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INTRODUCTION.

THERE are indications that Addison's literary criticisms, and especially his papers on Paradise Lost, are not so generally read, nor so highly esteemed, as was the case a hundred years ago. We hear much of the Roger de Coverley series and of the Fan Drill, when we hear of Addison at all, but little of his more serious and solid writings. "He does not go very deep," says his admirer Thackeray. Can it also be that, when he strives to go deep, he is not worth the labor of perusal? Says Leslie Stephen, treating of Addison in the Dictionary of National Biography, "The critical doctrines. are obsolete, and the judgments often worse than obsolete." Were this true, there would be little need of re-editing the essays on Paradise Lost. Is it true?

For our part we think not, or at least we dissent from the sweeping form of the statement. Other causes must contribute to the contemporary, and, we think, temporary neglect of his critical essays. Perhaps we shall discover some of them through an examination of Matthew Arnold's strictures in that one of his Mixed Essays entitled A French Critic on Milton. Much of the portion relevant to this inquiry is cited in our Notes, but for the sake of convenience we may be permitted to reintroduce, from point to point of the discussion, what is most significant in his criticism.

It must be premised that Arnold is not lacking in respect for Milton. Not only does he quote him in other essays as furnishing examples of the grand style, but, in the Address delivered at the unveiling of the Memorial Window, Feb.

13, 1888, he is full of laudatory appreciations of Milton's genius. Thus he says: "Shakespeare and Milton - he who wishes to keep his standard of excellence high, cannot choose two better objects of regard and honor." Again: "If to our English race an inadequate sense for perfection of work is a real danger, if the discipline of respect for a high and flawless excellence is peculiarly needed by us, Milton is of all our gifted men the best lesson, the most salutary influence. In the sure and flawless perfection of his rhythm and diction he is as admirable as Virgil or Dante, and in this respect he is unique amongst us. No one else in English literature and art possesses the like distinction." And again: "Milton, from one end of Paradise Lost to the other, is in his diction and rhythm constantly a great artist in the great style. Whatever may be said as to the subject of his poem, as to the conditions under which he received his subject and treated it, that praise, at any rate, is assured to him."

It may be remarked in passing that, when Arnold speaks of "the sure and flawless perfection of his rhythm and diction," he is at variance with such critics, not only as Addison, but as Dryden, as Johnson, and as Landor. Dryden charges Milton with running" into a flat thought, sometimes for a hundred lines together." Johnson remarks: "His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations, which Bentley endeavors to defend by the example of the ancients; his unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not necessary to mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured." Though it is true he adds, "And at last bear so little proportion to the whole that they scarcely deserve the attention of a critic." The criticisms of Landor occupy considerable space in the Conversation between himself and Southey. No one of these distinguished authors goes so far as to say, with Arnold, " From style really high and pure Milton never departs." 'Never'

is an emphatic word, yet one that could easily be condoned in most writers; it strikes us with surprise only as coming from a critic who, speaking of such as have made a certain degree of progress in the intellectual life, calmly adds, "At this stage, rhetoric, even when it is so good as Macaulay's, dissatisfies."

Arnold begins that part of his article which is concerned with Addison by saying: "This is the fault of Addison's Miltonic criticism, once so celebrated; it rests almost entirely upon convention." If we are seriously to consider the animadversions which follow, we are disposed to inquire at the outset regarding the sense in which the word ' convention' is used. But we are not left wholly in the dark by Arnold himself. Thus he tells us, for instance, after three or four pages of disquisition, that "the great merit of Johnson's criticism on Milton is that from rhetoric and convention it is free." We may therefore obtain assistance in discovering Arnold's sense of the word 'convention' by examining Johnson's criticism, seeing what it contains, and deliberately assuring ourselves that whatever we find in it is at least free from the odious blot of conventionality.

Turning, then, to Johnson's remarks on Paradise Lost, we observe, first of all, that he calls it " a poem which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and, with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind." We shall be somewhat surprised, on again referring to Arnold's essay, to discover that he criticizes Addison for the opinion that "the Paradise Lost is looked upon by the best judges as the greatest production, or at least the noblest work of genius in our language, and therefore deserves to be set before an English reader in its full beauty." To an unsophisticated understanding it would seem that Addison claims rather less for the poem than Johnson. But Johnson's criticism is devoid of convention, according to Matthew Arnold. May we not therefore assume that Addison is blameless on this score?

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