257 



MILTON, JOHN. 



M. 



218 



faults. But there is another class of readers to whom it may be well 

 to direct a few observations those, we mean, whose taste is accurate 

 enough to enable them to trace faultiness as pervading the system, 

 though they cannot discern its particular mistakes. In any criticism, 

 on whatever subject, it is most important that the spirit in which the 

 work subjected to criticism was written should be kept in view by the 

 critic. With this restriction and condition an imaginative work like 

 ' Lycidas,' written in the style of a school of Greek poets, of which 

 Theocritus is the model, would never be called "easy, vulgar, and 

 therefore disgu.-tiug ; " and its rhymes and numbers would not have 

 been stigmatised as uncertain and unpleasing by any one who reflected 

 that Milton bad Italian models in view when he wrote ' Lycidas ' in 

 verses of unequal length. 



Let no one try to render a poem, even epic or dramatic, into an 

 )ii-t' rical form. Charles Lamb has attempted it; a man perhaps 

 more likely to succeed than any of his age, and his prose Shakspere 

 would rather deter than provoke imitation. The absurdity of reducing 

 a chapter of Hume's ' History of England ' into a metrical shape, aud 

 then criticising it as a poem, is sufficiently manifest; but when we 

 come to an imaginative work like 'II Penseroso,' dissect it into 

 elements, aud make these elements purely narrative, persons are aud 

 have been deceived into supposing this dissection to be legitimate 

 criticism. 



' Paradise Lost,' perhaps the greatest continuous effort of human 

 imagination, had originally the form of a drama, of which several 

 plans remain. The epical form however at last asserted its superiority, 

 although enough of the drama remains in the present poem to enable 

 us to trace with some distinctness the shape which it probably 

 assumed. In spite of all that has been said and written on 'Paradise 

 Lost/ the truth of Dr. Johnson's observation must be however to a 

 cou.-iderable extent allowed, that it is "one of the books which the 

 reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again." Much 

 of this inattention is no doubt owing to the. character of this age. 

 Learned poetry suits us not. For allusions to clas-ical authors, how- 

 ever beautiful, for an exhibition and exposition of the leading doctrines 

 of Christianity, couched in language however sublime, and for a 

 history of events so gigantic, we have no tasto when conveyed in the 

 form of a poem. In other words, 'Paradise Lost' is not and cannot 

 be extensively popular ; and even among its admirers we shall detect 

 many who judge of it not as a poetical but as a theological production. 

 Taken as a whole, a proper estimate cannot be formed of it by any 

 one who has not learning enough to enable him at least to perceive 

 the learning of the author; and the same may be said of the dramatic 

 works of Milton, for the allusions to passages in the Greek tragedies 

 which are contained in the first few pages of ' Samson Agouistes ' are 

 almost equal in number to the lines themselves. 



Milton's poetry cannot be dismissed without a word or two on his 

 versification. His matchless ear led him to choose blank verse a 

 measure till then almost unknown except in dramatic works as the 

 best metre for an epic poem. To the same quality is owing the 

 harmony of his lyrical verses, in which, as in everything else, he 

 seeius to have been a century in advance of his own time. If we 

 compare hi* liquid verses with the lilting jingle which characterises 

 almost all the versifiers of the last century who attempted the octave 

 etanza, the difference will be immediately discerned. It was not until 

 Milton began to supersede the French school that English poets pro- 

 duced verses approaching his own in sweetness. 



Of all authors, ancient and modern, respecting whom conflicting 

 judgments have been pronounced, no one has had more to contend witli, 

 both from the unwhe conduct of his friends and the malice of his 

 ciiucjies, than Milton. Living at a time when party spirit ran high, 

 and identifying himself with one of the extremes, his character has 

 been assailed by many enemies, and of his defenders not a fow have 

 made up by violence what they wanted in discretion. It is part of 

 our national habits to regard every man who can be so regarded, not 

 according to his eminence in art or science, so much as according to 

 his station as a political partisan. Thus Milton is often viewed, not 

 as a poet, not as a writer of all writers most eloquent, but as a 

 ui. Ami yet, until we divest ourselves of this deep-engrafted 

 habit, we shall never read Milton's prose works as they ought to be 

 read ; we shall never see in them the commentaries on his own poetry 

 which they supply ; never trace those models of eloquence which they 

 contain ; never reflect that in Milton's polemics we find the perfection 

 of a reviewer's style, with all the acumen and not half the heaviness 

 of Bentley, and with qualities more adapted to controversy than auy 

 which have been exhibited from his time until the beginning of the 

 present century ; that in his historical fragment exists a mythological 

 narrative written not less poetically than Niebuhr's 'Lays' and 

 ' Legends ' of Itoman History, although Niebuhr was the first who 

 followed, however unconsciously, this great example ; and that in his 

 ' Spei ch for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing ' the sentiments are 

 noble, and are more nobly expressed than in any English composition 

 before the days of Burke. It is as rhetorical models that we must 

 vic-,v Milton's prose works ; his logic may fail, his facts and arguments 

 may be infmfliuicnt, but his eloquence remains unrivalled. 



The editions of Milton's poetical woiks are very numerous. Ilia 

 prose works have been much neglected : we believe that the only 

 uniform edition of them, which includes the tract on ' Christian 

 ':.DIV. VOL. IT. 



Doctrine,' is that which forms five volumes of Holm's 'Standard 

 Library," and that does not include the Latin works. 



In the year 1823 a Latin manuscript, with the title ' Do Doctriua 

 Christiana, libri duo posthumi,' was discovered in the Stite-Paper 

 Office, and, from internal and other evidence, was ascertained to be 

 the work which Milton was known to have written on this subject, 

 and which was supposed to be lost. It was edited by the present 

 Bishop of Winchester (Sumner), and a translation was also published. 

 This work is characterised by the usual boldness and freedom of opinion 

 which pervade all Milton's writings. As a theological work, it is per- 

 haps almost unnecessary to remark that it would be considered of 

 little value by any denomination of Christians. 



MIMNERMUS OF COLOPHON, a Greek elegiac poet, contem- 

 porary with Solon. He appears to have flourished from about B.C. 630 

 to B.C. 600. Miiller, quoting a fragment of Mimnermus's elegy 

 ' Nauno,' says that he was one of the colonists of Smyrna who came 

 from Colophon, and whose ancestors at a still earlier period came from 

 the Neleau Pylos. To the reduction of Smyrna to Halyattes, he 

 ascribes the melancholy character of his poems. (' History of the 

 Literature of Ancient Greece,' p. 115.) From Horace and Propertius 

 we gather that his poems had reference for the most part to those 

 appetites which are, in poetical language, expressed by the name of 

 love. His mind however was of a melancholy turn, which gave to 

 his writings a pensive cast not traceable in the writings of others 

 who belonged to the same school. In the few fragmeuts which we 

 have remaining of Mimnermus, he complains of the briefness of 

 human enjoyment, the shortness of the season of youth, and of the 

 many miseries to which man is subject. Mimuermus was the first 

 who adapted the elegiac verse to those subjects which, from this 

 adaptation, are now usually considered as proper to it, Calliuus, its 

 inventor, having used it as a vehicle for warlike strains. The frag- 

 ments of Mimnermus have been several times edited, in the collections 

 of Stephens, Brunck, Gaisford, and Boissonade, to which may be added 

 Bach's separate edition, published at Leipzig in 1826. They have 

 been translated by Ch. von Stolberg, Herder, A. W. Schlegel, and 

 others. (Ulrici, Geschichte dcr Hdleniicken Dichtkumt.) 



_MINE'LLIUS, JOHN, was born about 1625 at Rotterdam, and 

 died in 1683. He was rector of the public school in his native town, 

 and edited many of the Latin classics, with short notes for the use 

 of schools. He also published a translation of Terence in Dutch, 

 Rotterdam, 1663. 



*MINlfi, M., inventor of the Minie' rifle, was born about 1800, in 

 the city of Paris. He entered the French army as a common soldier 

 at an early age, and has attained the rank of chef d'escadron. He 

 is superintendant of a department of the ordnance at Vincennes, 

 where he resides, and has a workshop, in which he occupies himself 

 with carrying out his improvements in the construction of rifles and 

 other fire-arms. He is practically acquainted with the gun-maker's 

 trade in all its details, having hail himself instructed in it for the 

 express purpose of more perfectly accomplishing the invention which 

 had engaged his thoughts for some years previously. The Emperor 

 of the French has given him the decoration of the cross of the Legion 

 d'Honneur. The Minid rifle, in accuracy of direction and extent of 

 range, is generally considered to surpass all other rifles hitherto 

 invented, and is now adopted not only in the French army, but to a 

 greater or less extent in the armies of Great Britain and other 

 nation*. 



The musket was invented and brought into use in the first half of 

 the 16th century (1520-30). By degrees it was made lighter, aud a 

 flint-and-steel lock substituted for the original match-lock. Little 

 other improvement took place till modern times, when tbe percussion- 

 lock superseded the flint-lock. The musket-ball being spherical, and 

 of necessity smaller than the bore of the gun, underwent certain 

 irregular movements in its passage outwards, which almost always 

 made it take a direction of flight different from the line of the barrel. 

 So great indeed was the uncertainty of the bullet striking the object 

 aimed at, that even in modern warfare and with the best muskets, only 

 one bullet in 500 was considered to take effect. Marshal Suxe calcu- 

 lated that with the instrument in use in his time, ouly one bullet in 

 1000 took effect. 



The rifle however, with its grooved bore, aud greater accuracy in 

 the flight of the ball, has been long in use by sportsmen, and during 

 the American war was applied by them to the purpose of warfare with 

 destructive effect. It had iudeed previously been used for that pur- 

 pose by the French, and by th - Germans under Frederick the Great, 

 but only to a very limited extent ; and though riflemen both on foot 

 and mounted have for many years formed a part of the French, 

 British, and other armies, th: slowness of loading and the expense of 

 the piece have till very recent times greatly restricted its use. The 

 invention however of an elongated rifl-'-ball, especially the latest 

 invention of the expanding ball, has operated iu producing such an 

 improvement in easiness, of loading, in accuracy of flight, and extent 

 of range, that the general adoption of the riflo may be considered as 

 now certain, and the musket as falling rapidly into disuse. 



As far back as July 1747, Mr. Robins demonstrated before the Royal 

 Society the directness of flight which would result from the use of elon- 

 gated projectiles, but no application was made of the principle till the 

 beginning of the French Revolution, when such mia.=ilB.-s were used 



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