day was the repetition of the former, and on a system he avoided all visitors. Such a man could not have submitted to the reckless loss of many a golden day, in hammering at the obscure sense of the Saxon monk, which the critics find by his own printed text he could not always master; nor is it more likely that Milton himself could have sustained his poetic excitement through the tedious progress of a verbal or cursory paraphrase of Scripture history by this Gothic bard. At that day even Junius could not have discovered those “elastic rhythms,” which solicit the ear of a more modern Saxon scholar in his studies of Cædmon,15 but which we entirely owe to the skill, and punctuation, and accentuation of the recent editor, Mr. Thorpe.
Be it also observed, that Milton published his “Paradise Lost” in the lifetime of Junius, the only judge who could have convicted the bard who had daringly proposed
| ————to pursue Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme— |
of concealing what he had silently appropriated.
There are so many probabilities against the single possibility of Milton having had any knowledge of Cædmon, that we must decide by the numerical force of our own suggestions.
The startling similarities which have led away critical judgments, if calmly scrutinised, may be found to be those apparent resemblances or coincidences which poets drawing from the same source would fall into. There is a French mystery of “The Conception,” where the scene is hell; Lucifer appeals to its inmates in a long address. This Satan of “The Conception” strikingly reminds us of the Prince of Darkness of Milton, and indeed has many creative touches; and had it been written after the work of Milton, it might have seemed a parody.16
Similarity and coincidence do not necessarily prove identity and imitation. Nor is the singular theme of “the Rebellion of the Angels” peculiar to either poet, since those who never heard of the Saxon monk have constructed whole poems and dramas on the celestial revolt.17
We may be little interested to learn, among all the dubious inquiries of “the origin of ‘Paradise Lost,’ ” whether a vast poem, the most elaborate in its parts, and the most perfect in its completion—a work, in the words of the great artist—
| ——who knows how long Before had been contriving?—P. L., ix. 138. |
was or could be derived from any obscure source. The interval between excellence and mediocrity removes all connexion; it is that between incurable impotence and genial creation. A great poet can never be essentially indebted even to his prototype.
If we may still be interested in watching the primitive vigour of the self-taught, compared with the intellectual ideal of the poetical character, we must not allow ourselves, as might be shown in one of the critics of the Saxon school, to mistake nature in her first poverty, bare, meagre, squalid, for the moulded nudity of the Graces. The nature of Ennius was no more the nature of Virgil than the nature of Cædmon was that of Milton, for what is obvious and familiar is the reverse of the beautiful and the sublime. We have seen the ideal being,
| Whose stature reach’d the sky, and on his crest Sat Horror plumed— |
by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict, “fastened by the neck, his hands manacled, and his feet bound.”
Cædmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit, hastening to Adam with the apples—
| Some in her hands she bare, Some in her bosom lay, Of the unblest fruit. |
However natural or downright may be this specification, it is what could not have occurred with “the bosom” of our naked mother of mankind, and the artistical conception eluded the difficulty of carrying these apples—
| ————from the tree returning, in her hand A bough of fairest fruit.—ix. 850. |
In Cædmon, it costs Eve a long day to persuade the sturdy Adam, an honest Saxon, to “the dark deed;” and her prudential argument that “it were best to obey the pretended messenger of the Lord than risk his aversion,” however natural, is very crafty for so young a sinner. In Milton we find the Ideal, and before Eve speaks one may be certain of Adam’s fall—for
| ————in her face excuse Came prologue, and apology too prompt, Which with bland words at will, she thus address’d. |
A description too metaphysical for the meagre invention of the old Saxon monk!
We dare not place “the Milton of our forefathers” by the side of the only Milton whom the world will recognise. We would not compare our Saxon poetry to Saxon art, for that was too deplorable; but, to place Cædmon in a parallel with Milton, which Plutarch might have done, for he was not very nice in his resemblances, we might as well compare the formless forms and the puerile inventions of the rude Saxon artist, profusely exhibited in the drawings of the original manuscript of Cædmon,18 with the noble conceptions and the immortal designs of the Sistine Chapel.
1 Sir Francis Palgrave’s “Dissertation on Cædmon,” in the Archæologia.
In another work this erudite antiquary explains the marvellous part of Cædmon’s history by “natural causes;” and such a principle of investigation is truly philosophical; but we must not look over imposture in the search for “natural causes.” “Cædmon’s inability to perform his task,” observes our learned expositor, “appears to have arisen rather from the want of musical knowledge than from his dulness, and therefore it is quite possible that, allowing for some little exaggeration, his poetical talents may have been suddenly developed in the manner described.”—“Hist. of England,” i. 162. Thus the Saxon Milton rose in one memorable night after a whole life passed without the poet once surmising himself to be poetical; and thus, for we consent not to yield up a single point in the narrative of “the Dream,” appeared the patronising apparition and the exhilarating dialogue. A lingering lover of the Mediæval genius can perceive nothing more in a circumstantial legend than “a little exaggeration.” I seem to hear the shrill attenuated tones of Ritson, in his usual idiomatic diction, screaming, “It is a Lie and an Imposture of the stinking Monks!”
The Viscount de Chateaubriand is infinitely more amusing than the plodders in the “weary ways of antiquity.” The mystical tale of the Saxon monk is dashed into a glittering foam of enigmatical brevity. “Cædmon rêvait en vers et composait des poèmes en dormant; Poésie est Songe.” And thus dreams may be expounded by dreams!—“Essai sur la Litérature Anglaise,” i. 55.
2 “The Six Days of the Creation” offered a subject for an heroic poem to Dracontius, a Spanish monk, in the fifth century, and who was censured for neglecting to honour the seventh by a description of the Sabbath of the Divine repose. It is preserved in “Bib. Patrum,” vol. viii., and has been published with notes. Genesis and Exodus—the fall of Adam—the Deluge—and the passage of the Red Sea, were themes which invited the sacred effusions of Avitus, the Archbishop of Vienne, who flourished in the sixth century. His writings were collected by Père Sirmond. This Archbishop attacked the Arians, but we have only fragments of these polemical pamphlets; as these
