Amenities of Literature Part 4

Adamantine chains and penal fire,

and

A dungeon horrible on all sides round.

But as Satan was to be the great actor, Milton was soon compelled to find some excuse for freeing the evil spirit from the chains which Heaven had forged, and this he does--

Chain'd on the burning lake, _nor ever thence Had ris'n or heaved his head, but that the will And high permission of all-ruling Heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs_, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself d.a.m.nation, while he sought Evil to others.

The Saxon monk had not the dexterity to elude the difficult position in which the arch-fiend was for ever fixed; he was indissolubly chained, and yet much was required to be done. It is not, therefore, Satan himself who goes on the subdolous design of wreaking his revenge on the innocent pair in Paradise; for this he despatches one of his a.s.sociates, who is thus described: "Prompt in arms, he had a crafty soul; this chief set his helmet on his head; he many speeches knew of guileful words: wheeled up from thence, he _departed through the doors of h.e.l.l_." We are reminded of

The infernal doors, that on their hinges grate Harsh thunder.

The emissary of Satan in Caedmon had "a strong mind, lion-like in air, _in hostile mood he dashed the fire aside with a fiend's power_."[8]

That demon flings aside the flames of h.e.l.l with the bravery of his sovereign, as we see in Milton--

Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; _on each hand the flames Driv'n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll'd In billows_, leave in the midst a horrid vale.[9]

Caedmon thus represents Satan:--"Then spoke the haughty king, who of angels erst was _brightest, fairest in heaven_--beloved of his master--_so beauteous was his form_, he was like to the light stars."

Milton's conception of the form of Satan is the same.

His form had not yet lost All her _original brightness_, nor appear'd Less than archangel ruin'd.[10]

And,

His countenance as the _morning star_ that guides The starry flock, allured them.[11]

Literary curiosity may be justly excited to account for these apparent resemblances, and to learn whether similarity and coincidence necessarily prove ident.i.ty and imitation; and whether, finally, Caedmon was ever known to Milton.

The Caedmonian ma.n.u.script is as peculiar in its history as its subject.

This poem, which we are told fixed the attention of our ancestors "from the sixth to the twelfth century," and the genius of whose writer was "stamped deeply and lastingly upon the literature of our country,"[12]

had wholly disappeared from any visible existence. It was accidentally discovered only in a single ma.n.u.script, the gift of Archbishop Usher to the learned Francis JUNIUS. During thirty years of this eminent scholar's residence in England, including his occasional visits to Holland and Friesland, to recover, by the study of the Friesic living dialect, the extinct Anglo-Saxon, he devoted his protracted life to the investigation of the origin of the Gothic dialects. A Saxon poem, considerable for its size and for its theme, in a genuine ma.n.u.script, was for our northern student a most precious acquisition; and that this solitary ma.n.u.script should not he liable to accidents, Junius printed the original at Amsterdam in 1655, unaccompanied by any translation or by any notes.

We must now have recourse to a few dates.

Milton had fallen blind in 1654. The poet began "Paradise Lost" about 1658; the composition occupied three years, but the publication was delayed till 1667.

If Milton had any knowledge of Caedmon, it could only have been in the solitary and treasured ma.n.u.script of Junius. To have granted even the loan of the only original the world possessed, we may surmise that Junius would not have slept through all the nights of its absence. And if the Saxon ma.n.u.script was ever in the hands of Milton, could our poet have read it?

We have every reason to believe that Milton did not read Saxon. At that day who did? There were not "ten men to save the city." In Milton's "History of England," a loose and solitary reference to the Saxon Chronicle, then untranslated, was probably found ready at hand; for all his Saxon annals are drawn from the Latin monkish authorities: and in that wonderful list of one hundred dramatic subjects which the poet had set down for the future themes of his muse, there are many on Saxon stories; but all the references are to Speed and Hollinshed. The nephew of the poet has enumerated all the languages in which Milton was conversant--"the Hebrew, (and I think the Syriac,) the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, the Spanish, and French." We find no allusion to any of the northern tongues, which that votary of cla.s.sical antiquity and of Ausonian melody and fancy would deem--can we doubt it?--dissonant and barbarous. The Northern Scalds were yet as little known as our own Saxons. A recent discovery that Milton once was desirous of reading Dutch may possibly be alleged by the Saxonists as an approach to the study of the Saxon; but at that time Milton was in office as "the Secretary for Foreign Tongues," and in a busy intercourse with the Hollanders.[13]

"Secretary Milton" at that moment was probably anxious to con the phrases of a Dutch state-paper, to scrutinise into the temper of their style. Had Milton ever acquired the Dutch idiom for literary purposes, to study Vondel, the Batavian Shakspeare,[14] from whom some foreigners imagine our poet might have drawn his "Lucifer," it could not have escaped the nephew in the enumeration of his uncle's philological acquirements. But even to read Dutch was not to read a Saxon ma.n.u.script, whose strange characters, uncouth abbreviations, and difficult constructions, are only mastered by long practice. To have known anything about the solitary Caedmon, the poet must have been wholly indebted to the friendly offices of its guardian; a personal intimacy which does not appear. The improbability that this scholar translated the ma.n.u.script phrase by phrase is nearly as great as the supposition that the poet could have retained ideas and expressions to be reproduced in that epic poem, which was not commenced till several years after.

The personal habits of Junius were somewhat peculiar; to his last days he was unrelentingly busied in pursuits of philology, of which, he has left to the Bodleian such monuments of his gigantic industry. Junius was such a rigid economist of time, that every hour was allotted to its separate work; each day was the repet.i.tion of the former, and on a system he avoided all visitors. Such a man could not have submitted to the reckless loss of many a golden day, in hammering at the obscure sense of the Saxon monk, which the critics find by his own printed text he could not always master; nor is it more likely that Milton himself could have sustained his poetic excitement through the tedious progress of a verbal or cursory paraphrase of Scripture history by this Gothic bard. At that day even Junius could not have discovered those "elastic rhythms," which solicit the ear of a more modern Saxon scholar in his studies of Caedmon,[15] but which we entirely owe to the skill, and punctuation, and accentuation of the recent editor, Mr. Thorpe.

Be it also observed, that Milton published his "Paradise Lost" in the lifetime of Junius, the only judge who could have convicted the bard who had daringly proposed

-----------to pursue Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme--

of concealing what he had silently appropriated.

There are so many probabilities against the single possibility of Milton having had any knowledge of Caedmon, that we must decide by the numerical force of our own suggestions.

The startling similarities which have led away critical judgments, if calmly scrutinised, may be found to be those apparent resemblances or coincidences which poets drawing from the same source would fall into.

There is a French mystery of "The Conception," where the scene is h.e.l.l; Lucifer appeals to its inmates in a long address. This Satan of "The Conception" strikingly reminds us of the Prince of Darkness of Milton, and indeed has many creative touches; and had it been written after the work of Milton, it might have seemed a parody.[16]

Similarity and coincidence do not necessarily prove ident.i.ty and imitation. Nor is the singular theme of "the Rebellion of the Angels"

peculiar to either poet, since those who never heard of the Saxon monk have constructed whole poems and dramas on the celestial revolt.[17]

We may be little interested to learn, among all the dubious inquiries of "the origin of 'Paradise Lost,'" whether a vast poem, the most elaborate in its parts, and the most perfect in its completion--a work, in the words of the great artist--

------who knows how long Before had been contriving?--P. L., ix. 138.

was or could be derived from any obscure source. The interval between excellence and mediocrity removes all connexion; it is that between incurable impotence and genial creation. A great poet can never be essentially indebted even to his prototype.

If we may still be interested in watching the primitive vigour of the self-taught, compared with the intellectual ideal of the poetical character, we must not allow ourselves, as might be shown in one of the critics of the Saxon school, to mistake nature in her first poverty, bare, meagre, squalid, for the moulded nudity of the Graces. The nature of Ennius was no more the nature of Virgil than the nature of Caedmon was that of Milton, for what is obvious and familiar is the reverse of the beautiful and the sublime. We have seen the ideal being,

Whose stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest Sat Horror plumed--

by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict, "fastened by the neck, his hands manacled, and his feet bound."

Caedmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit, hastening to Adam with the apples,--

Some in her hands she bare, Some in her bosom lay, Of the unblest fruit.

However natural or downright may be this specification, it is what could not have occurred with "the bosom" of our naked mother of mankind, and the artistical conception eluded the difficulty of carrying these apples--

------------from the tree returning, in her hand _A bough of fairest fruit_.--ix. 850.

In Caedmon, it costs Eve a long day to persuade the st.u.r.dy Adam, an honest Saxon, to "the dark deed;" and her prudential argument that "it were best to obey the pretended messenger of the Lord than risk his aversion," however natural, is very crafty for so young a sinner. In Milton we find the Ideal, and before Eve speaks one may be certain of Adam's fall--for

----------in her face excuse Came prologue, and apology too prompt, Which with bland words at will, she thus address'd.

A description too metaphysical for the meagre invention of the old Saxon monk!

We dare not place "the Milton of our forefathers" by the side of the only Milton whom the world will recognise. We would not compare our Saxon poetry to Saxon art, for that was too deplorable; but, to place Caedmon in a parallel with Milton, which Plutarch might have done, for he was not very nice in his resemblances, we might as well compare the formless forms and the puerile inventions of the rude Saxon artist, profusely exhibited in the drawings of the original ma.n.u.script of Caedmon,[18] with the n.o.ble conceptions and the immortal designs of the Sistine Chapel.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sir Francis Palgrave's "Dissertation on Caedmon," in the Archaeologia.

In another work this erudite antiquary explains the marvellous part of Caedmon's history by "natural causes;" and such a principle of investigation is truly philosophical; but we must not look over imposture in the search for "natural causes." "Caedmon's inability to perform his task," observes our learned expositor, "appears to have arisen rather from the want of musical knowledge than from his dulness, and therefore it is quite possible that, _allowing for some little exaggeration_, his poetical talents may have been _suddenly developed in the manner described_."--"Hist. of England," i. 162.

Thus the Saxon Milton rose in one memorable night after a whole life pa.s.sed without the poet once surmising himself to be poetical; and thus, for we consent not to yield up a single point in the narrative of "the Dream," appeared the patronising apparition and the exhilarating dialogue. A lingering lover of the Mediaeval genius can perceive nothing more in a _circ.u.mstantial legend_ than "a little exaggeration." I seem to hear the shrill attenuated tones of Ritson, in his usual idiomatic diction, screaming, "It is a _Lie_ and an _Imposture_ of the stinking _Monks_!"

The Viscount de Chateaubriand is infinitely more amusing than the plodders in the "weary ways of antiquity." The mystical tale of the Saxon monk is dashed into a glittering foam of enigmatical brevity.

"_Caedmon revait en vers et composait des poemes en dormant; Poesie est Songe._" And thus dreams may be expounded by dreams!--"Essai sur la Literature Anglaise," i. 55.