Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/8

Milman perfect of Oxford prize poems. In 1814 Milman was elected fellow of Brasenose, and in 1816 was awarded the chancellor's prize for an English essay on ‘A Comparative Estimate of Sculpture and Painting.’ He was an early and intimate friend of Reginald Heber, for whose ‘Hymnal’ he wrote ‘By thy birth and early years,’ ‘Brother, thou art gone before us,’ ‘When our heads are bowed with woe,’ and other hymns, which have acquired and retain high popularity. In 1821 he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford, but did not make the mark of Keble, who succeeded him in 1831. He had meanwhile taken orders (1816), and was in 1818 presented to the important living of St. Mary's, Reading.

Though attentive to his clerical duties, Milman continued for some time to be known principally as a poet. It was the day of Scott, Byron, and Moore, who irresistibly attracted all talent of the imitative order, to which Milman's poetical gift certainly belonged. His first poetical publication was a drama, ‘Fazio,’ composed at Oxford, and described by the author as ‘an attempt at reviving the old national drama with greater simplicity of plot.’ Though ‘written with some view to the stage,’ it was published in book form in 1815 (2nd edit. 1816). It was first acted at the Surrey Theatre, without the author's knowledge, under the title of ‘The Italian Wife.’ Having succeeded there and at Bath, it was appropriated by the managers of Covent Garden, who astonished Milman by the request that Charles Kemble might be allowed to read the part of Fazio to him. The imperfection of the law of copyright would have frustrated any objections that he might have entertained, but, though protesting, he was flattered by the compliment, and the play was performed for the first time in London on 5 Feb. 1818, with triumphant effect, mainly owing to the acting of Miss O'Neill, who had seen the piece before publication and had then discouraged Milman from anticipating for it any success on the stage. Fanny Kemble subsequently played the part of Bianca with great effect, both in England and America, while Madame Ristori, when at the height of her fame in 1856, had it translated into Italian and appeared with much success as Bianca both in London and abroad. The plot, indeed, which is taken from a story in ‘Varieties of Literature,’ reprinted in 1795 by the ‘Annual Register,’ where Milman saw it, is powerful, and much the most effective element in the play. The diction is florid, and full of the false taste which had come in by perhaps inevitable reaction from the inanimate style of the eighteenth century. Milman's next publication, ‘Samor, the Lord of the Bright City’ (1818; 2nd edit, same year), an epic of the class of Southey's ‘Madoc’ and Landor's ‘Gebir,’ though not recalling the manner of either of these poets, had been begun at Eton, and nearly finished at Oxford. The subject is the Saxon invasion of Britain in Vortigern's days. The ‘bright city’ is Gloucester. The poem contains much fine writing in both senses of the term, and the author in after life subjected it to a severe revision. Southey, in criticising the poem, suggested that Milman's powers were ‘better fitted for the drama than for narration’ (, Corresp. chap. xii.), and he told Scott that ‘Samor’ was ‘too full’ of power and beauty. Milman's next works were more mature in thought and independent in style, and the vital interest of their subjects almost raised him to the rank of an original poet. In ‘The Fall of Jerusalem,’ a dramatic poem (1820), the conflict between Jewish conservatism and new truth is forcibly depicted (Corresp. of John Jebb and Alex. Knox, ii. 434-44). In ‘The Martyr of Antioch,’ another dramatic poem (1822), a no less effective contrast is delineated in the struggle between human affections and fidelity to conviction. The description of Jerusalem put into the mouth of Titus has been greatly admired, and with reason, but is unfortunately too fair a sample of the entire work. ‘Belshazzar,’ also a dramatic poem (1822), is chiefly remarkable for its lyrics; and ‘Anne Boleyn’ (1826), a poor performance, terminated Milman's career as a dramatist.

But he was still to render an important and an unprecedented service to English poetry by his translations from the Sanscrit. These he was led to make by having exhausted the subjects which he had prescribed to himself for his lectures as Oxford professor of poetry. Having gained some acquaintance with Indian poetry from the works of foreign scholars, he taught himself to a certain extent Sanscrit, whose resemblance to Greek delighted him, and, with the assistance of Professor H. H. Wilson [q. v.], produced some very creditable versions of passages from the Indian epics, especially the pathetic story of Nala and Damayanti. These were published in 1835. They have been long superseded, but the achievement was none the less memorable. At a later period (1849) he published an elegant edition of ‘Horace,’ and in 1865 excellent translations of the ‘Agamemnon’ and the ‘Bacchæ.’

In 1827 Milman was selected to deliver the Bampton lectures, and took as his subject the evidence for Christianity derived