Page images
PDF
EPUB

he laid aside his chosen work to serve the political needs of his country. When peace was restored he had paid the price of that service by losing his eyesight. Nevertheless he returned to the work he had chosen long years before. So Paradise Lost is not only one of the world's great poems, not only one of the indestructible glories of English Literature, but it remains to show how a man under crowding difficulties and heavy calamities can, if, as Beowulf said, "his courage holds," carry out a great purpose, planned when outward circumstances seemed more propitious.

It is not possible to show by extracts the real magnificence of Paradise Lost. But certain points can be brought out so. First, we can see Milton's supreme gift for using language to paint a picture as vivid to our imagination as a coloured canvas is to our eyes. It would be difficult to surpass his description of Pandemonium when it rose, out of dark nothingness, " like a mist":

Anon, out of the earth a fabric huge

Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculpture grav'n,
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon
Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
Equall'd in all their glories, to enshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat
Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile
Stood fixt her stately highth, and straight the doors
Op'ning their brazen folds discover wide
Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth
And level pavement: from the archèd roof
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps, and blazing cressets fed
With naphtha and asphaltus yielded light
As from a sky.

This is a typical instance of Milton's literary magnificence, issuing not only from his imagination, but from his knowledge, borrowed from those who had seen them, of the opulent glories of the East, and his choice of rich and sounding words drawn from Greek and Latin. As a contrast, and as an example of his characteristically English and enduring love of beautiful country, we may take some lines descriptive of the Eden-bower of Adam and Eve, in that Eden where

universal Pan

Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance
Led on th' Eternal Spring,

which he here described in a passage which recalls a famous painting of Sandro Botticelli. There is, perhaps, no more delicate picture in Paradise Lost than this:

the roof

Of thickest covert was inwoven shade,

Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of fine and fragrant leaf; on either side
Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub
Fenc'd up the verdant wall: each beauteous flow'r,
Iris all hues, roses and jessamine

Reared high their flourisht heads between and wrought
Mosaic: under foot the violet,

Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay

Broider'd the ground, more coloured than with stone
Of costliest emblem.1

His perfect description of nightfall must not be forgotten:

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied beast and bird,

They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleas'd: now glowed the firmament,
With living sapphires: Hesperus that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon
Rising in clouded majesty at length
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

1 i.e., an inlaid floor, the meaning of the Latin word emblema.

His love of natural beauty and of country life never deserted him. Even in one of his political pamphlets, when he was repelling an unjust attack on his personal character, he wrote that he was up and stirring in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour or devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier."

In L'Allegro he wrote this appeal:

Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

[blocks in formation]

Sometime walking not unseen
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great Sun begins his state,
Rob'd in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight.
While the plowman near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe
And the mower whets his sithe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Such was his attitude when he was a young man of about twenty-five; and such it was when, blind from hard work and almost sixty, he wrote his beautiful description of the First Garden of the World.

He could not only paint pictures of natural loveliness, but he could draw unforgettable portraits. Here is his description of Satan:

he above the rest

In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tow'r; his form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruined.

[blocks in formation]

Deep scars of thunder had intrencht, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge.

From the Council of the Lost Angels, I will take two other portraits: first, Belial's-wily, cunning adviser whose outwardly beautiful appearance and fair speech were no true index to his character:

On the other side uprose

Belial, in act more graceful and humane;
A fairer person lost not Heav'n; he seem'd
For dignity compos'd and high exploit;
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels; for his thoughts were low;
To vice industrious, but to noble deeds
Timorous and slothful; yet he pleas'd the ear.

The other is the greatest portrait of the three, that of Satan's principal counsellor, Beelzebub. When we remember that England had just suffered all the turmoil of Civil War, which sundered men, whether good or bad, who might in peaceful times have been friends, and had brought them not only into conflict but into close observation of each other's motives and actions, we wonder whether, in drawing these characters, Milton may not have had some of the great English public men in his mind. Anyhow, Beelzebub is so real and vivid that it is difficult to believe that he was not, in some measure, drawn from life:

Beelzebub... than whom,

Satan except, none higher sat, with grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd
A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care;

And princely counsel on his face yet shone,
Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer's noontide air.

S. Raphael, "the sociable spirit," Milton draws from

an outside point of view:

He stood

Veil'd with his gorgeous wings, up springing light

Flew through the midst of Heav'n.

From hence, no cloud, or, to obstruct his sight,

Star interpos'd, however small he sees,

[blocks in formation]

Earth and the gard'n of God, with cedars crown'd
Above all hills.

Down thither prone in flight

He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky
Sails between worlds and worlds.

on th' eastern cliff of Paradise

He lights, and to his proper shape returns
A seraph wing'd; six wings he wore, to shade
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast,
With regal ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold
And colours dipt in Heav'n; the third his feet
Shadow'd from either heel with feathered mail,
Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's1 son he stood.

Milton's accounts of the lost Angels are more full of life and fire than any others: this picture of S. Raphael's personal beauty stands midway between their vigour and the tamer descriptions of Adam and Eve, with their rather "schoolmastery" atmosphere of Milton's view of the relations between men and women. Compared with the slight but so human picture in Genesis, these lines are cold and remote:

For contemplation he and valour form'd,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him:
His fair large front and eye sublime declar'd
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clust'ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She as a veil down to the slender waist

1 Maia, the mother of Mercury, messenger of the gods, was the most brilliant of the seven starry sisters in the constellation Pleiades.

« PreviousContinue »