The passage continues to comment on the fall of the great man, which often seems disproportionate to his error. The sense of disproportion is aroused by Samson Agonistes, but less than by tragedies representing a lofty character at odds with petty and insidious or dire and ruthless forces that are beyond his power to control.

The nature of the tragic flaw which fits Samson for a tragic catastrophe, though not explained in these choral reflections, is elsewhere indicated. In his opening speech Samson condemns himself:

Yet stay; let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine prediction. What if all foretold

Had been fulfilled but through mine own default?
Whom have I to complain of but myself,

Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodged, how easily bereft me,
Under the seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it,
O'ercome with importunity and tears?
O impotence of mind, in body strong!
But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall

By weakest subtleties; not made to rule,

But to subserve where wisdom bears command.1

Later the hero again confesses his weakness, and admits that his shortcoming was conscious:

Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me
But justly; I myself have brought them on;
Sole author I, sole cause. If aught seem vile,
As vile hath been my folly, who have profaned
The mystery of God, given me under pledge
Of vow, and have betrayed it to a woman,

1S. A. 43-57.

A Canaanite, my faithless enemy.
This well I knew, nor was at all surprised,
But warned by oft experience. Did not she
Of Timna first betray me, and reveal
The secret wrested from me in her height
Of nuptial love professed, carrying it straight
To them who had corrupted her, my spies
And rivals?1

Finally, in two words, Samson characterizes his 'crime' as 'shameful garrulity." Taken together with the choral passages, the allusions to his disastrous shortcoming show that Samson fulfills the theoretical requisites of the tragic hero.3 As we add his weakness to the list of notable tragic flawsto the impetuosity of Oedipus, the jealousy of Othello, and the ambition of Macbeth-we establish another bond between Milton and the Poetics of Aristotle.

Milton's dramatic theory cannot be wholly recovered from his writings, but we may now summarize it so far as it has emerged. To begin with, he is strongly attached to the drama as a literary type. Next, we see that he believes in its humanizing efficacy in the State. Lastly, we observe his 3 final preference of the classical form, and his assimilation of 'Aristotelian and Horatian principles. But we cannot understand his theory unless we reflect that, while ultimately classical, it received a bias from the Italians. And this bias we must be prepared to find also in his theory of the epic.

'S. A. 374-387.

'S. A. 491. And see 193 ff., 233 ff., 426 ff.

'The tragic flaw upon which the catastrophe in Milton's drama depends is not so much an instance of the Aristotelian àμaprla (‘a mistake or error in judgment'-see Bywater's edition of the Poetics, p. 215) as of an inherent frailty or tendency toward error. Butcher believes that that usage wherein àμaprla denotes a defect of character, though rare, is still Aristotelian. See his Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p. 319.

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CHAPTER V

MILTON AND EPIC POETRY

No one utterance of Milton on epic poetry is comparable in value to his remarks on tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes. And, strangely enough, his scattered references to narrative poetry are fewer and less direct than his scattered references to the drama. The difference may be traced to the fact that for the epic there was no complete and generally recognized theory with which Milton could ally himself. Such theories as were current in the seventeenth century had largely been expanded from Aristotle's brief section on the epic; and prolonged discussions had indeed arisen on the organic structure, and the poetical diction, requisite in narrative writing of the romantic and heroic types. But, although there are useful generalizations in this body of criticism, there is no adequate guidance for the 'literary' epic; and Milton's system, while it shows traces of Aristotle, crossed by neo-classical influence, could not reproduce any one distinct prototype. Yet, as we have seen, he was willing enough to be judged by rules of epic poetry, and by standards from which the best epic conventions had sprung. We may therefore seek out, and to some extent develop, the eclectic principles that shaped his theory of the epic.

As with the drama, we may first consider Milton's early reading, for his youthful predilections in narrative poetry led up to his later theory of the epic. From boyhood on, he was determined to write a masterpiece in accordance with a true humanism. Dedicated to the service of his fellow

Englishmen and posterity, he was constrained to read widely in all national literatures, and to study, in particular, the great national epics. At first his mind was diverted and charmed by romantic poetry, especially by the Breton cycle, and his 'younger feet wandered . . . among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all Christendom."1 In Il Penseroso the young poet, high in his 'lonely tower,' beguiles the night with the 'sage and solemn tunes' that tell Of tourneys, and of trophies hung,

Of forests and enchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.?

And long afterwards, as amid more serious themes he seeks a comparison for surpassing loveliness, the memory comes to him

Of faëry damsels met in forest wide
By knights of Logres, or of Lyonesse,
Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore."

His mind thus richly furnished with the lore of romance, the young Milton first alludes to his own project, in the poem to Manso:

Oh might so true a friend' to me belong,
So skilled to grace the votaries of song,
Should I recall hereafter into rime
The kings and heroes of my native clime;
Arthur the chief, who even now prepares,
In subterraneous being, future wars,
With all his martial knights, to be restored
Each to his seat, around the federal board,
And oh! if spirit fail me not, disperse

Our Saxon plunderers, in triumphant verse!"

1 An Apology, Works 3.271.

Il Pens. 118-120.

'P. R. 2.359-361.

So true a friend as Manso had been to Tasso and Marino.

"Mansus 86-95, trans. by Cowper, p. 611.

And near the end of the Epitaphium Damonis, with more confidence and in more detail, he announces his plan to write an epic poem in his mother tongue on British legendary history:

Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare;
My thoughts are all now due to other care.
Of Brutus, Dardan chief, my song shall be,
How with his barks he ploughed the British sea,
First from Rutupia's towering headland seen,
And of his consort's reign, fair Imogen;
Of Brennus and Belinus, brothers bold,
And of Arviragus, and how of old
Our hardy sires the Armorican controlled;
And of the wife of Gorlois, who, surprised
By Uther, in her husband's form disguised
(Such was the force of Merlin's art), became
Pregnant with Arthur of heroic fame.

These themes I now revolve.1

Milton's early leaning toward romance may have been increased by the enthusiasm of Tasso, who, while discrediting the style, warmly advocated the subject-matter, of the French and Breton cycles. Beginning his Discorsi dell' Arte Poetica with an emphasis upon the importance of a right choice of epic material, Tasso, after some discussion of verisimilitude and wonder, decides against pagan themes, and proposes to substitute the deeds of Arthur and of Charlemagne. He says in effect: History is the proper source of epic material. The chronicles of a nation unite religious and secular history; but only in the annals of Christianity does the modern poet find marvels that are true ready to hand for his imitation. The acts of the angels 1 Damon 161-168; trans. by Cowper, p. 617.

'Cf. Tasso, Dell'Arte Poetica, Discorso 1, pp. 200 ff.