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Updated: June 19, 2025
Nothing could be more personal than a Miltonic Sonnet. The rigid principles of form, adhered to so scrupulously in the medium used, intensify, rather than detract from, his individualistic character. That Miltonic wit, so granite-like and mordant, how well it goes with the magical whispers that "syllable men's names"!
Nor is it only the Miltonic sentence which is incoherent; the whole arrangement of his topics is equally loose, disjointed, and desultory. His inspiration comes from impulse. Had he stayed to chastise his emotional writing by reason and the laws of logic, he would have deprived himself of the sources of his strength. These serious faults are balanced by virtues of another kind.
I doubt not that it may have excited some surprise in your minds that I should have spoken of this as Milton's hypothesis, rather than that I should have chosen the terms which are more customary, such as "the doctrine of creation," or "the Biblical doctrine," or "the doctrine of Moses," all of which denominations, as applied to the hypothesis to which I have just referred, are certainly much more familiar to you than the title of the Miltonic hypothesis.
It is there in the rhythms, it is there in the phrase. The poet may take things that had previously existed the Keatsian and Shelleian lyric, the Wordsworthian attitude to Nature, the Miltonic blank verse; but inevitably, invariably, each under his hands becomes different, becomes individual and original.
If there were any harmony between the Miltonic account and the circumstantial evidence, we ought to have abundant evidence of the existence of birds in the Carboniferous, the Devonian, and the Silurian rocks. I need hardly say that this is not the case, and that not a trace of birds makes its appearance until the far later period which I have mentioned.
But amid all the undulations of that great stony ocean, one peak there was that delighted Trevennack's soul more than any of the rest a bold russet crest, bursting suddenly through the heathery waste in abrupt ascent, and scarcely to be scaled, save on one difficult side, like its Miltonic prototype.
One wind and one tide at one time operate upon all who here engage. This simplicity renders a battle between two men-of-war, with their huge white wings, more akin to the Miltonic contests of archangels than to the comparatively squalid tussles of earth. As the ships neared, a hazy darkness overspread the water. The moon was not yet risen. Objects were perceived with difficulty.
It was unreal, a picture, a play, a poet's conception of chaos that was it! The thing was Dantesque or Miltonic. The gaping rent, the jumbled rocks, the thick spurt of steam issuing from the buried drill, it was all tumultuous, primeval; and that grimy workman, heaving aside the dirt and scrambling to the air, was suggestive of Milton's earth-born "tawny lion, pawing to get free."
Milton's conception of God is higher than Homer's, Virgil's, or Dante's, but the care of the Miltonic God for his offspring is greater, and the profound truth unaffected by Copernican discoveries and common to all these poets is therefore more impressive in Milton than in the others.
Among the poems of this age, we may emphasize: the shorter scopic pieces, of which the Far Traveler, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Fortunes of Men, and The Battle of Brunanburh are important examples; Beowulf, the greatest Anglo-Saxon epic poem, which describes the deeds of an unselfish hero, shows how the ancestors of the English lived and died, and reveals the elemental ideals of the race; the Caedmonian Cycle of scriptural paraphrases, some of which have Miltonic qualities; and the Cynewulf Cycle, which has the most variety and lyrical excellence.
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