At one slight bound high overleapt all bound.
I know there are Figures for this kind of Speech, that some of the greatest Ancients have been guilty of it, and that Aristotle himself has given it a place in his Rhetorick among the Beauties of that Art. [14]
But as it is in its self poor and trifling, it is I think at present universally exploded by all the Masters of Polite Writing.
The last Fault which I shall take notice of in Milton"s Style, is the frequent use of what the Learned call Technical Words, or Terms of Art.
It is one of the great Beauties of Poetry, to make hard things intelligible, and to deliver what is abstruse [of [15]] it self in such easy Language as may be understood by ordinary Readers: Besides, that the Knowledge of a Poet should rather seem born with him, or inspired, than drawn from Books and Systems. I have often wondered how Mr. Dryden could translate a Pa.s.sage out of Virgil after the following manner.
Tack to the Larboard, and stand off to Sea.
Veer Star-board Sea and Land.
Milton makes use of Larboard in the same manner. When he is upon Building he mentions Doric Pillars, Pilasters, Cornice, Freeze, Architrave. When he talks of Heavenly Bodies, you meet with Eccliptic and Eccentric, the trepidation, Stars dropping from the Zenith, Rays culminating from the Equator. To which might be added many Instances of the like kind in several other Arts and Sciences.
I shall in my next [Papers [16]] give an Account of the many particular Beauties in Milton, which would have been too long to insert under those general Heads I have already treated of, and with which I intend to conclude this Piece of Criticism.
L.
[Footnote 1: Poetics, cap. x. Addison got his affected word implex by reading Aristotle through the translation and notes of Andre Dacier.
Implex was the word used by the French, but the natural English translation of Aristotle"s [Greek: haplo] and [Greek: peplegmenoi] is into simple and complicated.]
[Footnote 2: [Stories of Achilles, Ulysses, and aeneas.]]
[Footnote 3: Poetics, cap. xi.]
[Footnote 4: that]
[Footnote 5: Dediction of the aeneid; where, after speaking of small claimants of the honours of the Epic, he says,
Spencer has a better for his "Fairy Queen" had his action been finished, or been one; and Milton if the Devil had not been his hero, instead of Adam; if the giant had not foiled the knight, and driven him out of his stronghold, to wander through the world with his lady-errant; and if there had not been more machining persons that human in his poem.]
[Footnote 6: [or]]
[Footnote 7: [Episode]]
[Footnote 8: [greater]]
[Footnote 9: Poetics, cap. xxv. The reason he gives is that when the Poet speaks in his own person he is not then the Imitator. Other Poets than Homer, Aristotle adds,
ambitious to figure throughout themselves, imitate but little and seldom. Homer, after a few preparatory lines, immediately introduces a man or woman or some other character, for all have their character.
Of Lucan, as an example of the contrary practice, Hobbes said in his Discourse concerning the Virtues of an Heroic Poem:
No Heroic Poem raises such admiration of the Poet, as his hath done, though not so great admiration of the persons he introduceth.]
[Footnote 10: Letters to Atticus, Bk. xiii., Ep. 44.]
[Footnote 11: Poetices, Lib. iii. cap. 25.]
[Footnote 12: [of]]
[Footnote 13: [which]]
[Footnote 14: Rhetoric, iii. ch. II, where he cites such verbal jokes as, You wish him [Greek: persai] (i.e. to side with Persia--to ruin him), and the saying of Isocrates concerning Athens, that its sovereignty [Greek: archae] was to the city a beginning [Greek: archae]
of evils. As this closes Addison"s comparison of Milton"s practice with Aristotle"s doctrine (the following papers being expressions of his personal appreciation of the several books of Paradise Lost), we may note here that Milton would have been quite ready to have his work tried by the test Addison has been applying. In his letter to Samuel Hartlib, sketching his ideal of a good Education, he a.s.signs to advanced pupils logic and then
rhetoric taught out of the rules of Plato, Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus. To which poetry would be made subsequent, or, indeed, rather precedent, as being less subtile and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and pa.s.sionate. I mean not here the prosody of a verse, which they could not but have hit on before among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime art which in Aristotle"s Poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Ta.s.so, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe. This would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our common rhymers and play-writers be; and show them what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human things.]
[Footnote 15: [in]]
[Footnote 16: [Sat.u.r.days Paper]]
No. 298. Monday, February 11, 1712. Steele.
Nusquam Tuta fides.
Virg.
London, Feb. 9, 1711-12.