The Press. — London, England, 1855-06-30 00:00:00

ii;ittraturt. An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton. By Thomas Keightley. London: Chapman and Hall. A MILITARY veteran, covered with scars, is a eight that interests the coldest spirit. If he be decked with glittering orders, people admire the proofs of his prowess, and think how dearly they were purchased. If, upon the other hand, his mutilated limbs and his Shattered frame are all that visibly attest the battles and sieges which he has survived, a sentiment of sympathy mingles with our feel ings as we gaze upon ill-requited valour. Unfortunately it has happened in all armies that there will be many cases of heroes whose outward decorations are far beneath their personal desserts. The neglected veteran is a stock character in the national drama of every country. In this respect, at least, the campaigns of literature present a strong analogy to those of war. Many a soldier of the pen falls un noticed and unmourned ; some staff favorites of the magnates of "the Row" obtain a gaudy and ephemeral success, and pass for distinguished authors, as lucky officers find themselves gazetted as heroes, though uncon scious of having ever been in peril. The veteran author, also, like the old campaigner, Ins often good cause for grumbling If he had been less solid and learned, and more superficial and sparkling, he might have had a cartload of bays tossed to him indiscrimi nately by the crowd of readers who know no distinction between notoriety and fame, and who cannot discriminate between the com posers in and compilers of literature. We think that it is impossible for the most frigid critic not to be touched with the con clusion of the preface to Mr. Keightley's new work on Milton : As in writing this volume I have been actuated solely by a regard for truth and reverence for the fame of Milton— lears and their attendant evils having nearly quenched my ore of fame—and as I live in seclusion, with little society beyond that of my bwn family, I may perhaps say without pre lumption that I am almost indifferent to criticism : praise cannot elate, or censure depress me. To the public ex pression of either, especially the latter, my ear is little used, and I have long been accustomed to be content with the silent approbation of my own mind. Conscious then of having exerted myself to the utmost of my powers to do justice to my subject. justice is all I ask of any, while to the friendly critic I would say— Approve it ouly—las too late to praise. In other cases we might object to the tone of egotism in that passage, but it is excusable in Mr. Keightley, who gave a rare proof of conscientious love of what he sincerely be lieved to be the truth. We need not partiCu larly refer to the circumstances under which Mr. Keightley (of whom we have no personal knowledge) turned to the profession of litera ture, but we may observe that it has appeared to us that certain incidents in his history always coloured his speculative opinions. Like minds that have a strong attachment to the law of individualism, Mr. Keightley is apt to be crotchetty. He refers in the following terms to his own "History of England ": The reader of Milton should be acquainted with the state of public affairs in his time. I will here follow a rather unusual course, and boldly recommend my own " History of England." Ido so both on account of its conciseness, and because I believe it to be the only one that can lay any just claim to impartiality. It is many years since we read Mr. Keight ley's "History of England," but we recollect being struck with its ability and candour. There were crotchets of the author, also, liberally scattered through its pages. At Pinkerton, his love of dogmatism reminded us of Pinkerton, a writer much in vogue in the early pare of this century. We remember one of Mr. Keightley's notes in which he asserted that " Scotis t icta never produced a great man " ; awl there are other assertions of a similar kind. His tendency is rather too mueit to the opinionative. While not willing to pin hie literary filth to the decrees of any grand eounco Qf critics with imposing names, by eliims the liberty of prophesying for him- self. Ife is only too apt, perhaps, to deMon PILAU his love of the sentire qua velia, but he certainly exemplifies the concomitant privi- leo of the vie sentias dicers iu a_ manner THE PRESS. worthy of a scholar habitually familiar with the grand masterpieces of the literature of antiquity. It would be difficult to find new matter upon the life of Milton, which has been so repeatedly examined. In his present volume Mr. Keight ley has treated the facts of the poet's biography from the commentator's point of observation. The matter of the work looks more like a valuable appendix, or a series of illustrative notes, than a regular composition. But the knowledge displayed in its pages is close and various, and, in spite of the obtrusion of pecu• liarities, there are many passages of sound and vigorous criticism. Amongst these we would refer particularly to the parallel between Milton and Dante. It thus commences : Sublimity and vigour being assumed as the justest criterions of high poetic genius, " Paradise Lost " con stitutes Milton one of the triumvirate of greatest poets, after Shakespeare, who dwells alone in separate glory as the mightiest poetic mind that nature has ever produced. Taken in order of time, the triumvirate is composed of iEschylus, I►ante, and Milton. Our omission of Homer may cause surprise; but much of the fame of Homer is merely traditional, and arose when he was regarded as the sole author of the poems that go under his name It seems to be now established by just principles of criticism, that the Ilion and the Odyssey are the productions of different poets, and that the former is a composite and not an organic whole, of which possibly not more than one half belongs to the poet whom we name Homer. His claim therefore to be placed in the same class with Milton and Dante becomes somewhat dubious. Here we have the peculiarity of Mr. Keightley too much -obtruded. Whether the Wolffian hypothesis on the Homeric poems be true or false, " Homer" must still continue to represent a psychological unity in the literary mind. It is too late to treat " Homer" as a group of ballad-writers. After some able dis quisitions, Mr. Keightley proceeds with his contrast between Milton and Dante : In vigour they are alike; in perception of beauty, whe ther in the moral or the natural world, we cannot pro nounce either to be inferior; yet perhaps the terrestrial Paradise is richer and more varied in natural charms in the " Paradise Lost " than in the " Purgatorio." In sub limity we give the palm to the English, in tenderness and pathos to the Tuscan, poet ; we do not think that Dante could have written the two first books of " Paradise Lost," we feel almost certain that Milton could not have narrated the sad tale of Francesca da Rimini, or the horrid fate of Count Ugolino, as they are narrated in the " Inferno." As strong feelings of one kind is usually united with strong feelings of other kinds, so in Dante there is an intensity and bitterness of satire of which the calmer nature and more pious spirit of Milton was incapable. In vividness of representation and graphic power we must award the prize to Dante. His life was one of wandering; he had traversed the plain, the vale and the mountain ; he had probably dwelt in the cot as well as the palace, and hence his similes and descriptions, being actual transcripts from nature, present the objects themselves to our senses. Milton, as we have already observed, saw life and nature chiefly through the medium of books, and hence we rarely meet in him with that accuracy of observation which dis tinguishes Dante. We would liken Milton to Raphael and those artists who, taking their sketches from nature, give reins to imagination and produce pieces beyond what actual nature presents ; while Dante may be in general compared with those who are called pre-Raphaelites, who copy nature faithfully and accurately, but rarely venture to go beyond her. The analogy between Milton and Raphael, and Dante with the pre-Raphaelites, is not close enough. In Raphael the beautiful is more constantly present than the sublime, and the converse is more applicable to Milton, whose austere and " magnificently stern " grandeur is not paralleled by the great painter's triumphs. Again, Dante never suggests the idea of artificial thought, and the pre-Raphaelites always :veal the frigidity of a school, with its preconceived and formalised modes of thought. What follows, however, is quite true : Milton also was quite devoid of, and Dante possessed in the highest degree, that power by which Swift makes us almost believe in the existence of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, when by seriousness of tone and manner, minuteness and circumstantiality of narrative, and apparent anxiety for accuracy, the writer would fain persuade us of the actual truth of what he is telling us. In learning, Milton, of course, as born at a Liter period, and after the invention of printing, had the superiority. In epic natures the grand and the general almost exclusively occupy the mental facul ties. Milton, probably, would have failed as a novelist or a writer for the stage. Mr. Keightley enters at some length into the versification of Milton, and also upon the structure of his style and certain " errors " in allusions. Mr. Keightley occasionally falls into mistakes himself. Thus he writes SATURDAY, We cannot offer the same excuse for the following error, which we can only ascribe to the incuria which comes at times on even the most vigilant : Meanwhile in utmost longitude where heaven With earth and ocean meets, the setting sun Slowly descended, and with right aspect Against the eastern gate of Paradise Leveled his evening rays.—lv. LW. Here no critic seems ever to have asked himself the queF• tion, how the sun who was sinking in the west could levtl his rays directly against the eastern gate of Paradise? The poet in writing this passage had, probably, the image before his mind of the sun setting on the horizorlibf some great landscape, where the rays certainly appear to strike towards the east, as Mr. Keightley may see from Hamp stead-hill, when viewing the close of a fine evening Mr. Keightley has entered at considerable length upon the subject of Milton's religion. The subject is now rather trite, but it is necessary to recollect that though the great poet vas heterodox as to the doctrine of the Trinity, his Arianism bore no resemblance to the Socinianism of later times. Mr. Keightley has announced in his preface that he has an annotated edition of Milton ready for the press, in which the notes will occupy about one-third of the space in Todd's edition. The present work is dedicated in graceful language to the Bishop of St. Davids, and is a valuable contribution to the rather numerous commentaries on Milton. The Private Life of an Eastern King. By a Member of the Household of his late Majesty Nussir-u•deen, King of Oude. London : Hope and Co. ORIENTALISM is clearly on the wane. In Constantinople, and in Cairo, the utilitarian ism of the West has long been prevalent amid scenes and images redolent of those far famed " Arabian Nights' Entertainments" that de lighted our youth. Yet further East, at Bom bay, Madras, and Calcutta, we find cities large, splendid, and swarming with a chiefly Asiatic population; but whose rise and present magni ficence are nevertheless of European origin. So also Delhi, and Agra, and Milton's " Lahore of Great Mogul,' have in course of time become more or less de-orientalised. The province of Oude did, indeed, feel and recognise British political ascendancy at a period considerably anterior to the extension of that ascendancy over the plains of North western India. But its successive rulers, whilst owning a sort of feudal allegiance to the paramount power, and in some degree controlled by the presence at their Court of a British Resident, have up to the present day enjoyed a fair share of what may bo called domestic independence. In short, as regards his " pot and his pipe, and his fiddlers three," and such like matters of internal economy, the Oude potentate still reigns as absolutely as ever did Haroun Al Raschid, or old King Cole of festive memory. And the fair city of Lucknow, as yet existing, is perhaps the last veritable reflex of that ancient Bagdad so in dissolubly connected by tradition with the frolic loving Commander of the Faithful and his boon companions. The present kingdom of Oude was in former days one of the richest satrapies under the old Mogul dynasty. Its governor held the title of Nawab Vuzeer, or Emperor's Lieute nant; and, so long as the throne of Delhi remained unshaken, he exercised correspond ing powers. But as the strength of the empire decayed, the authority of the several viceroys became more and more irresponsible, until their subordination to the imperial crown was by degrees reduced to a tradition and a name. In Oude—a fact already lanced at—this virtual disruption of ancient ties had a most important share in compelling the rulers of the country to seek a British alliance, at an earlier period than such would probably have been needed had the province continued to be an integral portion of the Mogul dominions ; its independence of v►hich was, by this new connection, most practically con firmed. Such, however, is the force of custom, especially in the East, that the princes of Gude still for many years continued to retain the subordinate style and title of Nawab Vuzeer. Nor was it until 1810 that au, insignia of royalty were (not, however,