E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer, Stephen Hutcheson,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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MILTON
BY
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
Author of
'Style,' 'Wordsworth,' &c.
TENTH IMPRESSION
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.
1915
TO
R. A. M. STEVENSON
WHOSE RADIANT AND SOARING INTELLIGENCE
ENLIGHTENED AND GUIDED ME
DURING THE YEARS OF OUR LOST COMPANIONSHIP
THIS UNAVAILING TRIBUTE OF
MEMORY AND LOVE
CONTENTS
| [INTRODUCTION] | |
|---|---|
| PAGE | |
| "Sciences of conceit"; the difficulties and imperfections of literarycriticism; illustrated in the case of Shakespeare; and of Milton;the character and temper of Milton; intensity, simplicity,egotism; his estimate of himself | 1 |
| [CHAPTER I John Milton] | |
| His birth, and death; his education; early life inLondon; ships andshipping; adventurers and players; Milton and the Elizabethandrama; the poetic masters of his youth; state of the Church ofEngland; Baxter's testimony; growing unrest; Milton's earlypoems; the intrusion of politics; the farewell to mirth; theRestoration, and Milton's attitude; the lost paradise of theearly poems; Milton's Puritanism; his melancholy; thepolitical and public preoccupations of the later poems; thedrama of Milton's life; his egotism explained; an illustrationfrom Lycidas; the lost cause; the ultimate triumph | 12 |
| [CHAPTER II The Prose Works] | |
| Poets and politics; practical aim of Milton's prose writings; thereforms advocated by him, with one exception, unachieved;critical mourners over Milton's political writings; the mournerscomforted; Milton's classification of his prose tracts; theoccasional nature of these tracts; allusions in the early proseworks to the story of Samson, and to the theme of ParadiseLost; Milton's personal and public motives; his persuasive vein;his political idealism; Johnson's account of his political opinions;the citizen of an antique city; Milton's attitude towardsmediæval romance, and towards the mediæval Church; hisworship of liberty; and of greatness; his belief in humancapacity and virtue; Milton and Cromwell; Milton's clearlogic; his tenacity; his scurrility, and its excuse; his fierce andfantastic wit; reappearance of these qualities in Paradise Lost;the style of his prose works analysed and illustrated; his richvocabulary; his use of Saxon; the making of an epic poet | 39 |
| [CHAPTER III Paradise Lost: The Scheme] | |
| Vastness of the theme; scenical opportunities; the poetry independentof the creed; Milton's choice of subject; King Arthur; ParadiseLost; attractions of the theme: primitive religion, naturalbeauty, dramatic interest; difficulties of the theme, and forbiddentopics; how Milton overcomes these difficulties by his episodes,his similes, and the tradition that he adopts concerning the fallenangels; the cosmography of Paradise Lost; its chronology; somedifficulties and inconsistencies; Milton's spiritual beings, theirphysical embodiment; the poem no treasury of wisdom, but aworld-drama; its inhumanity, and artificial elevation; the effectof Milton's simpler figures drawn from rural life; De Quincey'sexplanation of this effect; another explanation; the homelessnessof Eden; the enchanted palace and its engineer; the tyranny ofMilton's imagination; its effect on his diction | 81 |
| [CHAPTER IV Paradise Lost: The Actors. The Later Poems] | |
| Milton's argumentative end; its bearing on the scenes in Heaven;his political bias, and materialism; Milton's Deity; his Satan;the minor devils; Adam; Eve; personal memories; Adam'seulogy of Eve, criticised by Raphael; Milton's philosophy of loveand beauty; the opinions of Raphael, of Satan, and of Mrs.Millamant; the comparative merits of Adam and Eve; Milton'sgreat epic effects; his unity and large decorum; morning andevening; architectural effects; the close of Paradise Lost; Addisonand Bentley; Paradise Regained; the choice of subject;Milton's favourite theme--temptation; other possible subjects;the Harrying of Hell; Samson Agonistes; the riddle of life. | 126 |
| [CHAPTER V The Style of Milton: Metre and Diction] | |
| Difficulties of literary genealogy; the ledger school of criticism; Milton'sstrength and originality; his choice of a sacred subject;earlier attempts in England and France; Boileau's opinion;Milton's choice of metre an innovation; the little influence onMilton of Spenser, and of Donne; Milton a pupil of thedramatists; the history of dramatic blank verse; Milton'shandling of the measure; the "elements of musical delight";Tennyson's blank verse; Milton's metrical licenses; theChoruses of Samson Agonistes; Milton's diction a close-wroughtmosaic; compared with the diffuser diction of Spenser; concisenessof Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Milton; Homer's repetitions;repetitions and "turns of words and thoughts" rare in Milton;double meanings of words; Milton's puns; extenuating circumstances;his mixed metaphors and violent syntax, due to compression;Milton's poetical style a dangerous model; thespontaneity and license of his prose | 170 |
| [CHAPTER VI The Style of Milton; and its Influence on English Poetry] | |
| The relation of Milton's work to the 17th-century "reforms" ofverse and prose; the Classicism of Milton, and of the Augustans;Classic and Romantic schools contrasted in their descriptions;Milton's Chaos, Shakespeare's Dover Cliff; Johnson's comments;the besetting sins of the two schools; Milton's physicalmachinery justified; his use of abstract terms; the splendid useof mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidanceof mean associations, and of realism; nature of his similes andfigures; his use of proper names; his epic catalogues; hispersonifications; loftiness of his perfected style; the popularityof Paradise Last; imitations, adaptations, and echoes of Milton'sstyle during the 18th century; his enormous influence; theorigin of "poetic diction"; Milton's phraseology stolen by Pope,Thomson, and Gray; the degradation of Milton's style by hispupils and parodists | 218 |
| [EPILOGUE] | |
| Milton's contemporaries; the poetry of Religion, and of Love; HenryVaughan; the Court lyrists; Milton's contempt for them;how they surpass him; Sedley; Rochester; the prophet of theLord and the sons of Belial; unique position of Milton in thehistory of our literature | 256 |
| [Index] | 265 |