128 



II. 464. " While I abroad, 



Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek 

 Deliverance for iis all." 

 Addison remarks, as a "little slip," the following passage : — 

 TV. 323. " Adam, the goodliest man of men since born 

 His sons ; the fairest of her daughters Eve." 

 Adam and Eve are here reckoned among their own descendants, of 

 whom they are said to be the goodliest and the fairest. However, I 

 would not call this a " slip."' Milton was of no fault more free than of 

 negligRUce: For every peculiarity he has his authority. Thus, in the 

 (juoted passage, he, no doubt, had in his mind a similiar construction 

 found in the best Greek writers, e.g. in Thercydidcs. (Bell. 1 elop.I. 1. 



'iKirlaas [rhv Tr6\e/j.ov) ixeyav re iattrdai Ka\ a^oiXoydnaTov tSiv ■jrpoyeytvrifxevo)!'. 



The same explanation applies to 



II. 678. " God, and his Son excei^t. 



Created thing nought valued he nor shunned. " 

 All the peculiarities of Milton's style, which I have touched upon, 

 arise from his striving to elevate his style by adopting the more perfect 

 grammatical structure of the classical languages, more especially of 

 Latin. It is to these peculiarities, that I intend to confine myself in 

 the present essay. If they are to be looked upon as blemishes or as 

 ornaments, I leave others to judge. I am satisfied that they are not 

 the result of inadvertency. In Milton this style had become a second 

 nature. He could not write otherwise, even had he wished. It is an 

 interesting question, in how far the habit of so-called literal translations 

 from foreign languages tends to introduce foreign idioms into the 

 mother tongue ? A careful inquiry would show, that all modern Euro- 

 pean languages, and not only the Romance languages, owe a great 

 portion of their grammatical structure to imitation, especially of Latin. 

 I will not call this a wrong tendency, and, of course, I could not blame 

 those men who first adopted a classical idiom, which afterwards became 

 naturalised. But I have no hesitation in saying, that innovations of this 

 kind, like political and social revolutions, are only legitimised by 

 success. In so far, therefore, as a literary innovator has not succeeded 

 in imprinting his peculiarity of diction on the national idiom, in so far 

 does his failure deprive him of the meed of praise. The spirit of a 

 language rejects what is uncongenial to it. An attempt to inoculate 

 such heterogenous matter argues a fundamental error, a miscalculation 

 of the powers and capacities of a language. The result is the effect of 

 natural unerring laws. AVe must, therefore, abide by the decision, and 

 whatever merit we attribute in other respects to MUton, for the vigour 

 and loftiness of his diction, we cannot but say, that his tendency to 



