Part 8

Whoever has read these sentences attentively, and penetrated their meaning in connexion, will see that they reveal a mode of thought somewhat resembling that which we have attributed to Shakespeare, and yet essentially different from it. Both poets are distinguished by this, that they abstained systematically during their lives from the abstract, the dialectical, and the controversial, and devoted themselves, with true feeling and enjoyment, to the concrete, the real, and the unquestioned; and so far there is an obvious resemblance between them. But the manner in which this characteristic was attained was by no means the same in both cases. In Shakespeare, as we have seen, there was a metaphysical longing, a tendency towards the supersensible and invisible, absolutely morbid, if we take ordinary constitutions as the standard of health in this respect; and, if, with all this, he revelled with delight and moved with ease and firmness in the sensuous and actual, it was because the very same soul which pressed with such energy and wailing against the bounds of this life of man was also related with inordinate keenness and intimacy to all that this life spheres in. In Goethe, on the other hand, the tendency to the real existed under easier constitutional conditions, and in a state of such natural preponderance over any concomitant craving for the metaphysical, that it necessarily took, German though he was, a higher place in his estimate of what is desirable in a human character. That world of the real in which Shakespeare delighted, and which he knew so well, seemed to him, all this knowledge and delight notwithstanding, far more evanescent, far more a mere filmy show, far less considerable a shred of all that is, than it did to Goethe. To Shakespeare, as we have already said, life was but as a little island on the bosom of a boundless sea: men must needs know what the island contains, and act as those who have to till and rule it; still, with that expanse of waters all round in view, and that roar of waters ever in the ear, what can men call themselves or pretend their realm to be? "Poor fools of Nature" is the poet's own phrase--the realm so small that it is pitiful to belong to it! Not so with Goethe. To him also, of course, the thought was familiar of a vast region of the supersensible outlying nature and life; but a higher value on the whole was reserved for nature and life, even on the universal scale, by his peculiar habit of conceiving them, not as distinct from the supersensible and contemporaneously begirt by it, but rather, if we may so speak, as a considerable portion, or even duration, of the _quondam_-supersensible in the new form of the sensible. In other words, Goethe was full of the notion of progress or evolution; the world was to him not a mere spectacle and dominion for the supernatural, but an actual manifestation of the substance of the supernatural itself, on its way through time to new issues. Hence his peculiar notion of immortality; hence his view as to the mere relativeness of the terms right and wrong, good and bad, and the like; and hence also his resolute inculcation of the doctrine, so unpalatable to his countrymen, that men ought to direct their thoughts and efforts to the actual and the outward. Life being the current phase of the universal mystery, the true duty of men could be but to contribute in their various ways to the furtherance of life.

And what then, finally, was Goethe's _own_ mode of activity in a life thus defined in his general philosophy? Like Shakespeare, he was a literary man; his function was literature. Yes, but in what respect, otherwise than Shakespeare had done before him, did he fulfil this literary function in reference to the world he lived in and enjoyed? In the first place, as all know, he differed from Shakespeare in this, that he did not address the world exclusively in the character of a poet. Besides his poetry, properly so called, Goethe has left behind him numerous prose-writings, ranking under very different heads, abounding with such deep and wise maxims and perceptions, in reference to all things under the sun, as would have entitled him, even had he been no poet, to rank as a sage. So great, indeed, is Goethe as a thinker and a critic that it may very well be disputed whether his prose-writings, as a whole, are not more precious than his poems. But even if we set apart this difference, and regard the two men in their special character as poets or artists, a marked difference is still discernible. Hear Goethe's own definition of his poetical career and aim.

"Thus began that tendency from which I could not deviate my whole life through: namely, the tendency to turn into an image, into a poem, everything that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied me, and to come to some certain understanding with myself upon it, that I might both rectify my conceptions of external things, and set my mind at rest about them. The faculty of doing this was necessary to no one more than to me, for my natural disposition whirled me constantly from one extreme to the other. All, therefore, that has been put forth by me consists of fragments of a great confession."--_Autobiography_, vol. i. p. 240.

Shakespeare's genius we defined to be the genius of universal expression, of clothing objects, circumstances, and feelings with magnificent language, of pouring over the image of any given situation, whether suggested from within or from without, an effusion of the richest intellectual matter that could possibly be related to it. Goethe's genius, as here defined by himself, was something different and narrower. It was the genius of translation from the subjective into the objective, of clothing real feelings with fictitious circumstance, of giving happy intellectual form to states of mind, so as to dismiss and throw them off. Let this distinction be sufficiently conceived and developed, and a full idea will be obtained of the exact difference between the literary many-sidedness attributed to Shakespeare and that also attributed to Goethe.

MILTON'S YOUTH.

MILTON'S YOUTH.[5]

Never surely did a youth leave the academic halls of England more full of fair promise than Milton, when, at the age of twenty-three, he quitted Cambridge to reside at his father's house, amid the quiet beauties of a rural neighbourhood some twenty miles distant from London. Fair in person, with a clear fresh complexion, light brown hair which parted in the middle and fell in locks to his shoulders, clear grey eyes, and a well-knit frame of moderate proportions--there could not have been found a finer picture of pure and ingenuous English youth. And that health and beauty which distinguished his outward appearance, and the effect of which was increased by a voice surpassingly sweet and musical, indicated with perfect truth the qualities of the mind within. Seriousness, studiousness, fondness for flowers and music, fondness also for manly exercises in the open air, courage and resolution of character, combined with the most maiden purity and innocence of life--these were the traits conspicuous in Milton in his early years. Of his accomplishments it is hardly necessary to take particular note. Whatever of learning, of science, or of discipline in logic or philosophy, the University at that time could give, he had duly and in the largest measure acquired. No better Greek or Latin scholar probably had the University in that age sent forth; he was proficient in the Hebrew tongue, and in all the other customary aids to a Biblical Theology; and he could speak and write well in French and Italian. His acquaintance, obtained by independent reading, with the history and with the whole body of the literature of ancient and modern nations, was extensive and various. And, as nature had endowed him in no ordinary degree with that most exquisite of her gifts, the ear and the passion for harmony, he had studied music as an art, and had taught himself not only to sing in the society of others, but also to touch the keys for his solitary pleasure.

The instruments which Milton preferred as a musician were, his biographers tell us, the organ and the bass-viol. This fact seems to us to be not without its significance. Were we to define in one word our impression of the prevailing tone, the characteristic mood and disposition of Milton's mind, even in his early youth, we should say that it consisted in a deep and habitual _seriousness_. We use the word in none of those special and restricted senses that are sometimes given to it. We do not mean that Milton, at the period of his early youth with which we are now concerned, was, or accounted himself as being, a confessed member of that noble party of English Puritans with which he afterwards became allied, and to which he rendered such vast services. True, he himself tells us, in his account of his education, that "care had ever been had of him, with his earliest capacity, not to be negligently trained in the precepts of the Christian religion;" and in the fact that his first tutor, selected for him by his father, was one Thomas Young, a Scotchman of subsequent distinction among the English Puritans, there is enough to prove that the formation of his character in youth was aided expressly by Puritanical influences. But Milton, if ever in a denominational sense he could be called a Puritan (he wore his hair long, and in other respects did not conform to the usages of the Puritan party), could hardly, with any propriety, be designated as a Puritan in this sense, at the time when he left College. There is evidence that at this time he had not given so much attention, on his own personal account, to matters of religious doctrine as he afterwards bestowed. That seriousness of which we speak was, therefore, rather a constitutional seriousness, ratified and nourished by rational reflection, than the assumed temper of a sect. "A certain reservedness of natural disposition, and a moral discipline learnt out of the noblest philosophy"--such, in Milton's own words, were the causes which, apart from his Christian training, would have always kept him, as he believed, above the vices that debase youth. And herein the example of Milton contradicts much that is commonly advanced by way of a theory of the poetical character.

Poets and artists generally, it is held, are and ought to be distinguished by a predominance of sensibility over principle, an excess of what Coleridge called the spiritual over what he called the moral part of man. A nature built on quicksands, an organization of nerve languid or tempestuous with occasion, a soul falling and soaring, now subject to ecstasies and now to remorses--such, it is supposed, and on no small induction of actual instances, is the appropriate constitution of the poet. Mobility, absolute and entire destitution of principle properly so called, capacity for varying the mood indefinitely rather than for retaining and keeping up one moral gesture or resolution through all moods: this, say the theorists, is the essential thing in the structure of the artist. Against the truth of this, however, as a maxim of universal application, the character of Milton, as well as that of Wordsworth after him, is a remarkable protest. Were it possible to place before the theorists all the materials which exist for judging of Milton's personal disposition as a young man, without exhibiting to them at the same time the actual and early proofs of his poetical genius, their conclusion, were they true to their theory, would necessarily be that the basis of his nature was too solid and immovable, the platform of personal aims and aspirations over which his thoughts moved and had footing too fixed and firm, to permit that he should have been a poet. Nay, whosoever, even appreciating Milton as a poet, shall come to the investigation of his writings armed with that preconception of the poetical character which is sure to be derived from an intimacy with the character of Shakespeare will hardly escape some feeling of the same kind. Seriousness, we repeat, a solemn and even austere demeanour of mind, was the characteristic of Milton even in his youth. And the outward manifestation of this was a life of pure and devout observance. This is a point that ought not to be avoided, or dismissed in mere general language; for he who does not lay stress on this knows not and loves not Milton. Accept, then, by way of more particular statement, his own remarkable words in justifying himself against an innuendo of one of his adversaries in later life, reflecting on the tenor of his juvenile pursuits and behaviour. "A certain niceness of nature," he says, "an honest haughtiness and self-esteem either of what I was, or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that modesty whereof, though not in the title-page, yet here I may be excused to make some beseeming profession, all these, uniting the supply of their natural aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitutions." Fancy, ye to whom the moral frailty of genius is a consolation, or to whom the association of virtue with youth and Cambridge is a jest--fancy Milton, as this passage from his own pen describes him at the age of twenty-three, returning to his father's house from the university, full of its accomplishments and its honours, an auburn-haired youth, beautiful as the Apollo of a northern clime, and that beautiful body the temple of a soul pure and unsoiled. Truly, a son for a mother to take to her arms with joy and pride!

Connected with this austerity of character, discernible in Milton even in his youth, may be noted also, as indeed it is noted in the passage just cited, a haughty yet modest self-esteem and consciousness of his own powers. Throughout all Milton's works there may be discerned a vein of this noble egotism, this unbashful self-assertion. Frequently, in arguing with an opponent, or in setting forth his own views on any subject of discussion, he passes, by a very slight topical connexion, into an account of himself, his education, his designs, and his relations to the matter in question; and this sometimes so elaborately and at such length, that the impression is as if he said to his readers, "Besides all my other arguments, take this also as the chief and conclusive argument, that it is _I_, a man of such and such antecedents, and with such and such powers to perform far higher work than you see me now engaged in, who affirm and maintain this." In his later years Milton evidently believed himself to be, if not the greatest man in England, at least the greatest writer, and one whose _egomet dixi_ was entitled to as much force in the intellectual commonwealth as the decree of a civil magistrate is invested with in the order of civil life. All that he said or wrote was backed in his own consciousness by a sense of the independent importance of the fact that it was he, Milton, who said or wrote it; and often, after arguing a point for some time on a footing of ostensible equality with his readers, he seems suddenly to stop, retire to the vantage-ground of his own thoughts, and bid his readers follow him thither, if they would see the whole of that authority which his words had failed to express.

Such, we say, is Milton's habit in his later writings. In his early life, of course, the feeling which it shows existed rather as an undefined consciousness of superior power, a tendency silently and with satisfaction to compare his own intellectual measure with that of others, a resolute ambition to be and to do something great. Now we cannot help thinking that it will be found that this particular form of self-esteem goes along with that moral austerity of character which we have alleged to be discernible in Milton even in his youth, rather than with that temperament of varying sensibility which is, according to the general theory, regarded as characteristic of the poet. Men of this latter type, as they vary in the entire mood of their mind, vary also in their estimate of themselves. No permanent consciousness of their own destiny, or of their own worth in comparison with others, belongs to them. In their moods of elevation they are powers to move the world; but, while the impulse that has gone forth from them in one of those moods may be still thrilling its way onward in wider and wider circles through the hearts of myriads they have never seen, they, the fountains of the impulse, the spirit being gone from them, may be sitting alone in the very spot and amid the ashes of their triumph, sunken and dead, despondent and self-accusing. It requires the evidence of positive results, the assurance of other men's praises, the visible presentation of effects which they cannot but trace to themselves, to convince such men that they are or can do anything. Whatever manifestations of egotism, whatever strokes of self-assertion come from such men, come in the very burst and phrenzy of their passing resistlessness. The calm, deliberate, and unshaken knowledge of their own superiority is not theirs. True, Shakespeare, the very type, if rightly understood, of this class of minds, is supposed in his Sonnets to have predicted, in the strongest and most deliberate terms, his own immortality as a poet. It could be proved, however, were this the place for such an investigation, that the common interpretation of those passages of the Sonnets which are supposed to supply this trait in the character of Shakespeare is nothing more nor less than a false reading of a very subtle meaning which the critics have missed. Those other passages of the Sonnets which breathe an abject melancholy and discontentment with self, which exhibit the poet as "cursing his fate," as "bewailing his outcast state," as looking about abasedly among his literary contemporaries, envying the "art" of one, and the "scope" of another, and even wishing sometimes that the very features of his face had been different from what they were and like those of some he knew, are, in our opinion, of far greater autobiographic value.

Nothing of this kind is to be found in Milton. As a Christian, indeed, humiliation before God was a duty the meaning of which he knew full well; but, as a man moving among other men, he possessed, in that moral seriousness and stoic scorn of temptation which characterized him, a spring of ever-present pride, dignifying his whole bearing among his fellows, and at times arousing him to a kingly intolerance. In short, instead of that dissatisfaction with self which we trace as a not unfrequent feeling with Shakespeare, we find in Milton, even in his early youth, a recollection firm and habitual that he was one of those servants to whom God had entrusted the stewardship of ten talents. In that very sonnet, for example, written on his twenty-third birthday, in which he laments that he had as yet achieved so little, his consolation is that the power of achievement was still indubitably within him--

"All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task-Master's eye."

And what was that special mode of activity to which Milton, still in the bloom and seed-time of his years, had chosen to dedicate the powers of which he was so conscious? He had been destined by his parents for the Church; but this opening into life he had definitively and deliberately abandoned. With equal decision he renounced the profession of the Law; and it does not seem to have been long after the conclusion of his career at the university when he renounced the prospects of professional life altogether. His reasons for this, which are to be gathered from various passages of his writings, seem to have resolved themselves into a jealous concern for his own absolute intellectual freedom. He had determined, as he says, "to lay up, as the best treasure and solace of a good old age, the honest liberty of free speech from his youth;" and neither the Church nor the Bar of England, at the time when he formed that resolution, was a place where he could hope to keep it. For a man so situated, the alternative, then as now, was the practice or profession of literature. To this, therefore, as soon as he was able to come to a decision on the subject, Milton had implicitly, if not avowedly, dedicated himself. To become a great writer, and, above all, a great poet; to teach the English language a new strain and modulation; to elaborate and surrender over to the English nation works that would make it more potent and wise in the age that was passing, and more memorable and lordly in the ages to come: such was the form which Milton's ambition had assumed when, laying aside his student's garb, he went to reside under his father's roof.

Nor was this merely a choice of necessity, the reluctant determination of a young soul "Church-outed by the prelates" and disgusted with the chances of the Law. Milton, in the Church, would certainly have been such an archbishop, mitred or unmitred, as England has never seen; and the very passage of such a man across the sacred floor would have trampled into timely extinction much that has since sprung up amongst us to trouble and perplex, and would have modelled the ecclesiasticism of England into a shape that the world might have gazed at with no truant glance backward to the splendours of the Seven Hills. And, doubtless, even amid the traditions of the Law, such a man would have performed the feats of a Samson, albeit of a Samson in chains. An inward prompting, therefore, a love secretly plighted to the Muse, and a sweet comfort and delight in her sole society, which no other allurement, whether of profit or pastime, could equal or diminish,--this, less formally perhaps, but as really as care for his intellectual liberty, or distaste for the established professions of his time, determined Milton's early resolution as to his future way of life. On this point it will be best to quote his own words. "After I had," he says, "from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father (whom God recompense!), been exercised to the tongues and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers both at home and at the schools, it was found that, whether ought was imposed upon me by them that had the overlooking or betaken to of mine own choice, in English or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live." The meaning of which sentence is that Milton, before his three-and-twentieth year, knew himself to be a poet.