INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. DR. JOHNSON's censure of the "Lycidas" is so extraordinary, and so tastelessly malignant, that it is impossible to pass it over without some discussion. Whatever principle of poetry we adopt, it is absolutely indefensible. We know that the critic had little feeling for the higher orders of poetry; but his captious objections to this composition could only proceed from blind prejudice and hatred. He had probably talked in this way from an early stage of his literary career, and was now ashamed to retract. Whatever stern grandeur Milton's two epics and his drama, written in his latter days, exhibit; by whatever divine invention they are created; "Lycidas" and "Comus" have a fluency, a sweetness, a melody, a youthful freshness, a dewy brightness of description, which those gigantic poems have not. It is true that "Lycidas" has no deep grief; its clouds of sorrow are every where pierced by the golden rays of a splendid and joyous imagination: the ingredients are all poetical, even to single words; the epithets are all picturesque and fresh; and the whole are combined into a splendid tissue, as new in their position as they are radiant in their union. The unexpected transitions from one to the other at once surprise and delight they are like the heavens of an autumnal evening, when they are lighted up by electric flames. The contrasts of sorrow, and hope, and glory, keep us in a state of mingled excitement to the end: the imagery never flags: though it blazes with the most beautiful forms of inanimate nature, and all sorts of pastoral pictures; yet the whole are by some spell or other made intellectual and spiritual: they do not play merely upon the mirror of the fancy. When Johnson said that of this poem "the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing," where was his apprehension of beautiful language, and where his ear? Take any line as a specimen : Or this passage :— Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. But, O the heavy change, now thou art gone, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, The willows, and the hazel copses green, Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays Compare any of Pope's descriptions, so lauded by Johnson, with these lines. Johnson says that the rhymes of "Lycidas are ill-arranged, and too distant from each other: I know not that they are ever so; but if this is the case in one or two instances, they are in general most musically and happily placed. The occasional allusions to the heathen mythology, by way of illustration or allegory, were never before prohibited or blamed by any critic; and are only censured here from a mere resolve to find fault. The caviller contends that here is no grief, for grief does not deal in imagery or remote allusions; but, as Warton observes, if there is not deep grief, there is rich poetry. Milton's genius lay in strength and sublimity, not tenderness. This was one of a set of academical verses, written to glorify the deceased, and fix his memory upon the list of fame; and by what other possible means could Milton have effected it with equal success? In what way would the critic have expressed his sorrow? Johnson was no more remarkable for tenderness than Milton: his gravity was gloom, not tenderness. Milton saw in the death of the virtuous and accomplished an elevation to a higher and happier sphere of existence; Johnson beheld death with anxiety, doubt, and fear: Milton exulted; Johnson sighed, trembled, and was despondent: the thought paralysed Johnson; it cheered and irradiated Milton. Thus it supplied them with opposite figures and modes of expression. *Tickell's "Elegy on Addison" is probably the model which Johnson would have chosen. Tickell is solemn, and sometimes tender; but he has none of Milton's richness and illumination. 1 That prime charm of poetry, the rapidity and the novelty, yet the natural association of beautiful ideas, is pre-eminently exhibited in "Lycidas," where the sudden transitions to contrasted images and sentiments keep the mind in a state of delightful ferment; And o'er the cheek of sorrow throw A melancholy grace. It strikes me, 'that there is no poem of Milton, in which the pastoral and rural imagery is so breathing, so brilliant, and so new, as in this: the tone which has most similitude to it, is that of some descriptive passages of Shakspeare, whose simple brightness and modulation of words seem always to have dwelt on Milton's memory and ear. But though strength was Milton's characteristic, there are many passages, many turns of thought and expression, in this poem, which are not wanting in tenderness, in pathetic recollections, and tearful sighs; in that sort of grief, which, let Johnson say what he will, belongs to true poetry in grief neither factitious nor gloomy, but genuine, though hopeful, and mingled with rays of light, though melancholy. Perhaps I should be inclined to say more on this exquisite and inimitable Elegy; but I must forbear, lest those remarks should run to an extent disproportioned to its length. In this Monody the author bewails a learned friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637; and by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their highth. YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude; Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year: Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere. Newton has supposed, that Milton, while he mentions Apollo's laurel, to characterise King as a poet, adds the myrtle, the tree of Venus, to show that King was also of a proper age for love. We will allow that King, whatever hidden meaning the poet might have in enumerating the myrtle, was of a proper age for love, being now twenty-five years old : and the ivy our critic thinks to be expressive of King's learning, for which it was a reward. In the mean time, I would not exclude another probable implication; by pluck ing the berries and the leaves of laurel, myrtle, and ivy, he might intend to point out the pastoral or rural turn of this poem.-T. WARTON. The opening of this poem always struck me as singularly beautiful. felicity in this combination of poetic words, which cannot be defined. b I come to pluck your berries, &c. There is a sort of This beautiful allusion to the unripe age of his friend, in which death "shatter'd his leaves before the mellowing year," is not antique, I think, but of those secret graces of Spenser. See "Shep. Cal." Jan. ver. 37. The poet there says of himself, under the name of Colin Clout," All so my lustful leafe is drie and sere."-RICHARDSON. Milton had most probably in his mind a passage in Cicero " De Senectute," where the death of young persons is compared to unripe fruit plucked with violence from the tree, and that of old persons to fully ripe mellow fruit that falls naturally: "Et quasi poma ex arboribus, cruda si sint, vi avelluntur; si matura et cocta, decidunt; sic vitam adolescen tibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas."-DUNSTER. e Mellowing year. Here is an inaccuracy of the poet: the "mellowing" year could not affect the leaves of the laurel, the myrtle, and the ivy; which last is characterised before as "never sere.” -T. WARTON. Compels me to disturb your season due : Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; f With lucky words favour my destined urn; And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud ". For we were nursed upon the self-same hill; d And build the lofty rhyme. A beautiful Latinism. Hor. "Ep." 1. iii. 24. "Seu condis amabile carmen." And "De Arte Poet." v. 436. Si carmina condes."-NEWTON. Todd here cites a passage from Spenser's "Ruines of Rome," st. 25. I see little similitude. e Melodious tear. For song, or plaintive elegiac strain, the cause of tears.-HURD. 1 Coy. The epithet "coy is at present restrained to person anciently it was more generally combined. Our author has the same use and sense of " coy "in the "Apology for Smectymnuus :". '-" Thus lie at the mercy of a coy flurting style, to be girded with frumps and curtall gibes," &c.-T. WARTON. My sable shroud. Mr. Dunster has little doubt that Milton here means the "dark grave;" shroud being the Miltonic word for recess, harbour, hiding-place; yet he has overlooked the passages in Sylvester, which occasioned, in my opinion, the introduction of "sable shroud" into Milton's Monody. And, first, Sylvester uses the precise expression, though with a different meaning, in his "Bethulian's Rescue," lib. iv. p. 991, edit. 1621. Still therefore, cover'd with a sable shroud, But in Sylvester's translation of "Du Bartas," ed. supr. p. 114, we find, O happy pair! upon your sable toomb May mel and manna ever showring come. And what farther confirms me in the application of tomb or grave to Milton's text is a passage from a funeral Elegy of Sylvester, edit. supr. p. 1171. From my sad cradle to my sable chest, Poore pilgrim I did finde few months of rest.-TODD. I cannot think that, applied to Lycidas, "shroud" means tomb, as Todd supposes, because Sylvester so used it, in reference to a different case. h Together both, &c. From the regularity of his pursuits, the purity of his pleasures, his temperance, and general simplicity of life, Milton habitually became an early riser: hence he gained an acquaintance with the beauties of the morning, which he so frequently contemplated with delight, and has therefore so repeatedly described in all their various appearances and |
