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But while for the biographer of Milton Samson Agonistes is charged with a pathos, which as the expression of real suffering no fictive tragedy can equal, it must be felt that as a composition the drama is languid, nerveless, occasionally halting, never brilliant. If the date of the composition of the Samson be 1663, this may have been the result of weariness after the effort of Paradise Lost.
He had begun three tragedies, on Boadicea, Ines de Castro, and a fictitious story; several poems in Greek, and a translation of Samson Agonistes. The selection which Mr. Southey has made, consists of copious extracts from his letters, poems, and essays. Mr. Southey has truly said of him, that what he is most remarkable for is his uniform good sense.
The poem was published in 1667, seven years after the Restoration, and four years later appeared the "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes," in the severe grandeur of whose verse we see the poet himself "fallen," like Samson, "on evil days and evil tongues, with darkness and with danger compassed round."
Satan's speech about his own implacable fatality, "his harbour, and his ultimate repose," and that allusion to Our Lord's gentleness, like "the cool intermission of a summer's cloud" are both in the manner we love. It is only, however, when one comes to Samson Agonistes that the full power of Milton's genius is felt.
A story has to move or few will read it, but it is doubtful whether a greater technical achievement than this is required for popularity. "Samson Agonistes" is technically perfect, but was never popular, while, to pass from the sublime to its opposite, "This Side of Paradise" was most crudely put together, and yet was popular.
His Samson Agonistes is perhaps the finest example of a play written in English after the manner of the Greek dramas. Milton wrote The Areopagitica in defence of the liberty of publishers and printers of books. And it stands for all time as the first and greatest argument against interference with the freedom of the press.
Sir George Thrum has in his possession the score of an air, the words from 'Samson Agonistes, an autograph of the late revered monarch. We hear that that excellent composer has in store for us not only an opera, but a pupil, with whose transcendent merits the elite of our aristocracy are already familiar." Ibid., June 5. "Music with a Vengeance.
This is the class to which Milton belongs, in whose poems we have heard Mr. Coleridge say that he remembered but two proper pictures Adam bending over the sleeping Eve at the beginning of the fifth book of the "Paradise Lost," and Delilah approaching Samson towards the end of the "Agonistes."
If it were possible to blot out from our mind its memory of the Bible and of Protestant theology, and with that mind of artificial vacancy to read Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, how strange and great and mad would the genius of Milton appear.
Through these two overwhelming disasters, Milton must have been supporting his solitary spirit by writing Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and giving the final touches to Paradise Lost. He was now so wholly unmoved by his environment, that we look in vain in the poems for any traces of this season of suffering and disaster.
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