet had stray'd, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed. . . . She was a Goddess of the infant world; By her in stature the tall Amazon Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en Achilles by the hair and bent his neck; Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, Pedestal'd haply in a palace court, When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.^ These are figures worthy to have sat at the great council in Pande- monium. Keats's style, as may be seen from the passages just quoted, is marked by the absence of prettiness; it has the stately dignity and the condensation that distinguish Paradise Lost. Yet these lines are by no means so Miltonic as many others; in fact, except for the phrase "pedestal'd haply," the more technical marks of Milton's influence do not appear at all. Nor are they anywhere prominent in the poem. The contorted style which eighteenth-century writers re- garded as Miltonic, Keats saw to be a cheap imitation and instinc- tively avoided. Yet two of the most obvious characteristics of Paradise Lost, those without which Miltonic blank verse can hardly be written, inversion of the word-order and the use of adjectives for adverbs, he employed. In fact, he said himself that ''there were too many Miltonic inversions" in his epic.^ Here are six in the first twenty-five Hnes I open to: "influence benign on planets pale," "Deity supreme," "thine eyes eterne," "chariot fierce," "triumph calm," "gold clouds metropoHtan." ^ Of the use of adjectives where one would expect adverbs there are over twenty cases Hke "rumbles reluctant," "crept gradual," "I here idle hsten"; * and occasionally other parts of speech are shifted about. ^ Hyperion also gets a Mil- 1 i. 15-19, 26-33. '' Letter to Reynolds, Sept. 22, 1819. ^ i. 108-29. * i. 61, 260; iii. 106. See also i. 11, 94, 222, 308, 357; ii. 51, 74, 144, 164, 250, 284, 324, 329, 377, 388; iii. IS, 49, 52, 53, 74- 5 As in "sphere them round" (i. 117), "space region'd" (i. 119), "made . . . His eyes to fever out" (i. 138, cf. ii. 102), " how engine our wrath" (ii. 161), "antheming a lonely grief" (iii. 6), "Apollo anguish'd" (iii. 130), "voices of soft proclaim" (i. 130), "with fierce convulse" (iii. 129), "stubborn'd with iron" (ii. 17). In "foam'd along KEATS 205 tonic ring from the presence of condensed or elliptical expressions like "thus brief," "uncertain where," "though feminine," "all pros- trate else," "neighbour'd close," "what can I?", "all calm," "this too indulged tongue," ^ and from constructions like these, Save what solemn tubes, Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet And wandering sounds.^ At whose joys . . . I, Coelus, wonder, how they came and whence; And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be.' At times, also, one is reminded of Milton by an unbroken series of adjectives, as "nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred"; or by a list of proper names like Coeus, and Gyges, and Briareiis, Typhon, and Dolor, and Porphyrion.^ Words and phrases from the "Chief of organic numbers" will be found throughout Keats's work,^but borrowings from Paradise Lost are naturally much more common in Hyperion than in the other poems. Except in such borrowings, the vocabulary of Keats's epic, though of course less conversational and more classic than that of his lyric and romantic pieces, is less affected by Milton's than might be expected. What would be the most important influence upon it, if we could be sure the practice was derived from Milton, is that in Hyperion Keats for the first time makes extensive use of adjectives formed by adding -ed to nouns.^ Whether or not such adjectives — "orbed," "lion-thoughted," "mountained," "mouthed," etc. — come from Milton, with whom they are common, they are at least a great improvement over those in -y, "orby," "gulfy," "foody," "flamy," and the like, which are unpleasantly frequent in Keats's early work.^ By . . . winged creatures " (ii. 234-5) an intransitive verb is used transitively. Note also the adjectives formed from nouns by the addition of -ed (see text above). 1 i. 153; ii. 9, SS, 65, 74, 160, 204, 298. 2 i. 206-8; cf. P. L., i. 182-3, ii- 20-21, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful. With what besides, in counsel or in fight, Hath been achieved of merit. ' i. 312-16; cf. P. L., ii. 990, "I know thee, stranger, who thou art." * i. 18-19; ii. 19-20. * They have been carefully noted by his editors, and have for convenience been collected below in Appendix A. 8 This obligation is pointed out in W. T. Arnold's edition of Keats's works (1884), pp. xxxiv-xxxvi, where a large number of Milton's adjectives in -ed are also quoted. ^ Mr. de Selincourt is undoubtedly right in believing that Milton's influence "is 206 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON One other possible relation between the two poems, to which all writers on the subject have called attention, is the similarity of the assembly of the Titans to the council in Pandemonium. It seems to me, however, that the resemblances are so superficial that they would never have been noticed if the conception of the Titans and the general tone and style of the poem had not been decidedly Mil- tonic. To be sure, each is an assembly of fallen immortals, at which, as might be expected, there are several speeches and some differ- ences of opinion; but the two gatherings are otherwise quite unUke. The meeting of the Titans is not pre-arranged, no one calls it or presides over it, no plans are discussed and no action is decided on; the account simply stops at the arrival of the sun-god. It is hard to see wherein Keats could have made his assembly any less like Mil- ton's if he had tried. Hyperion is unfinished. Although it is one of Keats's greatest works, and probably the noblest fragment in English poetry, it was abandoned. "There were too many Miltonic inversions in it," he complained to Reynolds; "Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion, and put a mark -f to the false beauty proceeding from art, and one 1 1 to the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul, 'twas imagina- shown far more in allusion and . . . cadence, than by the borrowing of definitely Mil- tonic words" (p. 582). Indeed, while the words in his valuable "Glossary" do in general point to this influence and to that of the Elizabethans, only the few given on page 624 below are, in my opinion, likely to have had their origin in definite passages of the epic or the 1645 volum.e. It is probable, however, as he suggests, that " adorant," "aspirant," "penetrant," "cirque-couchant," and "ministrant" were formed in imi- tation of "congratulant," "volant," "couchant," "ministrant," and the like in Panidise Lost, and that Milton's practice may have led to the use of an adjective for a ncun in "the hollow vast" {Endymion, iii. 120, cf. ii. 240, ili. 593, etc., and P. L., vi. 203); to the use of verbs as nouns in "there was . . . fear in her regard" (Hyperion, i. 37, cf. P. L., iv. 877, X. 866, etc.), "he made retire From his companions" [Lamia, i. 230-31, cf. "bowers of soft retire," Song of Four Fairies, 6, and P. L., xi. 267), "at shut of eve" {Hyperion, ii. 36, and "The day is gone," 5, cf. P. L., ix. 278); and to the turning of nouns into verbs or participles in "who could paragon The . . . choir" [Sleep and Poetry, 172-3, cf. P. L., x. 426), "a . . . tree Pavilions him in bloom" (Endymion, ii. 55-6, cf. P. L., xi. 215), "her enemies havock'd at her feet" (King Stephen, I. ii. 23, cf. P. L., X. 617), "lackeying my counsel" {Otho, I. i. 97, cf. Conius, 455), "like legioned soldiers" (Endymion, ii. 43, cf. "legion'd fairies," Eve of St. Agnes, xix. 6), "orbing along" (Otlio, IV. i. 79, cf. "orbed brow," etc., Endymion, i. 616, etc., and P. L., vi. 543), "pedestal'd ... in a palace court" (Hyperion, i. 32, cf. "image pedestall'd so high," Fall of Hyperion, i. 299). In the case of "argent," "disparted," "drear," "dul- cet," "empty of," "freshet," "lucent," "parle," "ramping," "slumberous," "spume," and some other words, for most of which Mr. de Selincourt gives several possible sources, it seems to me impossible to be certain of any single origin. KEATS 207 tion — I cannot make the distinction — Every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation." ^ To his brother he expressed it thus: "The Para- dise Lost, though so fine in itseK, is a corruption of our language. It should be kept as it is, unique, a curiosity, a beautiful and grand curiosity, the most remarkable production of the world; a northern dialect accommo- dating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and intonations. The purest English, I think — or what ought to be the purest — is Chatterton's. . . . I prefer the native music of it to Milton's, cut by feet. I have but lately stood on my guard against Milton. Life to him would be death to me. Miltonic verse cannot be written, but is the verse of art. I wish to devote myseK to another verse alone." ^ The difficulty in determining just what Keats meant by these utterances, with their failure to discriminate between style and lan- guage and their curious praise for the purity of Chatterton's manu- „ factured language, is probably due to a vagueness in his own mind. ' It must be remembered that he wrote them, not in a carefully-worded preface, but in familiar letters presumably composed carelessly and ^ in haste and in the mood that happened to be dominant at the time. By taking simply the parts that are clear and interpreting them literally, we arrive at the easy, definite, and commonly-accepted idea that the poem was abandoned because of its excessive use of such external Miltonisms as inversion. But so great a poem could hardly have been laid aside merely on account of a number of " Greek and Latin inversions and intonations," which as a matter of fact were not particularly numerous and might easily have been removed. Besides, such Latinisms are quite as characteristic of Wordsworth's "^ best work — which Keats sincerely admired — as of Hyperion, and are indeed to be found in the noblest English blank verse. Why, then, was it discontinued? Clearly, because of some feeling of constraint begotten by its Miltonic character. Yet it may be that Keats confused the fundamental similarity to Paradise Lost with some of the superficial marks of that similarity.^ The pith of his re- marks is contained in the clause,'^ 'Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour," that is, with self- 1 Letter of Sept. 22, 1819. The reason alleged in the publishers' advertisement, that the reception given to Endymion "discouraged the author from proceeding," Keats himself branded as a "lie" (see De Selincourt's edition, p. 487). ^ To George Keats, Sept. 17-27, 1819, the part quoted presumably being written on the 2ist. In the letter to Reynolds noticed above he praised Chatterton's "genuine English Idiom in English words." ^ As Robert Bridges remarks (Keats, 32-5), Keats "attributes his dissatisfaction to the style; but one cannot read to the end without a conviction that the real hindrance lay deeper. ... he had not abused inversion in Hyperion." ) 2o8 THE INFLUENCE OF MILTON conscious effort as distinguished from natural self-expression, from the poet's ''easy unpremeditated verse." As a result, "the true voice of feeling" seemed to him to be killed by ''the false beauty proceeding from art"; he felt constrained and the poem seemed arti- ficial. This "artful, or, rather, artist's humour" he attributed to the lack of "genuine English Idiom in English words"; but if he had removed the foreign idiom and words could he have completed the ^^,work? Apparently not. He seems to have gone over it marking its superficial Miltonisms, and was baffled by the result. "I cannot make the distinction," he exclaimed ■ — "Every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation — But I cannot make the division properly. The fact is, I must take a walk." Does not this indicate that he d failed to find the root of the difficulty, that he was troubled because removing the foreign words, idioms, and inversions did not remove the "false beauty proceeding from art" or the general Miltonic im- \ pression the poem produces? He was right in standing on his guard Against Milton, and in thinking, "Life to him would be death to me"; but he apparently saw later that an influence so portentous to originality must go deeper than words and idioms. He might have inverted the inversions, changed the classical constructions, and dropped the foreign words if he had wished, but there would have • remained the austere restraint, the impersonality and aloofness, the lack of color, warmth, and human interest, which deadened "the true voice of feeling." These qualities were not natural to him; he could assume them for a time, but the farther he proceeded in the poem the more conscious he grew of their constraint, until at last he found it intolerable. He came to feel that his enthusiasm for Para- dise Lost had carried him out of his natural bent and led him to attempt a kind of work not suited to his powers.^ And he was right. For the greatness of Hyperion should not blind us, any more than it did him, to its defects. Nothing really happens in it; the central incident, the assembly of the Titans, to which the meeting of Thea and Saturn and in a way the account of Hyperion lead up, comes to nothing. No course of action is even discussed. So far as one can see, the intention is simply to introduce more char- acters and give a further picture of the fallen gods. To be sure, each of these scenes, as well as the deification of Apollo, does prepare for later action, but in what other epic is so Httle accomplished or even ^ The theory that Keats's ill health and hopeless love for Fanny Brawne made it impossible for him to go on with Hyperion fails to take account of the reason the poet himself gave, or to explain how, after abandoning his epic, he was able to compose most of his best work, including a piece as long as Lamia. KEATS 209 planned in the first nine hundred lines? ^ Much noble description, many lofty speeches, Keats has certainly given us, but Hyperion is supposed to be a narrative poem. In reality it is nothing of the kind; it is distinctly static and sculpturesque, with a tone, style, and man- ner admirably adapted to depicting the colossal deities of an elder world, but to Keats at least hampering and cumbersome when it came to making them move. When he tried narrative, as in describ- ing Apollo's metamorphosis into a god, he was unsuccessful. A care- ful study of the poem leaves one with the feeling that Keats did not know just what to do with his characters or how to get them to doing anything, that he could create gods but could not make them act. He was himself too good a critic of his own work not to be conscious of this defect, and at the beginning of the third book turns from the Titans with the words : O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes; For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire: A solitary sorrow best befits Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief. That is, he felt unequal to the epic action that the poem required, and after writing one hundred and thirty lines more gave up the task. But the fragment 3;vas too good to be lightly discarded, and a few months later he tried recasting it. This later version. The Fall of Hyperion, was, be it remembered, his last important work and was probably laid aside because of failing strength. The clouds that hung low over-