MILTON'S WORDS.*

WORDS are to the poet as notes are to the musician; with this difference, that the notes which go to the making of every melody are strictly limited in number, while the quantity of words at the disposal of a poet is virtually without any limit at all. John Stuart Mill's argument that musical composition must in process of time come to an end, owing to the exhaustion of all the possible combinations of notes, cannot be applied to the case of poetry ; and indeed the poet's problem is the converse of the musician's,—for it lies, not in the manipulation of a given fixed material, but in the selection, one might almost say in the creation, of the material itself. Poetry, after all, is in no small measure the art of finding the right words. And thus when one knows a poet's vocabulary one knows one of the most important things about him. Milton's vocabulary is particularly interesting, owing not only to the immensity of his achievement, but also to the fact that he was the most deliberate of all our poets. His greatest and most characteristic effects are the result of subtle workmanship, of learned preparation, of conscious and elaborate art. The spontaneity and catholicity which make the works of Shakespeare hardly distinguishable from those of Nature herself were qualities totally alien to Milton's temper of mind. He was the least natural writer who ever lived. Nothing shows this more clearly than his vocabulary, which Miss Lockwood's Lexicon to his English works now enables us for the first time to examine in a scientific spirit. Apart from the preponderance of its Latin words, his vocabulary is perhaps chiefly remark- able for its exclusions. Milton was the heir of the Eliza- bethans; without that marvellous heritage, his work as we know it could never have existed; and yet no sooner had he come into his fortune than he threw half of it into the sea. His diction, compared with that of the Elizabethans, is curiously devoid of vivid colour, of variety, of contrast,—in short, of those very qualities of superabundant wealth which was the chief glory of "the giant age before the flood." But superabundance was not what Milton wanted; he wanted perfection ; he wanted the grand style, the vast sublimity, the superhuman splendour which meet one so triumphantly on every page of Paradise Lost.

As its name suggests, Miss Lockwood's book is something more than a mere vocabulary. The purpose of her work, she tells us, "is to provide a means by which the student may • readily find the signification of any word in the poetry of • Milton. The chief aim has been definition, and every word in the poetry has been subjected to a careful examination." On the whole, Miss Lockwood has succeeded in her task, and her work shows evidence of much ungrudging labour and a genuine Miltonic zeal. She is at her best in the treatment of words which are of frequent occurrence. Her analysis, for • instance, of Milton's various uses of the word "eye" is a model of scrupulous discrimination; and it would be easy to indicate a hundred more words of this kind which have been no less exhaustively and accurately dealt with. Less satisfactory, however, is Miss Lockwood's examination of Milton's more recondite and subtle meanings ; and this is all the more • unfortunate since it is in these very subtleties that so much of the peculiar charm, of his poetry resides. Miss Lockwood

" Lexicon to the English Poetical Works Of John, Milton. By Laura E, Lock- -wood, Ph.D. (Yale). London-; Macmillan and Co. [12s. ed. nat.] herself points out that Milton's words Aro:tined, more perhaps than those of any other poet, "with literal and figurative meanings that shade into each otherand-off into other related senses" ; but she has not been sufficiently persistent in

tracking out these senses and 'bringing them before the reader's mind. In particular,-slie laairfailed in her treatment of those words of Latin source which in Milton's verse constantly bear a double signification, drawn on the one hand from the derived, and on the otherfrom. the original, meaning of the word. It is true that Miss Lockwood notices this curious and characteristic use in such glaring cases as that of "trumpery," in the description of the Paradise of Fools-

" eremites and friars, White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery,"

where, of course; the notion of deceit is conveyed, no less than of futility; or as that in which Samson speaks Of his "capital secret." But hardly less obvious instances seem to have escaped her notice. Thus in Moloch's description of the rout of the rebel angels-

" When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear Insulting, andipursued us through thej)eep"—

it is clear that the word " insulting " does not merely mean "behaving with insolent triumph," as Miss Lockwood would

have us believe, but that it also connotes a physical attack from above. And when Eve calls the nightingale "Night's solemn bird" the epithet loses half -its beauty if we fail to

notice—besides Miss Lockwood's obvious signification of "grave or melancholy "—the exquisite suggestion of" wonted" or "customary" which is called up by the Latin word. In these cases it is to the derived meaning alone that Miss Lockwood draws our attention ; but on other occasions she falls into the contrary error. Thus after the wondetiut description of the feast which Satan creates in the wilderness in order to tempt the Son of God—the "table richly spread in regal mode," the "meats of noblest sort and savour," the game "grisamber-ateamed," the fish of " exquisitest name "—Milton suddenly breaks off with a reflection :—

" Alas ! how simple, to these.cates compared, Was that crude apple that diverted Eve !"

Could anything be more delightful than the last line P But the charm of it surely depends upon our perception of a two- fold meaning in the word "diverted,"—the leas obvious ono which the Lexicon gives us of "led astray," and the derived sense, with its hint of something like actual amusement, calling up a vision of the childlike eye of Eve, caught and

fascinated by the, glamour of the "crude apple," the strange forbidden fruit; and of this latter sense the Lexicon gives no

suggestion at all. In passages of greater complexity it is hardly surprising that Miss Lockwood can give us very little help. For instance, in the subtle and splendid lines describing the musician whose

" volant touch

Instinct through all proportions high and low Fled and, pursued transverse the resonant fugue,"

every word is compact of interwoven meanings, with something of the contrapuntal richness of a fugue itself. Here is the very occasion for a Lexicon ; but, unhappily, in the ease of Miss Lockwood's, the occasion is missed.

Milton, fond as he was of crowding a word with meanings, was equally fond of using words which have very little meaning at all. His catalogues of proper names are hardly more than processions of gorgeous sounds, carrying with them only thc dimmest associations of strangeness or remoteness or romance.

His verse is of so rich a texture that it can do without the prop of definite sense ; it stands of its own weight. And, indeed, into the precise significance of Milton's proper names it is best not to inquire too curiously. Who or what is " Bellerus old" P Probably nobody knows, and certainly nobody ought to care. Miss Lockwood's pious investigations, and, in geographical eases, her references to Heylyn's con- temporary Cosmography, are here merely irrelevant. " Cain- balu," she informs us, was "the chief city of Cathay and the royal residence of the Mongol rulers, now known to have been the same city as Peking." We prefer Milton's description,— " Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Khan " ; that, surely, is enough. When we are told of-

" Mombaza, and Quiloa, and Melind, And Sofala (thought Ophir), to the realm Of Congo, and Angola farthest south, Or thence from Niger, flood to Atlas mount,

The kingdoms of Almanzor, Fez, and Sus, Marocco, and Algiers, and Tremisen ; . . . Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume, And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoiled Guiana, whose great city Geryon's sons Call El Dorado '

not look up latitudes, nor search into history ; let us listen to the mysterious music of the words, and be content. The truth is that only a poet is fit to be Milton's lexi- cographer. The most accurate net of scholarship is of too waive a grain to catch his "winged imaginations."