more domestic, types of needlework, serving a twofold end of use and beauty, it is not Milton, but Comus, who says: Course complexions

And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply

The sampler.1

The poet's own opinion may be more fairly expressed in his commendation of Edward the Confessor for being 'nothing puffed up with the costly robes he wore, which his queen with curious art had woven for him in gold." Yet who shall say how much Milton intended to praise the king for an indifference to 'curious art,' and how much for his superiority to cloth of gold? Spenser, with his admiration for the exercise of 'the fine needle and nyce thread,' and his feeling that so often

Did the workmanship farre passe the cost,'

would have quickly seen that if modesty entered in at all, it could do so only in the person of the Queen.

Of painting Milton says almost nothing. His only reference in the poetry denies that the so-called shadingpencil can reproduce the sparkling portal of Heaven; but the subject is manifestly unfit for such reproduction, and the remark has little importance. In Animadversions upon the

1 Comus 749–751.

2 Hist. Brit. (Bk. 6), Works 5. 291–292.

Faerie Queene 4. 4. 15. See above, p. 31, n. 1. This valuation of an object according to the workmanship expended upon it is also to be found in the romances. It appears in Tasso; and for an example from the literature of mediaeval romance we may quote these couplets from the Cligés of Chrétien de Troyes (lines 1539–1542):

Mout iert buene et riche la cope:

Et qui a voir dire n'açope,
Plus la devroit l'an tenir chiere
Por l'uevere que por la matiere.

'P. L. 3. 509.

Remonstrant's Defence,' painting is, by contrast with the art of divinity, rated as 'almost mechanic.' In Eikonoclastes2 the bad painter, obliged to label his picture in order 'to tell passengers what shape it is,' helps Milton to a simile. Only twice more in the prose is painting mentioned; in neither case does what is said pertinently bear upon the art. This paucity of reference astonishes the critics. Coleridge comments upon it as follows:

It is very remarkable that in no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of the great painters of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art; while every other page breathes his love and taste for music. Yet it is curious that in one passage in the Paradise Lost Milton has certainly copied the fresco of the Creation in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. I mean those lines:

Now half appeared

The tawny lion, pawing to get free

His hinder parts-then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane, etc.;

an image which the necessities of the painter justified, but which was wholly unworthy, in my judgment, of the enlarged powers of the poet. Adam, bending over the sleeping Eve, in the Paradise Lost, and Dalilah approaching Samson, in the Agonistes, are the only two proper pictures that I remember in Milton.'

Among other pictures that seem equally graphic is that of the dismay of Adam at Eve's recital upon returning from the Tree of Knowledge:

410.

1 Works 3.234. Here architecture and painting are coupled.

2 Works 3. 510.

* See below, p. 37

'Coleridge, Table Talk, Aug. 7, 1832, Works, ed. by Shedd, 6.409

Thus Eve with countenance blithe, her story told;
But in her cheek distemper flushing glowed.

On the other side, Adam, soon as he heard

The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed,
Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill
Ran through his veins, and all his joints relaxed.
From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve
Down dropped, and all the faded roses shed.
Speechless he stood and pale.1

A different sort of picture, and one that suggests, not Botticelli, but a modern painter, may be found in the Nativity Hymn, stanza 20, where the lines,

With flower-inwoven tresses torn

The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn,

offer a scene of contrast for Corot's 'Dance of the Nymphs.' Farther on, in stanza 26, the yellow-skirted fays who

Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze,

suggest the pictorial fancy and selection of some one like Moritz von Schwind; and few of any temperament have a visualizing power too inert to call up some image of the outline and pose of

and

Laughter holding both his sides,'

On the tawny sands and shelves

Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves;'

or of the color and gesture of

1P. L. 9.886-894.

2 L'All. 32.

3 Comus 117-118.

and

the flowery-kirtled Naiades

Culling their potent herbs,1

At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue.2

Finally, still fewer can be blind to the line and composition, the glow and pageantry, of

All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
With orient colors waving: with them rose
A forest huge of spears: and thronging helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
Of depth immeasurable.'

Yet the pictorial phrases and passages in Milton, it must be allowed, bear but indirectly on his interest in painting.

Of the builder's art there is more to say. A fondness for architecture and a familiarity with architectural detail may be traced in Milton's poetry. In L'Allegro he sets his stage with towers and battlements, smoking cottage-chimneys and rose-framed cottage-windows. In Il Penseroso he turns to the quiet loveliness of cloistered walks or dim-lit aisles, and the shadowed beauty of vaulted roofs and massive pillars. In Paradise Lost, an enthusiasm for architectural magnificence, and at least a vocabulary of architectural technique, produce the embellished and splendid passage:

1 Comus 254-255. Lycidas 192.

'P. L. 1.544-549.

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet-
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid

With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven:1
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,
Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
Equaled in all their glories, to enshrine

Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat

Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove

In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile

Stood fixed her stately height; and straight the doors,

Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide

Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth

And level pavement. From the arched roof

Pendent by subtle magic many a row

Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed

With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light

As from a sky. The hasty multitude

Admiring entered; and the work some praise,
And some the architect."

In Paradise Regained, through the mouth of the Tempter, Milton describes in some detail the distant imperial palace at Rome, and speaks of the porches, theatres, baths, aqueducts, statues, trophies, and triumphal arches that adorned the city. His interest, however, scarcely goes beyond the enumeration. To sculpture, for example, there

1Cf. Addison, Spectator, No. 297, Feb. 9, 1712; see Addison on P. L., ed. by Cook, pp. 40-41: 'The last fault which I shall take notice of, in Milton's style, is the frequent use of what the learned call technical words, or terms of art.... When he is upon building, he mentions "Doric pillars," "pilasters,' "cornice," "frieze," "architrave." And compare below, pp. 47-48.

"

2 P. L. 1.710-732. P. R. 4.31 ff.