The Spectator Volume Ii Part 53

I have been the more particular in these Observations on Milton's Stile, because it is that Part of him in which he appears the most singular.

The Remarks I have here made upon the Practice of other Poets, with my Observations out of Aristotle, will perhaps alleviate the Prejudice which some have taken to his Poem upon this Account; tho after all, I must confess that I think his Stile, tho admirable in general, is in some places too much stiffened and obscured by the frequent Use of those Methods, which Aristotle has prescribed for the raising of it.

This Redundancy of those several Ways of Speech, which Aristotle calls foreign Language, and with which Milton has so very much enriched, and in some Places darkned the Language of his Poem, was the more proper for his use, because his Poem is written in Blank Verse. Rhyme, without any other a.s.sistance, throws the Language off from Prose, and very often makes an indifferent Phrase pa.s.s unregarded; but where the Verse is not built upon Rhymes, there Pomp of Sound, and Energy of Expression, are indispensably necessary to support the Stile, and keep it from falling into the Flatness of Prose.

Those who have not a Taste for this Elevation of Stile, and are apt to ridicule a Poet when he departs from the common Forms of Expression, would do well to see how Aristotle has treated an Ancient Author called Euclid, [8] for his insipid Mirth upon this Occasion. Mr. Dryden used to call [these [9]]sort of Men his Prose-Criticks.

I should, under this Head of the Language, consider Milton's Numbers, in which he has made use of several Elisions, which are not customary among other English Poets, as may be particularly observed in his cutting off the Letter Y, when it precedes a Vowel. [10] This, and some other Innovation in the Measure of his Verse, has varied his Numbers in such a manner, as makes them incapable of satiating the Ear, and cloying the Reader, which the same uniform Measure would certainly have done, and which the perpetual Returns of Rhime never fail to do in long Narrative Poems. I shall close these Reflections upon the Language of Paradise Lost, with observing that Milton has copied after Homer rather than Virgil in the length of his Periods, the Copiousness of his Phrases, and the running of his Verses into one another.

L.

[Footnote 1: Aristotle, Poetics, ii. --26.

The excellence of Diction consists in being perspicuous without being mean.]

[Footnote 2:

Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parum cavit natura.

De Ar. Poet., II. 351-3.]

[Footnote 3: [see an Instance or two]]

[Footnote 4: Poetics, ii. -- 26]

[Footnote 5: [,like those in Milton]]

[Footnote 6:

That language is elevated and remote from the vulgar idiom which employs unusual words: by unusual, I mean foreign, metaphorical, extended--all, in short, that are not common words. Yet, should a poet compose his Diction entirely of such words, the result would be either an enigma or a barbarous jargon: an enigma if composed of metaphors, a barbarous jargon if composed of foreign words. For the essence of an enigma consists in putting together things apparently inconsistent and impossible, and at the same time saying nothing but what is true. Now this cannot be effected by the mere arrangement of words; by the metaphorical use of them it may.]

[Footnote 7: On Life and Poetry of Homer, wrongly ascribed to Plutarch, Bk. I. -- 16.]

[Footnote 8: Poetics, II. -- 26.

A judicious intermixture is requisite ... It is without reason, therefore, that some critics have censured these modes of speech, and ridiculed the poet for the use of them; as old Euclid did, objecting that versification would be an easy business, if it were permitted to lengthen words at pleasure, and then giving a burlesque example of that sort of diction... In the employment of all the species of unusual words, moderation is necessary: for metaphors, foreign words, or any of the others improperly used, and with a design to be ridiculous, would produce the same effect. But how great a difference is made by a proper and temperate use of such words may be seen in heroic verse. Let any one put common words in the place of the metaphorical, the foreign, and others of the same kind, and he will be convinced of the truth of what I say.

He then gives two or three examples of the effect of changing poetical for common words. As, that (in plays now lost):

the same Iambic verse occurs in aeschylus and Euripides; but by means of a single alteration--the subst.i.tution of a foreign for a common and usual word--one of these verses appears beautiful, the other ordinary.

For aeschylus in his Philoctetes says, "The poisonous wound that eats my flesh." But Euripides for ([Greek: esthiei]) "eats" says ([Greek: thoinatai]) "banquets on."]

[Footnote 9: [this]]

[Footnote 10: This is not particularly observed. On the very first page of P. L. we have a line with the final y twice sounded before a vowel,

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song.

Again a few lines later,

That to the height of this great argument I may a.s.sert Eternal Providence.

Ten lines farther we read of the Serpent

Stirr'd up with envy and revenge.

We have only an apparent elision of y a few lines later in his aspiring

To set himself in glory above his peers,

for the line would be ruined were the y to be omitted by a reader. The extreme shortness of the two unaccented syllables, y and a, gives them the quant.i.ty of one in the metre, and allows by the turn of voice a suggestion of exuberance, heightening the force of the word glory. Three lines lower Milton has no elision of the y before a vowel in the line,

Against the throne and monarchy of G.o.d.

Nor eight lines after that in the words day and night. There is elision of y in the line,

That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall.

But none a few lines lower down in

Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven.

When the y stands by itself, unaccented, immediately after an accented syllable, and precedes a vowel that is part of another unaccented syllable standing immediately before an accented one, Milton accepts the consequence, and does not attempt to give it the force of a distinct syllable. But Addison's vague notion that it was Milton's custom to cut off the final y when it precedes a vowel, and that for the sake of being uncommon, came of inaccurate observation. For the reasons just given, the y of the word glory runs into the succeeding syllable, and most a.s.suredly is not cut off, when we read of

the excess Of Glory obscured: as when the sun, new ris'n, Looks through the horizontal misty air,

but the y in misty stands as a full syllable because the word air is accented. So again in

Death as oft accused Of tardy execution, since denounc'd The day of his offence.

The y of tardy is a syllable because the vowel following it is accented; the y also of day remains, because, although an unaccented vowel follows, it is itself part of an accented syllable.]