Which, tasted, works knówledge of good and evil. Beyond all past examples and future. P. L. X, 840. Which of us who beholds the bright súrface P. L. VI, 472. The last two instances, with inversion in the final foot, are very unusual, and some misguided editors would accent the words "future" and surfáce" to escape it. VARIATIONS IN NUMBER OF ACCENTS. The changes which I have just indicated, even the most difficult of them, still leave us with lines that are capable of easy scansion as pentameter verse, allowing for the principle of substitution but without doing violence to the prose accent of the words. There are, however, many cases in which it is impossible to recognize the normal number of beats in any intelligent reading of the line. Apparent instances of three-beat lines are: Immútable, immórtal, infinite. Of happiness and final misery. Four-beat lines are more common: As from the céntre thrice to the útmost póle. No light but rather dárkness vísible. Lines having more than four actual accents give an effect of marked retardation to the verse: Light ármed, or heavy, shárp, smooth, swift or slow. P. L. II, 902. Rócks, cáves, lákes, féns, bógs, déns, and shades of death. P. L. II, 621. The last is an extreme case. Of course we may say that the missing beats in the three and four stress lines, though unheard by the sensual ear, are present in the mind, and that the six, seven, or eight beats in the others are subconsciously reduced to five. The number of stresses actually heard in a given line will, as I have said, vary with the individual interpretation. But one would defy even the most sing-song reader to get more than four in either of the following: 9 To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared. P. L. VIII, 299. In the visions of God. It was a hill. P. L. XI, 377. THE CESURA OR BREAK IN THE VERSE. The normal pentameter line tends to divide itself into two balancing parts, but all poets, even the regular versifiers of the eighteenth century, vary the position of the break to avoid monotony. Milton does so more freely than others. Bridges shows that the metrical pause in Milton, as determined by a grammatical pause, may come at any point within the line. Extreme instances are: Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn. (I + 9) And bush with frizzl'd hair implicit : || last (9 + 1) 9 Bridges rather arbitrarily refuses to recognize more than five There are sometimes two breaks in a line, the "variety and severity" of the breaks being, according to Bridges, a distinction of Milton's verse. Hail Son of God, || Saviour of men, || thy name. (4 + 4 + 2) Regions of sorrow, || dolefull shades, || where peace. (5 + 3 + 2) Such are the more obvious and tangible facts of Miltonic prosody in Paradise Lost, and they are, as we have seen, enough in themselves to mark him as individual in his metrical practice. The more complex factors of rhythm-quantity, pitch, modulation of vowel and consonant sound, the lesser degrees of rhetorical pause both within the line and at its end-are impossible to tabulate or measAll one can say is that Milton's artistry in their use is such as to make him the supreme master of the harmonies of English verse. ure. CHAPTER VII MILTON'S FAME AND INFLUENCE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HOUGH Milton lived his last days in quietness and published his great poems with no accompaniment of public demonstration, he had at his death already taken his place among the notables of England. As a man of learning, as a Latin and English poet, as the writer of the Defense against Salmasius, and as a last survivor of the Commonwealth government, he was naturally an object of public interest, and, to royalists, of scandal. He was visited in his London obscurity by distinguished foreigners. John Dryden asked his leave to turn Paradise Lost into an opera, and conversed with him on literary matters, receiving the scornful answer, "Yes, Mr. Dryden, you may tag my verses." Numerous biographies were written and published in the first quarter century after his death, Though Milton would have acquired no such prompt notoriety on the strength of his English poetry alone, and though the taste and temper of the Restoration were all against a proper understanding of his work, there is evidence that Paradise Lost was both read and admired from the first, not alone by the few men of Milton's own circle who, like Andrew Marvell, shared his moral and political ideas, but even occasionally by the wits of the new age.1 Professor Havens estimates that some four thousand copies of Paradise Lost were in circulation by 1680, enough to supply the "fit audience though few" whom Milton thought he had a right to expect in any age. The leader in critical admiration and the true founder of Milton's literary reputation was John Dryden, who returned to his work again and again in his prose discussions. The idea of Milton's unpopularity in the Restoration period was greatly exaggerated by eighteenth century writers, in contrast to the universal admiration of their own age.2 It remains true, however, that the changes in the moral tone of the nation which attended the Revolution of 1688 made possible a rapid widening of the circle of Milton's admirers. Jacob Tonson, into whose hands the copyright of Paradise Lost had fallen, published five successive editions of the poem in the decade from 1688 to 1698, one of them (that of 1695) with elaborate learned annotations by Patrick Hume. This is the first really scholarly edition of Milton or, indeed, of any English poet. Latin translations were made of Paradise Lost and other Miltonic poems. Even the prose works began to be read again with sympathy as the anti-Puritan reaction came to an end and the Stuart régime was finally overthrown. 1 Richardson has an account of Sir John Denham's enthusiasm for Paradise Lost, "wet from the press." He sent it to Dryden, who remarked "This man cuts us all out and the ancients too." On the authenticity of the anecdote see Banks, Sir John Denham and "Paradise Lost." 2 See Havens, Seventeenth Century Notices of Milton, also Good's Studies in the Milton Tradition to which I am greatly indebted for data regarding the early editions, biographies, and critiques of Milton. |