The Knickerbocker, Vol. 22, No. 3, September 1843

by Various

With this preamble, Mr. Jeffrey is introduced to the reader, in a critique upon 'The Tempest, by William Shakspeare: 4to. London: 1612.' After the dissertation upon 'matters and things in general' with which it is customary to open the labored papers of quarterly journals, the reviewer reaches at length the work which he is to criticise, and upon which he pounces 'in manner following, to wit:'

'The present play forms a sort of connecting link between the ancient mysteries and the modern drama, and, disregarding equally with these venerable monstrosities all rules of probability and taste, merely changes the abstractions into persons as shadowy, and their miracles into marvels altogether as amazing and edifying. In other respects, we are rather inclined to think that Mr. Shakspeare has outdone the native absurdity of the originals.

'The play opens with a conversation among some sailors in a ship sinking at sea, which is quite in the taste of these refined persons; others come in wet, which is at least as new on the stage as a ship foundering; then a confused noise is heard within:

'We split! we split! farewell my wife and children!
Brother, farewell! we split! we split! we split!'

'The author has here most happily expressed confusion, by not indicating to whom these separate speeches are to be given.

'The next scene is on an enchanted island, where a young lady called Miranda is entreating her father, Prospero, to allay the storm, of which she gives this splendid description:

'The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out.'

Prospero replies:

'Be collected;
No more amazement: tell your piteous heart
There's no harm done.'

'To this consolatory piece of intelligence Miranda most singularly answers, 'O wo the day!' and Prospero rejoins, 'No harm; wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.' From all which it would appear that Miranda was crying because nobody had been drowned. Prospero then bids her 'obey, and be attentive.' He relates that, just twelve years before, he was the Duke of Milan, but that his brother had usurped his dignity; and that himself and his daughter, having been put into a 'rotten carcass of a boat,' arrived safely at the island. But this interesting story is by no means so briefly told in the play, and is, moreover, perpetually interrupted in its course, after this fashion:

'Prospero. My brother, and thy uncle, called Antonio;
I pray thee mark me—thy false uncle—
Dost thou attend me?

Miranda. Sir, most heedfully.

Pros. Thou attend'st not.

Mir. Good Sir, I do.

Pros. I pray thee mark me, then. Hence, his ambition growing—
Dost thou hear, child?' etc., etc.

But, all this having nothing to do with the storm, Miranda very properly puts the question:

'And now I pray you. Sir,
(For still 'tis beating in my mind,) your reason
For raising this sea-storm.'

To which Prospero returns the following very clear and intelligible answer:

'Know thus far forth.
By accident most strange, bounteous fortune,
Now, my dear lady, hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore; and by my prescience
I know my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star, whose influence,
If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.'

He seems well convinced, however, of the natural effect of this kind of poetry, for he adds:

'Here cease more questions.
Thou art inclined to sleep. 'Tis a good heaviness.
And give it way. I know thou canst not choose.'

In which opinion all Mr. Shakspeare's readers will readily concur.

We could wish that we had space for the equally interesting and refreshing satire upon 'a spirit called Ariel,' the dialogue between whom and Prospero is turned into ridicule. We must pass on, however, to the assassination of the character of Caliban, that wonderful creation of the great bard. Does the reader remember any thing more thoroughly 'tortured from its sense' by any ancient or modern Aristarchus, than the scene in question here:

'We are now introduced to a new personage called Caliban, the son of a certain witch, whose services Prospero thus recounteth:

'We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices
That profit us. What, ha! slave! Caliban!
Thou earth, thou! speak!'

'It would seem, however, that fetching in wood was his principal occupation, for, without asking what his master wanted, he replies:

'There's wood enough within.

Pros. Come forth, I say; there's other business for thee.'

'Yet it turns out that it is none other than this very business on which he was to be employed:

'Pros. Hag-seed, hence!
Fetch us in fuel, and be quick, (thou wert best,' etc.)

'Ferdinand, the son of the king of Naples, who had been just 'cooling the air with sighs' for his father, whom he supposed to be drowned, now enters, accompanied by Ariel, invisible, who sings a charming song of his own composition, of which we can only afford to give the conclusion:

'Hark! hark! Bow-wow; the watch-dogs bark.
Bow-wow.
Hark! hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry cock-a-doodle-doo!'

'Ferdinand calls this a 'sweet air!' * * * 'The second act introduces us to the king of Naples and his lords, who have escaped from drowning; but his majesty, happening to miss his son, is very naturally made to express a strong curiosity to know what kind of fish had eaten him:

'O thou, mine heir
Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish
Hath made his meal of thee?'

'After some farther conversation, Mr. S., not knowing what to do with the personages he has brought on the stage, devises the notable expedient of making them all fall suddenly asleep:

'Gonz. Will you laugh me asleep, for I am very heavy!

Alon. What! all so soon asleep? I wish mine eyes
Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts: I find
They are inclined to do so.

Seb. Please you, Sir,
Do not omit the heavy offer of it, etc.

Alon. Thank you. Wondrous heavy.

Seb. What a strange drowsiness oppresses them!

Ant. It is the quality o' the climate.'

'The invention of that author who bethought him of sending his characters off kneeling was great, but it was nothing to this. It is evidently a favorite contrivance of the author for terminating a scene, and is here employed in order to introduce Caliban at his everlasting work of fetching in wood.

'Enter Caliban with a bundle of wood. He sees a sailor:

'Cal. Here comes a spirit of his now to torment me
For bringing wood in slowly.'

'Supposing every body to be as fond of wood as Prospero, he adds:

'I'll show thee the best springs, I'll pluck thee berries;
I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.'

'The act ends with this seducing person getting drunk and singing this delicious lay:

'No more dams I'll make for fish.
Nor fetch firing at requiring.
Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish.
Ban, ban, Ca—Caliban,
Has a new master. Get a new man.'

'The third act represents Ferdinand at the eternal employment of fetching in wood. Then follows a love-scene, which we omit.'

How many petty enemies had the 'myriad-minded Shakspeare,' who would have chuckled over this criticism, had it actually appeared in his day! What nuts it would have been for that feeble reviler and feebler rival of his, 'one Hill!' The summing up of the reviewer is quite in keeping with the fine fancy and striking acumen displayed in the detail of his criticism. 'The Tempest,' he says, 'shows us how ridiculous are those rules, to which writers have hitherto subjected themselves, for the purpose, as they fondly imagined, of giving interest to their dramas. It is to be hoped that Mr. Shakspeare's example will release them, in future, from all obligation to pay any regard to probability in their incidents, or to nature in their characters. It is evidently much more easy to invent a jargon for witches, demons, and spirits, than to deal with human passions and human affections; and it is clearly quite unnecessary to diversify a play with pathetic incidents, when the sleep which has hitherto been confined to the spectators is here transferred to the persons of the drama. Writers need no longer search for lofty subjects, which have been so absurdly deemed requisite to tragedy, when every one can readily find a storm either at sea or on shore. Many improvements will no doubt be made upon the new system, and we may shortly expect to see tragedies upon a fall of snow or a heavy shower of rain. 'The Tempest' fairly entitles Mr. Shakespeare to the honors due to a reformer of our poetry, and if it produces as much profit as some of those plays in which he has praised princes and traduced the people, we shall be convinced that there are other persons beside Lapland conjurors who can make a comfortable living upon contrary winds and wrecked vessels.'

Turn we now to Gifford's review of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' in which the cut-and-slash style of that great critic, which was 'nothing if not personal,' is very faithfully portrayed. It opens as follows:

'A considerable part, of this poem, we understand, was written in gaol; and, though the knowledge of such a fact is by no means likely to prejudice us in favor of the author or his work, we can assure our readers that we have come to the examination of Paradise Lost without any personal feelings toward Mr. Milton, though we believe he is the same person who, after canting about liberty, sold his flattery to a tyrant and usurper; that he is the author of various seditious pamphlets, of which we have never read a line, and of a book on divorce, so infamous as to have been deemed by the bench of bishops worthy of being burned by the common hangman. A poem founded on a fact recorded in Scripture by a person notorious for his hatred to the church was of itself sufficiently curious to justify us in taking an early notice of it; but we found it at once so extravagant and so unreadable, that we should not have troubled the public with any account of its demerits, had not the author, in a most affected preface, announced certain new notions about rhyme, and laid claim to the merit of setting an admirable example to the writers of all future epics. The subject of Mr. M.'s poem would appear from the title to be the Fall of Adam; but what will our readers think when we assure them that almost the whole of the poem is made up of the disputes, adventures, battles, and defeats of devils, who make war upon their Creator; a monstrous fiction, founded upon the apocryphal book of Enoch? There is only one book out of the twelve (the ninth) in which there is any thing about the loss of Paradise. Throughout the whole poem the author seems always glad to quit our first parents to get back to the devil, who is by far the most brilliant and interesting character of his pages, and on whose feats, indeed, he reposes with a delight not unworthy of a Manichee. All the lofty enterprises of this amiable personage are related with a feeling of partiality for their hero, which would be amusing were they not told in a singularly involved, obscure, and affected diction. Mr. Milton's idiom is generally Hebrew or Greek; but, when he condescends to be familiar, the structure of his sentences is modelled upon the Latin. He never condescends to use a plain term when there is a scientific one, an English word when he can find a foreign one, nor an old word when he can coin a new one. Dry with him is adust; a close vest is a habit succinct; starry is stellar; flag is gonfalon; four is quaternion; powerful is pleni-potent; and mingled is interfused. To tell us that war is at hand, he says that it is in precinct; and, to tell us something else, he makes God address this line to the angels, counting, no doubt, upon their power of divining what is quite unintelligible to mere mortals:

'Meanwhile, inhabit lax, ye powers of heaven!'

'A learned angel, who gives Adam the history of the creation, illustrates his meaning by such terms as quadrate, cycle, and epicycle, centric and eccentric, nocturnal and diurnal rhomb, etc.; and the same personage is so unacquainted with the language of this earth as to form such nouns and adjectives as hosting, battalions, aspect, solstitial, vacuous, opacous, etc.

'We have a proper sense of the obligation our language has to Mr. Milton for these splendid additions; our only fear is that it will sink under them. Mr. Milton was some time at the University, and there, perhaps, became so enamored of the ancients. Had his college residence not been so abruptly terminated, perhaps he might have learned that the language of poetry, in order to be delightful, should be intelligible, and that Homer and Virgil never attempted to engraft foreign words upon the languages which were spoken and understood in the age and country in which their immortal poems were written.'

After a querulous consideration of his preface, and an examination of what Milton calls 'English heroic verse without rhyme,' Gifford enters upon the work:

The first book opens with a description of hell, of which the flames give 'no light, but darkness visible;' and then follows a dialogue between Satan and Beelzebub, on their fall from heaven, in the course of which Satan thus speaks:

'Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering; but of this be sure, to do aught good will never be our task, but ever to do ill our sole delight, as being the contrary to His high will we resist. If then His Providence out of our evil seek to bring forth good, our labor must be to prevent that end, and out of good still to find means of evil, which ofttimes may succeed, so as, perhaps, shall grieve him.'

'This speech, though printed in the poem as verse, we have reduced to its proper state of prose for the purpose of exemplifying Mr. Milton's notions of musical delight,' his 'apt numbers,' and 'the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another.'

'We have next a biographical catalogue of devils, imitated from Homer's catalogue of ships. How much finer the imitation is than the original may be seen from the following specimen:

'Next, Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons,
From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild
Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon
And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond
The flowery dale of Sibma, clad with vines,
And Eleale to the Asphaltic pool.
Peor his other name, when he enticed
Israel in Sittim,' etc.

'Satan now tries to address a speech to his followers, but is seized with a fit of crying, which hinders him from proceeding. At last, he succeeds in delivering his harangue, in which he proposes to call an infernal council, and has a palace built for the speakers, though lie had just finished addressing his followers to as much purpose in the open space. Mr. Milton minutely describes the whole operation of 'scumming the bullion dross' to adorn the edifice, and kindly informs us that the pillars were of the Doric order. The higher orders of devils get into the hall 'in their own dimensions like themselves,' but the poor devils are obliged to reduce themselves 'to smaller shapes,' in order to find room. With this clumsy contrivance the first book closes: and the second contains a report of the debate.

'War is declared, and the council breaks up. Some of the devils amuse themselves with horse-races, others sing songs, with a harp accompaniment.

'Satan then goes to find out this world, and, after passing 'many a fiery Alp,' arrives at the gates of hell, where he encounters Sin and Death, about whom there is a most disgusting allegory.

'The third book shows us Satan flying between earth and heaven, and God the Father is represented as pointing him out to His Son. A long dialogue, in the taste of the dullest Puritanical eloquence, ensues on the causes and consequences of the fall of man; towards the end of which Satan, having safely arrived at the sun, in the disguise of an inferior angel, requests the Archangel Uriel to direct him to the new-created world. The archangel, with the utmost politeness, shows him the way to the earth, just as any mortal might direct another to a new street, which Satan very properly acknowledges with a low bow. Then we have a history of Adam and Eve, and their embraces, which we dare not quote. The happiest circumstance, however, in the situation of our first parents, appears, in the opinion of Mr. Milton, to have been their nakedness; for they

'Eased the putting off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,' etc.

'In the mean time, Uriel, 'the sharpest-sighted spirit of all in heaven,' is convinced that Satan has deceived him; he accordingly warns Gabriel, 'chief of the angelic guards,' who immediately orders half a company to 'draw off',' and search for the intruder. They find him in the captivating disguise of a toad at the ear of Eve; but he springs up at their approach, 'as when the smutty grain, with sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air;' which means, being interpreted, like a spark of gunpowder. He is then brought before Gabriel, who calls him a spy, a liar, a hypocrite, and various other polite names. Satan only replies by a lofty defiance; but the Deity hangs out a pair of scales:

'In these he put two weights,
The sequel each of parting and of fight;
The latter quick up-flew, and kicked the beam.'

'And Satan, knowing 'his mounted scale aloft,' flies from Paradise.

'In the fifth book, Raphael is sent down from heaven to warn Adam of Satan's devices; he 'with quick fan winnows the buxom air,' and alights in Eden just at the hour of dinner:

'And Eve within, due at her hour, prepared
For dinner.'

'Adam goes to meet the angel, and

'Awhile discourse they held,
No fear lest dinner cool.'

'Adam having expressed some fears lest his repast should be 'unsavory food to spiritual natures,' the angel assures him that spirits require food as well as man; that even the sun receives

'From all his alimental recompense
In humid exhalations, and at even
Sups with the ocean.'

'Therefore,' saith he, 'think not I shall be nice. So down they sat, and to their viands fell.'

'After dinner, Adam requests Raphael to relate the history of the rebellion in heaven, which he does at no small length, for the sixth book finds him only at the beginning of the first battle. He describes the arming of angels on foot, and angels on horseback, and gives them swords to fight with, though they could not be wounded. We are told, indeed, that Michael's sword met Satan's, and, that some of his followers, 'though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed,' were 'down cloven to the waist;' but then 'the ethereal substance closed, not long divisible,' and these worthy personages recover all their infernal powers. At last the evil spirits invent cannon and gunpowder, for which they find materials in heaven.

'The battle, though waged against the Almighty, is represented as being doubtful for some time; but at last the Son of God drives the rebels from heaven, and we are told, in mellifluous verse,

'Eternal wrath
Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.'

'The angel here concludes his account of the celestial rebellion: but Adam's curiosity is not yet satisfied, and he entreats to be told about the creation of the world. The angel kindly complies in the seventh book, which is merely an amplification of the first chapter of Genesis.

---

'In the tenth book we find Death 'drawing a scent of carnage,' and 'tasting the savor of death,' though mortality was as yet unknown; and he and Sin set about building a chain-bridge from hell to this world, which they at last happily accomplish:

'By wondrous art
Pontifical, with pins of adamant,
And chains, they made all fast,' etc.

'In the meantime the Creator

'Bid his angels turn askance
The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more
From the sun's axle; they with labor pushed
Oblique the central globe,' etc.

[** noind] 'an operation which, we think, must have a little deranged the plan of the bridge which had just been built. Adam and Eve feel the change of climate, and the scolding dialogue which was begun in the ninth book is continued here. In the eleventh book the archangel Michael is sent down to banish Adam and Eve from Eden, and arrives there clothed 'in a purple vest, as man clad to meet man,' though man was not yet clad. Adam, at his approach, 'heart-struck with chilling gripe of sorrows stood,' but the angel, after a few words, carries him up to a mountain, from which Mr. Milton says he might have seen all the kingdoms of the earth but for one trifling reason, viz. that they did not yet exist:

'Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can,
And Samarchand by Oxus, Temir's throne,
To Paquin of Sinæan kings, and thence
To Agra and Labor of Great Mogul,' etc.

'Astolf sees many kingdoms as he is hurried through the air; and this is the fiction of Ariosto, which Mr. Milton here has borrowed only to spoil. The angel first shows Adam an hospital, the diseases of whose inmates are described in a page taken from the Nosology:

'All feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.'

'After this brilliant and agreeable spectacle, the angel displays to Adam a kind of panoramic sketch of universal history, from Cain to the Apostles, to whom Mr. Milton only alludes for the sake of showing his malignity to the church in a passage too long for quotation. The vision which we have noticed thus briefly extends through the eleventh and twelfth books. At its close the angel hurries our first parents out of Paradise, and then leaves them:

'They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.'

'Such is the termination of this 'example of heroic poem,' which is completely destitute of human interest from the nature of the subject, and derives none from the comparisons and illustration which are so profusely introduced. Classical names and fables are strewn about with prodigality; but they are always produced not to show how like, but how unlike they are to the personages and actions described in the poem.'... 'In order to make out his 'apt number and fit quantity of syllables,' Mr. M. frequently employs the Procrustean method of lengthening the short and shortening the long. Hermit is eremite, mortal is unimmortal, survive is over-live, marsh is marish, etc. In like manner, malignant, ungrateful, magnificent, interrupted, are docked into malign, ingrate, magnific, interrupt; and we have 'dark with excessive bright' for brightness. Yet, in spite of the ample use of this liberty, the verse often halts for want of feet.'