PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX. No more of talk where God or angel guest With Man, as with his friend, familiar us'd 1. No more of talk &c.] These prologues or prefaces of Milton to some of his books, speaking of his own person, lamenting his blindness, and preferring his subject to those of Homer and Virgil and the greatest poets before him, are condemned by some critics and it must be allowed that we find no such digression in the Iliad or Æneid; it is a liberty that can be taken only by such a genius as Milton, and I question whether it would have succeeded in any hands but his. As Monsieur Voltaire says upon the occasion, I cannot but own that an author is generally guilty of an unpardonable selflove, when he lays aside his subject to descant upon his own person: : but that human frailty is to be forgiven in Milton; nay I am pleased with it. He gratifies the curiosity he has raised in me about his person; when I admire the author, I desire to know something of the man; and he, whom all readers would be glad to know, is allowed to speak of himself. But this how ever is a very dangerous example for a genius of an inferior order, and is only to be justified by success. See Voltaire's Essay on epic poetry, p. 111. But as Mr. Thyer adds, however some critics and Monsieur Voltaire may condemn a poet's sometimes digressing from his subject to speak of himself, it is very certain that Milton was of a very different opinion long before he thought of writing this poem. For in his discourse of the Reason of Church-Government, &c. apologizing for saying so much of himself as he there does, he adds, " For al"though a poet, soaring in the "high region of his fancies, with "his garland and singing robes "about him, might, without apo logy, speak more of himself than "I mean to do; yet for me sit 66 ting here below in the cool "element of prose, a mortal thing among many readers of "no empyreal conceit, to ven"ture and divulge unusual things "of myself, I shall petition to "the gentler sort, it may not To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast, permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam'd; I now must change And disobedience: on the part of Heaven "be envy to me." Vol. i. p. 59. 1. where God or angel guest] A difficulty has been made here, where, as it seems to me, no difficulty is. The poet says, that he must now treat no more of familiar discourse with either God or angel. For Adam had held discourse with God, as we read in the preceding book, and the whole foregoing episode is a conversation with the angel, and as this takes up so large a part of the poem, this is particularly described and insisted upon here. The Lord God and the angel Michael both indeed afterwards discourse with Adam in the following books, but those discourses are not familiar conversation as with a friend, they are of a different strain, the one coming to judge, and the other to expel him from Paradise. 5. I now must change Those notes to tragic;] As the author is now changing his subject, he professes likewise to change his style agreeably to it. The reader therefore must not expect such lofty images and 5 10 descriptions, as before. What follows is more of the tragic strain than of the epic. Which may serve as an answer to those critics, who censure the latter books of the Paradise Lost as falling below the former. 11. That brought into this world a world of woe,] The pun or what shall I call it in this line may be avoided, as a great man observed to me, by distinguishing thus, That brought into this world (a world of woe) Sin and her shadow Death, but I fancy the other will be found more agreeable to Milton's style and manner. We have a similar instance in xi. 627. The world ere long a world of tears must weep. But in these instances Milton 12. Death's harbinger: sad task, yet argument 15 20 13. -Sad task, yet argument] The Paradise Lost, even in this latter part of it, concerning God's anger and Adam's distress, is a more heroic subject than the wrath of Achilles on his foe, Hector, whom he pursued three times round the walls of Troy according to Homer; or than the rage of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused, having been first betrothed to him, and afterwards promised to Eneas according to Virgil; or Neptune's ire that so long perplexed the Greek, Ulysses, as we read in the Odyssey; or Juno's ire that for so many years perplexed Cytherea's son, Æneas, as we read at large in the Æneid. The anger that he is about to sing is an argument more heroic not only than the anger of men, of Achilles and Turnus, but than that even of the gods, of Neptune and Juno. The anger of the true God is a more noble subject than of the false gods. In this respect he has the advantage of Homer and Virgil, his argument is more heroic as he says, if he can but make his style answerable. 21. my celestial patroness,] His heavenly Muse, his Urania, whom he had invoked i. 6. vii. 1, 31. And he boasts of her nightly visitation, as he was not unaccustomed to study and compose his verses by night; as he intimates himself at the beginning of book the third. Her nightly visitation unimplor'd And dictates to me slumb'ring, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse: Since first this subject for heroic song Pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late; Muses walking by night, ver. 10. Εννυχία στειχον, περικαλλέα οσσαν εισαι. 21.] Milton's third wife related of him, that he used to compose his poetry chiefly in winter, and on his waking in a morning would make her write down sometimes twenty or thirty verses and being asked whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation upon him for stealing from those authors, and answered with eagerness that he stole from nobody but the Muse who inspired him; and being asked by a lady present who the Muse was, replied it was God's grace, and the Holy Spirit that visited him nightly. Newton's Life of Milton. Mr. Richardson also says, that "Milton would sometimes lie "awake whole nights, but not a verse could he make; and " on a sudden his poetical fancy "would rush upon him with an "impetus or astrum." See Johnson's Life of Milton. Dunster. 23. --or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse:] Here is the same kind of beauty that we observed before in iii. 37. The verse flows so easy, that it seems to have been made without premeditation. 25 26. -long choosing, and beginning late;] Our author intended pretty early to write an epic poem, and proposed the story of King Arthur for the subject of it: but that was laid aside probably for the reasons here intimated. The Paradise Lost he designed at first as a tragedy; it was not till long after that he began to form it into an epic poem: and indeed for several years he was so hotly engaged in the controversies of the times, that he was not at leisure to think of a work of this nature, and did not begin to fashion it in its present form till after the Salmasian controversy which ended in 1655, and probably did not set about the work in earnest till after the Restoration, so that he was long choosing, and beginning late. 28. hitherto the only argument Heroic deen'd,] By the moderns as well as by the ancients; wars being the principal subject of all the heroic poems from Homer down to this time. But Milton's subject was different, and whatever others may call it, we see he reckons it himself An heroic poem, though he names it only A poem in his title page. It is indeed, as Mr. Warburton most excellently observes in his Heroic deem'd, chief mast'ry to dissect Divine Legation of Moses, book 29. -chief mastry to dissect &c.] As the admired subjects for an heroic poem were mistaken, so those were wrong who thought the dissecting of knights was a principal part of the skill of a poet, describing wounds as a surgeon. He doubtless here glanced at Homer's perpetual 30 35 affectation of this sort of knowledge, which certainly debases his poetry. Richardson. 33. or to describe races and games,] As the ancient poets have done; Homer in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, Virgil in the fifth book of the Æneid, and Statius in the sixth book of his Thebaid: Or tilts and torneaments, which are often the subject of the modern poets, as Ariosto, Spenser, and the like. 34. imblazon'd shields,] The Italian poets in general are much too circumstantial about these trifling particulars. But I cannot help thinking that our author had principally in view Boiardo, who, in his catalogue of Agramante's troops, gives us a most fastidious detail of imblazonry, having for above a hundred verses together nothing else scarcely but names of warriors, and descriptions of the devices and impresses which they bore in their arms. See Boiardo's Orland. Inam. b. ii. c. 29. Thyer. 35. Impresses quaint, &c.] Uncommon witty devices or emblems, painted on their shields usually with a motto. We remember one which was not painted; it was a blank |