Midlothian

“ Middleton felt he could not be less mannerly himself, and so he related all he knew of the bottle, avowing his belief that it contained some dangerous chemical, such as that devilish corroding stuff known as Greek fire, or some deadly gas.
“Your theory sounds reasonable,” said the stranger; “and yet who knows? That inscription certainly is Hebrew. At least, it is neither English nor German. When one has studied psychic phenomena as long as I have, he comes to a point where he is very chary of saying what is not credible. ”

“ In Samson Agonistes it is hard to say who is more vividly present, the English {21} politician, the Greek tragedian, or the Hebrew prophet. And in one sense Paradise Lost is the most universal of all poems. Indeed, that word may be applied to it in its strictest meaning, for the field of Milton's action is not Greece, or Italy, or England, or even the whole earth; it is the universe itself. That is one of its difficulties: but it is also a source of the uplifting and enlarging quality which is peculiarly Miltonic. With him we are conscious of treading no petty scene. ”

“ I love Rome, but London better. I favour Italy, but England more. I honour the Latin, but worship the English.” He was also an advocate of the retention of good old Saxon words as against the invasion of Latinised ones. “But whither,” he writes, “have you banished those words which our forefathers used for these new-fangled ones? Are our words to be exiled like our citizens? O ye Englishmen, retain what yet remains of our native speech!” Under Mr. Gill’s instruction, and that of his son, who was usher, Milton spent about four years of strenuous study. ”

“ Milton, the greatest humanist among poets of the first rank, best illustrates the various sources of culture, ancient and modern, but more especially Greek and Italian, which had become available for Englishmen not long before his own time. The modern sources had been opened to almost all who cared for literature; the ancient, as yet, less widely. It is the prerogative of Milton to fuse in a splendid unity both the ancient and the modern elements that have contributed to enrich his genius; he can be genuinely classical without loss of spontaneity or freshness. ”

“ But there is a variety and subtilty in the Anglo-Saxon measure which is not found in the Middle English, and which is much more definitely under metrical rules. And apart from the metre of the single line, there is in the older alliterative poetry a skill in composing long passages, best described in the terms which Milton used about his own blank verse: ‘the sense variously drawn out from one line to another’. The Anglo-Saxon poets, at their best, are eloquent, and able to carry on for long periods without monotony. ”

“ To rejoin, as if it were a sufficient answer, that the definite Article is found in all these places in the original Greek,—is preposterous. In French also we say “Telle est la vie:” but, in translating from the French, we do not therefore say “Such is the life.” May we, without offence, suggest the study of Middleton On the Doctrine of the Greek Article to those members of the Revisionists' body who have favoured us with the foregoing crop of mistaken renderings? ”

“ The Creation of Man
Although the gods had from the beginning designed Midgard, or Mana-heim, as the abode of man, there were at first no human beings to inhabit it. One day Odin, Vili, and Ve, according to some authorities, or Odin, Hoenir (the bright one) , and Lodur, or Loki (fire) , started out together and walked along the seashore, where they found either two trees, the ash, Ask, and the elm, Embla, or two blocks of wood, hewn into rude semblances of the human form. The gods gazed at first upon the inanimate wood in silent wonder ”

“ Fatima, Nouronhor, or whatever your name might be, my fair Moslem, why did fate throw you in with a Puritan? Yet I wot that had it been one from a strain of later importation from Europe, you had not been so safe there last night. The Puritans may be disagreeable, but they are safe, safe.
Part of this Mr. Middleton was saying over and over to himself—the latter part. The Puritans are safe. The young lady of Englewood was safe. She was good, she was beautiful, too, in her calm, sweet, Puritan way. ”

“ From this side and that side the sound is echoed, the flash is reflected, while loud bursts the shout that strikes terror into the Midianites’ souls,—“The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” Smitten with panic, confused by the noise, dazzled by the glare, the multitudes of Midian are but embarrassed by their own numbers, they cannot distinguish friend from foe,—they snatch up their weapons, indeed, and use them with frantic vigour, but every man’s hand is turned against [237] his own fellow—warriors strike right and left, but their fierce blows fall on their own companions in arms! ”

“ Greek erudition exists on the Isis and Cam, whether the Maud man or the Brazen Nose man be properly ranked or not; the atmosphere is loaded with Greek learning; the whole river has reached a certain height, and kills all that growth of weeds, which this Castalian water kills. The English nature takes culture kindly. So Milton thought. It refines the Norseman. Access to the Greek mind lifts his standard of taste. He has enough to think of, and, unless of an impulsive nature, is indisposed from writing or speaking, by the fulness of his mind, and the new severity of his taste. ”

“ To each one amongst us to whom a present Saviour has been revealed by faith, the word of the Lord hath come as to the son of Joash. We may have rejoiced in the promise, but have we obeyed the command? Let us be honest with ourselves, my brethren; if the altar of Baal be yet standing, can we hope to drive the Midianites out of the land? Faith, if real, must appear in obedience; show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works, saith the inspired apostle. ”

“ During these days also Milton wrote his remarkable scheme for the education of gentlemen’s sons, in which he showed himself as radical and original and as ready to make learning a delightful and not an odious process as did Rousseau and Froebel a century or more later. Marvellous was the work accomplished by Milton’s young pupils at Aldersgate Street. We read of these boys of fourteen and sixteen, though even their learned teacher knew not yet of the microscope and the law of gravitation, studying not only Greek and Latin, but Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Italian. ”

“ As long as we remain in presumptuous self-confidence, the Midianites rest in possession; when we cast ourselves in earnest prayer at the feet of the Saviour, He maketh us more than conquerors.
We contemplated Faith, when last we met here, as the tree which in winter stands bare of foliage, black and leafless, yet with life within it. With Gideon now that tree had felt the warm breath of spring—the Lord had looked upon it, and the living sap had risen under the beams of the Sun of Righteousness ”

“ A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill-crests, and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays, gleam in the lowlands, and form dwarf bluffs; while inland, peering above the granites, the syenites, and the porphyries of the coast, pale quoins and naked cones again show the familiar Secondary formation of Midianitish Makná. ”

“ Apear’d: the Seven Kingdoms of Canaan & Five Baalim
Of Philistea into Twelve divided, call’d after the Names
Of Israel, as they are in Eden – Mountain, River & Plain,
City & sandy Desart intermingled beyond mortal ken.
But turning toward Ololon in terrible majesty, Milton
Replied: ‘Obey thou the Words of the Inspired Man.
All that can be annihilated must be annihilated
That the Children of Jerusalem may be saved form slavery.
There is a Negation, & there is a Contrary;
The Negation must be destroy’d to redeem the Contraries.
The Negation is the Spectre, the reasoning Power in Man. ”

“ Out of this one principle of subtle and lurking antagonism, may be explained everything which has been denounced under the idea of pedantry in Milton. It is the key to all that lavish pomp of art and knowledge which is sometimes put forward by Milton in situations of intense solitude, and in the bosom of primitive nature—as, for example, in the Eden of his great poem, and in the Wilderness of his Paradise Regained. The shadowy exhibition of a regal banquet in the desert, draws out and stimulates the sense of its utter solitude and remotion from men or cities. ”

“ Out of the grave came all the dead Puritan ancestors of Mr. Middleton, a long procession back to Massachusetts Bay. The elders of Salem who had ordained that a man should not smoke within five miles of a house, the lawgivers who had prescribed the small number, brief length, and sad color of ribbons a woman might wear and who forbade a man to kiss his wife on Sunday, all these righteous and uncomfortable folk stirred in Mr. Middleton’s blood and obsessed him. ”

“ Now if, as the parson said, all these enemies are most like to come, like the Midianites, to a soul where there’s been an idol set up, where was the idol in mine? You see, wife, pain and loneliness set an old man thinking.”
“You never had an idol,” said the wife; “in the midst of such a drunken, disorderly, quarrelsome set as we have here in Wildwaste, you took the pledge, and kept it too—never a drop of the poison wetted your lips; there’s not many a man would have kept steady, standing all alone as you did. ”

“ The Midianites within must be conquered, and the might which conquers is from God. If disappointment blight our hopes, discontent fret our spirits, dissension [84] mar our peace, distrust shrink from expected trials, we must yet lift up our eyes unto the hills from whence cometh our help—we must yet ask, and we shall receive, the grace which can supply all our need, and enable us to rise above the infirmities of the flesh, the weakness of our fallen nature. Let us trust fearlessly, let us trust alone in the might of our Lord. ”

“ In the vacancy of a mind formerly so active, he has taken to the study of local antiquities; and from his former intimacy with Middleton's father, he has a knowledge of the American part of the story, which he connects with the English portion, disclosed by his researches here; so that he is quite aware that Middleton has claims to the estate, which might be urged successfully against the present possessor. He is kindly disposed towards the son of his friend, whom he had so greatly injured ”

“ We hear no “opening exercises,” no joyous singing, no tender, earnest talk about right-doing and the temptations that little boys on Fore Street may encounter on Monday morning. There is nothing but a purely formal catechising of these [Pg 183] eager, impressionable little souls as to a theology that they cannot understand, and a history of the world which their first lesson on geology will undermine. This modern Sunday school is the one blot upon the memory of the beautiful old church so dear to every lover of Milton. ”

“ Milton's bodily appearance at this time was in brilliant correspondence with the ideal which imagination might form of a youthful poet. Perfect in all bodily proportions, an accomplished fencer, with delicate flowing hair, and beautiful features through which genius, still half in slumber, shed its mystic glow, he was all that the imagination of Greece saw in the young Hyperion or Apollo. ”

“ Middleton speculating upon the wonder and alarm little Mr. Cohen would experience at beholding the gigantic Nubian in all his outlandish panoply. While changing the dress suit for his street wear, from a back room came the sound of the blackamore moving about, chanting that weird refrain, tumpty, tumpty, tum—tum; tumpty, tumpty, tum—tum; which from Mesopotamia to the Pillars of Hercules, from the time of Ishmael to the present, has been the song of the sons of the desert. What was his surprise when the blackamore emerged. ”

“ The half-Fellah Bedawin, like the shepherds, their predecessors, in the days of Abimelech and Jethro, are ever chary of their treasure; the only object being extra camel-hire. After eating your salt, a rite whose significance, by-the-by, is wholly ignored throughout Midian and its neighbourhood, they will administer under your eyes a silencing nudge to an over-communicative friend. 'The very children that drive the sheep and goats instinctively deny all knowledge of the Themáil ("pits") and holes acting as wells. ”

“ It is quite possible that in Milton’s time the name of one of the numerous giants who appear to have made the Lands-End district their dwelling-place, might have still lived in the memories of men. Certain it is no such a giant is remembered now. [30]
In a map of Saxon England we find the Land’s-End called Penꞃiðꞅꞇeoꞃꞇ, and in some early English books this promontory is named Penrhin-guard, and Penrlien-gard, said to signify the “Headland of Blood.” [31] The old Cornish people called this promontory “Pen-von-las,” the “End of the Earth,” hence we derive the name of the Land’s-End. ”

“ With curious finger and thumb they pick holes in the mosaic; and wherever there is wealth they are always ready to cry "Thief!"
There is real interest in the enumeration of Milton's borrowings, and in the citation of parallel passages from the ancients to illustrate his work. But since style is the expression of a living organism, not a problem of cunning tesselation, it is permissible, in this place, to pass over what he borrowed from the ancients, in order to deal with a more intimate matter, and to attempt a valuation of that which he borrowed from no one, either ancient or modern. ”

“ Middleton, in a certain illuminating instinct which belongs to women but only occasionally comes to some men, saw all this in a flash without any pondering and turning over and reflecting and comparing, and he said to himself under his breath, not eloquently, but well, as there came home to him the heinousness of that abhorrant social system dependent upon the religious system of the Prophet of Mecca, “Damn the emir and Mohammed and the whole damned Mohammedan business, kit and boodle!” ”