Milton | Page 5

not art at all but pedantry. Those who have never read a line of the
Greek and Latin poets certainly miss many pleasures in reading Milton,
but, if they have any ear for poetry at all, they do not miss either the
mind or the art of Milton. The unconquerable will, the high soaring
soul, are everywhere audibly present: and so, even to those who have
little reading and no knowledge at all of matters of rhythm or metre, are
the grave Dorian music, the stately verses rolling in each after the other
like great ocean waves in eternal difference, in eternal sameness. The
ignorant ear hears and rejoices, with a delight that passes understanding,
as the ignorant eye sees a fine drawing or a piece of Greek sculpture
and without understanding enjoys, learns, and unconsciously grows in

keenness of sight. To live with Milton is necessarily to learn that the art
of poetry is no triviality, no mere amusement, but a high and grave
thing, a thing of the choicest discipline of phrase, the finest
craftsmanship of structure, the most nobly ordered music of sound. The
ordinary reader may not be conscious of any such lessons: but he learns
them nevertheless. And from no one else in English can he learn them
so well as from Milton.
{20} For these reasons, these and others, we must cling to our great
epic poet, Shelley's "third among the sons of light." He is not easy
reading: the greatest seldom are: but as with all the greatest, each new
reading is not only easier than the last but fuller of matter for thought,
wonder and delight. At each new reading, too, the things in him that
belonged to his own age, the Biblical literalism, the theological
prepossessions, the political partisanship, recede more and more into
the background and leave us freer to enjoy the things which belong to
all time. And to all peoples. Milton is, indeed, intensely English and
could not have been anything but an Englishman. His profound
conviction of the greatness of moral issues, and his passionate love of
liberty, have both been characteristic of the Englishmen of whom
England is most proud. Till lately too, at any rate, we should have said
that his fierce individualism, intellectual and political, was English too.
But his mind and soul, stored with the gathered riches of many
languages and of an inward experience far too intense to be confined by
national limitations, reach out to a world wider altogether than this
island, wider even than Europe. In Samson Agonistes it is hard to say
who is more vividly present, the English {21} politician, the Greek
tragedian, or the Hebrew prophet. And in one sense Paradise Lost is
the most universal of all poems. Indeed, that word may be applied to it
in its strictest meaning, for the field of Milton's action is not Greece, or
Italy, or England, or even the whole earth; it is the universe itself. That
is one of its difficulties: but it is also a source of the uplifting and
enlarging quality which is peculiarly Miltonic. With him we are
conscious of treading no petty scene. We have in some respects
travelled far from Milton's way both of stating and of solving his
problem, but nevertheless it is still with us to-day and always: the
problem of man's origin and destiny, of the ways of God to men. And

though Milton is more hampered by literal belief in a particular
theological legend than the authors of the Book of Job and the
Prometheus Vinctus, yet, like these, he shows that a great mind and
soul will leave the imprint of power and truth on the most incredible
primitive story. To read his great poem, or indeed any of his poems, is
to live for a while in the presence of one of those royal souls, those
natural kings of men, whom Plato felt to be born to rule and inspire
their fellows: and the heroic temper of the man is in England less rare
than the consummate {22} perfection of art which has eternalized its
utterance. This is Milton: and, though we may be too weak to read him
often, we shall never be able to do without him, never think of him
without an added strength and exaltation of spirit.

{23}
CHAPTER II
MILTON'S LIFE AND CHARACTER
We know far more about Milton than about any other English poet born
so long ago. There are three reasons for this. One is that from his
earliest years he was very much interested in himself, was quite aware
that he was a man above the stature of ordinary men, and had the most
deliberate intention and expectation of doing great things.
Consequently he is not only, like most good