Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/556

550 up in the Highlands, and relished extremely.

Blake paused. "So that's it, is it?" said he, with slow perception. Then, lifting his thumb, he jerked it over his shoulder at the grey tower, which was by this time barely distinguishable in the shadow of the hill.

Jerry nodded.

"Whew! We are in for it then, Jerry, an' no mistake!"

 

 From The Cornhill Magazine.

critics of the last century, whose idea of æsthetic analysis not unfrequently seems to have been to form a mosaic of such little bits of a poet as could in some degree be held to resemble little bits of earlier poets, found in Milton a wide field for their ingenious labor. With an extraordinary memory and a taste for poetry that far overflowed the conventional banks of English and classical literature, Milton, at the outset of his career, seems to have steeped his imagination in the fine thoughts of almost all the European poets, and to have occasionally combined or reproduced their felicities in his own verse. But when his blindness came upon him, and he was more and more thrown for refreshment back upon the stores of his memory, he was unable, and, perhaps, not anxious, to ascertain whether a noble fancy or a chord. of melody that floated in his brain was or was not his own in any sense but that of conquest. Like Goethe, he had the august arrogance of a supreme poet who is conscious that he confers immortality on a thought by stealing it, and that what is stolen leaves his lips so glorified in expression that it has become a new thing. A great deal of foolishness has been said about plagiarism; to plagiarize is the instinct, the characteristic audacity of almost every poet of the highest class. It is only when it is committed by a small poet or poetaster - in other words, when skill is wanted, and the hand of the thief is seen in the pocket of the owner - that the action becomes blamable, because contemptible. To carry out no further an argument that may to some readers seem paradoxical, it is at least certain, for praise or blame, that the later poems of Milton are studded with memories, more or less faint or vivid, of the works of numerous previous writers. The French didactic poet, Du Bartas, whether in the original or in the translation of Joshua Sylvester, supplied him with ideas; some fine images and a whole train of thought were taken from the richly colored 'Christ’s Victory and Triumph' of the younger Giles Fletcher; even Cowley's 'Davideis' was laid under contribution for 'Paradise Lost.' These suggestions and reminiscences have been frequently dwelt upon, but not so much attention has been paid to the still bolder appropriations Milton made from various foreign writers. Some notice, but to an inadequate extent, has, indeed, been taken of the influence on the great English epic of the "Adamo" of the Italian dramatist, J. B. Andreini, who died shortly before Milton commenced his great task. It is probable that a close study of Italian and Spanish literature would bring to light many more cases of Miltonic adaptation and suggestion. But the most full and, curious of all is one which has, indeed been frequently pointed out in a cursory manner, but never, to the knowledge of the present writer, been carefully investigated. This is the amount to which Milton was indebted in his sketch of the fall of the rebel angels to the choral drama of 'Lucifer,' by the Dutch poet Vondel.

The Dutch language was not so little studied in the beginning of the seventeenth century as it now is. Elizabeth, being in some sort looked upon as the head of the Reformed party throughout Europe, supplied help to the Netherlands in their revolt against Spain; and when the United Provinces, after their almost single-handed and heroic struggles, succeeded in establishing for themselves, not merely independence, but a foremost place among the states of Europe, there was a good deal of diplomatic coquetting between Holland and England before the ultimate jealousy and hatred set in. The sudden political start made by Holland was almost immediately succeeded by the creation of a brilliant literature. Within twenty years after the proclamation of the Federal Commonwealth of the Seven United Provinces, in 1581, all the greatest names in Dutch literature were born. It was a time of great imaginative revival all over the north of Europe. The same period saw the birth of Arrebo and of Stjernhelm, respectively destined to be the fathers of Danish and of Swedish poetry; and of Martin Opitz, in whom German literature threw out its first modern blossom. In England the great Elizabethan school was at its climax, and light and heat radiated from London through all the Reformed