ESSAY XXII.

On Milton's Sonnets.

THE great object of the Sonnet seems to be, to express in musical numbers, and as it were with undivided breath, some occasional thought or personal feeling, "some fee-grief due to the poet's breast." It is a sigh uttered from the fulness of the heart, an involuntary aspiration born and dying in the same moment. I have always been fond of Milton's Sonnets for this reason, that they have more of this personal and internal character than any others; and they acquire a double value when we consider that they come from the pen of the loftiest of our poets. Compared with Paradise Lost, they are like tender flowers that adorn the base of some proud column or stately temple. The author in the one could work himself up with unabated fortitude “to the height of his great argument ;" but in the other he has shown he could condescend to men of low estate, and after the lightning and the thunder-bolt of his pen, lets fall some drops of natural pity over hapless infirmity, mingling strains with the nightingale's, "most musical, most melancholy." The immortal poet pours his mortal sorrows into our breasts, and a tear falls from his sightless orbs on the friendly hand he presses. The Sonnets are a kind of pensive record of past achievements, loves, and friendships, and a noble exhortation to himself to bear up with cheerful hope and confidence to the last. Some of them are of a more quaint and humorous character; but I speak of those only, which are intended to be serious and pathetical. I do not know indeed but they may be said to be almost the first effusions of this sort of natural and personal sentiment in the language. Drummond's ought perhaps to be excepted, were they formed less closely on the model of Petrarch's, so as to be often little more than translations of the Italian poet. But Milton's Sonnets are truly his own in allusion, thought, and versification. Those of Sir Philip

Sydney, who was a great transgressor in this way, turn suffi-
ciently on himself and his own adventures; but they are
elaborately quaint and intricate, and more like riddles than
sonnets. They are " very tolerable and not to be endured."
Shakspeare's, which some persons better-informed in such matters
than I can pretend to be, profess to cry up as "the divine, the
matchless, what you will," to say nothing of the want of point
or a leading, prominent idea in most of them, are I think over-
charged and monotonous, and as to their ultimate drift, as for
self, I can make neither head nor tail of it. Yet some of them, I
own, are sweet even to a sense of faintness, luscious as the wood-
bine, and graceful and luxuriant like it. Here is one.

"From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odor and in hue,

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away,

As with your shadow, I with these did play.”

my

I am not aware of any writer of Sonnets worth mentioning here till long after Milton, that is, till the time of Warton and the revival of a taste for Italian and for our own early literature. During the rage of French models, the Sonnet had not been much studied. It is a mode of composition that depends entirely on expression; and this the French and artificial style gladly dispenses with, as it lays no particular stress on anything-except vague, general common-places. Warton's Sonnets are undoubt edly exquisite, both in style and matter: they are poetical and philosophical effusions of very delightful sentiment; but the thoughts, though fine and deeply felt, are not, like Milton's subjects, identified completely with the writer, and so far want a more individual interest. Mr. Wordsworth's are also finely

conceited and high-sounding Sonnets. They mouth it well, and are said to be sacred to Liberty. Brutus's exclamation, "Oh Virtue, I thought thee a substance, but I find thee a shadow," was not considered as a compliment, but as a bitter sarcasm. The beauty of Milton's Sonnets is their sincerity, the spirit of poetical patriotism which they breathe. Either Milton's or the living bard's are defective in this respect. There is no Sonnet of Milton's on the Restoration of Charles II. There is no Sonnet

of "the poet blind

of Mr. Wordsworth's, corresponding to that and bold," On the late Massacre in Piedmont. It would be no niggard praise to Mr. Wordsworth to grant that he was either half the man or half the poet that Milton was. He has not his high and various imagination, nor his deep and fixed principle. Milton did not worship the rising sun, nor turn his back on a losing and fallen cause.

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"Such recantation had no charms for him!"

Mr. Southey has thought proper to put the author of Paradise Lost into his late Heaven, on the understood condition that he is no longer to kings and to hierarchs hostile." In his life-time, he gave no sign of such an alteration; and it is rather presumptuous in the poet-laureate to pursue the deceased antagonist of Salmasius into the other world to compliment him with his own infirmity of purpose. It is a wonder he did not add in a note that Milton called him aside to whisper in his ear that he preferred the new English hexameters to his own blank verse!

Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was an eminent instance to prove that a poet is not another name for the slave of power and fashion; as is the case with painters and musicians -things without an opinion-and who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show of the day. There are persons in common life who have that eager curiosity and restless admiration of bustle and splendor, that sooner than not be admitted on great occasions of feasting and luxurious display, they will go in the character of livery-servants to stand behind the chairs of the great. There are others who can so little bear to be left for any length of time out of the grand carnival and masquerade of pride and folly, that they will gain admittance to it at the expense of

their characters as well as of a change of dress. Milton was not
one of these. He had too much of the ideal faculty in his com-
position, a lofty contemplative principle, and consciousness of in-
ward power
and worth, to be tempted by such idle baits. We have
plenty of chaunting and chiming in among some modern writers
with the triumphs over their own views and principles; but none
of a patient resignation to defeat, sustaining and nourishing itself
with the thought of the justice of their cause, and with firm-fixed
rectitude. I do not pretend to defend the tone of Milton's politi-
cal writings (which was borrowed from the style of controversial
divinity) or to say that he was right in the part he took :-I say
that he was consistent in it, and did not convict himself of error:
he was consistent in it in spite of danger and obloquy, "on evil
days though fallen, and evil tongues," and therefore his character
has the salt of honesty about it. It does not offend in the nostrils
of posterity. He had taken his part boldly and stood to it man-
fully, and submitted to the change of times with pious fortitude,
building his consolations on the resources of his own mind and
the recollection of the past instead of endeavoring to make himself
a retreat for the time to come. As an instance of this, we may
take one of the best and most admired of these Sonnets, that
addressed to Cyriac Skinner, on his own blindness.

"Cyriac, this three years' day, these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of light their seeing have forgot,
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun or moon or star throughout the year,

Or man or woman. Yet I argue not

Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?

The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overply'd

In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe talks from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
Content though blind, had I no better guide."

Nothing can exceed the mild, subdued tone of this Sonnet, nor the striking grandeur of the concluding thought. It is curious to remark what seems to be a trait of character in the two first lines.

From Milton's care to inform the reader that "his eyes were still clear to outward view of spot or blemish," it would be thought that he had not yet given up all regard to personal appearance; a feeling to which his singular beauty at an earlier age might be supposed naturally enough to lead. Of the political or (what may be called) his State-Sonnets, those to Cromwell, to Fairfax, and to the younger Vane, are full of exalted praise and dignified advice. They are neither familiar nor servile. The writer knows what is due to power and to fame. He feels the true, unassumed equality of greatness. He pays the full tribute of admiration for great acts achieved, and suggests becoming occasion to deserve higher praise. That to Cromwell is a proof how completely our poet maintained the erectness of his understanding and spirit in his intercourse with men in power. It is such a compliment as a poet might pay to a conqueror and head of the state, without the possibility of self-degradation.

"Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud,
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,

To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd,

And on the neck of crowned fortune proud

Hast rear'd God's trophies and his work pursued,
While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,
And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud,

And Worcester's laureat wreath. Yet much remains
To conquer still; peace hath her victories

No less renown'd than war: new foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains;
Help us to save free conscience from the paw

Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw."

The most spirited and impassioned of them all, and the most inspired with a sort of prophetic fury, is the one, entitled On the late Massacre in Piedmont.

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones

Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;

Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,

Forget not in thy book record their groans

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd