CHAPTER II MILTON AND THE FINE ARTS OTHER THAN Except as regards poetry, and to a certain extent music, there is little in Milton's writings to show his conception of any one of the fine arts. Yet one thing stands to reason: an emphasis upon function must have characterized all his criticism. Whatever his exactions and estimates, we cannot suppose them undetermined. He never would condone aimlessness in the arts, or view without scorn their reduction to so-called 'pure expression,' or tolerate the decadent standards of later generations that have praised 'art for art's sake.' But as he judged laws, and customs, and enterprises, by what they accomplished for humanity, so, being a great humanist, would he judge the arts. The occurrences in Milton's poetry and prose of the word 'art' show his careful usage. Almost always an adjective or phrase saves the word from ambiguity-from its present loose acceptation. When used by Milton without qualification, the word 'art' (except in certain passages, of little import to us, where it denotes duplicity or deceit) generally refers to a skilful method of procedure toward whatever end, or stands in a conventional contrast with nature. At no time does it have a vague aesthetic connotation, or appear in the doubtful rôle of an adjective. Such a statement, that is, as he has adopted art as his profession,"1 would have 1 See Webster's Modern English Dictionary, Unabridged, s.v. 'Art' 6. meant nothing to Milton, and the term 'art-product' would have seemed to him equally unintelligible. Yet he himself refers impartially and, as we shall see, with entire precision, to the art of the poet and the art of the smith, and bestows the title of 'neat-fingered artist' upon the cook, of 'gymnic artists' upon the tumblers and wrestlers in Samson Agonistes, and of 'Tuscan artist' upon Galileo. His coupling of the two nouns in the phrase,' wild above rule or art,"1 brings out his basic meaning, which is amplified in the lines, But with such gardening tools as art yet rude, and in Mammon's assurance to his fallen peers that they lack neither skill nor art to raise 'Magnificence." Finally, a glance at the term in the following connections should clarify its sense in Milton: he speaks, for example, of art and strength, art and argument, art and mysteries; of the art of divinity and (by implication) of the art of Christian religion; of theologic art and episcopal art; of the art of teaching, operating under methodical laws; of the art of policy much 'cankered in her principles'; of regal arts, the art of war, and the art of tyranny; of art and simony, and the calumnious art of counterfeited truth; of the arts of women, of amorous arts and sophisticated arts; of the magician's art, the art of alchemy, the land-pilot's art, the herdsman's art, the art of hawking, the art of flying (though not by that 1P. L. 5.297. P. L. 9.391–392. 'P. L. 2.272-273. See the story of Elmer, the venturesome and 'strangely aspiring' monk of the eleventh century, who 'made and fitted wings to his hands and feet,' and fluttered down from the top of a tower 'to the maiming of all his limbs.' Whereupon, with dauntlessness like that of his twentiethcentury descendants, he was 'so conceited of his art that he attributed the cause of his fall to the want of a tail.' Hist. Bril. (Bk. 6), Works 5.293. name), the curious art of weaving; and, finally, of the art to be industriously idle.1 Fine art, a term apparently of eighteenth-century invention,' he does not use, supplying its place by such phrases as 'liberal arts,' and 'arts that polish life,' and by combinations like 'arts and eloquence,' 'spacious art and high knowledge,' and 'civility of manners, arts, and arms.' Clearly, then, to Milton every adept is an artist, whether in the exercise of his craft he concocts a broth, charts the heavens, or writes an epic; because behind all three exhibitions of power lies a definite regulative theory. Milton no doubt recognizes a difference between useful and fine art, or between mere dexterity and artistic productivity; but for him that difference does not lie in the presence or absence of technical principles. As he conceives them, the fine arts, equally with all others, must be governed by laws, and subject to method. In other words, Milton certainly accepts the view of Aristotle: 'As . . . there is no art which is not a rationally productive state of mind, nor any such state of mind which is not an art, it follows that art must be the same as a productive state of mind under the guidance of true reason." This concept, together with Milton's emphasis The following usage is curious, and not, so far as I know, duplicated in Milton: 'But he [Plautius] sending first the Germans, whose custom was, armed as they were, to swim with ease the strongest current, commands them to strike especially at the horses, whereby the chariots, wherein consisted their chief art of fight, became unserviceable.' Hist. Brit. (Bk. 2), Works 5.49. In the year 1603, 'fine arts' had been casually employed by Ben Jonson to indicate the expedient mannerisms of the Court, the same to which Spenser (Colin Clout 701-702) had referred in the lines, A filed toung furnisht with termes of art, Eth. Nic. 6.4, trans. by Welldon, p. 182. upon function, must be borne in mind as a supplement to the fragmentary data that follow. To begin with the lesser fine arts, his references to carving in cedar, marble, ivory, and gold, and to the embellishment lent by gold and precious stones, show that Milton was not unobservant of fine handicraft; yet he rarely mentions small decorative objects. Unlike Spenser, he is not particularly attracted by the work of 'guileful goldsmiths' and 'cunning craftsmen'; the dissimilarity is typical in the descriptions of Mercilla's throne in the Faerie Queene and of Satan's throne in Paradise Lost. Spenser's sovereign sat Upon a throne of gold full bright and sheene, Adorned all with gemmes of endlesse price, As either might for wealth have gotten bene, Or could be framed by workmans rare device; And all embost with lions and with flour-delice. All over her a cloth of state was spred, Not of rich tissew, nor of cloth of gold, Nor of ought else that may be richest red, But like a cloud, as likest may be told, That her brode spreading wings did wyde unfold; Whose skirts were bordred with bright sunny beams, Glistring like gold, amongst the plights enrold, And here and there shooting forth silver streames, Mongst which crept litle angels through the glittering gleames.1 Milton thus enthrones the Monarch of Hell: High on a throne of royal state, which far 1 Faerie Queene 5. 9. 27-28. Should we explain the unlikeness in these passages by a corresponding unlikeness in the interests of the two poets, or by a difference in the respective literary types?1 In any case the difference does not come from a sense of restriction on Milton's part. He did not feel himself shut off from the use of concrete imagery by his supernatural subject. On the contrary, he says that his task is to represent supernatural phenomena in familiar terms-to measure Things in Heaven by things on Earth;2 and several times implies that part of his endeavor is to find earthly parallels to heavenly magnificence.3 Nor do the minute descriptions Of workes with loome, with needle, and with quill, that embellish Spenser's poetry, find parallels in Milton. Tapestry is spoken of in Comus (line 324), and in Elegia Sexta (line 39), in each case without comment. The only other references, in Eikonoclastes and in the tenth chapter of A Defence of the People of England, point more to Milton's classicism (both being reminiscent of Virgil) than to an interest in the art of ornamental weaving. As for simpler, 1 Spenser's frequent allusions to examples of fine workmanship possibly reflect his own taste less than the substance of his reading. The romantic poetry both of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance abounds in appreciations of the skill of handicraftsmen, which may, in their turn, be reminiscent of the classical descriptions of helmets and shields and drinking-cups. Compare Virgil's praise of the carving of Alcimedon, Eclogue 3. 37 ff. 2P. L. 6. 893. 'P. L. 6. 297-301; cf. P. L. 1. 768 ff., 10. 306 ff. A Works 3. 513. 'Works 8. 223. |