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The Spectator, Number 262

As the First Place among our English Poets is due to Milton, and as I have drawn more Quotations out of him than from any other, I shall enter into a regular Criticism upon his Paradise Lost, which I shall publish every Saturday till I have given my Thoughts upon that Poem. I shall not however presume to impose upon others my own particular Judgment on this Author, but only to deliver it as my private Opinion. Criticism is of a very large Extent, and every particular Master in this Art has his favourite Passages in an Author, which do not equally strike the best Judges. It will be sufficient for me if I discover many beauties or Imperfections which others have not attended to, and I should be very glad to see any of orlr eminent Writers publish their Discoveries on the same Subject In short, I would always be understood to write my Papers of Criticism in the spirit which Horace has expressed in those two famous Lines.

----Si quid novisti rectius istis
Candidus imperti, si non his utere mecnum.

If you have made better Remarks of your own, communicate them with Candour; if not, make use of these 1 present you with.

The Spectator, Number 267

THERE is nothing in Nature so irksome as general Discourses, especially when they turn chiefly upon Words. For this Reason I shall wave the Discussion of that Point which was started some Years since, Whether Milton 's Paradise Lost may be called an Heroick Poem? Those who will not give it that Title, may call it (if they please) a Divine Poem. It will be sufficient to its Perfection, if it has in it all the Beauties of the highest kind of Poetry; and as far those who allege it is not an Heroick Poem, they advance no more to the Diminution of it, than if they should say Adam is not Aeneas, nor Eve Helen.

I shall therefore examine it by the Rules of Epic Poetry, and see whether it falls short of the Iliad or Aneid, in the Beauties which are essential to that kind of writing. The first Thing to be considered in an Epic Poem, is the Fable, which is perfect or irmperfect, according as the Action which it relates is more or less s. This Action should have three Qualifications in it. First. It should be but one Action. Secondly, it should be an enthe Action; and Thirdly, it should be a great Action. To consider the Action of the Iliad, Aeneid, and Paradise Lost in these three several lights. Homer to preserve the Unity of his Action hastens into the midst of things, as Horace has observed. Had he gone up to Leda 's egg, or begun much later. even at the Rape of Helen, or the Investing of Troy, it is

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manifest that the Story of the Poem would have been a Series of several Actions. He therefore opens his Poem with the Discord of his Princes, and with great Art interweaves in the several succeeding parts of it, an account of every thing material which relates to them, and had passed before that fatal Dissention. After the same manner Aeneas makes his first appearance in the Tyrrhene Seas, and within sight of Italy, because the Action proposed to be celebrated was that of his Settling himself in Latium. But because it was necessary for the Reader to know what had happened to him in the taking of Troy, and in the preceding parts of his Voyage, Virgil makes his Hero relate it by way of Episode in the second and third Books of the Aeneid. The Contents of both which Books come before those of the first Book in the Thread of the Story, the' for preserving of this Unity of Action, they follow them in the Disposition of the Poem. Milton, in Imitation of these two great Poets, opens his Paradise Lost with an Infernal Council plotting the Fall of Man, which is the Action he proposed to celebrate; and as for those great Actions, which preceded in point of time, the Battle of the Angels, and the Creation of the World, (which would have enthely destroyed the Unity of his Principal Action, had he related them in the same Order that they happened) he cast them into the fifth, sixth and seventh Books, by way of Episode to this noble Poem.

Arisrotle himself allows, that Homer has nothing to boast of as to the Unity of his Fable, the' at the same time that great Critick and Philosopher endeavours to palliate this Imperfection in the Greek Poet, by imputing it in some Measure to the very Nature of an Epic Poem. Some have been of Opinion, that the Aeneid labours also in this particular, and has Episodes which may be looked upon as Excrescencies rather than as Parts of the Action On the contrary, the Poem which we have now under our Consideration, hath no other Episodes than such as naturally arise from the Subject, and yet is filled with such a multitude of astonishing Incidents, that it gives us at the same time a Pleasure of the greatest Variety, and of the greatest Simplicity; uniform in its Nature, though diversified in the Execution.

I must observe also, that as Virgil in the Poem which was designed to celebrate the Original of the Roman Empire, has described the Birth of its great Rival, the Carthaginian Commonwealth. Milton with the like Art in his Poem on the Fall of Man, has related the Fall of those Angels who are his professed Enemies. Besides the many other Beauties in such all Episode, it's running Parallel with the great Action of the Poem, hinders it from breaking the Unity so much as another Episode would have done, that had not so great an Affinity with the principal Subject. In short, this is the same kind of Beauty which the Criticks admire in the The Spanish Fryar, or the Double Discovery, where the two different Plots look like Counterparts and Copies of one another.

The second Qualification required in the Action of an Epic Poem is, that it should be an entire Action. An Action is entire when it is compleat in all its Parts; or as Aristotle describes it, when it consists of a Beginning, a Middle, and

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an End. Nothing should go before it, be intermix'd with it, or follow after it, that is not related to it. As on the contrary, no single Step should be omitted in that just and regular Process which it must be supposed to take from its Original to its Consommation. Thus we see the Anger of Achilles in its Birth, its Continuance and Effects; and Aeneas's Settlement in Italy, carried on through all the Oppositions in his way to it both by Sea and Land. The Action in Milton excels (I think) both the former in this particular; we see it contrived in Hell, executed upon Earth, and punished by Heaven. The parts of it are told in the most distinct manner, and grow out of one another in the most natural Method.

The third Qualification of an Epic Poem is its Greatness The Anger of Achilles was of such Consequence, that it embroiled the Kings of Greece, destroy'd the Heroes of Troy, and engaged all the Gods in Factions. Aeneas's Settlement in Italy produced the Caesars, and gave Birth to the Roman Empire. Milton's Subject was still greater than either of the former; it does not determine the Fate of single Persons or Nations, but of a whole Species. The united Powers of Hell are joyned together for the Destruction of Mankind, which they effected in part, and would have completed, had not Omnipotence it self interposed. The principal Actors are Man in his greatest Perfection, and Woman in her highest Beauty. Their Enemies are the fallen Angels: The Messiah their Friend. and the Almighty their Protector. In short, every thing that is great in the whole Circle of Being, whether within the Verge of Nature. or out of it, has a proper Part assigned it in this noble Poem.

In Poetry, as in Architecture, not only the whole, but the principal Members, and every part of them, should be Great. I will not presume to say, that the Book of Games in the Aeneid, or that in the Iliad, are not of this nature, nor to reprehend Virgil 's Simile of a Top, and many other of the same nature in the fable as liable to any Censure in this Particular; but I think we may say, without derogating from those wonderful performances, that there is all unquestionable magnificence in every Part of Paradise Lost, and indeed a much greater than could have been formed upon any Pagan System.

But Aristotle, by the Greatness of the Action does not only mean that it should be great in its Nature, but also in its Duration, or in other Words, that it should have a due length in it, as well as what we properly call Greatness. The just Measure of this kind of Magnitude, he explains by the following Similitude. An Animal, no bigger than a mite cannot appear perfect to the Eye, because the Sight takes it in at once, and has only a confused Idea of the whole, and not a distinct Idea of all its Parts; If on the contrary you should suppose an Animal of ten thousand Furlongs in length, the Eye would be so filled with a single Part of it, that it could not give the Mind an Idea of the whole. What these Animals are to the Eye, a very short or a very long Action would be to the Memory. The first would be, as it were, lost and swallowed up by it, and the other difficult to be contained in it. Homer and Virgil have shewn their principal Art in this Particular; the Action of the Iliad, and that of the Aeneid, were in themselves

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exceeding short, hut are so beautifully extended and diversified by the Invention of Episodes, and the Machinery of Gods, with the like Poetical Ornaments, that they make up an agreeable Story sufficient to employ the Memory without overcharging it. Milton's Action is enriched with such variety of Circumstances that I have taken as much Pleasure in reading the Contents of his Books, as in the best invented Story I ever met with. It is possible, that the Traditions of which the Iliad and Aeneid were built had more Circumstances in them than the History of the Fall of Man, as it is related in Scripture. Besides it was easier for Homer and Virgil to dash the Truth with Fiction, as they were in no danger of offending the Religion of their Country by it. But as for Milton, he had not only a very few Circumstances upon which to raise his Poem, but was also obliged to proceed with the greatest Caution in every thing that he added out of his own Invention. And, indeed, notwithstanding all the Restraints he was under, he has filled his Story with so many surprising incidents, which bear so close an Analogy with what is delivered in Holy Writ, that it is capable of pleasing the most delicate Reader, without giving Offence to the most scrupulous.

The Modern Criticks have collected from several Hints in the Iliad and Aeneid the Space of Time, which is taken up by the Action of each of those Poems; but as a great Part of Milton S Story was transacted in Regions that lie out of the reach of the Sun and the Sphere of Day, it is impossible to gratifie the Reader with such a Calculation. which indeed would be more curious than instructive: none of the Criticks, either Ancient or Modern, having laid down Rules to circumscribe the Action of an Epic Poem with any determined number of years, Days, or Hours.

This piece of Criticism on Milton's Paradise Lost, shall be carried on in Saturdays Papers.

The Spectator, Number 273

HAVING examined the Action of Paradise Lost, let us in the next place consider the Actors. This is Aristotle's Method of considering; first the Fable, and secondly the Manners, or, as we generally call them in English, the Fable and the Characters.

Homer has excelled all the Heroic Poets that ever wrote, in the multitude and variety of his Characters. Every God that is admitted into his Poem, acts a Part which would have been suitable to no other Deity. His Princes are as much distinguished by they Manners as by their Dominions; and even those among them, whose Characters seem wholly made up of Courage, differ from one another as to the particular kinds of Courage in which they excell. In short, there is scarce a Speech or Action in the Iliad, which the Reader may not ascribe to the Person that speaks or acts, without feeling his Name at the Head of it.

Homer does not only out-shine all other poets in the Variety, but also in the Novelty of his Characters. He has introduced among his Graecian Princes a

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Person who had lived thrice the Age of Man, and conversed with Theseus, Hercules, Polyphemus, and the first Race of Heroes. His principal Actor is the Son of a Goddess, not to mention the Offspring of other Deities who have likewise a Place in his Poem, and the venerable Trojan Prince, who was the Father of so many Kings and Heroes. There is in these several Characters of Homer, a certain Dignity as well as Novelty, which adapts them in a more peculiar manner to the Nature of an Heroic Poem. Tho', at the same time, to give them the greater variety, he has described a Vulcan, that is, a Buffoon among his Gods, and a Thersites among his Mortals.

Virgil falls infinitely short of Homer in the Characters of Iris Poem, both as to tlreir Variety and Novelty. AenPas is indeed a perfect Character, bur as for Achates, tho' he is stiled the Hero's Friend, he does nothing in the whole Poem which may deserve that Title. Gyan, Mnesreus,. Sergestus, Cloanthus, are all of them Men of the same Stamp and Character.

-- Fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloonthum [Virg.]

There are indeed several very natural Incidents in the Part of Ascanius; as that of Dido cannot be sufficiently admired. I do not see any thing new or particular in Turnus, Pallas and Evander are remote Copies of Hector and Priam, as Lausus and Mezentius are almost Parallels to Pallas and Evander. The Characters of Nisus and Eurialus are beautiful, but common. We must nor forget the Parts of Sinon. Cantilla, and some few others, which are beautiful Improvements on the Greek Poet. In short, there is neither that Variety nor Novelty in the Persons of the Aeneid which we meet with in those of the Iliad.

If we look into the Characters of Milton, we shall find that be has introduced all the Variety that his Poem was capable of receiving. The whole Species of Mankind was in two Persons at the time to which the Subject of his Poem is confined. We have, however, four distinct Characters in these two Persons We see Man and Woman in the highest Innocence and Perfection, and in the most abject State of Guilt and Infirmity. The two last Characters are, indeed, very common and obvious, but the two first are not only more magnificent, but more new than any Characters either in Virgil or Homer, or indeed in the whole Circle of Nature.

Milton was so sensible of this Defect in the Subject of his Poem, and of the Ten Characters it would afford him, tllat he has brought into it two Actors of a Shadowy and Fictitious Nature, in the Persons of Sin and Death, by which means he has interwoven in the Body of his Fable a very beautiful and well invented Allegory. But notwithstanding the Fineness of this Allegory may atone for it in some measure: I cannot think that Persons of such a Chymerical Existence are proper Actors in an Epic Poem; because there is not that measure of Probability annexed to them, which is requisite in Writings of this kind, as I shall shew more at large hereafter.

Virgil has, indeed, admitted Fame as an Actress in the Aeneid, but the Part she acts is very short, and none of the most admired Circumstances in that

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Divine Work. We find in Mock-Heroic Poems, particularly in the Dispensary and the Lutrin, several Allegorical Persons of this Nature, which are very beautiful in those Compositions, and may, perhaps, be used as an Argument. that the Authors of them were of Opinion, that such Characters might have a Place in an Epic Work. For my own part, I should be glad the Reader would think so, for the sake of the Poem I am now examining, and must further add, that if such empty unsubstantial Beings may be ever made use of on this occasion, there were never ally more nicely imagined, and employed in more proper Actions, than those of which I am now speaking.

Another Principal Actor in this Poem is the great Enemy of Mankind. The Part of Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey is very much admired by Aristotle, as perplexing that Fable with very agreeable Plots and Intricacies, not only by the many Adventures in his Voyage. and the Subtilty of his Behaviour, but by the various Concealments and Discoveries of his Person in several parts of that Poem. But the Crafty Being I have now mentioned, makes a much longer Voyage than Ulysses, puts in practice many more Wiles and Stratagems, and hides himself under a greater variety of Shapes and Appearances, all of which are severally detected, to the great Delight and Surprize of the Reader.

We may likewise observe with how much Art the Poet has varied several Characters of the Persons that speak in Iris infernal Assembly. On the contrary, how has he represented the whole Godhead exerting it self towards Man in its full Benevolence under the Three-fold Distinction of a Creator, a Redeemer and
a Comforter!

Nor must we omit the Person of Raphael who amidst his tenderness and Friendship for Man, shews such a Dignity and Condescention in all his Speech and Behaviour, as are suitable to a Superior Nature. The Angels are indeed as much diversified ill n/ilro,l, and distinguished by their proper Parts, as the Gods are in Homer and Virgil The Reader will find nothing ascribed to Uriel, Gabriel Michael. or Raphael, which is not a particular manner suitable to their respective Characters.

There is another Circumstance in the principal Actors of the Iliad and Aeneid which give a peculiar Beauty to those two Poems, and was therefore contrived with very great Judgment. I mean the Authors having chosen for their heroes Persons who were so nearly related to the People For whom they wrote. Achilles was a Greek, and Aeneas the remote roullder of Rome By this means their Countrymen (whom they principally proposed to themselves for their Readers) were particularly attentive to all the parts of their Story, and sympathized with their Heroes in all their Adventures. A Roman could nor but rejoice in the Escapes, Successes and Victories of Aeneas and be grieved at any Defeats, Misfortunes, or Disappointments that befell him: as a Greek must have had the same regard for Achilles. And it is plain, that each of those Poems have lost this great Advantage, among those Readers to whom their Heroes are as Strangers, or indifferent Persons.

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Milton's Poem is admirable in this respect, since it is imposrible for any of its Readers, whatever Nation, Country or People he may belong to, not to be related to the Persons who are the principal Actors in it; but what is still infinitely more to its Advantage, the principal /Actors in this Poem are not only our Progenitors, but our Representatives. We have an actual Interest in every thing they do, and no less than our utmost Happiness or Misery is concerned, and lies at Stake in all their Behaviour.

I shall subjoyn as a Corollary to the foregoing Remark, an admirable Observation out of Aristotle, which hath been very much misrepresented in the Quotations of some Modem Criticks. 'If a Man of perfect and consummate Virtue falls into a Misfortune, it raises our Pity, but not our Terror, because we do not fear that it maybe our own Case, who do not resemble the Suffering Person.' But as that great Philosopher adds, 'If we see a Man of Virtues mixt with Infirmities, fall into any Misfortune, it does not only raise our Pity but our Terror; because we are aftaid that the like Misfortune may happen to our selves, who resemble the Character of the Suffering Person.'

I shall make another Opportunity to observe, that a Person of an absolute and consummate Virtue should never be introduced in Tragedy, and shall only remark in this Place, that the foregoing Observation of Arisrorle, the' it may be true in other Occasions, does not hold in this; because in the present Case, though the Persons who fall into Misfortune are of the most perfect and consnmmate Virtue, it is not to be considered as what may possibly be, but what actually is our own Case; since we are embark'd with them on the same Bottom, and must be Partakers of their Happiness or Misery.

In this, and some other very few Instances, Aristotle's Rules For Epic Poetry (which he had drawn for his Reflections upon Homer) cannot be supported to quadrate exactly with the Heroic Poems which have been made since his Time; as it is plain his Rules would have been still more perfect, could he have perused the Aeneid which was made some hundred Years after his Death.

IN my next I shall go through the other parts of Milton's Poem; and hope that what I shall there advance, as well as what I have already written, will not only serve as a Comment upon Milton, but upon Aristotle.

The Spectator, Number 279

WE have already taken a general Survey of the Table and Characters in Milton's Paradise Lost. The Parts which remain to be consider'd, according to Aristotle's Method, are the Sentiments and the Language. Before I enter upon the first of of these, I must advertise my Reatler, that it is my Design as soon as I have finished my general Reflections on these four several Heads, to give particular instances out of the Poem which is now before us of Beauties and Imperfections which may be observed under each of them, as also of such other particulars as may not properly fall under any of them. This I thought fit to premise, that the Reader

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may not judge too hastily of this Piece of Criticism, or look upon it as Imperfect, before he has seen the whole Extent of it.

The Sentiments in an Epic Poem are the Thoughts and Behaviour which the Author ascribes to the Persons whom he introduces, and are just when they are conformable to the Characters of the several Persons. The Sentiments have likewise a relation to Things as well as Persons. and are then perfect when they are such as are adapted to the Subject. If in either of these Cases the Poet argues, or explains, magnifies or diminishes, raises Love or Hatred, Pity or Terror, or any other Passion, we ought to consider whether the Sentiments he makes use of are proper for their Ends. Homer is censured by the Criticks for his Defects as to this Particular in several parts of the Ilind and Odyssey, the' at the same lime those who have treated this great Poet with Candour, have attributed this Defect to the Times in which he lived. It was the fault of the Age, and not of Homer, if there wants that Delicacy in some of his Sentiments, which appears in the Works of Men or a much inferior Genius. Besides, if there are Blemishes in any particular Thoughts, there is an infmite Beauty in the greatest part of them. In short, if there are many Poets who wou'd not have fallen into the meanness of some of his Sentiments, there are none who cou'd have risen up to the Greatness of others. Virgil has excelled all others in the Propriety of his Sentiments. Milton shines likewise very much in this Particular: Nor must we omit one Consideration which adds to his Honour and Reputation. Homer and Virgil introduced Persons whose Characters are commonly known among Men, and such as are to be met with either in History, or in ordinary Conversation.

Milton's Characters, most of them, lie out of Nature, and were to be formed purely by his own Invention. If shews a greater Genius in Shakespeare to have drawn his Calyban, than his Hotspur or Julius Caesar.· The one was to be supplied out of his own Imagination, whereas the other might have been formed upon Tradition, History and Observation It was much easier therefore for Homer to find proper Sentiments for an Assembly of Grecian Generals, than for Milton to diversifie his Infernal Council with proper Characters, and inspire them with a variety of Sentiments. The Loves of Dido and Aeneas are only Copies of what has passed between other Persons. Adam and Eve, before the Fall, are a different Species from that of Mankind, who are descended from them, and none but a Poet of the most Unbounded Invention, and the most exquisite Judgment, could have filed their Conversation and Behaviour with such Beautiful Circumstances during their State of Innocence. Nor is it suficient for an Epic Poem to be filled with such Thoughts as are Natural, unless it abound also with such as are Sublime. Virgil, in this Particular falls short of Homer, he has not indeed so many Thoughts that are Low and Vulgar; but at the same time has not so many Thoughts that are Sublime and Noble. The truth of it is, Virgil seldom rises into very astonishing Sentiments, where he is not fired by the Iliad. He every where charms and pleases us by the force of his own Genius;

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but seldom elevates and transports us where he does not fetch his Hints from Homer.

Milton's chief Talent, and indeed his distinguishing Excellence, lies in the Sublimity of his Thoughts. There are others of the Moderns who rival him in every other part of Poetry; but in the greatness of his Sentiments he triumphs over all the Poets both Modem and Ancient, Homer only excepted. It is impossible for the Imagination of Man to distend it self with greater Ideas, than those which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth Books. The seventh, which describes the Creation of the World, is likewise wonderfully Sublime, the' not so apt to stir up Emotion in the Mind of the Reader, nor consequently so perfect in the Epic way of Writing, because it is filled with less Action. Let the Reader compare what Longinus has observed on several Passages of Homer, and he will find Parallels for most of them in the Paradise Lost.

From what has been said we may infer, that as there are two kinds of Sentiments, the Natural and the Sublime, which are always to be pursued in an Heroic Poem, there are also two kinds of Thoughts which are carefully to be avoided, The first are such as are effected and unnatural; the second such as are common and vulgar. As for the first kind of Thoughts we meet with little or nothing that is like them in Virgil: He has none of those little Points and Puerilitics that are so often to be met with in Ovid, none of the Epigrammatick Tums of Lucan, none of those swelling Sentiments which are so frequently in Statius and Claudian, none of those mixed Embellishments of Tasso. Everything is just and
natural. Hs Sentiments shew that he had a perfect Insight into Human Nature, and that he knew every thing which was the most proper to affect it.

Mr. Dryden has in some Places, which I may hereafter take notice of, misrepresented Virgil's way of thinking as to this Particular, in the Translation he has given us of the Aeneid I do not remember that Homer any where falls into the Faults above mentioned, which were indeed the false Refinements of later Ages. Milton, it must be confest, has sometimes erred in this Respect, as I will shew more at large in another Paper; the' considering how all the Poets of the Age in which he writ, were infected with this wrong way of thinking, he is rather to he admired that he did not give more into it, than that he did sometimes comply with the vicious Taste which prevails so much among Modern Writers.

But since several Thoughts may be natural which are low and groveling, an Epic Poet should not only avoid such Sentiments as are unnatural or affected, but also such as are low and vulgar. Homer has opened a great Field of Raillery to Men of more Delicacy than Greatness or Genius, by the Homeliness of some of his Sentiments. But, as I have before said, these are rather to be imputed to the Simplicity of the Age in which he lived, to which I may also add, of that which he described, than to any Imperfection in that Divine poet. Zoilus among the ancients, and Monsieur Perrault, among the Moderns, pushed their Ridicule

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very far upon him, on account, of some such Sentiments. There is no Blemish to be observed in Virgil under this Head, and but very few in Milton I shall give but one Instance of this Impropriety of Sentiments in Homer, and at the same time compare it with an Instance of the same nature, both in Virgil and Milton. Sentiments which raise Laughter, can very seldom be admitted with any decency into an Heroic Poem, whose Business it is to excite Passions of a much nobler Nature. Homer, however, in his Characters of Vulcan and Thersites, in his Story of Mars and Venus, in his Behaviour of Irus, and in other Passages, has been observed to have lapsed into the Burlesque Character, and to have departed from that serious Air which seems essential to the Magnificence of an Epic Poem. I remember but one Laugh in the whole Aeneid. which rises in the Fifth Book upon Monoetes, where he is represented as thrown overboard, and drying himself upon a Rock. But this Piece of Mirth is so well limed, that the severest Critick can have nothing to say against it, for it is in the Book of Games and Diversions, where the Reader's Mind may be supposed to be sufficiently relaxed for such an Entertainment. The only Piece of Pleasantry in Paradise Lost, is where the Evil Spirits are described as rallying the Angels upon the Success of their new invented Artillery. This passage I look upon to be the most exceptionable in the whole Poem, as being nothing else but a string of Punns, and those too very indifferent ones [6.607-629].

The Spectator, Number 285

HAVING already treated of the Fable, the Characters, and Sentiments in the Paradise Lost, we are in the last place to consider the Language, and as the learned World is very much divided upon Milton as to this Point, I hope they will excuse me if I appear particular in any of my Opinions, and encline to those who judge the most advantagiously of the Author.

It is requisite that the Language of an lleroic Poem should be both Perspicuous and Sublime. In Proportion as either of these two caualities are wanting, the Language is imperfect Perspicuity is the first and most necessary Quantification: insomuch, that a good-natured Reader sometimes overlooks a little Slip even in the Grammar or Syntax, where it is impossible for him to mistake the Poet's Sense. Of this kind is that Passage in Milton, wherein he
speaks of Satan [2.678-679]. And that in which he describes Adam and Eve (4.323-324).

It is plain, that in the former of these Passages, according to the natural Syntax, the Divine Persons mentioned in the first Line are represented as created Beings; and that in the other, Adam and Eve are confounded with their Sons and Daughters.

Such little Blemishes as these, when the Thought is great and natural, we should, with Horace, impute to a pardonable Inadvertency, or to the Weakness of Human Nature, which cannot attend to each minute Particular, and give the last finishing to every Circumstance in so long a Work. The Ancient

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Criticks therefore, who were acted by a Spirit of Candour, rather than that of Cavilling, invented certain figures of Speech, on purpose to palliate little Errors of this nature in the Writings of those Authors, who had so many greater Beauties to atone for them.

If Clearness and Perspicuity were only to be consulted, the Poet would have nothing else to do but to cloath his Thoughts in the most plain and natural Expressions. But, since it often happens, that the most obvious Phrases, and those which are used in ordinary Conversation, become too familiar to the Ear, and contract a kind of Meanness by passing through the Mouths of the Vulgar, a Poet should take particular care to guard himself against Idiomatick ways of speaking. Ovid and Lucan have many Poornesses of Expression upon this account, as taking up with the first Phrases that offered, without putting themselves to the trouble of looking alter such as would not only have been natural, but also elevated and sublime. Milton had few Failings in this kind, of which, however, you may meet with some Instances, as in the following Passages [3.474-476; 5.395-397; 10.733-736].

The great Masters in Composition know very well that many an elegant Phrase becomes improper for a Poet or an Orator, when it has been debased by common use. For this reason the Works of Ancient Authors, which are written in dead Languages, have a great Advantage over those which are written in Languages that are now spoken. Were there any mean Phrases or Idioms in Virgil and Homer. they would not shack the Ear of the most delicate Modern Reader, so much as they would have done that of an old Greek or Roman, because we never hear them pronounced in our Streets, or in ordinary Conversation.

It is not therefore sufficient, that the Language of an Epic Poem be Perspicuous, unless it be also Sublime. To this end it ought to deviate from the common Forms and ordinary Phrases of Speech. The Judgment of a Poet very much discovers it self in shunning the common Roads of Expression, without falling into such ways of Speech as may seem stiff and unnatural; he must not swell into a false Sublime, by endeavouring to avoid the other Extream. Among the Greeks. Eschylus, and sometimes Sophocles, were guilty of this Fault; among the Latins Claudian and Statius; and among our own Countrymen, Shakespear and Lee. In these Authors the Affectation of Greatness often hurts the Perspicuity of the Stile, as in many others the Endeavour after Perspicuity prrjudices its Greatness.

Aristotle has observed, that the Idiomatick Stile may he avoided, and the Sublime formed, by the following Methods. First, by the use of Metaphors, like those of Milton (6:579-580; 7:463).

IN these and unnumerable other Instances, the Metaphors are very bold but beautiful; I must however observe, that the Metaphors are not thick sown in Milton, which always favours too much of Wit; that they never clash with one another, which as Aristotle observes, turns a Sentence into a kind of Enigma

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or Riddle; and that he seldom makes use of them where the proper and natural Words will do as well.

Another way of raising the Language, and giving it a Poetical Turn, is to make use of the Idioms of other Tongues. Virgil if full of the creek Forms of Speech, which the Criticks call Hellenisms, as Horace in his Odes abounds with them much more than Virgil I need not mention the several Dialects which Homer has made use of for this end. Milton, in conformity with the Practice of the Ancient Poets, and with Arisrorle's Rule has infused a great many Latinisms. as well as Graecisms, and sometimes Hebraisms, into the Language of his Poem; as towards the beginning of it [1.335-337; 2.404-409; 11.376-377].

Under this Head may be reckoned the placing the Adjective alter the Substantive, the transposition of Words, the turning the Adjective into a Substantive, with several other Foreign Modes of Speech, which this Poet has naturalized to give his Verse the greater Sound, and throw it out of Prose.

The third Method mentioned by Arislotle, is what agrees with the Genius of the creek Language more than with that of any other Tongue, and is therefore more used by Homer than any other Poet. I mean the lengthning of a Phrase by the Addition of Words, which may either be inserted or omitted, as also by the extending or contracting of particular Words by the Insertion or Omission of certain Syllables. Mrlron has put in practice this Method of raising his Language, as far as the nature of our Tongue will permit, as in the Passage above- mentioned, Eremite, for what Is Hermite, in common Discourse. If you observe the Measure of his Verse, he has with great Judgment suppressed a Syllable in several Words, and shortned those of two Syllables into one, by which Method, besides the above mentioned Advantage, he has given a greater Variety to his Numbers. But this Practice is more particularly remarkable in the Names of Persons and Countries, as Beelzebub. Hessebon, and in many other Particulars, wherein he has either changed the Name, or made use of that which is not the most commonly known, that he might the better deviate from the Language of the Vulgar.

The same Reason recommended to him several old Words, which also makes his Poem appear the more venerable, and gives it a greater Air of Antiquity.

I must likewise take notice, that there are in Milton several Words of his own Coining, as Cerberean, miscreated, Hell-doom'd, Embryon Atoms, and many others. If the Reader is offended at this Liberty in our English Poet, I would recommend him to a Discourse in Plutarch, which shows us how frequently Homer has made use of the same Liberty

Milton, by the above-mentioned Helps, and by the choice of the noblest Words and Phrases which our Tollgue would afford him, has carried our Language to a greater height than any of the English Poets have ever done before or after him, and made the Sublimity of his STile equal to that of his Sentiments.

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I have been the more particular in these Observations of Milton 's Stile, because it is that part of him in which he appears 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 Millon 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 assistance, throws the Language off from Prose, and very often makes an indifferent Phrase pass 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, for his insipid Mirth upon this Occasion. Mr. Dryden used to call this 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, that are not customary among other English Poets, as may be particularly observed in his cutting off the Letter Y when it preceeds a Vowel. This, and some other Innovations 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 Rhyme never fail to do in long Narrative Poems. I shall close these Reflections upon the I.anguage 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.

The Spectator, Number 291

I Have now consider'd Milton's Paradise Lost under those four great Heads of the Fable, the Characters, the Sentiments, and the Language; and have shewn that he excels, in general, under each of these Heads. I hope that I have made several Discoveries which may appear new, even to those who are versed in Critical Learning. Were I indeed to chuse my Readers, by whose Judgment I would stand or fall, they should not be such as are acquainted only with the French and Italian Criticks, but also with the Ancient and Moderns who have written in either of the learned Languages. Above all, I would have them well

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versed in the Geek and Latin Poets, without which a Man very often fancies that he understands a Critick, when in reality he does not comprehend his Meaning.

It is in Criticism, as in all other Sciences and Speculations; one who brings with him any implicit Notions and Observations which he has made in his reading of the Poets, will find his own Reflections methodized and explained, and perhaps several little Hints that had passed in his Mind, perfected and improved in the Works of a good Critick; whereas one who has not these previous Lights, is very often an utter Stranger to what he reads, and apt to put a wrong Interpretation upon it.

Nor is it sufficient, that a Man who sets up for a Judge in Criticism, should have perused the Authors above-mentioned, unless he has also a clear and Logical Head. Without this Talent he is perpetually puzzled and perplexed amidst his own Blunders, mistakes the Sense of those he would confute, or if he chances to think right, does not know how to convey his Thoughts to another with Clearness and Perspicuity. Arislolle, who was the best Critick, was also one the best Logicians that ever appeared in the World.

Mr. Lock 's Essay on Human Understanding would be thought a very odd Book for a Man to make himself Master of who would get a Reputation by Critical Writings; though at the same lime it is very certain, that an Author who has not learn'd the Art of distinguishing between Words and Things, and of ranging his thoughts, and setting them in proper Lights, whatever Notions he may have, will lose himself in Confusion and Obscurity. I might further observe, that there is not a Greek or Latin Critick, who has not shewn, even in the stile of his Criticisms, that he was a Master of all the Elegance and Delicacy of his Native Tongue.

The truth of it is, there is noting more absurd, than for a Man to set up For a Critick, without a good Insight into all the Parts of Learning; whereas many of those who have endeavoured to signalize themselves by Works of this Nature among our Englich Writers, are not only defective in the above-mentioned Particulars, but plainly discover by the Phrases which they make use of and by their confused way of thinking, that they are not acquainted with the most common and ordinary Systems of Arts and Sciences A few general Rules extracted out of the French Authors, with a certain Cant of Words, has sometimes set up an Illiterate heavy Writer for a most judicious and formidable Critick.

One great Mark, by which you may discover a Critick who has neither Taste nor Learning, is this, that he seldom ventures to praise any Passage in an Author which has not been before received and applauded by the Publick, and that his Criticism turns wholly upon little Faults and Errors This part of a Critick is very easie to succeed in, that we find every ordinary Reader, upon the publishing of a new Poem, has Wit and Ill-nature enough to turn several Passages of it into Ridicule, and very often in the right Place. This Mr. Dryden has very agreeably remarked in those two celebrated Lines,

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Errors. like Straws, upon the Surface flow;
He who would search for Pearls must dive below.

A true Critick ought to dwell rather upon Excellencies than Imperfections. to discover the concealed Beauties of a Writer, and communicate to the World such things as are worth their Observation. The most exquisite Words and finest Strokes of an Author are those which very often appear the most doubtful and exceptionable, to a Man who wants a Relish for polite I.earning; and they are these, which a soure undistinguishing Critick generally attacks with the greatest Violence. Tully observes, that it is very easie to brand or fix a Mark upon what he calls Verbum ardens, or, as it may be rendered into English, a glowing bold Expression, and to turn it into Ridicule by a cold ill-natured Criticism. A little Wit is equally capable of exposing a Beauty, and of aggravating a Fault, and though such a Treatment of an Author naturally produces Indignation in the Mind of an understanding Reader, it has however its effect among the generality of those whose Hands it falls into, the Rabble of Mankind being very apt to think that every thing which is laughed at with any mixture of Wit, is ridiculous in itself.

Such a Mirth as this, is always unseasonable in a Critick, as it rather prejudices the Reader than convinces him, and is capable of making a Beauty, as well as a Blemish, the Subject of Derision. A Man, who cannot write with Wit on a proper Subject, is dull and stupid, but one who shews it in an improper place, is as impertinent and absurd. Besides, a Man who has the Gift of Ridicule is apt to find Fault with any thing that gives him an Opportunity of exerting his beloved Talent, and very often censures a Passage, not because there is any Fault in it, but because he can be merry upon it. Such kinds of Pleasantry are very unfair and disingenuous in Works of Criticism, in which the greatest Masters, both Ancient and Modern, have always appeared with a serious and instructive Air.

As I intend in my next Paper to shew the Defects in Milton's Paradise Lost, I thought fit to premise these few Particulars, to the End that the Reader may follow I enter upon it, as on a very ungrateful Work, and that I shall just point at the Imperfections, without endeavouring to enflame them with Ridicule. I must also observe with Longinus, that the Productions of a great Genius, with many Lapses and Inadvertencies, are infinitely preferable to the Works of an inferior kind of Author, which are scrupulously exact and conformable to all the Rules of correct Writing.

I shall conclude my Paper with a Story out of Boccalini. which sufficiently shews us the Opinion that ludicious Author entertained of the sort of Criticks I have been here mentioning. A famous Critick, says he, having gathered together all the Faults of an Eminent Poet, made a Present of them to Apollo, who received them very graciously, and resolved to make the i\rlthor a suitable Return for the Trouble he had been at in collecting them. In order to this, he set before him a Sack of Wheat, as it had been just threshed out of the Sheaf. He

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then bid him pick out the Chaff from among the Corn, and lay it aside by itself. The Critick applied himself to the Task with great Industry and Pleasure, and after having make the due Separation, was presented by Apollo with the Chaff for his Pains.

The Spectator, Number 297

AFTER what I have said in my last Saturday's Paper, I shall enter on the Subject of this without farther Preface, and remark the several Defects which appear in the Fable, the Characters, the Sentiments, and the Language of Milton's Paradise Lost; not doubting but the Reader will pardon me, if I alledge at the same time whatever may be said for the Extenuation of such Defects. The first Imperfection which I shall observe in the Fable is, that the Event of it is unhappy.

The Fable of every Poem is according to Aristotle's Division either Simple or Implex. It is called Simple when there is no change of Fortune in it, Implex when the Fortune of the chief Actor changes from Bad to Good, or from Good to Bad. The Implex Fable is thought the most perfect; I suppose, because it is most proper to stir up the Passions of the Reader, and to surprize him with a greater variety of Accidents.

The Implex Fable is therefore of two kinds: In the first the chief Actor makes his way through a long Series of Dangers and Difficulties, 'till he arrives at Honour and Prosperity, as we see in the Stories of Ullysses. In the second, the chief Actor in the Poem falls from some eminent pitch of Honour and Prosperity, into Misery and Disgrace. Thus we see Adnm and Eve sinking from a State of Innocence and Happiness, into the most abject Condition of Sin and Sorrow.

The most taking Tragedies among the Ancients were built on this last sort or Implex Fable, particularly the Tragedy of Oedipus, which proceeds upon n Story, if we may believe Aristotle, the most proper for Tragedy that could be invented by the Wit of Man. 1 have taken some pains in a former Paper to shew that this kind of Implex Fable, wherein the Event is unhappy, is more apt to affect an audience than that of the first kind; notwithstanding many excellent Pieces among the Ancients, as well as most of those which have been written of late Years in oor own Country, are raised upon contrary Plans. I must however own, that I think this kind of Fable, which is the most perfect in Tragedy, is not so proper for an Heroic Poem.

Milton seems to have been sensible of this Imperfection in his Fable, and has therefore endeavoured to cure it by several Expedients; particularly by the Mortification which the great Adversary of Mankind meets with upon his return to the Assembly of Infernal Spirits, as it is described in a beautiful passage of the tenth Book; and likewise by the Vision, wherein Adam at the close of the Poem

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sees his Off-spring triumphing over his great Enemy, and himself restored to a happier Paradise than that from which he fell.

There is another Objection against Milton's Fable, which is indeed almost the same with the former, tho' placed in a different Light, namely, that the Hero in the Paradise Lost is unsuccessful, and by no means a Match for his Enemies. This gave occasion to Mr. Dryden's Reflection, that the Devil was in reality Milton's Hero. I think I have obviated this Objection in my first Paper. The Paradise Lost is an Epic, or a Narrative Poem, he that looks for an Hero in it, searches for that which Milton never intended; but if he will needs fix the Name of an Hero upon any Person in it, 'tis certainly the Messiah who is the Hero, both in the Principal Action, and in the chief Episodes. Paganism could not furnish out a real Action for a Fable greater than that of the Iliad or Aeneid and therefore an Heathen could not form a higher Notion of a Poem than one of that kind, which they call an Heroic. Whether Milton's is not of a sublimer Nature I will not presume to determine, it is sufficient that I shew there is in the Paradise Lost all the Greatness of Plan, Regularity of Design and masterly Beauties which we discover in Homer and Virgil. I must in the next Place observe, that Millon has interwoven in the Texture of his Fable some Particulars which do not seem to have Probability enough for an Epic Poem, particularly in the Actions which he ascribes to Sin and Death, and the Picture which he draws of the Lymbo of Vanity, with other Passages in the second Book. Such Allegories rather favour of the Spirit of Spencer and Ariosto, than of Homer and Virgil.

In the Structure of his Poem he has likewise admitted of too many Digressions. It is finely observed by Aristotle, that the Author of an Heroic Poem should seldom speak of himself, but throw as much of his Work as he can into the Mouth of those who are his PrincipalActors. Aristotle has given no Reason for this Precept; but I presume it is because the Mind of the Reader is more awed and elevated when he hears Aeneas or Achilles speak, than when Virgil or Homer talk in their own Persons. Besides that assuming the Character of an eminent Man is apt to fire the Imagination, and raise the Ideas of the Author. Tully tells us, mentioning his Dialogues of Old Age, in which Cnto is the chief Speaker, that upon a Review of it he was agreeably imposed upon, and fancied that it was Cato, and not he himself, who utter'd his Thoughts on that Subject.

If the Reader would he at the pains to see how the Story of the Iliad and the Aedeid is delivered by those Persons who act in it, he will be surprized to find how little in either of these Poems proceeds from the Authors. Milton has, in the general disposition of his Fable, very finely observed this great Rule; insomuch, that there is scare a third part of it which comes from the Poet; the rest is spoken either by Adam and Eve, or by some Good or Evil Spirit who is engaged either in their Destruction or Defence.

From what has been here observed it appears, that Digressions are by no means to he allowed of in an Epic Poem. If the Poet, even in the ordinary course

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of his Narration, should speak as little as possible, he should certainly let the Narration sleep for the sake of any Reflections of his own I have oftrll observed, with a secret Admiration, that the longest Reflection in the Aeneid is in that Passage of the Tenth Book, where Turnis is represented as dressing himself in the Spoils of Pallas, whom he has slain. Virgil here lets his Fahlc stand still for the sake of the following Remark. How is the Mind of Man Ignorant of Futurity, and unable to hear prosperous Fortune with Moderation? The time will come when Turnus shall wish that he had left the Body of Pallas untouched, and curse the Day on which he dressed himself in these Spoils. As the great Event of the Aeneid, and the Death of Turnus, whom Aeneas slew because he saw him adorned with the Spoils of Pallas, has upon this Incident, Virgil went out of his way to make this Reflection upon it, without which so small a Circumstance might possibly have slipped out of his Reader's Memory. Lucan, who was an Injudicious Poet, lets drop his Story very frequently for the sake of his unnecessary Digressions or his Diverticula, as Scaliger calls them. If he gives us an Account of the Prodigies which preceded the Civil War, he declaims upon the Occasion, and shews how much happier it would be for Man, if he did not feel his Evil Fortune before it comes to pass, and suffer not only by its real Weight, but by the Apprehension of it. Milton's Complaint of his Blindness, his Panegyrick on Marriage, his Reflections on Adam and Eve's going naked, of the Angels eating, and several other Passages in his Poem, are liable to the same Exception, tho' I must confess there is so great a Beauty in these very Digressions, that I would not wish them out of his Poem.

I have, in a former Paper, spoken of the Characters of Milton's Paradise Lost, and declared my Opinion, as to the Allegorical Persons who are introduced in it.

If we look into the Sentiments, I think they are sometimes defective under the following Heads; First, as there as several of them too much pointed, and some that degenerate even into Punns. Of this last kind I am afraid is that in the First Book, where, speaking of the Pigmies, he calls them [1.575-576].

Another Blemish that appears in some of his Thoughts, is his frequent Allusion to Heathen Fables, which are not certainly of a Piece with the Divine Subject, of which he treats. I do not find fault with these Allusions, where the Poet himself represents them as fabulous, as he does in some Places, but where he mentions them as Truths and Matters of Fact. The Limits of my Paper will not give me leave to be particular in Instances of this kind: The Reader will easily remark them in his Perusal of the Poem.

A Third Fault in his Sentiments, is an unnecessary Ostentation of Learning, which likewise occurs very frequently. It is certain that both Homer and Virgil were Masters of all the Learning of their Times, bur it shews it self in their Works after an indirect and concealed manner Milton seems ambitious of letting us know, by his Excursions on Free-will and Predestination, and his many Glances upon History, Astronomy, Geography and the like, as well as by the

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terms and Phrases he sometimes makes use of, that he was acquainted with the whole Circle of Arts and Sciences.

If, in the last place, we consider the Language of this great Poet, we must allow what I have hinted in a former Paper, that it is often too much laboured, and sometimes obscured by old Words, Transpositions, and Foreign Idioms.

Seneca's Objection to the Stile of a great Author, Reget ejus orario, nihil in ed placidum, nihil lene, is what many Criticks make to Milton: as I cannot wholly refute it, so I have already apologized for it in another Paper; to which I may further add, that Milton's Sentiments and Ideas were so wonderfully Sublime, that it would have been impossible for him to have represented them in their full Strength and Beauty, without having recourse to these Foreign Assistances. Our Language sunk under him, and was unequal to that greatness of Soul which furnished him with such glorious Conceptions.

A second Fault in his Language is, that he often affects a kind of Jingle in his Words, as in the following Passages, and many others: [9.11; 5.868-869; 1.642; 4.181].

I know there are Figures of this kind of Speech, that some of the greatest Ancients have been guilty of it, and that Aristotle himself has given it a place in his Rhetorick among the Beauties of that Art. But as it is in itself poor and trifling, it is I think at present universally exploded by all the Masters of polite Writing.

The last Fault which I shall take notice of in Milton's Stile, is the frequent use of what the Learned call Technical Words, or Terms or Art. It is one of the great Beauties of Poetry, to make hard things intelligible, and to deliver what is abstruse of it self in such easy Language as may be understood by ordinary Readers: Besides that the Knowledge of a Poet should rather seem born with Ilim, or inspired, than drawn from Books and Systems. I have often wondered how Mr. Dryden could translate a Passage of Virgil after the following manner.

Tack to the Larboard, and stand off to Sea,
Veer Star-hoard Sea and Land

Milton makes use of Larboard in the same manner. When he is upon Building, he mentions Doric pillars. Pilasters, Cornice. Freeze. Archir,ave When he talks of Heavenly Bodies, you meet with Eccliptick, and Eccentric, the trepidation, Stars dropping from the Zenith, Rays cumulating from the Equator. To which might be added many Instances of the like kind in several other Arts and Sciences.

I shall in my next Papers give an Account of the many particular Beauties in Milton, which would have been too long to insert under those general Heads I have already treated of, and with which I intend to conclude this Piece of Criticism

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spectacle that surrounds him and his dark, vacant mystery rejects him like an alien virus. The text-world rounds on him and is not content, finished, until by means it can only half-acknowledge it has reduced him to its own dimension. As the visible body which Fortinbras orders the four captains to carry 'to the stage' the unproductive prince is finally at one with the order of the plenum: or, in its master-language, 'most royal' (V.ii. 394-6)

But this triumph - and this reduction - does not elegiacally affirm that settlements prior to the exigencies of our own were without their rigours and contradictions. Nor even that they were particularly settled, as if the spectacular plenum were unchallenged (we have seen that it is not) or its forces perfectly balanced, unnaturalized because irresistible. Desire which is the motor is forever restless, A struggle is being fought out in these texts, and this is the lot: of discourse, and of social life, in any polity organized under forms of domination. If the once-full body is so often presented as a shattered wreckage of disarticulated fragments, it is because the disintegration of this world and its signification is already upon it. As modern subjectivity begins to emerge, it turns destructively on that older body from which it struggles to free itself. If the anachronistic paradox of Hamlet, the non- homogeneity of the historical time of the soul and that of the encompassing spectacle can be deciphered (and it is only paradoxical when judged against a measure of textual unity and historical monism which should be, by now, antique), it is because the Jacobean scene, for all its dominant attachment to the old kingdom, is already touched by the marks of the gathering modern crisis on whose threshold this text-world stands.

And as for regulating the Presse, let no man think to have the honour of advising ye better than your selves have done in that Order publisht next before this, that no book be Printed, unlesse the Printers and the Authors name, or at least the Printers be register'd. Those which otherewise come forth, if they be found mischievous and libellous, the fire and the

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executioner will be the timeliest and the most effectual remedy, that mans prevention can use. (Areopagitica, p 353)

It is certainly an index of the depth of the crisis that these words, apart from a few lines serving as an envoi, conclude what is otherwise regarded as one of the great texts written against censorship. But that a writing which sets itself that task should end by handing discourse over to the executioner is only fully a paradox when viewed from the Idealist standpoint of a plenitude of human speech, It is skewed when seen from the perspective of the principle of rarefaction which governs the actual distribution of human discourse. A full speech stands above its ca·nnditt9ns, sufficient to itself, at: once adequately grounded in its own meanings and at the same time aspiring to, if not already extant in a universal and sacred realm of independent and discrete truths. But the discursive position which wishes to escape the antinomies (purely internal to a certain historicism) between the universal and the historical will have to recognize that even where discourse is globally implicative it is none the less locally relational, hollowed by the strategic character of its deployment. For this reason to contemplate Areopagitica as a significant document of some 'human freedom' would only be to assuage a particular restlessness in respect of the truth and then only momentarily. To the extent that it has been thought in the past that Milton conceived of liberty and censorship as antitheses, it is now necessary to take his text's will to freedom at a little less than its face value, and to exercise a critical decoding rather than the more familiar appreciative summary. Discursively, Areopagitica operates to call into being a new state-form, and to inscribe there a novel citizen- subject. And it does this despite its argument. This is not to say that its substance is beside the point; on the contrary, censorship was a decisive experience of the seventeenth century, which has even managed to cover its own traces and disappear from the standard histories of the literature of the period which are silent on the subject; none the less,

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Areopagitica is a document which arranged its arguments, its rhetoric and its metaphors - its utterance - among and across relations which it inscribes within itself without ever making them the evident object of its arguments or the manifest content of its speech. To say that these distinctions operate behind the back of the text, or as its unconscious, would be to risk too far the temptations of a metaphysic of depth which we have been at pains to avoid so far, despite the fact that it is the history of its emergence which we are tracing here. But the transactions of the text, in the discursive register, are in a real sense unknown to the text itself ]in this sense it is similar in status to other fabular seventeenth- century script we are concerned to read here: not exhaustive; not permitting everything to be said about the new emergency; exemplary but not illustrative, a site of real inscription of the new relations and terms.

While an anecdote (although in no way trivial for being such) will not by itself deprive Areopagitica of its 'literary' truth and return it to its discourse, it will serve to indicate a pathway to the issue: Milton was never opposed to censorship, in fact we know that in 1651 he served as a licenser of news books, a state censor. `If this only signals, as many have argued, that Milton was prepared to make a division in the field of discourse between those daily words too promiscuous not to come under the scrutiny of the governing authority and the graver products of 'the industry of a life-wholly dedicated to studious labours' (296) (and thus, no doubt, more docile), this is at least to have dislodged his pamphlet from its universality. This relocation can be further effected by replacing the text within the preceding development of the means of policing discourse which the office of state for which he worked inherited. From the early part of the previous century through to what was to be one of · - the last executive acts of the Caroline government, the authorities established, elaborated and : consolidated increasingly fierce and attentive measures to bring the printing and distribution of books under their direct or delegated control. The detail of this history is accessible elsewhere. But here some description of its main tendency

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will serve to point out the structural contrast between Milton's text and the developments anterior to it. Whichever aspect of the mechanism of control we examine, whether it be the trade-off by which the Crown granted the stationers' Company a virtual monopoly on printing in return for the acceptance of overt or implicit responsibility of regulating the issue of its presses, or the more Psuma provisions for pre-publication licensing by officers of Church and state, in either case the period saw a strengthening and increasing sophistication of the censoring machine. From the Elizabethan Injunctions of 1559 to the Star Chamber decree of 11 January 1637 which provided for a largely professional censorship dealing with printed matter under separate expert categories, procedures were built up to ensure-an ever more vigilant and pervasive control: the scope of materials coming within their purview was progressively widened as were the means of enforcement, until the censorship, in these corporal times, had at its disposal an almost unlimited power to punish. By the time that the Long Parliament abolished Star Chamber and the other prerogative courts, a high wall of prohibition, surveillance and punishment had been built up around the printed word in whose supervision the government was prepared to invest enormous quantities of time, labour and expertise.

It: would be wrong, however, to conclude that with the accession of Parliamentary forces this machinery was dismantled. For a period after the abolition of the Caroline executive courts there was a brief and unprecedented freedom of the press in which printing shops and their products proliferated. But within a few years, shaken by the explosion of written discourse which attended the breakdown of censorship, the same Parliament was soon enacting its own regulatory measures, including the Order of 14 June 1643, against which Milton wrote Areopagitica. The reanimated censoring machine - which was met with widespread and sometimes armed popular resistance - was, in its essential outline, identical with the Star Chamber provisions. Although the personnel was changed and Parliamentary appointees substituted for the clerics and

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other delegates of the Caroline government, and the prerogative Crown authority to license was not re- established, the machinery itself was refined still further. Now nine categories of books were designated, and an even more precisely orgranized battery of licensers established to deal with them.

A small but decisive incision in this structure and in the plenum of the old kingdom, is offered by Areopagitica. A feature common to all the preceding measures, whatever the degree of complexity of the censoring apparatus or the poignancy of its disposable violence, but which separates Milton's text from them, is that they each place the moment of state intervention before that of publication. Areopagitica, though also a call for censorship (slightly reduced in scope), places that moment in the production and distribution of discourse after it has 'come forth'. The pre-publication licensing of the Tudor, Stuart and early Parliamentary measures are those of a pre-emptive state designing to stop the publication of what were called, in a phrase surviving from the reign of Henry VIII, 'naughty books'; its powers were vengeful ones which bore down on the transgressions it had itself failed to prevent. The powers of the Miltonic 'provisions', however, are essentially deterrent (although also punitive). They offer to the discoursing subject the image of an eventuality of punishment which will occur if the offending book comes out, while she or he remains 'free' to publish it. This crucial difference between the Miltonic text and the history of censorship which goes before it (and, indeed, after it, for Areopagitica's proposals were not enacted immediately) encodes two distinctly separate versions of the state and its relation to social life. The pre-Miltonic state acknowledges its existence as state, but one could say, without investing the state with a spurious benevolence that it also assumes an essential continuity between itself and the subjects it incorporates. As we have remarked in Lear and Hamlet, the body of the king, the place of representation, and the correspondences of kinship, power and sense, are

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coterminous, This state knows no limits because in theory nothing is outside its domain. It is permissive only in the ungenerous sense that it seeks positively to supervise the production and the contents of discourse. Its paternalism is given in the fact that it assumes the father's role of a real and metaphysical authority which is all-pervasive, backed up by the angry recompense of punishment. Bur in the Miltonic 'state' - that set of relations marked out in Areopagitica - it is already possible to detect the outline of that modern settlement which founds itself on a separation of realms between the public arena of the state apparatus and another domain of civil life. Here a new liberty is encoded, although it is but a negative one. The subject, now emerging as a private citizen although not legally named as such in a constitution` which isi to this day, unwritten, or - rather - 'inscribed elsewhere', may do as it pleases up to the point of transgression where its activity will be arrested by the agents of the apparatus who patrol the frontier between the two spaces.

But lest it be thought that this is simply a step along an even and uncomplex path from the old tyranny to a new and modern freedom, it is important to emphasize the extent to which what is proposed in Areogagitica represents a fresh form of control, What is to become the meagre political insubordination of a classical liberalism can be discerned even at this stage when Milton's text defines liberty as what is in any case the basis of its own political practice: nor the positive freedom of a just order, but the ex post facto redress of grievances. And as he says, the attack on licensing is not intended to introduce licence. On the contrary all of Milton's descriptions of social life emphasize the stability, maturity and sobriety of the English nation. Far from the 'untaught and irreligious gadding rout' (336) which a pre- emptive censorship must assume the people to be, they are in fact characterized by a remarkable degree of that self- discipline which, along with other qualities associated with it, is to become the linchpin of a move articulated by the text from the unmediated and overt violence of: the older settlement to a mote indirectly ideological control implanted

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in the new subjectivity, The text defines the principal problem for government, the 'great art', as discerning 'in what: the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work' (318-19), and in a similar way, to censure the population 'for a giddy, vitious and ungrounded people' would be 'to the disrepute of our ministers' whose 'exhortations, and the benefiting of their hearers' are to be among the central means of securing the required tranquility in what would otherwise be 'an unprinciple'd, unedify'd, and laick rabble' (328-9). The decisive moment of control is now to be not so clearly the sanction of punishment, as the inner discipline, the unwritten law, of the new subjection: for 'under pittance, and prescription, and compulsion, what were vertue but a name, what praise could be then due to welldoing, what grammercy to be sober, just or continent"' (319). The state succeeds in penetrating to the very heart of the subject, or more accurately, in pre-constituting that subject as one which is already internally disciplined, censored, and thus an effective support of the emergent pattern of domination. As Milton reminds us again and again, the new subject becomes the location of the new drama of individual conscience which 'doth make cowards of us all', or, as Hamlet might have said had he reflected in a different language on his political situation, ascertains each of us severally in obedience to a sovereignty whose head we dare not thus cut off. Conscience, assisted by that private reason, deliberation and judgement with which Areopagitica invests the bourgeois citizen, enters in the text into an essentially single battle with temptation (amongst whose 'objects of lust' (319), as Pepys discovered, are certain books) and in doing so interiorizes conflicts and dynamics which are newly encoded as belonging to subjectivity rather than to the social exterior.

It would, then, be a misplaced reception of Areopagitica's separation of the aid kingdom that succumbed to a euphoria of early liberation remembered (although bourgeois culture's self-universalization doubtless accounts for the timelessness of the text's alleged pertinence). At stake in Milton's call for 'civil liberty' is a control which is in some

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ways more profound than when such legislated or unlegislated rights are missing. In the settlement which begins to impinge here, the state secures its overall penetration on the basis of an apparent withdrawal and limitation of its pertinent domain: Milton accepts that in the realm of discourse at least, atheism and blasphemy might continue to be the state's concern, but allots the rest to the individual subject who 'searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends' (324), in short, to civil society. But by demarcating the public space of the state's competence from the private realm of individual freedoms, it has secured its domination there too, by securing the recto of its public verse. This is why Areopagitica remains the text of a new power despite its agonistic rhetoric of liberty. In addition, it is important that the essence of this power lies as much in the line of division between the public and the private (on either side of which lie - at another level to that we have been discussing - philosophical subjectivity over against an object-world) as in the substantive contents of what lies to either side of it. It is not that in the establishment of a domain of public authority and another area of private freedom, domination has been confined to one, and liberation released into the other, but that the division itself is the very form of the new power, grounded as much in the apparent freedom of even the choices allowed by Milton's benign pluralism as in its more overt controls, It is counter-intuitive and defies every instinct of common sense to insist that the inception of specific and more or less well-defined freedoms - 'free consciences and Christian liberties' (341-2) - is the effect of a powerful new dominion; but, without impugning the sacrifices of the women and men who gave their lives for these freedoms, that is the outcome. In the division between the two spheres is encoded an essential settlement which allots civil liberty to the subject only on condition that it is indeed civil, with all the well-ordered Roman and juridical connotations which seventeenth-century classicism, to be reinforced in the eighteenth century, could add to the ideological registers of that word. The horror with which

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Milton contemplates the logical consequence of the principle of licensing books when he remarks that it would necessitate the extension of control to every area of social life, to all discourse and representation, all styles of dress, each country dance, every guitar in every bedroom (while it foreshadows the absolute disciplinary surveillance which will be consolidated later) is now counterposed to the intrinsic sobriety Of the people which argues against the need for detailed state control. That sobriety - we have noticed Pepys' somewhat equivocal use of the same notion - is the condition, in the sense both of a central feature of, and a condition of granting, even the provisional civil liberty envisaged by the text,

A few moments with the Diary of Philip Henslowe show that despite the firm attachment of authors' names to Jacobean play-texts today, the actual construction of the works, in so far as it: was a commercial enterprise carried out largely by jobbing writers whose remuneration for odd additional scenes, revision and initial composition is recorded in Henslowe's accounts of payment, it was also a collaborative process. The firmness of the attachment of any author's name to text, let alone that of a single author who becomes, thus, fully and singly, the subject of that text, had then by no means an equal fixity with that which has been constructed subsequently, often by dint of elaborate and frequently wasted canonical scholarship. In Milton's discourse on discourse, however, an important step in the establishment of that fixity, and that writing subjectivity, is taken. Areopagitica twice refers approvingly to the Order of Parliament passed immediately before the licensing provisions against which it argues, which provided for the registration on. publication of the names of author and printer, and for the protection of copyright vested, for the - first time in English law, in the author. Although measures fully resembling modern copyright were only enacted by the so-called Statute of Anne at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Miltonic evocation of the early measures is of

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great ideological significance. Areopagitica marks a shift in representative and central discourse from the performed writing of the early seventeenth-century stage to the more evidently 'written' writing of the later period: a transition from collaboration (of composition and performance) to individual production, and from visuality to script. And in the new discursivity, in which the text: is fully in place for the first time, an essential relation of the author to that text is a property relation.- Of course,- in order to preserve the idealism, of Areopagitica it is necessary to construct an imaginary division within discourse (formally identical to that opening up between body and soul) so that Truth, which Milton, goes out of his way to insist should nor be 'monopotiz'd and traded in by tickets and statutes, and standards ..., like out broad cloaths and our wooll packs' (327), can be spoken of separately from the book- commodity which is thus left free, by rhetorical sleight of hand, to enter the market-place. At the same time as the discoursing subject is newly confirmed in the domain of private liberty, the material writing of discourse also enters the 'free' exchange of civil society. Truth, the conveniently ideal form, hovers, naturally, above it.

· The marks of this economy of discourse are not, however, as emphatic in the text as those defining the conditions of that discoursing subject, who mass- now - in a phrase which would have been resonant for Pepys - 'in a private condition, write' (Areopagitica, 293). Whether it be 'him who from his private house wrote that discourse to the Parlament of Athens' (296), that 'privat man' (316) to whom Plate forbade poets to read before their verse had been scrutinized by authority, or simply the phrase which adequately positions the subject in relation to the objects and the destination of discourse - 'When a man writes to the world' (324)- in each case the discursive location is clearly enunciated, and in addition the judicious and rational discrimination, imputed to the new subject in general, is the more insistently emphasized when it is overtly the subject of

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writing (or of reading). In seeking to extract the discoursing subject from state control, 'leaving it to each ones conscience to read or to lay by' (302), the text ever more clearly hands the subject over to that deeper control which we have already evoked. In doing so it signals the more graphically the profound implication of seventeenth-century discourse in the machinery of censorship, and in particular the imbrication of the founding moment of bourgeois discursivity, articulated as a socially hegemonic form, with that machinery.

That censorship was a constitutive experience for the seventeenth century - and for ourselves - needs stressing in view of the deletion of the entire problem from the history of writing. But if it is hardly possible to overemphasize its importance for the texts of the period, this should not be taken to refer only to the gross instances (although they should be identified and understood) where the censor's pen has left gaps in the text, but also to the fullness of the period's discourse. It has taken a historian writing on literature to notice what literary criticism has been studiously blind to. Christopher Hill shows that by a certain moment an entire literary mode - pastoral - could function as a set of coded symbols by which political statements could be enunciated in a form that would allow them to evade the censorship: with sufficient care in the manipulation of the stock conventions it could always be claimed that the poem was only about nymphs and shepherds after all, Axaid centuries later literary 'critics' would agree .... But this evasive coding is itself only a relatively simple and external instance of discourse being conditional on censorship not in its elisions but in its substantial articulation. In a still profounder sense, as the example of the Cartesian text will show, although it is already clear in Pepys, the very structure of all bourgeois enunciation is governed by its relation to censorship as a determinant condition.

If this subjectivity is sketched in the seventeenth century, although perhaps not fully and ultimately consolidated as a phenomenon then, it is of crucial importance that its discourse, and the discourses in which it emerges, are

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censored ones. It is an essential link between the inner being of the subject, that interiority which was beginning to open up in Hamlet but for which the pre-bourgeois polity had no role, and the outer dimension of the state. While censorship is a State function, an exterior apparatus of control, in so far as the domain it polices is the production, circulation and exchange of discourses, it is one that reaches into the subject itself It thus .has a double function here, at once representative and substantive: representative in as much as it: stands cross-sectionally for a whole ensemble of other changes brought about by the long process of the bourgeois revolution in the relationship between state and civil society, state and citizen, and for the opening-up of that division, a caesura missing from the Jacobean spectacle, or if present only soin promissory form; but substantive in as much as it is the articulating mode of the bourgeois subject in discourse, When Milton's persona replied peremptorily to an imagined opponent 'The State Sir... The State shall be my governours, but not my criticks' (326), he offered a more consequential hostage to historical fortune than he imagined.

The defining feature of the bourgeois discursive regime is the in situ control - direct, or now more prevalently implicative - of the newly interiorated subject. From the standpoint of the politics of representation, that soul is also the necessary vehicle of the naturalistic empiricism which, in one form or another, including some which are technically rationalist, is to dominate the epoch. The modern subject is constructed as the bearer of naturalism, the facticity of things and their weightless transcription in discourse, in the first instance by an obvious device. The subject is contrasted to an outer world which, although 'social', becomes for it a kind of nature; whether fixed and irredeemable, or governed by those natural laws from whose precise externality not even Marx was entirely willing to free his language. For the first time it is possible to speak with some certainty of society - the associative name we give to lived isolation - when the