186-191. These eight lines are in ottava rima, a favorite form of versification with Byron. uncouth swain the poet himself, — a depreciatory touch. Perhaps also in various and eager we have a half-apology for the mixture of styles in this poem. Doric lay; Theocritus wrote in the Doric dialect. See note on Lydian airs,' L'Allegro, 135-152. blue; the conventional color for a shepherd's dress. The last line is interpreted by some to mean that Milton intended to write no more occasional verse but to return to his serious studies. Others see in it a reference to his approaching journey to Italy. Perhaps you have found this a difficult poem. Has it convinced you that he who would become a thorough scholar in the department of English Literature, must base his studies upon a broad foundation of Greek and Latin Literature? Would a knowledge of Old English serve your purpose as well? ON SHAKESPEARE. This little poem with commendatory verses by other hands, was prefixed to the 1632 folio of Shakespeare. It is there called 'An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare.' It is certainly an astonishing performance for a young man of twenty-two and contains at least one immortal line. Which is that? 1-6. What; for this use of what compare, Tennyson's Passing of Arthur, 418 and 420 (p. 301 of this book): For what are men better than sheep or goats If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer? Delphic star-ypointing; see notes on L'Allegro, 11–16. 7-16. unvalued - not to be valued, inestimable. inspired. At Delphi, in Phocis, was a famous oracle of Apollo. Cl. Myths, p. 420. In lines 13-14, the metaphor is so far-fetched that it may fairly be called a conceit. The interpretation seems to be that Shakespeare, by the power and beauty of his thought (conceiving) exalts us to a state of wrapt and silent attention wherein the creations of the imagination (fancy) become realities to us. Such conceits were popular when Milton wrote these lines; they abound in the works of Donne (d. 1631) who was actually considered a great poet in his day. INTRODUCTION TO THE SONNETS. The Sonnet is an Italian form of versification that appeared for the first time in England in Tottel's Miscellany, 1557. The poems there called Sonnets are extremely crude in construction; the so-called 'Sonnets' of Shakespeare are strictly speaking not Sonnets at all; Milton is the first English writer in whom the form of the Sonnet approaches the type set by the best Italian writers. The following are the principal Rules of the Sonnet deduced from their usage. 1o, The Sonnet must contain fourteen lines of five accents each. 2o, Lines 1-8 must form two quatrains with only two rimes, arranged according to the following scheme: a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a. 3o, Lines 9-14 must contain two tercets with either two rimes or three. The tercets must not reproduce the rimes of the quatrains. 4o, The two last lines must not rime. (This rule is not strictly observed by Milton or by Wordsworth). These rules, in spite of their appearance of artificiality, are really grounded upon common sense. The following brief suggestions may start you along a line of thought that you can profitably follow up for yourself. 1o, "The limit of the Sonnet is imposed by the average duration of an emotional mood." (Pattison). 2o & 3o, The division into quatrains and tercets is based upon the law of effect by contrast. 4o, The Sonnet as a whole being intended to express one thought or feeling must adopt a metrical form that will carry the thought smoothly and continuously to the end. If the two last lines rime, they seem to stand out separated from the body of the poem. Notice this in the Sonnet to Cromwell, (p. 16); how inferior is the effect of this ending to that in Keats' Sonnet on Homer (p. 171) or to that in Wordsworth's Sonnet to Milton (p. 210)! ON HIS HAVING ARRIVED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE. This Sonnet was sent to a friend who had urged Milton to lead a more 'practical' life and become a clergyman at once. But Milton was wiser than his friend. He felt that the will of Heaven had destined him to be a poet. Through long years of distracting conflict he never abandoned this purpose; the result was Paradise Lost. sheweth. This is not a faulty rime, since this word, though now commonly spelled and pronounced show, in Milton's day was commonly spelled and pronounced as here. Both forms occur in his poems, but shew much oftener than show. The etymology (Middle English shewen') decides that shew is the older form. my semblance; Milton had a remarkably beautiful and youthful face. At college he was nick-named 'The Lady of Christ's.' 6 TO THE LORD GENERAL CROMWELL. The 'certain ministers' were John Owen and other Independents who desired State-support for the clergy. The 'Committee for Propagation of the Gospel' was a Committee of the Rump Parliament who had charge of ecclesiastical affairs. Milton's lines are both a general plea for religious freedom and a special appeal to Cromwell to 'Save us from our friends!' This the Lord General did very effectively ten months later by calling in his troopers to expel the Rump. The members departed so little regretted, he declares, that not even a dog barked as they left the place. Darwen the neck of crowned Fortune. A biblical metaphor; Genesis XLIX. S. trophies; a word with an interesting etymology. What do you think of trophies reared on a neck? stream; near Preston in Lancashire where Cromwell defeated the Scotch under the Duke of Hamilton, August, 1648. Dunbar; Worcester; Cromwellian victories, Sept. 3, 1650, and Sept. 3, 1651. For a vivid picture of Dunbar fight see Carlyle's Cromwell, Letters 139-146; for Worcester, Letters 182-183. new foes; Owen and his associates, as distinguished from the old foes, Presbyterians, who had been long committed to the policy of an established church. What is the famous line in this Sonnet? ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT. In 1655 the Duke of Savoy had attempted by force to convert some of his Protestant subjects to Catholicism. As Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth it was Milton's duty to draft the letter of remonstrance sent to the Duke on this occasion by Cromwell. In that document, diplomatic courtesy restrained him from giving vent to the grievous indignation which, in this Sonnet, bursts forth like a bright and consuming fire. The leading thought in this Sonnet is as old as Tertullian, the imagery is trite, the diction is of the utmost simplicity; yet so great was this man's soul and so deep the passion he has put into these few lines, that after the lapse of nearly two centuries and a half he makes us feel the shock of strong emotion that swept over him when he heard of the cruel deeds of the "bloody Piedmontese." Consult your English History for the parts played by Cromwell and Mazarin in this affair. Alpine mountains cold. This phrase is from Fairfax's Tasso, XIII. 60. Into the valleys greene Distilled from tops of Alpine mountains cold. of old. The form of Christianity professed by the Waldenses antedated the 16th Century Reformation. stocks and stones. The Puritans regarded Roman Catholicism as a species of idolatry. The incident referred to in lines 7-8 is illustrated by a cut in a book published in 1658 by Sir William Moreland, Cromwell's Agent at Geneva. The triple tyrant, meaning the Pope, so called from his tiara or triple crown. See Brewer, article Tiara.' Babylonian woe. Rome was looked upon by the Puritans as the Babylon of Revelation XVII. and XVIII. ON HIS BLINDNESS. The year in which Milton became totally blind is not known with certainty. It was probably about 1652, since in that year he was allowed an Assistant Secretary. As he explains in the next Sonnet, loss of eyesight was hastened by his labor upon his Defense of the English People against Salmasius. talent; Matthew XXV. 14-30. thousands at his bidding speed. We have the same thought in Par. Lost, IV. 677-8. Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. Compare also the Te Deum, 2-3. All the earth doth worship thee. To thee all Angels cry aloud; the Heavens and all the Powers therein. post. This word is a bit of fossil history; it will repay you to dig it out. They also serve who only stand and wait; a beautiful expression of a beautiful thought that has brought consolation to thousands of weary souls. TO CYRIACK SKINNER. this Skinner had been a pupil of Milton's and at the date of this Sonnet (probably 1655) was a lawyer of some prominence. three years' day. We have a similar phrase in 2 Henry VI. ii. 1; 'these seven years' day.' rings; the Cambridge MS. reads 'talks' which is so much feebler, that Pattison is almost the only editor who retains it. With the magnificent courage of this Sonnet compare the pathetic resignation of Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, Of the six short poems of Milton here given, you will do well to commit to memory the lines On Shakespeare, On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three, and either the Sonnet On His Blindness or To Cyriack Skinner. From these, you cannot fail to learn that Nobility of Thought goes hand-in-hand with Simplicity of Expression and that the highest poetic effects are based upon Sincerity. INTRODUCTION TO DRYDEN AND POPE. DURING the thirty-eight years which elapsed between Milton's Sonnet to Skinner and Dryden's Epistle to Congreve, a great change came over the spirit of English literature. Even before the outbreak of the Civil War (1642) it was evident that the Romantic movement had almost spent its force, running off into such absurdities and extravagancies that even the prosy Waller was welcomed with relief as the herald of a new age. During the time of Puritan ascendancy (1649-1660), with the exception of an occasional Sonnet from Milton, Literature, suffering in silence, hid her diminished head. When she emerged at the Restoration, she found herself in a new world; a world of Realism to which Idealism was dead, a world on whose map the Forest of Ardennes is undiscoverable, but on which the Mall and the Coffee House are printed in large letters. ་ It has been seriously maintained that the poets of this agesuch great literary artists as Dryden and Pope-are not poets at all. But surely they dwell in a Poetry Land of narrow dimensions who cannot find room in it for the author of the Absalom and Achitophel and of the Epistle to Augustus. Was ever dictum more absurd than the following, advanced by a critic of some repute;1 'Dryden is perhaps the only great writer - he is certainly the only English poet of high rank who appears to be wholly destitute of the gift of observation.'(!) Observation of what? Surely there is power of observing Human Nature in him who etched Zimri, in lines as clear-cut today as they were two hundred years ago. And is not Human Nature as worthy an object of study as Inanimate Nature? Does not its delineation call for as high poetic powers? 'The proper study of mankind is man.' Was there ever a truer line than this hackneyed one of Pope's - hackneyed because so true? The eighteenth century poets then (and with them Dryden belongs) are the poets of Human Nature, or, more specifically, of Man in Society; they confine themselves almost exclusively to this topic; they love the 'sweet shady side of Pall Mall;' caring almost nothing for Inanimate Nature, they have their limits, but within these limits they are unexcelled for keen observation and for aphoristic expression. The form which this expression takes is almost invariably the heroic couplet, an instrument that Dryden forged out of crude materials, and that Pope polished until it became smooth and shining as a Venetian dagger of glass. Let us not quarrel with them, as did Wordsworth, because 1 Gosse. History of 18th Century Literature, p. 379. 2 The Chaucerian couplet' is a different thing. For illustrations, see Notes on Dryden's Character of a Good Parson, pp. 31-32. |