Chapter XI: Front Matter (11)

Another of his peculiarities is equally striking. There seems to be such a thing as second-hand poetry. Some poets, musing on the poetry of other men, have unconsciously shaped it into something of their own: the new conception is like the original, it would never probably have existed had not the original existed previously; still it is sufficiently different from the original to be a new thing, not a copy or a plagiarism; it is a creation, though, so to say, a suggested creation. Gray is as good an example as can be found of a poet whose works abound in this species of semi-original conceptions. Industrious critics track his best lines back, and find others like them which doubtless lingered near his fancy while he was writing them. The same critics have been equally busy with the works of Milton, and equally successful. They find traces of his reading in half his works; not, which any reader could do, in overt similes and distinct illustrations, but also in the very texture of the thought and the expression. In many cases, doubtless, they discover more than he himself knew. A mind like his, which has an immense store of imaginative recollections, can never know which of his own imaginations is exactly suggested by which recollection. Men awake with their best ideas; it is seldom worth while to investigate very curiously whence they came. Our proper business is to adapt, and mould, and act upon them. Of poets perhaps this is true even more remarkably than of other men; their ideas are suggested in modes, and according to laws, which are even more impossible to specify than the ideas of the rest of the world. Second-hand poetry, so to say, often seems quite original to the poet himself; he frequently does not know that he derived it from an old memory; years afterwards it may strike him as it does others. Still, in general, such inferior species of creation is not so likely to be found in minds of singular originality as in those of less. A brooding, placid, cultivated mind, like that of Gray, is the place where we should expect to meet with it. Great originality disturbs the adaptive process, removes the mind of the poet from the thoughts of other men, and occupies it with its own heated and flashing thoughts. Poetry of the second degree is like the secondary rocks of modern geology—a still, gentle, alluvial formation; the igneous glow of primary genius brings forth ideas like the primeval granite, simple, astounding, and alone. Milton’s case is an exception to this rule. His mind has marked originality, probably as much of it as any in literature; but it has as much of moulded recollection as any mind too. His poetry in consequence is like an artificial park, green, and soft, and beautiful, yet with outlines bold, distinct, and firm, and the eternal rock ever jutting out; or, better still, it is like our own lake scenery, where nature has herself the same combination—where we have Rydal-water side by side with the everlasting upheaved mountain. Milton has the same union of softened beauty with unimpaired grandeur; and it is his peculiarity.

These are the two contrasts which puzzle us at first in Milton, and which distinguish him from other poets in our remembrance afterwards. We have a superficial complexity in illustration, and imagery, and metaphor; and in contrast with it we observe a latent simplicity of idea, an almost rude strength of conception. The underlying thoughts are few, though the flowers on the surface are so many. We have likewise the perpetual contrast of the soft poetry of the memory, and the firm, as it were fused, and glowing poetry of the imagination. His words, we may half fancifully say, are like his character. There is the same austerity in the real essence, the same exquisiteness of sense, the same delicacy of form which we know that he had, the same music which we imagine there was in his voice. In both his character and his poetry there was an ascetic nature in a sheath of beauty.

No book perhaps which has ever been written is more difficult to criticise than _Paradise Lost_. The only way to criticise a work of the imagination, is to describe its effect upon the mind of the reader—at any rate, of the critic; and this can only be adequately delineated by strong illustrations, apt similes, and perhaps a little exaggeration. The task is in its very nature not an easy one; the poet paints a picture on the fancy of the critic, and the critic has in some sort to copy it on the paper. He must say what it is before he can make remarks upon it. But in the case of _Paradise Lost_ we hardly like to use illustrations. The subject is one which the imagination rather shrinks from. At any rate, it requires courage, and an effort to compel the mind to view such a subject as distinctly and vividly as it views other subjects. Another peculiarity of _Paradise Lost_ makes the difficulty even greater. It does not profess to be a mere work of art; or rather, it claims to be by no means that, and that only. It starts with a dogmatic aim; it avowedly intends to

‘assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to man.’

In this point of view we have always had a sympathy with the Cambridge mathematician who has been so much abused. He said, ‘After all, _Paradise Lost_ proves nothing;’ and various persons of poetical tastes and temperament have been very severe on the prosaic observation. Yet, ‘after all,’ he was right. Milton professed to prove something. He was too profound a critic—rather, he had too profound an instinct of those eternal principles of art which criticism tries to state—not to know that on such a subject he must prove something. He professed to deal with the great problem of human destiny; to show why man was created, in what kind of universe he lives, whence he came, and whither he goes. He dealt of necessity with the greatest of subjects. He had to sketch the greatest of objects. He was concerned with infinity and eternity even more than with time and sense; he undertook to delineate the ways, and consequently the character of Providence, as well as the conduct and the tendencies of man. The essence of success in such an attempt is to satisfy the religious sense of man; to bring home to our hearts what we know to be true; to teach us what we have not seen; to awaken us to what we have forgotten; to remove the ‘covering’ from all people, and ‘the veil’ that is spread over all nations; to give us, in a word, such a conception of things divine and human as we can accept, believe, and trust. The true doctrine of criticism demands what Milton invites—an examination of the degree in which the great epic attains this aim. And if, in examining it, we find it necessary to use unusual illustrations, and plainer words than are customary, it must be our excuse that we do not think the subject can be made clear without them.

The defect of _Paradise Lost_ is that, after all, it is founded on a _political_ transaction. The scene is in heaven very early in the history of the universe, before the creation of man or the fall of Satan. We have a description of a court. The angels,

‘By imperial summons called,’

appear

‘Under their hierarchs in orders bright:
Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced,
Standards and gonfalons ’twixt van and rear
Stream in the air, and for distinction serve
Of hierarchies, and orders, and degrees.’

To this assemblage ‘th’ Omnipotent’ speaks:

‘Hear, all ye Angels, progeny of light,
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow’rs,
Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall stand:
This day I have begot whom I declare
My only Son; and on this holy hill
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold
At my right hand; your Head I him appoint;
And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow
All knees in Heav’n, and shall confess him Lord:
Under his great vicegerent reign abide
United as one individual soul
For ever happy. Him who disobeys,
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day,
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls
Int’ utter darkness, deep ingulph’d, his place
Ordain’d without redemption, without end.’

This act of patronage was not popular at court; and why should it have been? The religious sense is against it. The worship which sinful men owe to God is not transferable to lieutenants and vicegerents. The whole scene of the court jars upon a true feeling. We seem to be reading about some emperor of history, who admits his son to a share in the empire, who confers on him a considerable jurisdiction, and requires officials, with ‘standards and gonfalons,’ to bow before him. The orthodoxy of Milton is quite as questionable as his accuracy. The old Athanasian creed was not made by persons who would allow such a picture as that of Milton to stand before their imaginations. The generation of the Son was to them a fact ‘before all time;’ an eternal fact. There was no question in their minds of patronage or promotion. The Son was the Son before all time, just as the Father was the Father before all time. Milton had in such matters a bold but not very sensitive imagination. He accepted the inevitable materialism of biblical, and, to some extent, of all religious language as distinct revelation. He certainly believed, in contradiction to the old creed, that God had both ‘parts and passions.’ He imagined that earth

‘Is but the shadow of heaven and things therein,
Each to other like more than on earth is thought.’

From some passages it would seem that he actually thought of God as having ‘the members and form’ of a man. Naturally, therefore, he would have no toleration for the mysterious notions of time and eternity which are involved in the traditional doctrine. We are not, however, now concerned with Milton’s belief, but with his representation of his creed—his picture, so to say, of it in _Paradise Lost_; still, as we cannot but think, that picture is almost irreligious, and certainly different from that which has been generally accepted in Christendom. Such phrases as ‘before all time,’ ‘eternal generation,’ are doubtless very vaguely interpreted by the mass of men; nevertheless, no sensitively orthodox man _could_ have drawn the picture of a generation, not to say an exaltation, _in_ time.

We shall see this more clearly by reading what follows in the poem:

‘All seemed well pleased; all seemed, but were not all.’

One of the archangels, whose name can be guessed, decidedly disapproved, and calls a meeting, at which he explains that

‘orders and degrees
Jar not with liberty, but well consist;’

but still, that the promotion of a new person, on grounds of relationship merely, above, even infinitely above, the old angels, with imperial titles, was ‘a new law,’ and rather tyrannical. Abdiel,

‘than whom none with more zeal adored
The Deity, and with divine commands obeyed,’

attempts a defence:

‘Grant it thee unjust,
That equal over equals monarch reign:
Thyself, though great and glorious, dost thou count,
Or all angelic nature join’d in one,
Equal to him begotten Son? by whom
As by his Word the mighty Father made
All things, ev’n thee; and all the Spirits of Heav’n
By him created in their bright degrees,
Crown’d them with glory, and to their glory named
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow’rs,
Essential Pow’rs; nor by his reign obscured,
But more illustrious made; since he the Head,
One of our number thus reduced becomes;
His laws our laws; all honour to him done
Returns our own. Cease then this impious rage,
And tempt not these; but hasten to appease
Th’ incensed Father and th’ incensed Son,
While pardon may be found, in time besought.’

Yet though Abdiel’s intentions were undeniably good, his argument is rather specious. Acting as an instrument in the process of creation would scarcely give a valid claim to the obedience of the created being. Power may be shown in the act, no doubt; but mere power gives no true claim to the obedience of moral beings. It is a kind of principle of all manner of idolatries and false religions to believe that it does so. Satan, besides, takes issue on the fact:

‘That we were formed then, say’st thou? and the work
Of secondary hands, by task transferr’d
From Father to his Son? Strange point and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learned.’

And we must say that the speech in which the new ruler is introduced to the ‘thrones, dominations, princedoms, powers,’ is hard to reconcile with Abdiel’s exposition. ‘_This day_’ he seems to have come into existence, and could hardly have assisted at the creation of the angels, who are not young, and who converse with one another like old acquaintances.

We have gone into this part of the subject at length, because it is the source of the great error which pervades _Paradise Lost_. Satan is made _interesting_. This has been the charge of a thousand orthodox and even heterodox writers against Milton. Shelley, on the other hand, has gloried in it; and fancied, if we remember rightly, that Milton intentionally ranged himself on the Satanic side of the universe, just as Shelley himself would have done, and that he wished to show the falsity of the ordinary theology. But Milton was born an age too early for such aims, and was far too sincere to have advocated any doctrine in a form so indirect. He believed every word he said. He was not conscious of the effect his teaching would produce in an age like this, when scepticism is in the air, and when it is not possible to help looking coolly on his delineations. Probably in our boyhood we can recollect a period when any solemn description of celestial events would have commanded our respect; we should not have dared to read it intelligently, to canvass its details and see what it meant: it was a religious book; it sounded reverential, and that would have sufficed. Something like this was the state of mind of the seventeenth century. Even Milton probably shared in a vague reverence for religious language. He hardly felt the moral effect of the pictures he was drawing. His artistic instinct too, often hurries him away. His Satan was to him, as to us, the hero of his poem. Having commenced by making him resist on an occasion which in an earthly kingdom would have been excusable and proper, he probably a little sympathised with him, just as his readers do.

The interest of Satan’s character is at its height in the first two books. Coleridge justly compared it to that of Napoleon. There is the same pride, the same satanic ability, the same will, the same egotism. His character seems to grow with his position. He is far finer after his fall, in misery and suffering, with scarcely any resource except in himself, than he was originally in heaven; at least, if Raphael’s description of him can be trusted. No portrait which imagination or history has drawn of a revolutionary anarch is nearly so perfect; there is all the grandeur of the greatest human mind, and a certain infinitude in his circumstances which humanity must ever want. Few Englishmen feel a profound reverence for Napoleon I. There was no French alliance in _his_ time; we have most of us some tradition of antipathy to him. Yet hardly any Englishman can read the account of the campaign of 1814 without feeling his interest in the Emperor to be strong, and without perhaps being conscious of a latent wish that he may succeed. Our opinion is against him, our serious wish is of course for England; but the imagination has a sympathy of its own, and will not give place. We read about the great general—never greater than in that last emergency—showing resources of genius that seem almost infinite, and that assuredly have never been surpassed, yet vanquished, yielding to the power of circumstances, to the combined force of adversaries, each of whom singly he outmatches in strength, and all of whom together he surpasses in majesty and in mind. Something of the same sort of interest belongs to the Satan of the first two books of _Paradise Lost_. We know that he will be vanquished; his name is not a recommendation. Still we do not imagine distinctly the minds by which he is to be vanquished; we do not take the same interest in them that we do in him; our sympathies, our fancy, are on his side.

Perhaps much of this was inevitable; yet what a defect it is! especially what a defect in Milton’s own view, and looked at with the stern realism with which he regarded it! Suppose that the author of evil in the universe were the most attractive being in it; suppose that the source of all sin were the origin of all interest to us! We need not dwell upon this.

As we have said, much of this was difficult to avoid, if indeed it could be avoided in dealing with such a theme. Even Milton shrank, in some measure, from delineating the Divine character. His imagination evidently halts when it is required to perform that task. The more delicate imagination of our modern world would shrink still more. Any person who will consider what such an attempt must end in, will find his nerves quiver. But by a curiously fatal error, Milton has selected for delineation exactly that part of the Divine nature which is most beyond the reach of the human faculties, and which is also, when we try to describe our fancy of it, the least effective to our minds. He has made God _argue_. Now the procedure of the Divine mind from truth to truth must ever be incomprehensible to us; the notion, indeed, of His proceeding at all, is a contradiction: to some extent, at least, it is inevitable that we should use such language, but we know it is in reality inapplicable. A long train of reasoning in such a connection is so out of place as to be painful; and yet Milton has many. He relates a series of family prayers in heaven, with sermons afterwards, which are very tedious. Even Pope was shocked at the notion of Providence talking like ‘a school-divine.’ And there is the still worse error, that if you once attribute reasoning to Him, subsequent logicians may discover that He does not reason very well.

Another way in which Milton has contrived to strengthen our interest in Satan, is the number and insipidity of the good angels. There are old rules as to the necessity of a supernatural machinery for an epic poem, worth some fraction of the paper on which they are written, and derived from the practice of Homer, who believed his gods and goddesses to be real beings, and would have been rather harsh with a critic who called them machinery. These rules had probably an influence with Milton, and induced him to manipulate these serious angels more than he would have done otherwise. They appear to be excellent administrators with very little to do; a kind of grand chamberlains with wings, who fly down to earth and communicate information to Adam and Eve. They have no character; they are essentially messengers, merely conductors, so to say, of the providential will: no one fancies that they have an independent power of action; they seem scarcely to have minds of their own. No effect can be more unfortunate. If the struggle of Satan had been with Deity directly, the natural instincts of religion would have been awakened; but when an angel possessed of mind is contrasted with angels possessed only of wings, we sympathise with the former.

In the first two books, therefore, our sympathy with Milton’s Satan is great; we had almost said unqualified. The speeches he delivers are of well-known excellence. Lord Brougham, no contemptible judge of emphatic oratory, has laid down, that if a person had not an opportunity of access to the great Attic master-pieces, he had better choose these for a model. What is to be regretted about the orator is, that he scarcely acts up to his sentiments. ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,’ is, at any rate, an audacious declaration. But he has no room for exhibiting similar audacity in action. His offensive career is limited. In the nature of the subject there was scarcely any opportunity for the fallen archangel to display in the detail of his operations the surpassing intellect with which Milton has endowed him. He goes across chaos, gets into a few physical difficulties; but these are not much. His grand aim is the conquest of our first parents; and we are at once struck with the enormous inequality of the conflict. Two beings just created, without experience, without guile, without knowledge of good and evil, are expected to contend with a being on the delineation of whose powers every resource of art and imagination, every subtle suggestion, every emphatic simile, has been lavished. The idea in every reader’s mind is, and must be, not surprise that our first parents should yield, but wonder that Satan should not think it beneath him to attack them. It is as if an army should invest a cottage.

We have spoken more of theology than we intended; and we need not say how much the monstrous inequalities attributed to the combatants affect our estimate of the results of the conflict. The state of man is what it is, because the defenceless Adam and Eve of Milton’s imagination yielded to the nearly all-powerful Satan whom he has delineated. Milton has in some sense invented this difficulty; for in the book of Genesis there is no such inequality. The serpent may be subtler than any beast of the field; but he is not necessarily subtler or cleverer than man. So far from Milton having justified the ways of God to man, he has loaded the common theology with a new encumbrance.

We may need refreshment after this discussion; and we cannot find it better than in reading a few remarks of Eve.

‘That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked, and found myself reposed
Under a shade on flow’rs, much wond’ring where
And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.
Not distant far from thence a murm’ring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved
Pure as th’ expanse of Heav’n.... I thither went
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seem’d another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the wat’ry gleam appear’d,
Bending to look on me. I started back;
It started back: but pleased I soon return’d;
Pleased it return’d as soon with answ’ring looks
Of sympathy and love: there I had fix’d
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warn’d me. What thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair Creature, is thyself;
With thee it came and goes: but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays
Thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he
Whose image thou art; him thou shalt enjoy
Inseparably thine: to him shalt bear
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be call’d
Mother of Human Race. What could I do
But follow straight, invisibly thus led?
Till I espy’d thee, fair indeed and tall
Under a platan; yet methought less fair,
Less winning soft, less amiably mild,
Than that smooth wat’ry image. Back I turn’d:
Thou following cry’dst aloud, Return, fair Eve;
Whom fly’st thou?’

Eve’s character, indeed, is one of the most wonderful efforts of the human imagination. She is a kind of abstract woman; essentially a typical being; an official ‘mother of all living.’ Yet she is a real interesting woman, not only full of delicacy and sweetness, but with all the undefinable fascination, the charm of personality, which such typical characters hardly ever have. By what consummate miracle of wit this charm of individuality is preserved, without impairing the general idea which is ever present to us, we cannot explain, for we do not know.

Adam is far less successful. He has good hair,—‘hyacinthine locks’ that ‘from his parted forelock manly hung;’ a ‘fair large front’ and ‘eye sublime;’ but he has little else that we care for. There is, in truth, no opportunity of displaying manly virtues, even if he possessed them. He has only to yield to his wife’s solicitations, which he does. Nor are we sure that he does it well. He is very tedious; he indulges in sermons which are good; but most men cannot but fear that so delightful a being as Eve must have found him tiresome. She steps away, however, and goes to sleep at some of the worst points.

Dr. Johnson remarked, that, after all, _Paradise Lost_ was one of the books which no one wished longer: we fear, in this irreverent generation, some wish it shorter. Hardly any reader would be sorry if some portions of the later books had been spared him. Coleridge, indeed, discovered profound mysteries in the last; but in what could not Coleridge find a mystery if he wished? Dryden more wisely remarked that Milton became tedious when he entered upon a ‘tract of Scripture.’ Nor is it surprising that such is the case. The style of many parts of Scripture is such that it will not bear addition or subtraction. A word less, or an idea more, and the effect upon the mind is the same no longer. Nothing can be more tiresome than a sermonic amplification of such passages. It is almost too much when, as from the pulpit, a paraphrastic commentary is prepared for our spiritual improvement. In deference to the intention we bear it, but we bear it unwillingly; and we cannot endure it at all when, as in poems, the object is to awaken our fancy rather than to improve our conduct. The account of the creation in the book of Genesis is one of the compositions from which no sensitive imagination would subtract an iota, to which it could not bear to add a word. Milton’s paraphrase is alike copious and ineffective. The universe is, in railway phrase, ‘opened,’ but not created; no green earth springs in a moment from the indefinite void. Instead, too, of the simple loneliness of the Old Testament, several angelic officials are in attendance, who help in nothing, but indicate that heaven must be plentifully supplied with tame creatures.

There is no difficulty in writing such criticisms, and, indeed, other unfavourable criticisms on _Paradise Lost_. There is scarcely any book in the world which is open to a greater number, or which a reader who allows plain words to produce a due effect will be less satisfied with. Yet what book is really greater? In the best parts the words have a magic in them; even in the inferior passages you are hardly sensible of their inferiority till you translate them into your own language. Perhaps no style ever written by man expressed so adequately the conceptions of a mind so strong and so peculiar; a manly strength, a haunting atmosphere of enhancing suggestions, a firm continuous music, are only some of its excellences. To comprehend the whole of the others, you must take the volume down and read it,—the best defence of Milton, as has been said most truly, against all objections.

Probably no book shows the transition which our theology has made since the middle of the seventeenth century, at once so plainly and so fully. We do not now compose long narratives to ‘justify the ways of God to man.’ The more orthodox we are, the more we shrink from it; the more we hesitate at such a task, the more we allege that we have no powers for it. Our most celebrated defences of established tenets are in the style of Butler, not in that of Milton. They do not profess to show a satisfactory explanation of human destiny; on the contrary, they hint that probably we could not understand such an explanation if it were given us; at any rate, they allow that it is not given us. Their course is palliative. They suggest an ‘analogy of difficulties.’ If our minds were greater, so they reason, we should comprehend these doctrines: now we cannot explain analogous facts which we see and know. No style can be more opposite to the bold argument, the boastful exposition of Milton. The teaching of the eighteenth century is in the very atmosphere we breathe. We read it in the teachings of Oxford; we hear it from the missionaries of the Vatican. The air of the theology is clarified. We know our difficulties, at least; we are rather prone to exaggerate the weight of some than to deny the reality of any.

We cannot continue a line of thought which would draw us on too far for the patience of our readers. We must, however, make one more remark, and we shall have finished our criticism on _Paradise Lost_. It is analogous to that which we have just made. The scheme of the poem is based on an offence against positive morality. The offence of Adam was not against nature or conscience, nor against any thing of which we can see the reason, or conceive the obligation, but against an unexplained injunction of the Supreme Will. The rebellion in heaven, as Milton describes it, was a rebellion, not against known ethics, or immutable spiritual laws, but against an arbitrary selection and an unexplained edict. We do not say that there is no such thing as positive morality: we do not think so; even if we did, we should not insert a proposition so startling at the conclusion of a literary criticism. But we are sure that wherever a positive moral edict is promulgated, it is no subject, except perhaps under a very peculiar treatment, for literary art. By the very nature of it, it cannot satisfy the heart and conscience. It is a difficulty; we need not attempt to explain it away. There are mysteries enough which will never be explained away. But it is contrary to every principle of criticism to state the difficulty as if it were not one; to bring forward the puzzle, yet leave it to itself; to publish so strange a problem, and give only an untrue solution of it: and yet such, in its bare statement, is all that Milton has done.

Of Milton’s other writings we have left ourselves no room to speak; and though every one of them, or almost every one of them, would well repay a careful criticism, yet few of them seem to throw much additional light on his character, or add much to our essential notion of his genius, though they may exemplify and enhance it. _Comus_ is the poem which does so the most. Literature has become so much lighter than it used to be, that we can scarcely realise the position it occupied in the light literature of our forefathers. We have now in our own language many poems that are pleasanter in their subject, more graceful in their execution, more flowing in their outline, more easy to read. Dr. Johnson, though perhaps no very excellent authority on the more intangible graces of literature, was disposed to deny to Milton the capacity of creating the lighter literature: ‘Milton, madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.’ And it would not be surprising if this generation, which has access to the almost indefinite quantity of lighter compositions which have been produced since Johnson’s time, were to echo his sentence. In some degree, perhaps, the popular taste does so. _Comus_ has no longer the peculiar exceptional popularity which it used to have. We can talk without general odium of its defects. Its characters are nothing, its sentiments are tedious, its story is not interesting. But it is only when we have realised the magnitude of its deficiencies that we comprehend the peculiarity of its greatness. Its power is in its style. A grave and firm music pervades it: it is soft, without a thought of weakness; harmonious and yet strong; impressive, as few such poems are, yet covered with a bloom of beauty and a complexity of charm that few poems have either. We have, perhaps, light literature in itself better, that we read oftener and more easily, that lingers more in our memories; but we have not any, we question if there ever will be any, which gives so true a conception of the capacity and the dignity of the mind by which it was produced. The breath of solemnity which hovers round the music attaches us to the writer. Every line, here as elsewhere, in Milton excites the idea of indefinite power.

And so we must draw to a close. The subject is an infinite one, and if we pursued it, we should lose ourselves in miscellaneous commentary, and run on far beyond the patience of our readers. What we have said has at least a defined intention. We have wished to state the impression which the character of Milton and the greatest of Milton’s works are likely to produce on readers of the present generation—a generation different from his own almost more than any other.

_LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU._[30]

(1862.)

Nothing is so transitory as second-class fame. The name of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is hardly now known to the great mass of ordinary English readers. A generation has arisen which has had time to forget her. Yet only a few years since, an allusion to the ‘Lady Mary’ would have been easily understood by every well-informed person; young ladies were enjoined to form their style upon hers; and no one could have anticipated that her letters would seem in 1862 as different from what a lady of rank would then write or publish as if they had been written in the times of paganism. The very change, however, of popular taste and popular morality gives these letters now a kind of interest. The farther and the more rapidly we have drifted from where we once lay, the more do we wish to learn what kind of port it was. We venture, therefore, to recommend the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as an instructive and profitable study, not indeed to the youngest of young ladies, but to those maturer persons of either sex ‘who have taken all knowledge to be their province,’ and who have commenced their readings in ‘universality’ by an assiduous perusal of Parisian fiction.

It is, we admit, true that these letters are not at the present day very agreeable reading. What our grandfathers and grandmothers thought of them it is not so easy to say. But it now seems clear that Lady Mary was that most miserable of human beings, an ambitious and wasted woman; that she brought a very cultivated intellect into a very cultivated society; that she gave to that society what it was most anxious to receive, and received from it all which it had to bestow;—and yet that this all was to her as nothing. The high intellectual world of England has never been so compact, so visible in a certain sense, so enjoyable, as it was in her time. She had a mind to understand it, beauty to adorn it, and wit to amuse it; but she chose to pass a great part of her life in exile, and returned at last to die at home among a new generation, whose name she hardly knew, and to whom she herself was but a spectacle and a wonder.

Lady Mary Pierrepont—for that was by birth her name—belonged to a family which had a traditional reputation for ability and cultivation. The _Memoirs of Lucy Hutchinson_—(almost the only legacy that remains to us from the first generation of refined Puritans, the only book, at any rate, which effectually brings home to us how different they were in taste and in temper from their more vulgar and feeble successors)—contains a curious panegyric on _wise William_ Pierrepont, to whom the Parliamentary party resorted as an oracle of judgment, and whom Cromwell himself, if tradition may be trusted, at times condescended to consult and court. He did not, however, transmit much of his discretion to his grandson, Lady Mary’s father. This nobleman, for he inherited from an elder branch of the family both the marquisate of Dorchester and the dukedom of Kingston, was a mere man ‘about town,’ as the homely phrase then went, who passed a long life of fashionable idleness interspersed with political intrigue, and who signalised his old age by marrying a young beauty of fewer years than his youngest daughter, who, as he very likely knew, cared nothing for him and much for another person. He had the ‘grand air,’ however, and he expected his children, when he visited them, to kneel down immediately and ask his blessing, which, if his character was what is said, must have been _very_ valuable. The only attention he ever (that we know of) bestowed upon Lady Mary was a sort of theatrical outrage, pleasant enough to her at the time, but scarcely in accordance with the educational theories in which we now believe. He was a member of the Kit-Cat, a great Whig club, the Brooks’s of Queen Anne’s time, which, like Brooks’s, appears not to have been purely political, but to have found time for occasional relaxation and for somewhat unbusiness-like discussions. They held annually a formal meeting to arrange the female toasts for that year; and we are told that a whim seized her father to nominate Lady Mary, ‘then not eight years old, a candidate; alleging that she was far prettier than any lady on their list.’ The other members demurred, because the rules of the club forbade them to elect a beauty whom they had never seen. ‘Then you shall see her,’ cried he; and in the gaiety of the moment sent orders home to have her finely dressed and brought to him at the tavern, where she was received with acclamations, her claim unanimously allowed, her health drunk by every one present, and her name engraved in due form upon a drinking-glass. The company consisting of some of the most eminent men in England, she went from the lap of one poet, or patriot, or statesman, to the arms of another, was feasted with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with caresses, and what perhaps already pleased her better than either, heard her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. Pleasure, she said, was too poor a word to express her sensations; they amounted to ecstasy: never again, throughout her whole future life, did she pass so happy a day. Nor, indeed, could she; for the love of admiration, which this scene was calculated to excite or increase, could never again be so fully gratified; there is always some alloying ingredient in the cup, some drawback upon the triumphs, of grown people. Her father carried on the frolic, and we may conclude, confirmed the taste, by having her picture painted for the club-room, that she might be enrolled a regular toast. Perhaps some young ladies of more than eight years old would not much object to have lived in those times. Fathers may be wiser now than they were then, but they rarely make themselves so thoroughly agreeable to their children.

This stimulating education would leave a weak and vain girl still more vain and weak; but it had not that effect on Lady Mary. Vain she probably was, and her father’s boastfulness perhaps made her vainer; but her vanity took an intellectual turn. She read vaguely and widely; she managed to acquire some knowledge—how much is not clear—of Greek and Latin, and certainly learned with sufficient thoroughness French and Italian. She used to say that she had the worst education in the world, and that it was only by the ‘help of an uncommon memory and indefatigable labour’ that she had acquired her remarkable attainments. Her father certainly seems to have been capable of any degree of inattention and neglect; but we should not perhaps credit too entirely all the legends which an old lady recounted to her grandchildren of the intellectual difficulties of her youth.

She seems to have been encouraged by her grandmother, one of the celebrated Evelyn family, whose memory is thus enigmatically but still expressively enshrined in the diary of the author of _Sylva_:—‘Under this date,’ we are informed, ‘of the 2d of July 1649, he records a day spent at Godstone, where Sir John’ (this lady’s father) ‘was on a visit with his daughter;’ and he adds, ‘Mem. The prodigious memory of Sir John of Wilts’s daughter, since married to Mr. W. Pierrepont.’ The lady who was thus formidable in her youth deigned in her old age to write frequently, as we should now say,—to open a ‘regular commerce’ of letters, as was said in that age—with Lady Mary when quite a girl, which she always believed to have been beneficial to her, and probably believed rightly; for she was intelligent enough to comprehend what was said to her, and the old lady had watched many changes in many things.

Her greatest intellectual guide, at least so in after life she used to relate, was Mr. Wortley, whom she afterwards married. ‘When I was young,’ she said, ‘I was a great admirer of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, and that was one of the chief reasons that set me upon the thoughts of stealing the Latin language. Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom I communicated my design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study five or six hours a day for two years in my father’s library; and so got that language, whilst everybody else thought I was reading nothing but novels and romances.’ She perused, however, some fiction also; for she possessed, till her death, the whole library of Mrs. Lennox’s _Female Quixote_, a ponderous series of novels in folio, in one of which she had written, in her fairest youthful hand, the names and characteristic qualities of ‘the beautiful Diana, the volatile Clemene, the melancholy Doris, Celadon the faithful, Adamas the wise, and so on, forming two columns.’

Of Mr. Wortley’s character it is not difficult, from the materials before us, to decipher the features; he was a slow man, with a taste for quick companions. Swift’s diary to Stella mentions an evening spent over a bottle of old wine with Mr. Wortley and Mr. Addison. Mr. Wortley was a rigid Whig, and Swift’s transition to Toryism soon broke short that friendship. But with Addison he maintained an intimacy which lasted during their joint lives, and survived the marriages of both. With Steele likewise he was upon the closest terms, is said to have written some papers in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_; and the second volume of the former is certainly dedicated to him in affectionate and respectful terms.

Notwithstanding, however, these conspicuous testimonials to high ability, Mr. Wortley was an orderly and dull person. Every letter received by him from his wife during five-and-twenty years of absence, was found, at his death, carefully endorsed with the date of its arrival, and with a _synopsis_ of its contents. ‘He represented,’ we are told, ‘at various times, Huntingdon, Westminster, and Peterborough in Parliament, and appears to have been a member of that class who win respectful attention by sober and business-like qualities; and his name is constantly found in the drier and more formal part of the politics of the time.’ He answered to the description given more recently of a similar person: ‘Is not,’ it was asked, ‘Sir John —— a very methodical person?’ ‘Certainly he is,’ was the reply, ‘he files his invitations to dinner.’ The Wortley papers, according to the description of those who have inspected them, seem to contain the accumulations of similar documents during many years. He hoarded money, however, to more purpose, for he died one of the richest commoners in England; and a considerable part of the now marvellous wealth of the Bute family seems at first to have been derived from him.

Whatever good qualities Addison and Steele discovered in Mr. Wortley, they were certainly not those of a good writer. We have from his pen and from that of Lady Mary a description of the state of English politics during the three first years of George III., and any one who wishes to understand how much readability depends upon good writing would do well to compare the two. Lady Mary’s is a clear and bright description of all the superficial circumstances of the time; Mr. Wortley’s is equally superficial, often unintelligible and always lumbering, and scarcely succeeds in telling us more than that the writer was wholly unsuccessful in all which he tried to do. As to Mr. Wortley’s contributions to the periodicals of his time, we may suspect that the jottings preserved at Loudon are all which he ever wrote of them, and that the style and arrangement were supplied by more skilful writers. Even a county member might furnish headings for the _Saturday Review_. He might say: ‘Trent British vessel—Americans always intrusive—Support Government—Kill all that is necessary.’

What Lady Mary discovered in Mr. Wortley it is easier to say and shorter, for he was very handsome. If his portrait can be trusted, there was a placid and business-like repose about him, which might easily be attractive to a rather excitable and wild young lady, especially when combined with imposing features and a quiet sweet expression. He attended _to her_ also. When she was a girl of fourteen, he met her at a party, and evinced his admiration. And a little while later, it is not difficult to fancy that a literary young lady might be much pleased with a good-looking gentleman not uncomfortably older than herself, yet having a place in the world, and well known to the literary men of the age. He was acquainted with the classics too, or was supposed to be so; and whether it was a consequence of or a preliminary to their affections, Lady Mary wished to know the classics also.

Bishop Burnet was so kind as to superintend the singular studies—for such they were clearly thought—of this aristocratic young lady; and the translation of the _Enchiridion_ of Epictetus, which he revised, is printed in this edition of her works. But even so grave an undertaking could not wholly withdraw her from more congenial pursuits. She commenced a correspondence with Miss Wortley, Mr. Wortley’s unmarried sister, which still remains, though Miss Wortley’s letters are hardly to be called hers, for her brother composed, and she merely copied them. The correspondence is scarcely in the sort of English or in the tone which young ladies, we understand, now use.

‘It is as impossible,’ says Miss Wortley, ‘for my dearest
Lady Mary to utter thought that can seem dull as to put on a
look that is not beautiful. Want of wit is a fault that those
who envy you most would not be able to find in your kind
compliments. To me they seem perfect, since repeated assurances
of your kindness forbid me to question their sincerity. You
have often found that the most angry, nay, the most neglectful
air you can assume, has made as deep a wound as the kindest;
and these lines of yours, that you tax with dulness (perhaps
because they were writ when you was not in a right humour,
or when your thoughts were elsewhere employed), are so far
from deserving the imputation, that the very turn of your
expression, had I forgot the rest of your charms, would be
sufficient to make me lament the only fault you have—your
inconstancy.’

To which the reply is:

‘I am infinitely obliged to you, my dear Mrs. Wortley, for the
wit, beauty, and other fine qualities, you so generously bestow
upon me. Next to receiving them from Heaven, you are the person
from whom I would choose to receive gifts and graces: I am very
well satisfied to owe them to your own delicacy of imagination,
which represents to you the idea of a fine lady, and you have
good nature enough to fancy I am she. All this is mighty well,
but you do not stop there; imagination is boundless. After
giving me imaginary wit and beauty, you give me imaginary
passions, and you tell me I’m in love: if I am, ’tis a perfect
sin of ignorance, for I don’t so much as know the man’s name:
I have been studying these three hours, and cannot guess who
you mean. I passed the days of Nottingham races [at] Thoresby
without seeing, or even wishing to see, one of the sex. Now,
if I am in love, I have very hard fortune to conceal it so
industriously from my own knowledge, and yet discover it so
much to other people. ’Tis against all form to have such a
passion as that, without giving one sigh for the matter. Pray
tell me the name of him I love, that I may (according to
the laudable custom of lovers) sigh to the woods and groves
hereabouts, and teach it to the echo.’

After some time Miss Wortley unfortunately died, and there was an obvious difficulty in continuing the correspondence without the aid of an appropriate sisterly screen. Mr. Wortley seems to have been tranquil and condescending; perhaps he thought placid tactics would be most effective, for Lady Mary was not so calm. He sent her some _Tatlers_, and received, by way of thanks, the following tolerably encouraging letter:

‘_To Mr. Wortley Montagu._

‘I am surprised at one of the _Tatlers_ you send me; is it
possible to have any sort of esteem for a person one believes
capable of having such trifling inclinations? Mr. Bickerstaff
has very wrong notions of our sex. I can say there are some
of us that despise charms of show, and all the pageantry of
greatness, perhaps with more ease than any of the philosophers.
In contemning the world, they seem to take pains to contemn
it; we despise it, without taking the pains to read lessons
of morality to make us do it. At least I know I have always
looked upon it with contempt, without being at the expense of
one serious reflection to oblige me to it. I carry the matter
yet farther; was I to choose of two thousand pounds a year
or twenty thousand, the first would be my choice. There is
something of an unavoidable _embarras_ in making what is called
a great figure in the world; [it] takes off from the happiness
of life; I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great
estates and titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought
only to be given to fools, for ’tis only to them that they are
blessings. The pretty fellows you speak of, I own entertain
me sometimes; but is it impossible to be diverted with what
one despises? I can laugh at a puppet-show; at the same time
I know there is nothing in it worth my attention or regard.
General notions are generally wrong. Ignorance and folly are
thought the best foundations for virtue, as if not knowing
what a good wife is was necessary to make one so. I confess
that can never be my way of reasoning; as I always forgive an
_injury_ when I think it not done out of malice, I can never
think myself _obliged_ by what is done without design. Give
me leave to say it (I know it sounds vain), I know how to
make a man of sense happy; but then that man must resolve to
contribute something towards it himself. I have so much esteem
for you, I should be very sorry to hear you was unhappy; but
for the world I would not be the instrument of making you so;
which (of the humour you are) is hardly to be avoided if I am
your wife. You distrust me—I can neither be easy, nor loved,
where I am distrusted. Nor do I believe your passion for me is
what you pretend it; at least I am sure was I in love I could
not talk as you do. Few women would have spoke so plainly as
I have done; but to dissemble is among the things I never do.
I take more pains to approve my conduct to myself than to
the world; and would not have to accuse myself of a minute’s
deceit. I wish I loved you enough to devote myself to be for
ever miserable, for the pleasure of a day or two’s happiness. I
cannot resolve upon it. You must think otherwise of me, or not
all.

‘I don’t enjoin you to burn this letter. I know you will. ’Tis
the first I ever writ to one of your sex, and shall be the
last. You must never expect another. I resolve against all
correspondence of the kind; my resolutions are seldom made, and
never broken.’