In conclusion, let us take leave of this poem, as of its companion, “Paradise Regained," by recalling two passages typical of its spirit. The first is from a chorus:

66

"O, how comely it is, and how reviving

To the spirits of just men long oppressed,
When God into the hands of their deliverer
Puts invincible might,

To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor,
The brute and boisterous force of violent men,
Hardy and industrious to support

Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue

The righteous, and all such as honor truth!

He all their ammunition

And feats of war defeats,

With plain heroic magnitude of mind

And celestial vigor armed;

Their armories and magazines contemns,

Renders them useless, while

With winged expedition

Swift as the lightning glance he executes
His errand on the wicked, who, surprised,

Lose their defence, distracted and amazed."

Traces of senility are hardly to be discovered in this passage, or in the following, which will serve to illustrate the staple blank verse of the drama:

"But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty –
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty –
And to despise, or envy, or suspect,
Whom God hath of his special favor raised
As their deliverer? If he aught begin,
How frequent to desert him, and at last
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds!"

CHAPTER X

MILTON'S ART

It is quite obvious that a chapter with the above caption is a bold undertaking and one that is doomed from the beginning to partial or complete failure. Even a book would not exhaust the subject of Milton's art, especially in these days when it would be likely to consist in large measure of statistical tables. Then, again, there is practically nothing new to be said about a topic upon which critics great and small have exhausted themselves from the days of Patrick Hume to those of Professor Masson. Yet to close a study such as the present without an attempt to sum up the general artistic powers of the great poet with whom it has dealt, would be to leave the whole undertaking somewhat in the air; a result in which it would be cowardly to acquiesce without a struggle or at least a dignified effort.

But what now do we mean by saying that Milton was a great artist? We may ean many things, but we certainly mean that he was careful in selecting and ordering the materials out of which he composed his works, and that he was particular in joining these materials together and in preparing them for the joining process. To speak more concretely, we mean that he took great pains with his choice and evolution of theme, that he thought out the details of his composition from a logical point of view, and that in addition to this care about the thought-matter of his poems or their substance, he paid great attention to the word-matter, whether from the points of view of diction, syntax, metrical rhythm, or harmony; that is to say, to the form of his poems. This is, of course, a commonplace statement, but the twofold division it contains will furnish us with a good point of departure.

With regard to his choice of materials, Milton, as we have observed, showed the caution that befits the scholar and the man, who, conscious of great powers, is determined to excel supereminently. He was never a hasty writer.

Up to the time of the composition of the “Epitaphium Damonis," i.e. his thirty-second year, he had produced what is, on the whole, a small body of verse for a poet so gifted, and had for a considerable portion of it relied upon external stimulation to production rather than upon inward prompting. In other words, if Lawes had not been Milton's friend and if King had not died, the minor poems would not now be preferred by some critics to "Paradise Lost." During the twenty years of prose writing, computing roughly, external stimulation was again the rule, as is evidenced both by the pamphlets and by the sonnets. "Paradise Lost" is the first important work representing Milton's own creative impulse, and “Samson Agonistes is the second, for Ellwood suggested "Paradise Regained" and the theological, historical, and grammatical treatises are hardly to be considered in this connection.

As we have seen and as it has been frequently shown for the past two hundred years, Milton brought to bear on each subject, whether chosen by himself or not, the full weight of his learning and the full force of his conscience.