gain'd Milton presents the foiling of temptation as the cause of man's restoration. The death of Christ would have been a less fitting counterpart to the earlier poem and could hardly have been made the subject of an epic. In the theme of Paradise Lost there is unity, but not simplicity. Milton's taste, growing ever simpler, preferred Paradise Regain'd, because its theme has simplicity as well as unity. But this simplicity is not attained without cost. The wilderness, the scene of the temptation, is no equivalent to Heaven and Hell and Paradise, nor can it provide the poet with the sublimity of sense and sound which fitted the scenery of Paradise Lost. It fits better with such simple pictures as that of an old man, Following, as seem'd, the quest of some stray Ewe, Or wither'd sticks to gather; which might serve To warm him wet return'd from field at Eve. (I. 315 et seq.) In so far as the subject of Paradise Lost is the eternal conflict between good and evil, the later poem is a repetition of the theme and shows the truth of the old Greek proverb that "twice is impossible." Milton's additions to the Biblical story are not happy. The temptation to hunger appears twice, and there is a false note in the apparatus of the second, A Table, richly spred, in regal mode, With dishes pil'd, and meats of noblest sort The second temptation, the appeal to ambition, takes several forms and makes the soundest part of the poem. The third is so slightly treated that the poet may be taken not to have understood it. "Samson Agonistes."-For his last poem Milton took a hero whose physical affliction was the same as his own. More than this, the case of Samson Agonistes was as the case of Milton and the cause for which he had lived. Puritanism was fallen from power but not wholly from hope. It might still save its life, though by no other way than by losing it. If it be true that whatsoever was noblest in Puritanism has passed into modern English life, Milton was justified in his confidence, but at the moment he could not express it except in an allegorical form. His allegory takes the shape of a drama which essays to follow the lines of the Attic tragedians. Samson, a prisoner at Gaza, and deeply ashamed of the weakness that has ruined him, is visited by a company of his countrymen, who form the chorus, and by his father, who desires to ransom him. Samson himself feels that death were a better end to his sufferings and his disgrace. Confronted with his traitress wife Dalila and the giant Harapha, an Æschylean type of brainless strength, he shows that he is morally greater than in the day of his triumphs. Summoned to make sport for the Philistines he at first refuses, but afterwards, conscious that his strength was come back to him and that by going he might get the chance of doing "some great act," he consents. It is left to the messenger to describe how by destroying the temple and the worshippers he vindicates the cause of Jehovah against Dagon. And Manoah, in his final speech, seems to utter the poet's own fierce hope of the ultimate triumph of national righteousness. Come, come; no time for lamentation now, Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself A life heroic, on his enemies Fully revenged-hath left them years of mourning. . With God not parted from him, as was feared, But favouring and assisting to the end : Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt, SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST Texts.-MILTON, JOHN: Poetical Works, ed. H. C. Beeching (Clarendon Press, 1900); ed. D. Massor. (3 vols., Macmillan, 1890); Prose Works (5 vols., Bell). Studies.-MASSON, DAVID: Life of Milton (6 vols., Macmillan, 1873-80).-PATTISON, MARK: Milton (English Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1879).-GARNETT, R.: Milton (Great Writers, W. Scott, 1890). -BAILEY, JOHN: Milton (Home University Library, Williams & Norgate, 1913).-BRIDGES, R.: Milton's Prosody (Clarendon Press, rev. ed., 1921).—Raleigh, W.: Milton (Arnold, 1900).-NEWBOLT, Sir HENRY: A New Study of English Poetry (Constable, 1917). CHAPTER 3. THE LATER WRITERS OF GREAT PROSE The Character-writers and Early Essayists-Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy-Milton's THE CHARACTER-WRITERS Milton, Sir Thomas Browne, and Jeremy Taylor, with whose works the great old prose came to a magnificent end, were preceded by a number of writers who in form and style have closer affinities to the essayists, journalists, and even the novelists of a later era. BISHOP HALL (1574-1656).—Joseph Hall's Characters of Virtues and Vices (1608) was published the same year as Dekker's Belman of London, and a year before The Guls Hornboke. There are character-drawing, portraiture of manners, and moralization in both writers; but the learned Hall composed his work on a much more formal plan than that of the pamphleteer. The future Bishop of Exeter and Norwich had published his Juvenalian satire Virgidemiarum in 1597, giving in rhyme portraits of moral and immoral types of the same kind as his later prose characters. Another satire, Mundus Alter et Idem (1605), was in Latin. He now adopted the plan of Theophrastus, merely entitling his essays "Of the Humble Man" or " Of a Valiant Man," instead of the names of personal qualities used by the Lesbian philosopher. Of an honest man he says: He looks not to what he might do, but what he should. Justice is his first guide, the second law of his actions is expedience. He had rather complain than offend, and hates sin more for the indignity of it than the danger. His simple uprightness works in him that confidence which ofttimes wrongs him, and gives advantage to the subtle, when he rather pities their faithlessness than repents of his credulity. He hath but one heart, and that lies open to sight; and were it not for discretion, he never thinks aught whereof he would avoid a witness. The resemblance to Bacon's aphoristic style in the Essays is patent, but in place of detached thoughts and abrupt transitions, there is an orderly sequence, if nothing to compare with Bacon's flashes of insight and radiating wisdom. The piquancy of the satirist is, of course, better seen in the characterisations of vices, as of ambition, which is a proud covetousness, a dry thirst of honour, the longing disease of reason, an aspiring and gallant madness. The ambitious climbs up high and perilous stairs, and never cares how to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up his fear of a fall. SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.-Less academical, not less pungent, and far more homely in flavour are the Characters of Sir Thomas Overbury, published in 1614, a year after his death, but very likely written before those of Hall. The original edition contained twenty-one characters, "written by himselfe and other learned Gentlemen his Friends"; and as the collection grew in successive editions, the existence of a coterie interested in ethical questions and culture is clearly revealed. The Overbury character is not, however, limited to the moral or immoral type. Among the best portraits are those of an ostler, an host, a serving-man, a braggadocio Welshman, and this short one, "A Pedant": He treads in a rule, and one hand scans verses, and the other holds his sceptre. He dares not think a thought that the nominative case governs not the verb; and he never had meaning in his life, for he travelled only for words. His ambition is criticism, and his example Tully. He values phrases, and elects them by the sound, and the eight parts of speech are his servants. To be brief, he is a Heteroclite, for he wants the plural number, having only the single quality of words. The more personal Overbury touch is seen best in longer characters, like "An Ordinary Widow," who "is like the herald's hearse-cloth; she serves to many funerals, with a very little altering the colour," or "A Very Woman": A dough-baked man, or a She meant well towards man, but fell two bows short, strength and understanding. Her virtue is the hedge, modesty, that keeps a man from climbing over into her faults. She simpers as if she had no teeth but lips; and she divides her eyes, and keeps half for herself, and gives the other to her neat youth. A good pendant to this is "A Good Woman," or the charming "Fair and Happy Milkmaid," the ending of which is quoted in a well-known passage of Walton's Compleat Angler: Thus lives she, and all her care is that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet. JOHN EARLE, BRETON, CLEVELAND, AND BUTLER.-There were numerous books of Characters after Hall and Overbury, some in the one style, some in the other. In the philosophic manner of Hall were the portraits by John Earle (and perhaps others) in Microcosmographie, or a Piece of the World discovered (1628). Earle is sober and serious. A contemplative man is a scholar in this great university the world; and the same his book and study. He cloisters not his meditations in the narrow darkness of a room, but sends them abroad with his eyes, and his brain travels with his feet. Earle's humour is not very biting. A surgeon differs from a physician as a sore does from a disease, or the sick from those that are not whole, the one distempers you within, the other blisters you without. He complains of the decay of valour in these days, and sighs for that slashing age of sword and buckler; and thinks the law against duels was made merely to wound his vocation. Nicholas Breton, in the dedication to Sir Francis Bacon of his Characters upon Essays, Moral and Divine (1615), had the critical insight to point out that characterwriting was but an imitation or development of what Bacon had done in the Essays; and in a second book, The Good and the Bad (1616), described "the worthies and unworthies of this age" in a conceited style as affected as that of Euphues. The popularity of the form is evinced by the number of anonymous collections, like Micrologia, by R. M. (1618), Whimzies (1631), and The Times Anatomized, by T. F. (1646). Samuel Butler's "Characters."-In the strife of King and Parliament, the character-essay became polemical. It is this in the hands of John Cleveland, and more brilliantly so in those of the author of Hudibras. Samuel Butler was as trenchant in his prose portraits as in his verse. "A degenerate noble" "is like a turnip, there is nothing good of him but that which is underground." "A Newsmonger is a retailer of rumour that takes up upon trust and sells as cheap as he buys. He deals in a perishable commodity that will not keep; for if it be not fresh it lies upon his hands and will yield nothing. True or false is all one to him; for novelty being the grace of both, a truth grows stale as soon as a lie; and as a slight suit will last as well as a better while the fashion holds, a lie serves as well as truth till new ones come up. ESSAYISTS Felltham's "Resolves," Ben Jonson's "Discoveries."-The Baconian essay was the model of Owen Felltham's Resolves (c. 1620), desultory moral reflections of a not very striking order quaintly expressed. Ben Jonson's Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter (1641) is a cross of the same breed with the mere commonplace-book, the idea of nearly every essay or casual jotting being taken and amplified from some well-known authority, especially the later classical authors. Here is one of the shorter variety: Natura non effœta.-I cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed, that she can bring forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like herself; and when she collects her strength, is abler still. Men are decayed, and studies: she is not. Selden's “Table-Talk.”—With the essay may also be affiliated such a miscellany as Table-talk, being the Discourses of John Selden, collected after Selden's death in 1654. The learning, the breadth of mind, and the gravity of the great jurist make these disconnected utterances as well worth pondering as many that are expressed with more fascination of phrasing. These are favourable examples: Question.-When a doubt is propounded, you must learn to distinguish, and show wherein a thing holds, and wherein it does not hold. Ay, or no, never answer'd any Question. The not distinguishing where things should be distinguish'd, and the not confounding where things should be confounded, is the cause of all the mistakes in the World. King of England.-1. The King can do no wrong, that is no Process can be granted against him, what must be done then? Petition him, and the King writes upon the Petition Soit droit fait, and sends it to the Chancery, and then the business is heard. His Confessor will not tell him he can do no wrong. 8 a (2,352) |