be furnished with only two necessaries, leisure and belief, whether it be the writer or he that reads."1 Besides, as Milton with his growing Puritanism looked askance even at fictions, "where more is meant than meets the ear," and with austerer veracity demanded the truth and nothing but the truth; as with maturing genius, he discarded allegory, which is usually the hybrid birth of poetry and prose; so the circumstances of the community and of himself turned his eyes on what he considered the well-vouched narrative of man's religion. This was a subject that came home to the heart of all the nation as nothing in the authentic or invented history of the realm could do. The scriptural record was felt by almost all his countrymen to be the surest of truths, divinely inspired and divinely preserved. And, not in parable but in fact, it had the most momentous spiritual significance that the devoutest poet could require. Beyond it he need not and would not go. In certainty and dignity it was far ahead of any other imaginative subject. And in this spirit he reviews his youthful fancies and finds them immeasurably below his present enterprise. The story of the Fall is not less but more heroic than any of ancient song ; "If answerable style I can obtain Of my celestial Patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse, Since first this subject of heroic song Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late, 1 History of Britain, Bk. III. Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabled knights Unsung), or to describe the races and the games, Not that which justly gives heroic name To person or to poem! Me, of these Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument Remains." 1 Scott looks back wistfully on the lower argument that was rejected, and exclaims: "What we have lost in his abandoning the theme can only be estimated by the enthusiastic tone into which he always swells, when he touches on the 'Shores of old Romance.' The sublime glow of his imagination which delighted in painting what was beyond the reach of human experience; the dignity of his language, formed to express the sentiments of heroes and immortals; his powers of describing alike the beautiful and terrible; above all, the justice with which he conceived and assigned to each supernatural agent a character as decidedly peculiar as lesser poets have given to their human actors, would have sent him forth to encounter such a subject with gigantic might. Whoever has ventured, undeterred by their magnitude, upon the old ro 1 Paradise Lost, IX. 20. mances of Sir Lancelot du Lac, Sir Tristrem, and others, founded on the achievements of the knights of the Round Table, cannot but remember a thousand striking Gothic incidents worthy of the pen of Milton. What would he not have made of the adventure of the Ruinous Chapel, the Perilous Manor, the Forbidden Seat, the Dolorous Wound, and many other susceptible of being described in the most sublime poetry?" 1 All this is very true, and Scott has sympathetically enumerated the points in which Arthurian fiction and Milton's genius would have had affinities with each other. But it is only in isolated points that they coincide; in essence they are widely different; and Milton doubtless obeyed a true instinct when he swerved aside from figurative romance or fabulous heroic to pursue his " heavenly theme." In the religious narrative he felt that he could give direct expression to the deepest interests of himself and his fellows, and do this with the most rigorous observance of truth. 1Scott's Dryden, Introduction to King Arthur. K CHAPTER II FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ILTON had sought for truth of fact in the story of Arthur, and had not found it. It suited the positive spirit of the next generation, also, to require an historical basis for an epic poem; but the demands for vérity were less highly pitched in a poet of the Restoration than in the poet of the Puritan Revolution. A little authority could go a long way. It need not, therefore, surprise us to find Dryden thinking of what might at first seem the uncongenial story of Arthur as the subject of a national heroic. The composition of an epic, he says, "I had intended chiefly for the honour of my native country, to which a poet is particularly obliged. Of two subjects both relating to it, I was doubtful whether I should choose that of King Arthur conquering the Saxons, which being further distant in time gives the greater scope to my invention, or that of Edward the Black Prince in subduing Spain and restoring it to the lawful prince, though a great tyrant, Don Pedro the Cruel."1 It is evident from this equation of "Satire," Scott's Dryden, vol. xiii., page 32. 1 Essay on Arthur with the Black Prince that Dryden, had he carried out his purpose, would have leaned rather on Geoffrey than on Malory, rather on pseudo-history than on genuine romance, and would have aimed chiefly at the glorification of national prowess. Noticeable too is the selection, not of Prince Edward's achievements in France, but of his Spanish campaign, which resulted in the restoration of “a great tyrant," though "the lawful prince "an escape of Restoration legitimacy which seems to show that Dryden would have laid less stress on the wider ideal significance of his subject than on the temporary political reference;1 but so treated, Arthurian legend would have been apt to lose all its typical characteristics. And of this there is further evidence. The alternative of Arthur he seems to prefer as giving "greater scope to his invention." Such free additions of the imagination may harmonise with the traditional story, or they may not. In the case of Dryden they hardly would have done so. In that age machinery" was imperatively demanded for an epic, but exception was taken against mythology and superstitions discarded by the Christian world, and therefore beyond the pale of ordinary belief. Dryden proposed to get out of the difficulty by introducing "the guardian angels of kingdoms," mentioned in the book of Daniel, and the idea does credit to his ingenuity. how ill could But 1 In the same way, though he dwells on "the magnanimity of the English hero, opposed to the ingratitude of the person he restored," he talks of "the greatness of the action and its answerable event," i.e. a legitimist restoration. |