But G.
Polidori, Who Has Reprinted The 'Angeleide' In His Italian Version Of
Milton (London, 1840), Has Gone Into This
Matter and thinks otherwise.
These devil-and-angel combats were a popular theme at the time, and
there is no
Reason why the English poet should copy continental writers
in such descriptions, which necessarily have a common resemblance. The
Marquis Manso was very friendly with the poets Tasso and Marino, and it
is also to be remarked that entire passages in 'Paradise Lost' are
copied, totidem verbis, from the writings of these two, Manso having
no doubt drawn Milton's attention to their beauties. In fact, I am
inclined to think that Manso's notorious enthusiasm for the warlike
epic of Tasso may first of all have diverted Milton from purely pastoral
ideals and inflamed him with the desire of accomplishing a similar feat,
whence the well-known lines in Milton's Latin verses to this friend,
which contain the first indication of such a design on his part. Even
the familiar invocation, 'Hail, wedded Love,' is bodily drawn from one
of Tasso's letters (see Newton's 'Milton,' 1773, vol. i, pp. 312, 313).
It has been customary to speak of these literary appropriations as
'imitations '; but whoever compares them with the originals will find
that many of them are more correctly termed translations. The case, from
a literary-moral point of view, is different as regards ancient writers,
and it is surely idle to accuse Milton, as has been done, of pilferings
from Aeschylus or Ovid. There is no such thing as robbing the classics.
They are our literary fathers, and what they have left behind them is
our common heritage; we may adapt, borrow, or steal from them as much as
will suit our purpose; to acknowledge such 'thefts' is sheer pedantry
and ostentation. But Salandra and the rest of them were Milton's
contemporaries. It is certainly an astonishing fact that no scholar of
the stamp of Thyer was acquainted with the 'Adamo Caduto'; and it says
much for the isolation of England that, at a period when poems on the
subject of paradise lost were being scattered broadcast in Italy and
elsewhere - when, in short, all Europe was ringing with the doleful
history of Adam and Eve - Milton could have ventured to speak of
his work as 'Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyma' - an amazing
verse which, by the way, is literally transcribed out of Ariosto
('Cosa, non detta in prosa mai, ne in rima'). But even now the
acquaintance of the British public with the productions of continental
writers is superficial and spasmodic, and such was the ignorance of
English scholars of this earlier period, that Birch maintained that
Milton's drafts, to be referred to presently, indicated his intention of
writing an opera (!); while as late as 1776 the poet Mickle,
notwithstanding Voltaire's authority, questioned the very existence of
Andreini, who has written thirty different pieces.
Some idea of the time when Salandra's tragedy reached Milton might be
gained if we knew the date of his manuscript projects for 'Paradise
Lost' and other writings which are preserved at Cambridge. R. Garnett
('Life of Milton,' 1890, p. 129) supposes these drafts to date from
about 1640 to 1642, and I am not sufficiently learned in Miltonian lore
to controvert or corroborate in a general way this assertion. But the
date must presumably be pushed further forward in the case of the
skeletons for 'Paradise Lost,' which are modelled to a great extent upon
Salandra's 'Adamo' of 1647, though other compositions may also have been
present before Milton's mind, such as that mentioned on page 234 of the
second volume of Todd's 'Milton,' from which he seems to have drawn the
hint of a 'prologue spoken by Moses.'
Without going into the matter exhaustively, I will only say that from
these pieces it is clear that Milton's primary idea was to write, like
Salandra, a sacred tragedy upon this theme, and not an epic. These
drafts also contain a chorus, such as Salandra has placed in his drama,
and a great number of mutes, who do not figure in the English epic, but
who reappear in the 'Adamo Caduto' and all similar works. Even Satan is
here designated as Lucifer, in accordance with the Italian Lucifero; and
at the end of one of Milton's drafts we read 'at last appears Mercy,
comforts him, promises the Messiah, etc.,' which is exactly what
Salandra's Misericordia (Mercy) does in the same place.
Milton no doubt kept on hand many loose passages of poetry, both
original and borrowed, ready to be worked up into larger pieces; all
poets are smothered in odd scraps of verse and lore which they 'fit in'
as occasion requires; and it is therefore quite possible that some
fragments now included in 'Paradise Lost' may have been complete before
the 'Adamo Caduto' was printed. I am referring, more especially, to
Satan's address to the sun, which Philips says was written before the
commencement of the epic.
Admitting Philips to be correct, I still question whether this
invocation was composed before Milton's visit to Naples; and if it was,
the poet may well have intended it for some other of the multitudinous
works which these drafts show him to have been revolving in his mind, or
for none of them in particular.
De Quincey rightly says that Addison gave the initial bias in favour of
'Paradise Lost' to the English national mind, which has thenceforward
shrunk, as Addison himself did, from a dispassionate contemplation of
its defects; the idea being, I presume, that a 'divine poem' in a manner
disarmed rational criticism. And, strange to say, even the few faults
which earlier scholars did venture to point out in Milton's poem will be
found in that of Salandra. There is the same superabundance of allegory;
the same confusion of spirit and matter among the supernatural persons;
the same lengthy astronomical treatise; the same personification of Sin
and Death; the same medley of Christian and pagan mythology; the same
tedious historico-theological disquisition at the end of both poems.
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