The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [549]
‘Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation.’
Indeed even Dr. Towers, who may be considered as one of the warmest zealots of The Revolution Society986 itself, allows, that ‘Johnson has spoken in the highest terms of the abilities of that great poet, and has bestowed on his principal poetical compositions the most honourable encomiums.’a
That a man, who venerated the Church and Monarchy as Johnson did, should speak with a just abhorrence of Milton as a politician, or rather as a daring foe to good polity, was surely to be expected; and to those who censure him, I would recommend his commentary on Milton’s celebrated complaint of his situation, when by the lenity of Charles the Second, ‘a lenity of which (as Johnson well observes) the world has had perhaps no other example; he, who had written in justification of the murder of his Sovereign, was safe under an Act of Oblivion.’
‘No sooner is he safe than he finds himself in danger, fallen on evil days and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compassed round.987 This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful and unjust. He was fallen, indeed, on evil days; the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of evil tongues for Milton to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence.’
I have, indeed, often wondered how Milton, ‘an acrimonious and surly Republican,’ – a man ‘who in his domestick relations was so severe and arbitrary,’ and whose head was filled with the hardest and most dismal tenets of Calvinism, should have been such a poet; should not only have written with sublimity, but with beauty, and even gaiety; should have exquisitely painted the sweetest sensations of which our nature is capable; imaged the delicate raptures of connubial love; nay, seemed to be animated with all the spirit of revelry. It is a proof that in the human mind the departments of judgement and imagination, perception and temper, may sometimes be divided by strong partitions; and that the light and shade in the same character may be kept so distinct as never to be blended.a
In the Life of Milton, Johnson took occasion to maintain his own and the general opinion of the excellence of rhyme over blank verse, in English poetry; and quotes this apposite illustration of it by ‘an ingenious critick,’ that it seems to be verse only to the eye.b The gentleman whom he thus characterises, is (as he told Mr. Seward) Mr. Lock, of Norbury Park, in Surrey, whose knowledge and taste in the fine arts is universally celebrated; with whose elegance of manners the writer of the present work has felt himself much impressed, and to whose virtues a common friend,988 who has known him long, and is not much addicted to flattery, gives the highest testimony.
Various Readings in the Life of MILTON.
‘I cannot find any meaning but this which [his most bigotted advocates] even kindness and reverence can give.
‘[Perhaps no] scarcely any man ever wrote so much, and praised so few.
‘A certain [rescue] preservative from oblivion.
‘Let me not be censured for this digression, as [contracted] pedantick or paradoxical.
‘Socrates rather was of opinion, that what we had to learn was how to [obtain and communicate happiness] do good and avoid evil.
‘Its elegance [who can exhibit?] is less attainable.’
I could, with pleasure, expatiate