Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

inveterate they must have been taken up early in life from some passion, and have grown with his growth. He never ridded himself of the impressions he imbibed from Lander: his hatred, however, was partly political. I know not what made him so bigoted and blind a partisan: his birth and station will not account for it;-probably it was imbibed jacobitism. But there was something adverse in the native structure of the minds of these two celebrated men: if Johnson had genius, it was quite dissimilar to that of Milton: it was solely argumentative: he had no inventive imagination: he saw no phantoms but the gloomy phantoms of superstition: he had no chivalrous enthusiasm: he delighted not to gaze on feudal halls, or "throngs of knights and barons bold:" he thought not of another world; of angels, and heavenly splendour, but as subjects of trembling and painful awe! He turned away from them, except so far as duty enforced his attention: he loved the world, and all its gaieties, and follies, and conflicts.

Could there be a greater contrast to the bard of Paradise Lost' and Paradise Regained?' To him who would decapitate kings, and defy the powers of the earth? To him who would haunt groves and forests, and listen to the lonely blast, and busy himself in deep solitude, and love musing and his own creations, rather than the busy talk of social collision? Him, whose taste is opposed to our own, and from its elevation claims a superiority, we learn first to envy, then to hate,

then to scorn. Till we can persuade ourselves that he is in the wrong, we feel our own degradation. Thus Johnson, when he was grasping at the head seat of the literature of his country, could not bear the memory of one whose dissimilar splendour paled his own; hence his constant detractions, his petty cavils, his malignant perversions.

To dwell on this topic is not idle or irrelevant: Johnson still holds the public ear; and to endeavour to weaken his influence is a duty neither useless nor ungenerous. The more the public studies and admires Milton, the higher will be its taste and grasp of intellect.

As to the Sonnets, if any one can read them without both pleasurable excitation and improvement, he has a sort of mind which it would be vain to attempt to cultivate a barren soil, or one overgrown with weeds and prejudices.

CHAPTER XXVI.

6
ON SAMSON AGONISTES.'

WE come again to fable and invention. 'Samson Agonistes is written after the severe model of the ancient Greek tragedies; but it is not fit for the stage, nor intended for it: the characters are few; it indeed almost approaches to a monologue. Many object to the chorus; but for a dramatic poem it affords many opportunities of noble eloquence. Samson's character is magnificently supported: he is a giant in mind as well as in body his language, though not suited to the effeminate polish of modern ears, is vigorous and majestic.

There is a deep pathos, but unyielding soul, in all the hero utters: the moral reflections are grand, profound, and expansive. The application every where to the poet's own misfortunes and position augments the interest twofold.

Milton, in his preface to this poem, says :"Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore said by

Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions; that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated." &c.

On this Warton makes the following note:"Milton, who was inclined to puritanism, had good reason to think that the publication of his 'Samson Agonistes' would be very offensive to his brethren, who held poetry, and particularly that of the dramatic kind, in the greatest abhorrence and upon that account, it is probable, that in order to excuse himself from having engaged in this proscribed and forbidden species of writing, he thought it expedient to prefix to his play a formal defence of tragedy."

Such defence of what does not require to be defended never makes impression upon bigoted minds. The blind slaves of party are never convinced by reason; they repeat by rote, and cannot be put out of their lesson.

Long speeches on the stage become tedious; but are not so to the intelligent reader: and there is no mode by which an ideal character can be represented with so much effect. A person under the influence of passion can best describe his own feelings: we cannot conceive any thing more heroic than much of what is said by Samson.

In accordance with some celebrated critics, I have no doubt that the third place of excellence

in Milton's works ought to be assigned to 'Samson Agonistes'-placing the 'Paradise Lost' first, and 'Paradise Regained' second. Though 'Comus' is exquisite poetry, it has not so much grandeur and holiness it certainly is more purely imaginative; but then we must consider the compound of the four great essentials; and we must always prefer sublimity to sweetness. To live among the nymphs and dryads is delightful; but moral heroism is more delightful. One is duty; the other is only pleasure.

We are entitled to amuse ourselves by sometimes living in a purely visionary world; but sometimes also we are called upon to perform our part among the human inhabitants of the solid earth and the grandeur of bold enterprise, or patient suffering, has a longer, deeper, and more instructive hold upon the mind, than any simple and unmixed play upon the fancy or the

senses.

The Comus' is the work of a younger man, full of hope, elasticity, and joy: the tragedy is the pouring out of one enriched by the wisdom of age and experience, mellowed by misfortune, and elevated by patience under danger and calumny ;of one "fallen on evil tongues and evil days;' of one resolved to lift himself above sublunary oppression, and rising in grandeur in proportion to the severity of his trials.

[ocr errors]

We muse in this tragedy upon the great bard mingling his ideal inventions with his own personal gloomy recollections and his present sorrows

« AnteriorContinua »