by James Hutchings.
Originally published in The Poet's Magazine (Leonard Lloyd) vol.2 #16 (Dec 1877).
Second Article.
Dante's fiend is clearly in the final stage of his ruin, and, considering the condition of his affairs in this upper world that assuredly is an anachronism. The poet may be however, permitted the licence, inasmuch as the poem is entitled a vision and the horror of its details may very well make us happy that it is but a dream. Milton on the other hand has entered on his work with such a solemn note of preparation and professes to aim at so much, that we are fully entitled to bring him to the judgment seat of criticism, and handle him when there with unmitigated severity. His Satan is indubitably composed of materials taken from various quarters. I think I have shown how largely he is indebted to Dante. It is pretty clear and evident that he laid Tasso also under heavy contribution, though not exactly to the same extent affirmed by Voltaire, who declares him to have "spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil." Space cannot be afforded to meet comments on Tasso's fiend, besides, he is not in my category, and I introduce him merely to illustrate the fact of Milton's free use of the literary properties of his predecessors. The highest mountains are but molehills in comparison with the stature of Tasso's fiend. With a dreadful blast that rumbles and roars through subterranean ranks he summons his parliament of fiends. His eyes, filled with rage and venom, glare like two beacons—his mouth sends forth flames like Etna in an eruption, and all is listening fear and silence as he commences his address.
"Still were the furies while their sovereign spoke
And swift Coeytus staid his murmur shrill,
While thus the thunderer thundered out his will."
You perceive the very style of the orator has been adopted by Milton, whose Satan speaks thus—
"Princes, potentates, warriors, the flowers of heaven," &c. The drift too of the oration has been plainly followed by Milton. Tasso's fiend, like him of Paradise Lost, compliments his host on their former progress in the war with heaven. I have a strong opinion that Milton also made pretty free use of the Prometheus chained, of Eschylus. The following passage bears so strong a resemblance to the overthrow of Satan that the translator appears to have felt himself justified in assuming some of Milton's lines—
"The furious Typhon who 'gainst all the gods
Made war; his horrid jaws with serpent hiss
Breathe slaughters, from his eyes the gorgon glare
Of baleful lightnings flash'd, as his proud force
Would rend from Jove his empire of the sky—
But him the vengeful bolt, instinct with fire,
Smote sore and dashed him from his haughty vaunts,
Pierced through his soul and withered all his strength,
Thus stretched out, huge in length, beneath the root
Of Etna, near Trinacria's narrow sea
Astonied, blasted, spiritless, he lies."
Macauley has a passage in his essay on Milton in reference to Prometheus and Satan which I shall make bold to censure somewhat, or if you like, cavil at a little. The passage is this:—"The Prometheus of Eschylus has undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In truth we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus however is hardly superhuman enough. He felt too much of his chains and his uneasy posture; he is rather too much distressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend upon the knowledge which he possesses that he holds the fate of his future in his hands, and that the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain; amidst agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves and even exults; against the sword of Michael, against the thunders of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the moat burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of unintermitted misery his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its innate energies, requiring no support from anything external, not even from hope itself." Let us look a little carefully. "Prometheus is scarce superhuman enough." He is at least as superhuman as Satan. If he has less in him of the fiend, he has incomparably more of the God. If he talks more of his chains he dreams not of obtaining deliverance save upon his own terms. He has no inward misgivings, no tendency to sue for grace, or accept it unless it be proffered and secured in accordance with the justice he conceives to be due. He must, he will be first liberated, and not till then will he treat with his oppressor. But Satan is withheld from abject supplication for mercy solely by fear of the futility of the attempt. Compare the contemptuous reception Prometheus gives to Jove's messenger offering favour and freedom if he will submit, and the calm defiance with which he awaits the torture which he knows will speedily be hurled on his dauntless head and which, chained as he is to the rock, he has no chance of eluding. Compare this with Satan's soliloquy, so expressive of his inward shrinking from his doom and manifest disposition to escape it on any possible condition however degrading. What can be less superhuman, less heroic or less self-sustained than his caitiff despairing howl, "Me miserable, which way shall I fly; infinite wrath and infinite despair." What can less express the spirit resting on its innate energies than this pitious wail? "Is there no hope left for repentance—none for pardon left?" How much of the superhuman is there in this climax of wailing weakness? But why does he not repent and sue for peace? Because he knows that his punisher knows him too well to listen to any plea of his pretended repentance. He has no faith of being accepted. The might of his intellectual nature is by no means victorious over the evils of his ruined state. He cried, "Evil be thou my good" but he had not enough in him to make it such, for we find him shortly afterwards, touched with a sense of wretched cowardliness and scoundralism, attempting to wreak his malice on his Almighty victor through the ruin of such a pair of innocents as our first parents, who had never injured or could injure him. The brave words uttered in hell—"The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,"—are as regards himself merely words and nothing more. "Myself am hell," he cries, in the very prostration of despair. His words are in fact variable; for he is influenced by circumstances, moulded and changed by them much as the frail children of mortality. In truth the objection, if it be one, of not "superhuman enough" belongs rather to Satan than Prometheus. In my reading of the character it is not objectionable. Milton, I take it, meant not Satan to be the heroic model Macauley and Hazlett would have us think him. They have both chosen to consider the character of Satan exclusively from the opening of the poem.
In comparing Hazlett and Macauley I find several opinions that appear to me not well founded. Hazlett has thus expressed himself about Satan—"His ambition was the greatest and his punishment was the greatest, but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings." I should be led to infer from this passage that the punishment of Satan was as great as it could be, but was it so? Is he not greatly favored—is he not a person at large? Is he a prisoner at all? Is he not free of the Universe? the Heaven of Heaven's alone excepted. What hindrance is there to his escape from the the sea of fire into which we find him at first precipitated? What obstruction to the assembly of his legions? or the construction of the sublime place in which they debate their ways and means? Nor is Satan hindered from escaping hell itself. The gates of the prison, if prison it may be called, are guarded by no hostile power. They are his own progeny who recognise him as their progenitor and make common cause with him and speed him on his way. That Milton is himself consistent in this matter is more than his most devoted admirers will venture to affirm. In fact the affair of Sin, Death, and Satan's escape is at once the most sublime and the most ridiculous conceivable. The Almighty is represented as speaking of Satan's escape as an extraordinary achievement for He is made to say—
"Only-begotten son, see'st thou what rage
Transports our adversary? whom no bounds
Proscribe, no bars of hell, nor all the chains
Heap'd on him there, nor yet the main abyss
Wide, interrupt can hold: * * * *
Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way
Not far off heaven, in the precints of light
Direct towards the new created world."
Nothing can be more absurd than words like these spoken by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omniprescient Being. What chains were those of which he speaks? We have seen Satan in hell floating in a sea of fire, but not chained, nor in the least impeded in his movements. We are told indeed that it was by divine sufferance that he, Beelzebub and the rest, escaped the stygian pool, but that only increases the absurdity, of the passage just quoted. There are no chains, no bars, nor anything of the sort. What does it all avail that—
"Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates, threefold were brass,
Three iron, three adamantine rock
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,"
if Satan's own dear daughter keeps the key? She says
"The key of this infernal pit due by
And by command of heaven's all powerful king
I keep, by Him forbidden to unlock
These adamantine gates."
Who is this greatly trusted personage—who but Sin! Milton has here indeed stepped from the sublime into the ridiculous. The holy omniscient Almighty One places his high trust and confidence in Sin herself, commands her to keep shut hell-gates and yet gives her the means of opening them. This is a singular process in Milton to achieve his high purpose to "justify the ways of God with man!"
To return to Hazlett's comment. He says, Satan's strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body, but I cannot find that either was matchless. Satan is seriously overthrown by Abdiel and Michael in the first contest, and in Eden he is afraid to encounter Ithuriel, and as to fortitude, he is but an indifferent stoic. To Beelzebub he says—"Fallen cherub, to be weak is to be miserable, doing or suffering," and he illustrates his own remark by his own example. He is miserable because he is weak—he can despair, but not endure his doom—and he wails out, "Me miserable, which way shall I fly."
Hazlett, like Macauley appears to have looked at Satan in in the first book only, and apparently misunderstood the character, The critical comments of these illustrious writers are probably erroneous, because one-sided. It is the province of criticism, not to seek to praise or blame an author, but to comprehend and illustrate the principles of his performance. Byron's conception of the Great Fiend now claims our attention. As Milton formed his mainly on that of Dante, so Byron evidently formed his on that of Milton. Like Satan, he is the creature eminent in Beauty, yet he is not so beautiful as he has been and might be, and there is a settled gloomy grief upon him so profound, that sorrow seems half of his immortality. He is like Satan in his hatred of the Supreme, but more intense. There is nothing in the Paradise Lost to equal that piece of sublime blasphemy—
"Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in
His everlasting face, and tell him that
His evil is not good. * * But let him
Sit on his vast and solitary throne,
Creating worlds to make eternity
Less burdensome to his immense existence
And unparticipated solitude!
Let him crowd orb on orb; he is alone
Indefinite, indisoluble tyrant!
Could he but crush himself 'twere the best boon
He ever granted; but let him reign on,
And multiply himself in misery!"
We know all about Satan, his origin, his aspiring to supremacy, his overthrow, his doom, his strength, his weakness—but this Lucifer, this beautiful, proud, sorrowful blasphemer, we know not whence he is, or whither he goes. Cain, in the midst of a soliloquy teeming with embryo discontent and doubt, becomes aware of the presence of a shape like to that of the angels, but of a sterner and sadder aspect; who makes himself known as the "Master of Spirits." Under the influence of this mysterious personage, Cain finds strangely his thoughts and imaginings urged onward, his half-formed doubts shaped for him, and his discontents grow from feeble rickety children into huge Titans reaching at the throne of the Highest. Cain would like to pluck out the heart of this spirit's mystery. He cannot be thus sorrowful by choice. What ails him? We suspect him to be totally inflicted with the malady of thought—thought of lost happiness. It is all sham that stately talk of his, that he knows of no superior. "I have nought in common with him—I dwell apart." It is a lie on the very face of it, that He who is the source of happiness can Himself, be unhappy. This conception of the Great Fiend by Byron, must be admitted, is in the highest degree a poetical conception of genius. It is perfectly sustained in pride, hate, and blasphemy. True, we have not caught him in soliloquy, and at farthest have but a few hours knowledge of him. We have not seen him as we have Satan, reduced to his utmost wits to escape the eyes of vigilant angels. He has not come to our knowledge to the very gaze of Heaven, or he might have looked up longing to enter again into his primeval home. There has been no need for humiliating transformation into toads and snakes, his present object is best accomplished by himself in his highest and proudest bearing. Hence, he is the most responsible of the brood of fiends at this time brought forward for exhibition.
I must confess I never could see any reason for the dust raised as there was at this Fiend's first appearance on the stage of public opinion, or why men or women should continue to fear him. His words are but fiendish words at most, and you cannot in reason expect that a fiend will talk like a seraph.
Goethe's conception of the fiend differs materially from those we have been considering. He is indeed a fallen spirit, but a pacification has healed this breach between him and the Almighty. .His movements are in opposition to the Supreme, but in subservancy, like Satan in the book of Job, and he comes freely into the Courts of Heaven—"A devil of the pit mid holy cherubims." He is not only a permitted, but a welcome visitor. The Lord Almighty discourses familiarly with him—invites his opinion concerning the affairs of earth—asks if Faust is known to him, and observes that it pleases him to give man a companion such as he. Mephistophiles is to stir and elate him—though as a devil—that human nature may be awakened into activity, man being prone to slumber when all goes smoothly.
This fiend Mephistophiles has no qualms of conscience like Satan—he is not in any dread of a coming doom, he bemoans no lost happiness—he is not weighed upon by a superincumbent gloom and grief like Lucifer. In him are no longing, lingering remains of the high state from whence he fell. He is acclimated to evil. "Evil be thou my good," an utterance untrue and senseless in the mouth of Milton's Satan; would be perfectly in place coming from the mouth of Mephistophiles. He has a zest and appetite for wrong and mischief. Evil has a savour that is relishing to his palate, which eschews goodness, virtue and the like qualities as tame, insipid and tasteless. It is not that he hates man or man's maker, but he loves the sport of hunting down his prey just as some high spirits of the human race love to hunt to death the fox or stag. There is excitement in the chase of humanity, in hunting it till it stands at bay in its naked wickedness.
We know nothing of his personal beauty or deformity, but purity shrinks from him—the untainted moral sense loathes and shuns him. Poor Margaret wonders her Henry will associate with such a man, one whom she fears and shrinks from, seeking shelter and safety on the bosom of her lover, where she feels at home. We are surprised that such a companion should be given us, at least such as know him, sitting side by side with the holiest, within the very sanctuary of the soul. When we would do good we feel that this evil—this devil is present with us, and are we not constrained to cry out with Faust—
"O great and glorious spirit, thou who hast deigned to make thyself visible to me, thou who knowest my heart and my soul, why, why didst thou unite me to this companion of shame, who feedeth on evil and rejoices in destruction?"
In conclusion, I think it will be a little-interesting to show briefly that the Diaboli of the great poets are characteristic of the Christian era to which they severally belong. Thus the fiend of Dante is a monster wholly impossible of belief in our day, yet believed in with the utmost implicitness in the thirteenth century, which was an age abounding in monkish legends of the grossest and most disgusting extravagance. Dante, born in this age, was necessitated to labour in it with such materials as were provided for him. All the theological extravagancies of the time, witches, demons, the black art, and a monstrous devil, were sucked in with his mother's milk, and they had become a part of his being with the rest of the human family of that generation, and all intensified by the potency of his imagination. Hence the Lucifer of the Inferno, to us an impossible monster, was doubtless a most tremendous fact to Dante who portrayed him, and indeed he is in sufficient keeping with the place in which we find him.
In like manner the country which produces the Satan of Milton was a period singularly unsettled, restless, enigmatical and disputative. Men were all abroad in everything, and a general incertitude prevailed. It was a.talking age, but it was also one of tremendous action.
The Satan of Paradise Lost, with his complicity, materiality, and spirituality—his dazzling heroic attributes—his spirit of rebellion and enterprise—his tendency to talk, and to do as well as talk, together with his ability to undo and ruin others without the inner prowess of settling his individual anarchy, altogether splendid anamoly as he assuredly is—is the representative and exponant of that day and generation in which he was produced.
That Byron and Göethe believed in their respective fiends is more than I could undertake to affirm. I should rather vaticinate they did not. They were neither of them addicted to belief. Byron especially hovered constantly in the "everlasting no," and has taken the opportunity of having to make his Lucifer talk and tempt, to give utterance to an elaboration of his own scepticism. Göethe was a man of such boundless intellectual wealth, force, and magnificence, that he must be a bold and presumptuous critic who would venture to gage his intellect. It is evident to every student of this great man's mind, that he was absolutely free in ranging through the universe—perfectly conversant with all thought and modes and phases of the human mind, and could not be restricted by any theological system whatever, or to be held in leading strings to any human philosophy. Of the four Diaboli we have been contemplating, his Mephistophiles is the only one possible to the general belief of our own day and generation. Something of impediment to all individual and social perfection, too subtle to be seized, too deep to be removed, and ever marring man's best and highest efforts, is so eternally felt by each and all, that there is no impossibility, but some such devil or spirit of evil like this. Mephistophiles has to do with us and our affairs, whilst the idea that such a genius is given to man to quicken his exertions and stir him into activity is worthy the large mind of the poet. I most willingly relinquish the consideration of diabolical agencies from a theological and moral point of view, to those who think proper to deal with them.
I beg my readers not to suppose that I am satisfied with this performance—yet I think is not impossible but some additional assistance to the right understanding of these great authors, may, here and there, have been contributed by my attempt. It is however, no great discredit even signally to fail, where the most illustrious of our literati have not wholly succeeded.