Milton's poetry is one of the glories of the English language, and yet

it owes everything to Milton's widespread knowledge of other

languages: he knew ten, wrote in four, and translated from five. In
Milton's languages, John K. Hale first examines Milton's language-
related arts in verse-composition, translations, annotations of
Greek poets, Latin prose and political polemic, giving all relevant
texts in the original and in translation. Hale then traces the impact
of Milton's multilingualism on his major English poems. Many
vexed questions of Milton studies are illuminated by this approach,
including his sense of vocation, his attitude to print and publicity,
the supposed blemish of Latinism in his poetry, and his response to
his literary predecessors. Throughout this first full-length study of
Milton's use of languages, Hale argues convincingly that it is only
by understanding Milton's choice among languages that we can
grasp where Milton's own unique English originated.
MILTON'S LANGUAGES
MILTON'S LANGUAGES
The impact of multilingualism on style

JOHN K. HALE
University of Otago

CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521583534

© John K. Hale 1997

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1997

This digitally printed first paperback version 2005

A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Hale, John K.
Milton's languages: the impact of multilingualism on style / John K. Hale.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 58353 5 (hardback)
1. Milton. John, 1608-1674 - Style. 2. Milton, John, 1608-1674 - Knowledge - Language and
languages. 3. English language — Early modern, 1500—1700 Style. 4. Multilingualism —
England. I. Title.
PR3594.H35 1997
821'.4-dc20
96-44205 CIP

ISBN-13 978-0-521-58353-4 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-58353-5 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-02237-8 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-02237-1 paperback
 For my family, with fondest love:
Ken and Betty Hale (died iggo and
Beatrice Hale
Elizabeth Beatrice Rachel Hale
Katharine Margaret Kenealey Hale
and
John David Francis Hale
 Contents

Preface xi
List of abbreviations xiv

Introduction: Milton's languages in the context of

renaissance multilingualism i

P A R T ONE: M I L T O N ' S E X E R C I S I N G OF HIS LANGUAGES

l
1 The multilingual self presented in Milton's Poems, 1645 9
2 The development and quality of Milton's multilingual verse 27
3 The Italian journey (1638-9) and language-choice 51
4 Milton's arts of language: translating and philology 67
5 Milton's Latin prose 82
Conclusion to part one: multilingualism in Milton's Latin
prose 99

PART TWO: MULTILINGUALISM AND THE MAJOR ENGLISH POEMS

6 Latin and Milton's other languages in the style of

Paradise Lost 105
7 Milton's languages and the voices of Paradise Lost 131
8 Multilingualism and epic 146
9 Multilingualism and the style of temperance in Paradise
Regained 165
10 Hebrew meets Greek in Samson Agonistes 180

IX
x Contents
11 The impact of Milton's languages upon his mature
English verse styles 194

Appendix: translating Milton's Latin poems into English 203

Notes 208
Bibliography 236
General index 242
Index ofpassages from Milton 244
 Preface

The book's premises are threefold. First, because learning foreign

languages is enjoyable, and Milton enjoyed doing so, my own enjoyment
of language-learning gives a suitable angle of address to 'Milton's
languages'. Secondly, while more languages are studied nowadays,
Milton's ten included classical or extinct ones which are less studied in
the English-speaking world; which means that readers of his English
need help to recover what his mind was like in so far as it moved among
his languages. Thus, thirdly, a study from the inside of its processes,
rather than a mere assimilating of their product in the drab form of
English footnotes, is timely.
But what are my credentials for the undertaking, since nobody can
know Milton's languages exactly to the same extent and in the same way
as he did? My Greek and Latin are of long standing and reputable. My
Italian is similar. Hebrew, I have had to learn for this project; which
means a loss of disinterestedness, as well as the wine being new and raw.
Is it only special pleading, nonetheless, to think my known incapacity
equips me as well as competence would to enter into Milton's mental
processes, the 'quick forge and working-house' of his polyglot versatility?
One other credential should be mentioned. Like most students of
Classics (Literae Humaniores) till this century, I was compelled to write
Latin and Greek verses, in the manner of approved ancient models like
Ovid or Euripides. I found this a barren exercise in itself. But it has left
me with a vivid sense of how good Milton and a few others were in this
arcane field of combat; and it has left me with a grateful willingness to
explain what value can be found within the process of verse-composing.
Composing is hard, for the remarkable reason that Virgil and Ovid and
Horace purposely made it harder, by refining the norms of rhythm to
reflect more clearly the underlying muscle of Latin in verse. Milton's
success in these lists is not merely praiseworthy. It mattered so greatly in
his milieu that it will be valued wrongly in ours unless emphasized.
XI
xii Preface
In a work on languages the problem of method, of how best to present
them in translation, becomes acute. I give originals and translations,
hoping that the reader will not plump for one or the other. I hope that
instead the reader will move between the two. The translations of Milton
are purposely drawn from several translators, including myself, so that
the varieties (and defects) of translating can be felt on the pulse. An
appendix illustrates the problem and my solution of it, for those who are
interested.
For the Bible, on the other hand, I keep to the King James Version.
Modern versions may be more correct, but they are less resonant and less
close to Milton's world and oracy. The Latin Bible poses a special
problem: did Milton work exclusively from the Junius-Tremellius-Beza
(Protestant) version, or did he move between that and a Vulgate? And in
both cases, which printing did he favour? Even if this could be
determined, I myself could not, through not having access to enough
Bibles to decide the matter. Accordingly, I explain my choices at each
point where they matter.
The somewhat eclectic method of quotation, then, is meant to help
readers stand away from any single version, so as to share my own
excitement in following Milton's practice of the language-arts which he
so esteemed, and applied to the needs of his many-sided life. With
respect to languages he was both a theorist and a pragmatist. He was a
user of them and a player amongst them. Because of this lifelong
diversity of engagement with them, and because he played upon them as
if they were musical instruments, we meet a Milton here who differs from
current versions.

The work harnesses most of the intellectual arts I have ever exercised. It
seeks especially to combine the essentials of what I respect as enduring
work on poetry, namely scholarship and criticism, together with a
sufficiency of theory, inductively arrived at and pragmatically employed.
The debts incurred in a work using many languages and many kinds
of scholarship are likewise many, and I gladly acknowledge them.
Outweighing even acknowledgement, though, is my gratitude to every-
one who gave me time and help, and who implicitly or explicitly
encouraged me. It has been a long road.
Among them are: Agathe Thornton; Anthea Morrison and Ann Moss
(Durham); Maurice Andrew and George Knight; Roger Collins; Robin
Hankey, in fact the entire Classics Department of the University of
Otago; the neo-Latin Seminars at Otago; my colleagues and pupils in
 Preface xiii
the English Department of Otago; Kevin Lee (Sydney); Frank Wood-
house, Philip J. Ford, Helena M. Shire, Ingrid Smets, Zweder von
Martels and Philip Hardie (Cambridge); Gordon Campbell (Leicester);
Jozef IJsewijn (Louvain); James Binns (York); Roy Flannagan (Ohio);
John Carey, Dennis Burden, Don MacKenzie and Tony Nuttall
(Oxford); Harold Jenkins; Tom Corns (North Wales); David Reid, Neil
Keeble and Robin Sowerby (Stirling); Michael Spiller (Aberdeen);
Roger Green (St Andrews); Stella Revard (Southern Illinois); Paul
Stanwood (British Columbia); Stuart and Jean Strachan; Stuart Sellar;
Leo Miller; my original teachers at Oxford, especially Eric Gray, John
Gould, E. R. Dodds and Eduard Fraenkel; and many more.
I thank conference and seminar audiences who helped me improve
work in progress, in Dunedin, Christchurch, Perth, Delhi, Vallombrosa,
London, Bangor, Stirling, Vancouver and San Diego. And I thank the
editors and readers for the Cambridge University Press, especially Linda
Bree.
Not only did I receive help from these good and great people, but, as
the formula rightly has it, the mistakes which remain are my very own. In
a work covering several languages, centuries and fields of scholarship,
there will surely be mistakes. I hope readers will alert me to such, perhaps
privately however, rather than with a trumpet in the market-place.
Some portions of the book have been printed in a fuller form by
journals, especially Milton Quarterly, Milton Studies and Renaissance Studies. I
thank their editors for confidence and advice: nothing is perfect,
especially first versions. Chapter 3 in particular is substantially the same
as printed in Milton in Italy. Contexts, Imagesy Contradictions, edited by Mario
Di Cesare for Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, and I thank MRTS
for permission to use the material here.
I am grateful to the staff of libraries in which I have worked for the
book: especially the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; the
Cambridge University Library; the Bodleian Library; the British Li-
brary; the Library of the University of Colorado at Boulder; and the
Library of the University of Illinois.

I dedicate the finished enterprise to my family, the dead as well as the

living. One and all, in varied ways, they enabled me to conceive this
work and finish it.

Dunedin, University of Otago

 Abbreviations

Campbell Gordon Campbell (ed.), John Milton. The Complete

Poems (London: Everyman, 1980)
Carey and Fowler John Carey and Alastair Fowler (ed.), The Poems of
John Milton (London: Longman, 1968)
ColWorks The Works of John Milton, General editor Frank
Allen Patterson, The Columbia Edition, 18 vols. +
2 index vols. (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1931-40)
Darbishire Helen Darbishire (ed.), The Poetical Works ofJohn
Milton, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1952)
EpFam Epistolarum Familiarium, Milton's 'Familiar Letters',
as printed in ColWorks vol. xn
The Faerie Queene
Hughes Merritt Y. Hughes (ed.), John Milton. Complete Poems
and Major Prose (New York: Macmillan, 1957)
LSJ A Greek-English Lexicon, Compiled by Henry George
Liddell and Robert Scott, revised by Henry Stuart
Jones and Roderick McKenzie, with a supplement
(Oxford University Press, 1968)
MacKellar Walter MacKellar (ed.), The Latin Poems of John
Milton, Cornell Studies in English 15 (New Haven:
Yale University Press for Cornell University, 1930)
OED The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2
vols. (Oxford University Press, 1971)
OxLD P. W. Glare (ed.), The Oxford Latin Dictionary (Ox-
ford University Press, 1982)
Parker William Riley Parker, Milton. A Biography, 2 vols.
(Oxford University Press, 1968)
PBA Proceedings of the British Academy
PL Paradise Lost
 List of abbreviations xv
PR Paradise Regained
RES Review of English Studies
Samson Samson Agonistes
Variorum Douglas Bush (ed.), A Variorum Commentary on the
Poems of John Milton, (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1970), vol. 1
YPW Don M. Wolfe et al. (eds.), 8 vols., Complete Prose
Works of John Milton (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1953-82)
 INTRODUCTION

Milton's languages in the context of renaissance

multilingualism

Multilingualism: the ability to use three or more languages, either

separately or in various degrees of code-mixing . . . different
languages are used for different purposes, competence in each
varying according to such factors as register, occupation, and
education.1
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Milton's formal education
emphasized languages, especially Latin and Greek, and further that he
practised and applied his languages (some ten of them) lifelong, in the
course of reading or translating or composing. It is less often asked what
exactly his possession of languages meant to him in the vicissitudes of a
busy life, whether as ends in themselves or for access to texts in their
original, and whether as means to thought or as resources of stylistic
choice. These questions deserve a sustained exploration.
To supply it, we should first see Milton in the most pertinent context,
namely renaissance multilingualism. Here is a humanist who wrote
poems in four languages (Latin, Greek and Italian as well as his
mother-tongue) and whose voluminous prose is almost half in Latin; a
lifelong polyglot whose writings evince knowledge of three Semitic
languages and further modern languages. How far does Milton typify his
milieu, how far does he transcend or ignore or flout it?
A provisional sense can be gained by situating him in relation to a
number of key linguistic or languages-related issues. These include: (a)
the Questione della Lingua, the question whether (or when) to write in Latin
or the mother-tongue; (b) languages as access to the springs of religion
and thought for the Christian humanist; (c) the practice and norms of
humanist education; (d) related broader questions of Imitatio2 and
intertextuality. Imitatio, here, means 'emulation', not slavish copying. In
order to emulate the exemplary poets and thinkers of the multilingual
past, the renaissance humanist strove to use their thought as texture
without perpetrating pastiche. The resulting intertextuality is the index of
2 Introduction

the emulation but also its criterion; that is to say, while the ancients are a
felt presence, recognized in diction and allusion and much else, the
humanist has failed utterly if the reader's attention is held by nothing but
the debts. Afifthlanguage-issue is more speculative: (e) the question, was
the past to which languages gave access more of a burden than an
opportunity to the humanist, leading one home or into exile, and as
double vision, was it a source of curse or blessing? Finally, (f) was
Milton's attitude to languages typical or exceptional in his age, so that we
may perceive the purposes for which he acquired and maintained them?

LATIN AND THE VERNACULARS

Latin was the sine qua non of an educated person. It was a triple gateway:
to preferment, to the intellectual life of antiquity, and to active
membership of the European intelligentsia. Nonetheless, the grandeur
of Rome's long history made its language potentially overwhelming. The
dilemma of the renaissance humanist was, how to absorb and exploit
antiquity through its languages without being dwarfed by these lang-
uages' axiomatic, definitive greatness. Would one succeed better by
writing in Latin, the actual words of the ancients, or in the mother-
tongue? And if in Latin, which Latin? Cicero's alone, or something more
mixed? Or if in the mother-tongue, how should one purge it of a
grossness felt when comparing it with Roman exemplars? Moreover,
which version of it was to be used, in times when regional variations
stood out more than later when nation-states had made vernaculars
more uniform?
Since the issues impinged on different populations in different ways
and at different epochs, I summarize the crucial developments chrono-
logically so as to place Milton's individual resolution of the dilemma.
This has to be done in a European as much as in an English context, for
three reasons: internationalism inheres in language-study; it inheres
peculiarly in the choices of a renaissance multilinguist; and certainly
Milton himself saw the question in European terms. I begin my
necessarily cursory account with Italy.
Italy first confronted (and so named) the Questione della Lingua, the
language-question. From 1300 to 1550, from Dante through Landino
and Bembo to Ariosto, Italians argued whether or when to use their
volgare. Italians spent time, talent and energy on the Questione. One should
not oversimplify the range of their positions, nor ironize their choice of
Latin prose to explain their choice of Italian for verse. What counts is,
 Introduction 3
that despite renaissance Italy's having so many, vying vernaculars the
vernacular was preferred, even as early as Dante. As for Milton, since in
general he knew Italian literature and culture intimately, and Ariosto is
the particular predecessor whom he cites3 in making his own declaration
for the mother-tongue, he may have known more of the Italian debate.
A modern analogy helps clarify the issue. It resembles that posed for
postcolonial nation-states, of the 'cultural cringe', which is antipodeans'
metaphor for the 'cultural inferiority complex' which they may feel
towards the older and richer culture of Britain or Europe. Henry James
felt a version of this, the complex fate of being an American drawn to
Europe's older culture yet repelled by it. Similarly, the sheer dominance
of Latin culture for many renaissance poets might arouse anxiety and a
concern with positioning, to accept and exploit their complex fate.
Every generation of the Renaissance had to think the Questione
through, so gravitational did the pull of Latin remain till after Milton. It
was Latin which enabled the humanist to study and teach anywhere;
Erasmus in England, Buchanan in France. No humanist ever voted for
the vernacular at the expense of Latin's portability, and we usually notice
a sense of sacrifice or regret about the choice of one language over
another for one's most important work. In Italy, at any rate, the struggle
over the Questione was long and difficult, and even to some extent
precarious.
In France, the sixteenth century saw the emergence of the French
language as not merely one possible and less esteemed option for poetic
utterance. In a struggle that was shorter than that of Italian, but still an
agonized one, French in the sixteenth century supplanted Latin for
verse. Even though as in Italy the regional tongues were still far apart, the
Pleiade movement centring on Dorat, Du Bellay and Ronsard achieved
a French prose and verse which settled the Questione permanently in
favour of a purified vernacular. Yet the supplanting was not done
without loss and paradox.
The loss and paradox may actually interest us more than the outcome.
Because we know Latin died, there is the danger of becoming Whig
historians intoning deterministically over its demise. Buchanan, who
wrote in Latin and could not have joined in as francophone, worked
amicably with the Pleiadistes. Du Bellay called French his wife and Latin
his mistress. He says, 'The one is beautiful, the other pleases more',
perhaps because he is less tied to Latin than to the mother-tongue. He
expressed this, and many of his best thoughts on the topic, in Latin, no
doubt to savour the paradoxes of interplay between the medium and
4 Introduction

message. One such paradox is that in representing themselves as the first

champions of classical standards for literature in French the Pleiadistes
belittled their own originality. Paradox itself pleases, and dignifies the
linguistic self. And 'the rivalry of the two [languages] intensifies their
linguistic and cultural interaction...' so that 'read from inside, as it were,
the texts of the humanists and their vernacular counterparts seem to
draw from their very uncertainties, from their protean shifts of style and
intellectual context, an unfailing supply of colour and energy5.4
In other countries, there were other outcomes. In Germany, 'Latin
was more easily accepted as the main language of culture and intellectual
life. Many Germans, unlike the French, considered their native tongue
to be barbarous.'5 In general, the smaller the country, or the less
self-confident the language-community, the readier it was to talk and
think in Latin and thus tap into wider resources.
The English position was both more and less clear than the French. It
had established its vernacular by 1500 as the language of law and
government, and by 1540 of the church as well, supplanting both Latin
and French. Yet if publishing in Latin be the yardstick, it was on the
increase until the Civil War.
Especially does this hold for the publishing of Latin verse, from the
two university presses. J. W. Binns has shown6 how Latin verse was
written at university not solely as an exercise but to gain attention and
consequent preferment. Unlike his friend Charles Diodati, unlike his
older friend Alexander Gil, unlike Herbert and Marvell and Crashaw
and Cowley, Milton (though not averse to fame) wrote no Latin verse for
the teeming anthologies on royal occasions. He seems to have rejected
this, along with other career paths, in the 1630s. We can speak of
'rejection' because he wrote much Latin verse, and kept it, yet none was
published though the means and fashion would prompt this. We cannot
say for sure why this talent was not to be shown on a wider stage in those
years, while his English verse was. But we may infer that it seemed not to
belong to his search for his major vocation, and perhaps that he did not
want the display of his Latin talent to serve Cambridge in the years of
Archbishop Laud's predominance. (I return to this in chapter 2.)
In 1628 at Cambridge, if not before, Milton addressed the Questione,
'At a vacation Exercise in the College'. As he put it in Poems, 1645, 'The
Latin speeches ended, the English thus began: - Hail, native language
. . .' (Hughes, p. 30). There follows a 54-line digression, or rather
invocation, asking help from the personified mother-tongue. Although
Latin is not criticized nor rejected, he is very explicitly turning away from
 Introduction 5
Latin, towards English, for help with serious future subjects: 'some
graver subject' (line 30), such as a glimpse of the gods in heaven (33-46)
or 'heroes old5 (47). The fact that the passage is a digression, and is
bilingual on the subject of a bilinguaPs choice, shows what is on his mind
at the age of twenty-one. The moment is prophetic of Milton's eventual,
mature choice of poetic tongue.
Nonetheless, he continued to write in Latin verse after Cambridge.
He experienced on his pulse the value of Latin for poetry and other
purposes when he went to Italy in 1638. If he had been disposed to reject
Latin as too Laudian a medium (contrast Crashaw), it opened different
doors for him in Italy, such that he rapidly resurrected his poemata and
composed more.
But much latelier in the private academies of Italy, whither I was favoured to
resort [I perceived] that some trifles I had in memory . .. met with acceptance
above what was looked for, and other things which I had shifted in scarcity of
books and conveniences to patch up amongst them, were received with written
encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the
Alps . . .{Reason of Church Government, Hughes, pp. 668-9).

He says it was this encouragement, received for his Latin verses in Italy,
which clarified if it did not engender his sense of vocation, and its sense of
English as its direction and medium. It was in Italy that he finally gave up
Latin for major verse, doing so from a position of strength. With the
Italians' own example all round him it was one of the most deliberate and
responsible choices even he ever made: he knows what he is giving up,
namely the chance to speak in poetry to his Italian friends and to the
intelligentsia of Europe, since English to them was the unknown tongue of
a small offshore people.
Paradox invigorates his Latin verse renunciation of Latin verse:
Omnia non licet uni,
Non sperasse uni licet omnia.7
(One person can't do everything, nor even hope to do everything.)
Moreover, paradox is not all, because this is a counterfactual wish that
one could do everything, and could in this case hold both native-language
and international audiences rapt. The thought of doing something for
his country merges with doing it for glory, which however is a
circumscribed glory. The poem is a farewell to more than its subject, his
closest friend: I shall argue later that he lays Latin verse-making itself in
Diodati's grave.
6 Introduction
This process of choice during his twenties and thirties will be explored
further in chapter 3. Already, though, we sense its dialectical quality, the
twists and turns, the reassessment of pros and cons.
Before leaving Italy Milton has chosen his medium by thinking what is
his most-desired audience, and then the rest follows by decorum. He
chose Latin or English accordingly thereafter: he chose Latin for
European or pedagogic consumption, English for the History of Britain.
The choice of tongue reveals fundamentals about the particular act of
thought. Though that is obvious, in these days of reading-in-translation
it is readily forgotten.
Let me make it explicit. If choice was Milton's great theme, and
'reason was but choosing', it included language-choice. Language-
choice was both precondition and part of the utterance. Time and again,
he makes a theme out of his language-choice. He does it for purposes
which we can, for the moment, summarize as sense of occasion, mimesis
and paradox.

LANGUAGES FOR READING AND FOR OTHER USES

Granted then that renaissance humanists were ipso facto bilingual, and
experienced the cognate tensions of choice when composing, in their
reading most were in fact /m/Mingual. As my epigraph has it, they
possessed the 'ability to use three or more languages, either separately or
in various degrees of code-mixing . . . [so that] different languages are
used for different purposes, competence in each varying according to
such factors as register, occupation, and education'.
Obviously Greek even more than Latin fed their obsession with
classical antiquity, by giving direct (not shaky because derivative) access
to the authors who had civilized Rome itself. Milton's Greek was very
high-powered: witness that he made emendations in the text of Euripides
which modern scholarship has confirmed and accepted.
But Christian humanists, who sought pietas litterata ('learned piety' or
'educated faith')8 for themselves or influence on the Reformation at
large, had to have equal access to the three 'sacred languages' - Hebrew,
Greek and Latin. The first two of these were the languages of the two
Testaments. Greek was furthermore the tongue of the Septuagint, and
Latin of the Vulgate: both these translations had (and retain) special
standing in biblical hermeneutics. Biblical scholars in large numbers,
others in smaller numbers, acquired the three languages for use together
on the Bible.
 Introduction 7
Milton was among them, but acquired also Aramaic and Syriac.
Aramaic is the original language of some later writings of the Old
Testament, not very different from biblical Hebrew.9 Syriac is the
language of an influential transmission of the New Testament.10 Here,
Milton's language-acquisition exceeds the ordinary. His reading knowl-
edge of the five classical languages was most purposive, pursuing alike
the austerities of literary scholarship and the countless applications to
religion (which in turn embraced both spirituality and controversy).
More still, the languages of Athens, Rome and Jerusalem were not
separate. Latin absorbed much Greek. Hebrew and Aramaic entered
Greek in the Septuagint and (differently) in the New Testament. All
march on into the Vulgate's Latin. The three languages interact,
kaleidoscopic and specific in effect. Milton moves freely among the
interactions, for example using Septuagint Greek within his own Greek
psalm version. The wealth and complexity of interactions among these
original tongues gives him powerful choice.
Italian, to him the most interesting of the vernaculars, worked to
similar effect but extended his choice still wider. Besides standing closest
to Latin, for instance in pronunciation, Italian had most renewed its
poetic and expressive resources from Latin. Milton not only wrote
Italian sonnets, but learnt to impart a Latin density and gravitas to his
English verse style from the work of Delia Casa and Tasso. Milton also
went back to the first champion of the volgare, Dante, for intertextuality
and architecture alike. Just as Dante had let Virgil and Latin shape his
narrative and texture respectively, so did Milton, albeit differently (see
chapters 6-8). Italian was thus fundamental to his vocation as a poet.
Italian gave a rationale and confidence to this vocation.
Beyond these tongues, Milton also read French.11 He may have
spoken French on his travels through France, but the best visible
evidence of his using French is provided by a number of entries from
French historians which he made in his Commonplace Book. Spanish
was attributed to him by an Italian friend, Francini.12
German or Dutch have been ascribed to him by modern writers,
along with Old English. The last-named may well be wishful thinking. In
principle, one might wish for the multilingual poet to have entered into
his mother-tongue's earliest recorded form. In particular, too, Miltonists
have wished to relate his Satan to that of the Genesis 'B'. Evidence is
sparse, but there is some. In the History of Britain he misunderstands
passages of Latin chroniclers which a knowledge of Old English would
have clarified for him.13 As for German, there is only slight evidence for
8 Introduction
his knowing it. Better evidence records that he was read to in Dutch.14
His languages may, then, amount to ten: English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
Aramaic, Syriac, Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch.
Impressed, as we should be, we should then ask: do his ten languages
known, and four composed in, have any parallel in his world?
They do. Language-acquisition and language-display both made part
of that world. Witness the Oxbridge anthologies, honouring royalty with
multilingual tributes. These centred on Latin with Greek, but further
flaunted more outre accomplishments, like Turkish and Persian. Witness,
too, such display-pieces as are found in the writings of the much-
travelled Thomas Coryat - Italian verses flattering James's queen.
Precisely because these Englishmen's displays are gauche or fulsome or
eccentric, if not all three, they make Milton look abstemious and
judicious, in that for Poems, 1645 he prepares poems in only four of his
languages, thoughtfully balanced into two pairings (see chapter 1).
More serious multilinguists still found it worth writing in several
different languages. Naturally enough, since continental multilinguists
lived among overlapping language-areas, they were more numerous,
and more serious about multilingual praxis than the English showmen
and dilettantes. Thus when it is recorded of Elizabeth Jane Weston, who
settled in Prague, that she was fluent in German, Czech and Italian as
well as the more usual English, Latin and French, we would guess that
she had occasion to use all of them, in life as in her poetry.15 The Dutch,
then as now, excelled. Thus the poet P. C. Hooft brought together at
meetings in his castle a distinguished company who composed each in a
different preferred language. 'Barlaeus wrote almost exclusively in Latin;
Hooft mainly in Dutch, but also . . . in Latin, French and Italian.'
Constantijn Huygens 'wrote not only in Dutch but also in Latin, French
and Italian and occasionally in Spanish, Greek, English and German'. A
comparable German polyglot is Georg Rudolph Weckherlin: he wrote a
cycle of poems in four languages- German, French, English and Latin.16
Moreover, we know the varied purposes for which some continental
multilinguals used their languages. Forster (pp. 39—40) movingly de-
scribes how Hooft tried to express his grief for the death of Brechje
Spiegels by writing her epitaph in six different languages; not satisfied
with any, he reverted to Dutch, the mother-tongue for the simple essence
of his praise for lost love. Equally, the seriousness of Huygens and
Weckherlin is sensed in their self-restraint, their awareness that the many
tongues are not of equal standing for the poet using them.
Precisely this, again, emerges from the comparison of these notable
 Introduction 9
continental polyglot poets with Milton. They are differently polyglot, and
purposefully so. The multilingual reading or writing comes from within
them, not from externalities of display or coterie. And just as the needs of
his intellectual life had made Milton already of this serious, pragmatic
class of multilinguist, so political need would have done so. It is
symptomatic that Weckherlin's successor as Secretary for the Foreign
Tongues in Whitehall was Milton himself. His activities as a translator or
composer of state papers is not a focus of this study, but his readiness to
do such things for the Parliament in his country's long crisis typifies - as
much as his patriotism or ideology - his kind of multilingualism.

THE PRACTICE AND NORMS OF HUMANIST EDUCATION

Humanist education was grounded in the ancient tongues but also in the
principles and practice of ancient rhetoric.
Because Latin was begun young, composition in particular would
begin in Latin (and then Greek) as soon as in English. To compose Latin
verse was second nature to such as Marvell and Milton. In the case of
Marvell it is even possible that where his lines exist in both Latin and
English he composed them in Latin first;17 and though we cannot check
this for Milton, the education they underwent would make the budding
humanist more at home in Latin for some purposes than in the
mother-tongue.
Latin was the medium of instruction as well as its content, and the
work was oral as much as written - indeed increasingly so, as pupils
progressed up the school and on to university. As formal education
proceeded they did more and more discrete things with their Latin. The
comparison today would be with a country such as India, where
'English-Medium5 on a school's front door is a great selling-point, and
English is perceived as the avenue to almost every professional career.
This Latin education was largely for the sake of developing profi-
ciency in rhetoric. Rhetoric included both creative writing and dramatic
performance in Latin, giving the pupil a command of topics, figures,
levels of style, stances towards subject and audience, and a sense of
audience, along with knowledge of a pantheon of exemplary ancient
exponents. The lack of division (curricular or theoretical) between
poetry and rhetoric, since both alike were persuasive eloquence, enabled
poetic speech to be rhetorical and oratory to be poetic, at first in Latin
but really in whatever language was being used.
All this Milton absorbed - much like everyone who underwent the
io Introduction
training. When later in life he conducted controversy, he used all the
familiar methods in the familiar manner. I do not share modern
misgivings about Milton's rhetoric as excessive, since polemic was (and
is) polemical. The aim of lawyers, for example, is to win cases, and of
politicians to win votes; and if personal abuse helps, so be it. Assuredly,
the force of rhetoric was one of the most influential, if not the single most
influential, part of the legacy of antiquity in the Renaissance. So when
Milton waxed polemical, Latin became for him, not a musical instru-
ment, but a cosh.
Another emphasis of his language-learning needs to be recaptured
here. To learn a language, the student was made not only to translate
from original language to target language, and the reverse, but even to
go round a circle of languages, finally back to the original.18 Such
retranslating is hard but not stultifying (unless one is gifted or cursed with
photographic memory): the pre-existence of an authoritative original
provides a check and model for how one is to think one's way into the
language, its thought-forms and idioms. The value of the 'circle' method
is that where words and ornaments are bound to be left behind, the
thought is seized, ready to be expressed in whatever tongue. Paradoxi-
cally, then, so verbal an exercise trains one in skills of thought, as much as
skills of words. Certainly all Milton's psalm versions show his grasp of the
thought, first and foremost. Then, as paraphrast, he incorporates words
of other translators, or makes up his own expansions. These five-finger
exercises gave to him the freedom of a great many ways of thinking and
creating, albeit not more than to others who had had the same training.
But as he outgrew such exercises of pedagogy he did not outgrow care
for the words themselves; far from it, for his verse-translating moves
towards literalism. He is not content after all with giving only the bald
sense of a Psalm or a Horace ode: he presses English to a variously
conceived maximum of fidelity. In this, whether we like the product or
loathe it, he outgoes his contemporaries (see chapter 4). He is heeding
Horace's topos of the 'fidus interpres', 'faithful interpreter', by coming to
favour its 'fidus' element. This has a bearing on the text-studded texture
of Paradise Lost it makes the poem sometimes odd, more often sublime,
and always distinctive (see chapters 6 and 7).

IMITATIO AND INTERTEXTUALITY

By practising Imitatio, the renaissance humanist sought to build some-

thing original and personal from inherited materials, and to do it by
 Introduction 11
methods and in media which the prior tradition had refined. Even when
inventing a new genre or approaching a totally new subject, one went
back to the known and proven exemplars; for the Romans had done
likewise, resorting to the Greeks and to earlier Romans. One 'stood on
the shoulders of the giants'. Standing there, one was not dwarfed if the
personal contribution was original enough and expressed with skill
enough. After all, Horace's new genres owed much to his inheritance,
and Horace was one of the giants.
Milton never questioned this set of ideas, but perhaps the language-
issue implicitly did. If the mother-tongues could achieve Imitatio, would
they not achieve it actually better than Latin could, in that their very
rawness or their impurities presented a challenge to a bold spirit? And
did they not offer greater scope for originality, right down at the cellular
level, of words, phrases, lines of verse - the levels where poetry is alive or
most dead? Moreover, to do great things for the mother-tongue was to
do them for the mother-land, wherever (as in Milton's case) language
and nation coincided.
Yet as we have seen, the humanists went on writing in Latin for some
purposes. Imitatio worked variously. Though the vernaculars were
increasingly favoured for the highest endeavours, like poetry, some
ambivalence lingered. It can be seen in actions which have a dash of
compensation to them. So, for example, Milton writing in Latin
sometimes signed himself 'Of London' (not the expected patriotic
'Englishman'). This was either to parallel the local more than national
affiliation of his Italian addressees (their campanilismo, attachment to their
own bell-tower), or else to mimic 'Roman', the name of a city and empire
but not country. Or perhaps he had both motives, but at any rate he used
Latin to play an Italian role and aspiration. To give a later example,
when he was in government employ, drafting and revising letters to
foreign powers, he fought a lone battle for classical Latin phraseology
(and lost it).19 We do not hear of him, as we do of Ariosto, that he tried to
w/dearn his Latin verse skill. A clear pride in his Latin performances
stands out in his publishing.
Choice of languages for Imitatio resulted in complexities, paradoxes,
changes and revisions of mind within the clear main current flowing
away from Latin. 'The texts of the humanists and their vernacular
counterparts seem to draw from their very uncertainties, from their
protean shifts of style and intellectual context, an unfailing supply of
colour and energy.'20 So it was with Milton also. The present study, by
addressing all his languages rather than giving automatic primacy to his
12 Introduction

English, gives the inside story of his many-sided response to the

challenges of Imitatio.
For an example, let us take intertextuality. This is precisely the aspect
of neo-Latin poetry which deters and baffles us, because the degree of
verbal allusiveness to the ancients either seems servile or vanishes in
translation. It is time that literary theory rescued it, as being the most
intertextual poetry known to Europe. Intertextuality works at such a
local level that it is the nuts and bolts of Imitatio: in the feeling of
palimpsest in individual words, phrases and lines of verse, the poetic
texture honours the ancient world and the post-Roman reception. One
can create such palimpsest more readily in Latin, by using Virgil's own
words, and phrases, or even whole lines.21 But therefore the task is harder
in a romance vernacular, and still harder in English. Does one then do
what is harder, or what can be more complete? It is not, or at least it was
not, a foregone conclusion. Buchanan, as much as Milton, chose with
integrity, when he continued to write (both prose and verse) in Latin. It
was that integrity which enabled Milton to read and use Buchanan.22
From my own perspective I see Milton as choosing what gave him the
more options. English gave him almost all the options which Latin gave,
and some which Latin could not. As this is one of the main thrusts of the
present study, I summarize and explain it straightaway.
To summarize, first, imitating in Latin posed one dilemma, while
imitating in English posed another.
Using Latin words and metres to emulate Roman exemplars like
Virgil, Ovid, Horace, he would so readily call into view their words that
too much might show through the palimpsest; not necessarily dwarfing
him, but obscuring his own sense or distracting from it (like a simile
whose vehicle crushes its tenor). The challenge was to ensure that his
thought commanded more attention than did the words or allusions.
Theory, too, might cramp one's style. Latin composition was supposed
to achieve copia (expressive abundance), by means of amplijicatio (apposite
expansion of one's theme). Much neo-Latin verse, and Milton's own
earlier specimens of it, moved sluggishly because - what with the aid of
dictionaries, thesauri and vocabulary-books to facilitate the copia - it
systematically repeated its thought in the name of elegant variation.
Even Buchanan, whose Latin can be very succinct on occasion, prefers
amplitude in his celebrated psalm versions. Reading a neo-Latin writer
whose sole strength is copia is like eating a meal of marshmallows.
Composing in English produced the reverse dilemma. In English,
Milton could not summon up Virgil or others so easily or casually,
 Introduction 13
because he could not use so many Latin-derived words within English.
The task was apparently far harder than in Latin. Yet Milton gains the
option to foreground the thought and not the words, or the interaction of
thoughts with words, and both options enable an interaction of infinite
variety. The more stringent needs of English Imitatio were, finally, more
liberating.
Moreover, whereas words may fail to evoke, names will probably do
so. This is among the reasons why Milton's use of names for allusion,
though splendid and apt in his Latin, carries greater weight in his
English. Classical names in Lycidas simply stand out more than they can
in the Epitaphium Damonis.
Milton is 'playing5 among his languages. He does it all the time, with
increasing force and point. Latin is a palimpsest of Greek, but a
vernacular may be one of both, to which may be added Hebrew and the
romance vernaculars and whatever else English had then gone to for its
wordstock (older English, Celtic). The same holds for names, allusions,
thoughts and their interactions. It is in English that Milton can choose
connotation most precisely and richly. Thereby he can direct the
reader's attention with authority; that is, with a whole multilingual and
multicultural cloud of witnesses, and yet without loss of clarity. It is a very
purposeful playing; but still a spirit of play is felt.
What every English writer does willy-nilly, Milton does to an extreme,
the extreme of his mature high style. There, he works most significantly,
yet not solely, by Latinism.

MULTIPLE VISION AND THE SINGLE MIND

So far the Questione della Lingua has been discussed as if it were essentially
similar for all within a time and place. In a paper to the Copenhagen
Neo-Latin Congress, however, Ann Moss23 contested this, arguing that a
deeply personal, sometimes anxious dimension was entailed by the fact
of bilingualism. She supported this by the modern distinction between
'compound' and 'coordinate' bilingualism. In thefirst,the two languages
are 'learnt in the same context and are more or less interdependent',
while in the second they are 'learnt separately and are more or less
independent'. She argued that Du Bellay's form of bilingualism was the
second, and that it caused anxiety because he felt more gap between his
two languages than was healthy. Further, she argued that because
Montaigne as a child had been subjected by his father to the bizarre
experiment of learning to speak Latin before French (with amazing
14 Introduction
subterfuges to prevent the boy acquiring French on the sly) Montaigne
emerged with a double vision of everything under the sun.
I find it implausible to think of any humanist, let alone a French one,
as a 'coordinate' bilingual, and certainly not Milton, for whom his
languages merged and meshed both when learning and then later when
writing. Be all that as it may, I take from Moss's thesis the point that
humanists differ at the core in terms of the Questione; and that they did not
need to choose once and for all (especially as Latin was their 'mistress'!)
Thus thoughts about the relations of self and other, and the possibility of
separate linguistic selves or at least personae, are very usefully brought to
focus by her hypothesis.
Do Milton's languages suggest how he thought, how he viewed
himself through languages, where he was at home, what humanist roles
he felt equipped to play (or avoid)? He was, surely, in the main anyway,
'compound' and at-home. The latter finding makes Milton ordinary, not
visionary or very modern; not very like Montaigne, but a citizen of
multilingual sectarian Europe. But the idea of his being a compound
multilingual needs probing. Precisely because he could think in Latin or
English, or both or neither, he cared about their differences and limits,
and about those of his other languages. He will emerge from a later
chapter as a tireless experimenter with translation, seeking or pushing its
limits. He asks, like the French humanists, what is a 'fidus interpres'?
And no wonder. If the biblical part of his inheritance made him incline to
prize the gist above the original styling (lumping), his humanism inclined
him to prize difference (splitting again). A continual intimate dialectic is
unfolded, corresponding to two cultural poles of his being. Language-
questions generally, as well as the Questione more acutely, represent
Milton's address to the philosophical dilemma (part of the Fall perhaps)
of the One and the Many.
By now we are examining issues which involve more than languages.
Here is another. Harold Bloom exempted Milton, alone, from the
'anxiety of influence'. Influences there were, but he coped with them or
used them to advantage. Linguistically, however, Milton did evince
some anxiety. He avoided French for some reason. He was anxious
about language-choice, about the discourtesy of abusing the Pope in
Latin to Italian friends, about the long delay in beginning the great
promised poem, about the correctness of his own and others' Latin. I
surmise he knew some of these were matters of fact not opinion, within
his chosen professionalism.
More important, I am led by studying his multilingualism to an
 Introduction 15
increased sense of his emulation of one predecessor more than others,
namely Dante. Dante came early in the history of the Questione and
decided it for others than himself: Milton came late, and had it easier.
Dante wrote in Latin about the Tightness of the volgare: so did Milton.
Dante in his greatest poem included passages in other languages, and
Milton wrote in four. In the Divina Commedia Dante Latinized his Italian
poem from top to bottom - from the inclusion of Virgil as his guide and
master, to the coining of words direct from Latin, to quotation of much
liturgical and scriptural Latin, not to mention his infinite gradations of
interaction, including coining. Milton Latinized in some of these and in
many other ways. An austere playing among languages, and a strenuous
desire thereby to teach about faith, morals and the cosmos itself, are
fundamental to both poets and to few others. Among its other objectives,
then, our study will argue that Dante as multilingual gave much to
Milton. Almost anything about Dante's languages will suggest lines of
enquiry into Milton's. Here is the equiponderant multilingual ego whom
Milton, in his vernacular poems, is emulating.

TYPICAL OR EXCEPTIONAL?

It emerges that in the main Milton was typical of his time, in the sense of
being touched by widespread renaissance contentions. He responded to
all the main themes and issues of that age, including the ones which
centred on languages or related to them. At times, indeed, he was a quite
ordinary man of his time, as with his controversializing or his Greek
verses. Yet he was altogether extraordinary where the contentions
touched 'a fine spirit to fine issues', and in concluding I shall dwell on
that spirit as revealed in his language-arts and their uses.
Languages grant access for their reader to intellectual and spiritual
diversity. Milton seized his chances, in an all-round way worthy of
humanist aspiration.
Languages in use release the speaker or writer into new roles, and a
modified self. Milton relished this release, at times for its own sake, often
later to play a series of humanist roles. Surveying the number of his
languages and of the genres in which he wrote (and not forgetting
sub-genres like satire and insult within his major work), I infer that he
relished the entering by his languages into as many personae as possible.
They show he shared the renaissance eagerness for versatility.
He was indefatigable and thrifty in his languages. He kept up his
philology and languages and their arts, and applied them all somewhere
16 Introduction
in his life. Indeed, he did this to an exceptional extent, and with
exceptional diversity and all-round competence. He stands out less in
any one language-art than for the number of them and for the standard
he maintained.
When Milton first showed interest in language-options he invented a
new version of language-choice, in a striking multilingual gesture. About
1628 he switched from performing his Latin prose oration for Christ's
College (Prolusion VI) into English verse, moving from acceptance of an
imposed tongue to explicit choosing of another.24 He thereby made a
statement about his languages, and about himself; a statement about his
range of choice, not to mention a prophetic juxtaposing of the two genres
which would create his contemporary reputation — Latin oratorical
prose and English verse.
So it continued. Whenever afterwards he wrote a poem in one of his
foreign languages, to the other things which decorum required him to
match together, such as subject, style, occasion, audience and stance, he
added the choice of tongue. He had permanently enlarged his repertoire
of ways to achieve decorum.
At least during his apprenticeship, he could get nearer to the
exemplars by literally speaking their language. Later, his relationship to
them and to his languages altered: rather than inhabiting their lan-
guages, he domiciled them in his own. They are what gives his English
much of its distinction, in both senses of 'distinction'. So here is the
further and final option for his decorum, adopted from a position of
multilingual strength.
Consequently, the study of his multilingualism and its associated
language-arts initiates new enquiries for us. It provides fresh evidence on
existing ones. By making us heed the multilingual voice in the three great
English poems, it defamiliarizes them. The more aware one is of the
variety of Milton's language-knowledge and language-skills, the more
meaning one finds within his writings, in whichever language. There is
little loss of existing meanings. But the ensuing enquiries should help to
restore and uphold meanings which were more apparent to Milton's
original readers than can be the case now. Whether or not the reader
agrees with all the interpretations offered now, I offer them as the kind of
meaning which can be retrieved by philological scholarship.
 PART ONE

Milton's exercising of his languages

 CHAPTER I

The multilingual selfpresented in Milton's

Poems, 1645

In 1645 Milton had reached the notional 'mid-point5 of his life.1 A small
tradition exists of poems describing- or composed a t - a poet's mid-point
en route to the biblical lifespan of three score years and ten. Chief among
these is Dante's beginning to the Divine Comedy. 6nel mezzo del cammin di
nostra vita', 'midway in the journey of our life'. This may have been in
Milton's mind, as it certainly was for Longfellow and Updike later, in
presenting himself for the first time to a general public by name as a poet.
Hitherto, when he had published poems in print, they were mostly
contributions to anthologies. In the case ofA Masque (1637) his name does
not even appear in the credits. In the printing ofEpitaphiumDamonis (1640)
his name remained thickly veiled, as 'I. M.'2 In 1645, previous named
publication had been of prose only. What is the significance, then, of the
mid-point 'statement' which he makes by putting his full name to these
multilingual poems, in that form and at that time?
Two views dominate the debate about Milton's action. Biographers
see an intent to launder his public image, as if the 'presenting' mattered
more than the 'self'.3 That is, to borrow Erving Goffman's terms, the
'impression' made was to outweigh any 'expression' of personality.4
Other writers, being more interested in the fully expressed Miltonic self
and voice of Paradise Lost, see the Poems as premonitory.5 As for editors
and general readers, they naturally assess the poems individually, in the
context of their time of composition, not that of the time of first named
printing. For present purposes, however, I have examined the 1645
volume page by page, to do justice to both aspects of the 'self-
presentation', to impression and expression alike and to their interac-
tions. I find that Milton's languages provide energy and themes for both
aspects. They give him much that is 'impressive' to present, thereby to
'express' an intelligent self.
Furthermore, besides (obviously) employing his tongues to produce
20 Milton's exercising of his languages
the verse of twenty years which is gathered up in Poems, 1645, Milton as
self-editor draws attention to the tongues. He does this in a complex, witty
way which suggests how manifold was the resource of his multilingual-
ism. Imaginative worlds, personae for writing, a cultivation of idealizing
friendship - his languages made him free possessor of all these.
He may even have worked out a rationale. For Aristotle in the
Kicomachean Ethics theoretical wisdom and abstract contemplation were
superior to practical wisdom and political science; yet the needs of the
latter arena, that of humans living in society, must be met too. A similar
balance is desiderated in the Roman and humanist debates between
otium and negotium, between 'leisure5 and 'business5, between 'cultivated
private life5 and 'responsible civic life5.6 Milton knew of the debate and
the balance, and though he does not discuss it concerning his languages,
I apply the distinction when appropriate.
I consider first the issues of self-presentation as far as these involve
languages. Then, passing over the merits or otherwise of the individual
poems (as they are discussed in the next chapter), I illustrate from the
collection as a whole how multilingualism made him free possessor,
lifelong, of worlds and activities he never ceased to value.

SELF-PRESENTATION THROUGH THE LANGUAGES OF

POEMS, I 645

Self-presentation starts at once, on the title-page. By proclaiming the

contents as 'Poems . . . both English and Latin5 (my emphases), the
title-page alerts readers to the fact that the book is actually two books.
Though the English poems are named first, the Latin ones have their
own title-page and page-numbering. That makes a clear proclamation
of language-flair; but is the conception of a bilingual book to be credited
to Milton or to his publisher, Humphrey Moseley? And how unusual was
the conception?
As to the former point, Milton himself called the book a 'little twin
volume, with twin frontage5 ('Ad Rousium5,1—2, of early 1647).7 His tone
is of modest pride that hisfirstpoetic offspring is twins, namely bilingual.
Indeed, there is some wit to the image of twinning: joy at a double safe
birth must exceed the usual, and I would sooner suspect Milton of such
wit. But whoever had the idea, the ode shows that Milton stands by it. It
seems likeliest to be the author who conceives the volume as bilingual,
since he had published anonymous verse in both languages before 1645
('On Shakespeare5, A Masque, Lycidas and the Hobson poems in English,
 The multilingual self in Milton's Poems, 1645 21
the EpitaphiumDamonis in Latin) and had earned plaudits from friends for
his accomplishment in both tongues. Self-belief, belief in the bilingual
voice, is fundamental to the ode to Rouse.
And why not be proud, if no one had offered such a volume before?
To be precise, no individual had, and certainly not with this equal
weighting between the mother-tongue and the tongue of civilized
European discourse. Bilingual volumes by divers hands abounded, since
Oxford and Cambridge burst into multilingual print with anthologies
whenever princes were born or married, died or stubbed the royal toe.
The balancing of English with ancient tongues is found in Justa Edovardo
King (1638), to which Milton had of course contributed Lycidas, so that we
might guess he drew thence the idea for his own bilingual volume.
Nonetheless, volumes of verse composed by a single author and
assembled into a book by the author remained rare in the England of
1645.
Humphrey Moseley was encouraging such volumes, bringing out
specimens by Quarles (1642) and Waller (1645). Milton's schoolfriend
Alexander Gil published his Parerga (Latin with Greek) in 1632, which
could further have prompted Milton for Poems, 1645. The climate of taste
in England before the Civil War did favour the display in print of a
writer's languages, witness the multilingual flourishes of Harington and
Coryat. Yet not one of these volumes sustains the serious original verse in
two languages, with the two balanced, that distinguishes Milton's
self-collection in 1645. He does what the others only glimpse. According-
ly, it is again natural to credit to Milton himself the conception which
makes an impression of cultivation and originality through a balanced
bilingualism.
Moreover, the bilingual impression created by the title-page has soon
to be revised. The book is mwtolingual. The readerfindsItalian sonnets as
a supporting sequence inside the sequence of English ones, and Greek
poems similarly amid the Latin. The book thus declares an aptitude, and
enthusiasm, for languages. It declares that this poet has unusual options.
In case it is still doubted whether the declarations are Milton's own or
Moseley's, I would answer 'Milton's' for these further reasons. He had
kept these poems, for some years. In supplying them for the book he must
have known he would be judged by them, for instance by their
competence and aptness. Besides, the idea of including Italian sonnets
within an English series - and within a continuous numbering - is
unprecedented: it is a creatively daring idea unlikely to be conceived by
Milton's publisher. Evidence and probability concur.
22 Milton's exercising of his languages
In that case, we can go on to observe that Milton has timed the
changes of tongue with care, to apt effect. The Greek poems are placed
immediately after 'Ad Patrem', 'To My Father', where he thanks his
father for enabling him to learn languages, so that the placing confirms
the gratitude.8 And when he moves into Italian for love sonnets, they
hinge on the reminder that Italian is the 'language in which Love himself
takes pride': 'Questa e lingua di cui si vanta Amore' (Canzone 15).9 That
neatly reinforces the poems' message, that he speaks Italian because his
lady is Italian: he explores medium and meaning together, in a play of
multilingual wit.10
So far, the impression given is of a poet who takes pride in his linguistic
accomplishments. They give him the freedom to express a multiple self,
one that varies with the language-roles adopted for each occasion. The
pride is justified by the quality of the expression: free self-expression, for
a poet's first volume, is a natural, irreducible good. What else is a first
volume for?
The freedom which his languages give Milton, he passes on to his
readers by the double structure, as the freedom to begin with either half.
Cultivated humanist readers of the time might value Poemata above
Poems, He was also giving readers the freedom to judge his language-
performances. When later the humanist Salmasius faulted some of his
Latin expressions he took the attack seriously.11 He was risking loss of
face.
The frontispiece shows similar multilingual resource, but through a
more combative wit. The sour-faced, elderly man depicted by the
engraver William Marshall is said to be the poet 'at age 20'! Incensed,
Milton got Marshall to add a Greek epigram composed especially. It
said: 'Anyone would say this portrait was drawn by an ignorant engraver
if you compared it with the face of the original; but you who are my
friends and know me will not even recognize me here: so laugh to scorn
this rotten portraitist.'12 So Marshall has been made to engrave his own
condemnation. In other words, Milton converts the displeasing portrait
into another act of multilingual wit. Only Greek would communicate it
to the readers he wanted without alerting the engraver himself.
Thus the self shown forth is ambitious and versatile. And since none of
the accomplishments is faked, but all are truly there, we may question
the need for any disjunction of self and image (expression and
impression) in respect of the multilingual Milton in 1645. Should not a
bird sing? His pride in competence is flanked by good editorial
judgement. Out ofpoems which individually might often be paralleled in
 2
The multilingual self in Milton's Poems, 1645 3
other seventeenth-century poet-humanists, good judgement makes a
collection without peer. This impact results from the number of the
languages, and their discerning ordonnance.

VALUES FOUND IN MULTILINGUAL PERFORMANCE

To move on from questions of self-presentation in Poems, 1645,1 ask what

value we can infer he found in multilingual performance there. The first
of the freedoms which languages gave Milton is the imaginative worlds
ofpredecessors in other languages than English. The point would be trite
except that even though he has by now decided to write henceforth in the
mother-tongue13 he emulates authors who are not English: they are
Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew.
Thus in editing Poems, 1645 ^ ls Virgil he quotes on the title-page:
Baccare frontem
Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro,
Virgil, Eclog. 7.
(Circle the forehead with ivy lest an evil tongue harm the future poet [or less
literally] let not the voice of envy ruin this hopeful early work.)14
Virgil provides the organizing theme of the 'rising poet' (Vati futuro5).
Virgil, moreover, provides him with a second important freedom of
access, namely to a persona or given role as poet. Both parts of the 'twin
volume' shape to a climax with pastoral lament that is heavily indebted
to Virgil: Lycidas, for the English half, Epitaphium Damonis for the Latin.
The two pastorals are indebted not only to Virgil, though, but to all
ancient pastoral lament, whether Latin or Greek. In fact, his access to
classical antiquity through its languages enables him to imitate for
purposes of occasion whichever ancient writers are most apt: Ovid for
the Elegiae, Martial for the epigrams which follow them, the Silvae of
Statius for his own Latin Sylvae.
He is more exuberant outside the dignitas of Latin, blending the Italian
of Dante and Petrarch (whom he revered as 'praisers of Beatrice and
Laura') in his own Italian poems. More exuberantly still, he puts the
Hebrew or Greek of Psalm 114 into Homeric Greek: this is a transcul-
tural long-jump of a kind which (albeit sobered) anticipates his mature
English style, as he detects points of intersection between Homer and
King David.
The instance of Statius helps us sense the spirit of this language-use, a
spirit of identification and accurate recovery. Whereas 'Silvae' was a
24 Milton's exercising of his languages
common enough title for miscellanies in the Renaissance, Milton edits
those Latin poems which are not in elegiac couplets into a group, Sylvae,
that is made self-aware by the allusion to Statius at the fountainhead of
this procedure. To Statius (45?~96?) the name 'Silvae' meant five things
about the poems so designated: they were (a) written quickly and were (b)
less polished than they might have been because (c) written for the needs
of occasion, hence (d) varied in subject and (e) varied in metre. Milton
strikes a similar note of deprecative virtuosity. This in turn makes any
necessary apology for juvenilia. (Further apology is seen, as Milton
includes a statement of his age when composing the poems which are
more juvenile in theme or restricted in occasion.)15 More positively, he is
using the date-protected juvenilia to confirm the theme of the rising- in
this case, the improving-poet. The debts to Statius make a general point
about Milton's multilingualism: the debts confirm its self-awareness, as
inwardness with diverse culture and as editorial judgement.
Another freedom is shown in evidence that looks at first like blatant
self-congratulation, but viewed another way promotes understanding of
what languages were to him, lifelong. The evidence comes from the
numerous commendations which precede the poems in both halves of
the collection. Every reader notices their number (eight), and their bulk
(seven pages for each half). They certainly belong to the self-editing, for
only Milton could have supplied the assorted tributes. What purpose do
they serve?
Blurbs were, and are, useful when written by influential people. The
thinking is, presumably, that praise from discerning persons imputes
discernment to the person praised. Yet this would only increase the
disappointment if the thing praised did not measure up to the praise.
Milton's performances do match the praise.
More to the present point, they sometimes reciprocate it, when the
performances address or allude to people whose commendations have
been cited (Manso, Salsilli, Dati). Thus commenders and commended
are integrated in an active relationship, which indeed becomes a theme.
Furthermore, the poems vindicate the criteria of the praise because
they bear witness to the same values. This is particularly so in their
multilingual jaunting because that celebrates, just as it enables, humanist
friendships. These cross the boundaries of culture and even religious
allegiance. Not only did his Italian Catholic friends get him composing
Latin verse again after a long lull. He missed their companionship, as a
letter of 1647 attests: 'Very sad to me . . . was that departure [from
Florence]. It planted stings in my heart which now rankle there deeper
 2
The multilingual self in Milton's Poems, 1645 5
every time I think of departing from so many good friends, living so
pleasantly with each other in one city; far off indeed, but to me most
dear'.16 This is not a platitude of humanist amicitia, but the engaging
reality.
The commendations, then, suggest a reason for the existence of the
Poems themselves. Whether or not many copies were sold, we do know
that Milton made good use of his complimentaries. He sent them to
libraries, in search (according to the 'Ode to Rouse') of fame with
posterity. He sent others to friends, especially in Italy, in search of
something else - not fame now, but friendship, appreciation, recogni-
tion. Though he came to regret abusing the Papacy in some of the
poems, he sent the copies off to Italy anyway.17 Did he even go into print
for the sake of the complimentaries?18 Was he among the first poets who
extended courtesy, from gifting manuscript poems to exploiting print for
the same purpose on a grander scale?
Latin in particular counted here. He probably did not risk sending his
Italian poems to Italian friends, but he did to his English friend with the
Italian name, Diodati. Poems to Diodati in Latin are a feature of the
Poemata, while there is nothing comparable in the English part of the
volume. Though no equiponderant friendship ever came his way after
Diodati died, a similar ease of companionship achieved across language
as well as distance is sensed in the Latin letters and poems; through and
because of the Latin.
Last among the gifts or freedoms which languages bestow is the
opportunity for strenuous play. In the Introduction I suggested that a
vital part of Milton's emulation was of Dante, and that it included
Dante's kind of austere multilingual playing. Dante is a felt presence in
the Italian sonnets, naturally, but he contributes something more
fundamental: a spirit of encounter, and sometimes of wrestling, not only
with contemporary issues and persons but with the same issues,
deepened, in dead exemplars. Thus Virgil is almost a character and
certainly a guide in these Poems, as he was in the Divina Commedia. Statius,
not a highly regarded author in general, is a model for Milton's Poemata
just as he found his way into Dante's Purgatorio.
So an ardour and a fervour pervade Milton's 'serious playing'.
Throughout, he is heeding that humanist topos, serio ludere. It explains
why the poet wears so many masks, for different occasions and genres,
and equally why the number of languages displayed is large. This is
fundamental to understanding Milton's life, as well as his voluminous
work, for it explains why he is so contentious in religious debate, and
26 Milton's exercising of his languages
how. The humanist as scholar and linguist - as 'philologist', in the
broader German sense of Philologie - must do each thing thoroughly.
That includes doing it with a maximum of vigour and rigour, and rigour
includes getting the minutiae right. Not to get them right is to forsake
philaletheia, the love of truth.
This of course explains the heat with which later classicists smelt out
false quantities in his scansion: this was their philaletheia, mixed up as it
had been for Milton himself with the delight of battle and the joy of
knowing better. It was already motivating Salmasius, battling Milton in
the 1650s. Childish as some manifestations of serio ludere and philological
emulation do seem, they must be viewed in Milton's own way if he and
his writings are to be understood. The Poems of 1645 gi ye a n instructive
instance of such humanist role-playing because in them what is being
expressed and conveyed is a pure joy in playing among the languages.
Such playing is not less joyous because it is serious, emulative, and
strenuous. Impression and expression serve each other.
 CHAPTER 2

The development and quality of Milton's

multilingual verse

Such being the multilingual self which Milton presented in his Poems,
1645, what had been the process of which this was the product? How did
he come to this stature as a poet in several tongues? Indeed, how good
are his best performances? The first two questions are answered most
naturally from his Latin verses because these are most numerous and
continue longest. Nonetheless, evaluation - the third question - should
include his Greek and Italian verses. Conveniently, some of the principal
criteria which emerge from discerning his development in Latin carry
across to the other two languages. At the same time, though, differing
language-choices reveal differing first principles as well as recurrent
ones; for instance, the question of audiences differs for Italian, as a living
not a classical tongue. In the end, the differences may count more, in that
they lead beyond evaluating to the Questione della Lingua, subject of
chapter 3.
That question is not simple, because Latin as the language of
international discourse and friendship possessed an inherent multilin-
gual appeal: the power of that appeal is seen in all the chapters of part
one, not only the present one. Latin supplied a continuing creative
tension of choice.

THE LATIN POEMS! CONTEXTS OF UNDERSTANDING

A dilemma besets neo-Latin poetry for modern readers. In so far as poets
depart from Roman practice they look incorrect, either inauthentic or
ignorant. Yet in so far as they keep to Roman practice they look servile.
Thus both Latinists and non-Latinists, though for opposite reasons, may
dismiss this body of verse. The problem is compounded by the decrease
in the number of scholars who can read Latin at all, since this sort of
verse depends on qualities like copia ('fullness5, 'plenitude') and amplificatio

27
28 Milton's exercising of his languages

('apposite expansion' of one's theme) which translation dilutes, and

betrays into understandable boredom.
There is not much one can do about the last problem, an extreme case
oftraduttore traditore (The translator is a traducer), except to urge that the
Latin-less reader at least try out the sound of the original. The main
dilemma is solved in principle by invoking Imitatio, as the personal
extending of the ancients' legacy - neo-Latin verse being a signal
example of 'standing on the shoulders of giants' like Ovid and Virgil. Yet
I prefer here to resolve the dilemma by considering it in practice,
Milton's developing practice of five main aspects of this Imitatio. In
ascending order the five are: diction; prosody; eclecticism, of allusion
and thought together; tone; and what I call a 'presumptive ground of
approval' emerging from all this precriticism. 'Precriticism' means, the
recovery of relevant conditions of understanding this type of verse,
recovery which -just as when we approach a Roman poet, but in some
ways more so — must precede evaluation.
Even in a super-vivacious, super-confident piece like the 'Ode to
Rouse', his last Latin poem,1 we collide with the dilemma of diction at its
sixth word, 'fronde'. Milton, apostrophizing the copy of Poems, 1645
which was sent to Rouse but went astray, speaks of its 'double leaf,
'fronde gemina'. But, said Thomas Warton, who knew his Latin, the
word should be 'fronte', the double 'edge' of a Roman papyrus-roll, not
the double 'leaf of a printed book. He duly emended what he saw as
incorrect Latin, if not anachronism into the bargain.2 Since both the
printed text, and the manuscript copy sent to Rouse himself, read
'fronde' the error, if it is such, is Milton's responsibility. So why, we must
ask, has he not said it as his exemplars would have?
First of all, it was a book not a roll which went missing, and the book —
Poems, 1645 - is the whole topic and ground of contact between the
parties to this epistolary act. But Warton is being doubly obtuse, since the
'twin' leaf also alludes to the most original feature of the book's contents,
its bilingualism proclaimed in twin title-pages. Yet he is not totally
wrongheaded, since he raises the key issue: 'fronte' would have pictured
Milton's work as papyrus, hence established the English subject as more
fully Roman, so dignifying it further. Milton, however, must have felt his
surrounding Latin did that enough, and wanted the reference more
actual and pictorial. Just because the Latin starts offby establishing an
English subject as Roman, it can afford next to display the subject as not
solely similar but distinctive - as Milton proudly knew his volume to be.
Besides, dignity is not precisely the tone Milton wants, in a partly playful
 Milton's multilingual verse 29
poem. I shall come back to tone shortly. But for diction, fully half its
pleasure lies in its playing upon sameness and difference; the Roman
within the English, the English reality transformed or defamiliarized by
Latin. The local effects please by the sheer variety of such interactions.
A graver objection to neo-Latin diction is that in keeping to classical
usage it puts the clock back. Moreover, to change the metaphor, the
diction has gone slack because it imitates the lexis of too long a period -
some 150 years perhaps, therefore much too synchronously. No one in
antiquity spoke, or wrote, like that. The only answers are the obvious
ones, (a) The entire Renaissance wanted to 'put the clock back5, (b) The
poet in particular sought to revive the utterance of the greatest
exemplars in each kind, and primarily by their authoritative diction.
And (c) people did write like that, in antiquity itself: later Latins went
back to 'golden', normative periods for each genre, doing as Greeks
before them had done, Greeks like Apollonius Rhodius reinventing
Homeric diction. 'Vos exemplaria Graeca', said Horace to the young
Roman; 'follow the Greek exemplars'. In turn following Horace, the
renaissance tiro followed the best advice. 'Fronde' turns an old word into
the new name, new image, of a new thing. Lastly, (d) no slackness is
involved: poets made life, if anything, harder for themselves, because
what they imitated was lexis within each genre.
Prosody presents the same dilemma, in a tougher form because the
purists have a still stronger case (while the outsider cannot care less).
Though humanist poets modelled their scansion on their Roman
exemplars', they could not do it with full accuracy; for since they could
not reconstruct all Roman pronunciation, they could not hear the whole
of the Romans' verse rhythms. Besides, again, they licensed for their own
composing a wide range of usage, ignoring changes in pronunciation
over the 150 years between (say) Lucretius and Martial. They are
misconceivedly eclectic.
Yet since every humanist did these things, can they be simply solecisms?
As Philip Ford writes, of the exactly comparable instance of Buchanan:

What is surprising is that scholars should continue to evaluate neo-Latin

according to classical rules rather than according to its own, verifiable
standards. It is as if one were to judge a Palladian villa according to the criteria of
a classical temple; for Palladio, no less than the renaissance poet, based his
works on classical precedent and theory.3
That is well said. It is liberating too, because so we may judge prosody on
its merits, namely the sound of the verse itself and how sound supports
30 Milton's exercising of his languages

sense. Prosodic rules cannot be greater than the sound-sense wholes

from which they are an abstraction.
To take a simple example, when Milton writes (Elegia iv. 25)*
Quamque Stagirites generoso magnus alumno
the final e would by the Roman rules be lengthened, by position before
double consonant following, hence unmetrical (~ " w , not the required
dactyl,- - - ) . True, Roman poets sometimes left such afinalopen vowel
short in that situation; but humanists did it regularly, not sometimes.
That shows they did not hear the words as Romans did. Yet our need,
surely, is to hear the sounds as the humanists did.5 This line hinges, not
on the insignificant e (of a humble suffix, '-que', 'and'), but on the
resounding paired polysyllables, swelling up at the line's middle:
'Stagirites generoso', linking the great Aristotle with the great spirit of his
pupil Alexander.
Or take a subtler prosodic 'distortion', that of thefinal0 in verbs. CO' in
Amo, Moneo, and so on, was normally long in Golden Latin, yet not
always; but alas, humanists shorten this 0 more freely than Roman
practice had done in the normative period. The answer, as before, is that
humanists had their own practice, which if it works should not be
blamed, not even though they thought their practice was right in theory
too. It does work, because they shorten this 0 more in the lower genres
than the high, thus heeding after all the Roman sensibility: such
asperities are more frequent in humanist satire than in epic hexameter,
and therefore the humanists preserve the required decorum, the spirit if
not the letter of Roman prosody.
We must take the humanist practitioners as wefindthem; and we shall
find them eclectic. They combine things as a Roman did not, because
the Roman could not: he was still living a development of Latin which
the humanists loved in its completed form.6 And further, they join things
of their own to these selections.
Selection, indeed, is the key. I examine the Rouse ode, again, for
Milton's eclectic way with allusion, and with the ideas which allusions
together bring into view. In the ode, Milton's first strophe gives a rapid
allusive sketch of his poetic life to date. It is rapid because ode requires
that, and because allusion speeds it along: he says, for instance, that he
performed songs for his neighbours 'with a Daunian quill' (line 10,
'pectine Daunio'). Why 'Daunian'? Doesn't the epithet slow down the
line, more vapid than rapid? Editors gloss Daunia as south-east Italy,
hence a synecdoche for 'Italian'. This misses the sharp exactitude of
 Milton3s multilingual verse 31
'Daunio'. It names the home region of the greatest exemplar of Latin
ode, Horace.7 Although Horace's Daunia was poor and scruffy, it was his
region and he was proud of it; proud, too, to have overcome its
disadvantages. Milton aligns his ode, thus, with Horace's exemplary
ones, glancing at his English provinciality (from a Roman standpoint).
'Daunio' provides not padding, but a sunburst of suggestion.
And that is not all. Taken alone, 'Daunio' is eclectic in the literal,
etymological sense of being 'selected' with care, from a rich armoury of
poetry read by Milton. But it comes linked with Britain: he sings with
Italian help 'to his neighbours [fellow-countrymen, 'vicinis' (line 12)]'. It
comes in a metre which does not follow Horace, but the more
corybantic Greek odist, Pindar. Milton's own note of explanation
mentions the metrics of Catullus, who was freer in his odes than other
Romans; but Milton outdoes Catullus too, and in a direction that is
Greek. This is made plain in the next stanza, the antistrophe: the river
Thames is first mythologized as a river-god (18-19), then linked with
Oxford as a home of the Muses, and a 'sacred band' of dancer-
worshippers. The reference may not be to Oxford's scholars, dancing
along the High Street in full academic fig to worship the Muses, though
such a conceit is diverting, but to the more central idea of Bodley's
Library keeping safe the best works of mind as a holy treasure
belonging to the Muses.
At all events, that is the idea which is driven home in the third strophe,
by a fanfare of eklexis. Bodley's treasure excels that of Delphi which Ion
guarded, because Rouse is 'quaestor gazae nobilioris' (55), 'custodian of
a nobler treasure' than Ion had been. Now to be a 'quaestor' was to hold
a Roman magistracy. But 'gazae' is an oriental loan-word into Latin:
does it glance at the huge accession of oriental books to Bodley in the
seventeenth century? As for Delphi, the other term of this extended
comparison, it was the 'navel' of the Greek world (omphalos ges). All these
cultural allusions, now assembled like the treasures themselves, are to be
surpassed. Diction and allusion are deliberately eclectic in order to
embody the point, the praise of Bodley as a holy treasure-house.
But isn't this preposterous, or at least top-heavy? Doesn't the
hyperbole collapse, and the tone falter? No, because of the context. The
context is of a Greek ecstatic joy, expressing relief after a Roman
confession: the second strophe has spoken of an 'expiation' needed by
England, because not only the lost copy of Milton's poems but a great
deal else, human lives included, in fact all civilitas - civility, in the broad
sense of civilized life and value — has been at risk through 'civil' war.
32 Milton's exercising of his languages
Allusions, to Horace's poems about the enormity of civil war, and to
families sundered, engender a Roman abhorrence. Allusions do not
merely reflect or support the thought. They are the thought. The eclectic
allusions are syncretistic thought: what unites us (like books and the
culture they access) outweighs what divides us. This idea well suits a
librarian and his library, which had a sworn duty to carry on no matter
who was ruling Oxford or England.8 It also suits the multilingual Milton,
not jubilant as a partisan of the winning side in the First Civil War, but
glad that it is over, and he can get back to his studies.
Tone keeps coming into analyses of other, more particular features of
style. Tone, though not comprehensively definable, is irreducible. It
includes how one reads aloud for meaning and expression by responding
to directives in the text - directives such as diction, rhythm and allusion,
which together impel the voice towards description or feeling, where
these are seen as two ends of a scale. Tone guides as to whether the poet
seeks to surprise or fulfil expectation. Tone is carried by function-words
as much as by magniloquence. It is easiest to know where it goes wrong,
in the writing or the rendering. The more concentrated the poem is, the
more tone matters, because it will alter - as in Horace's Odes - more
nimbly, even within a single word.
So much in general, but tone is not nimble for the most part, in
Milton's Latin. (What he might have done, had he written Latin in his
last great phase, who knows? Dramatic U-turns abound in Paradise Lost:
'Thus they relate / Erring...') Things move in general more slowly, and
with a loving amplitude, in his Latin because he then still revered copia.
But changes of tone do not have less importance just because we can
sense their approach. Key transitions of tone are prepared for by diction
with thoroughness - as consolation approaches through digression in the
latter part of the Epitaphium Damonis (140-78, and again 180-97). The
conviction gained by tonal transition is comparable towards the close of
Lycidas. The twists and turns of tone between the parts of the Rouse ode
are what make it ecstatic, yet keep it light; in the whole effect, so
enthusiastic and engaging.
If the reader wonders why praise keeps coming into 'precriticism', it is
not so much clandestine as inherent. Precriticism entails seeing the
artefact from the poet's standpoint, hence in the case of neo-Latin verse
looking down his pen at its colossal intertextuality, and seeing it this way
first. To do so identifies the features of a poem which most merit
attention. Thence begins the implied value-judgement; yet that is still
relative, namely relative to the worth of the whole. I certainly think it
 Milton's multilingual verse 33
right to let this body of poetry put its best foot forward in the present
study, having been ignored or abused for so long.
In what follows, I am not claiming equal merit for each poem, far from
it. As a chronological sketch shows, Milton's Latin moved from
mechanical beginnings through many sorts of exercising, to just a few
poems of distinctive conception. His extant Latin verses were composed
in three quite separate periods of his life. More than half come from his
school and Cambridge years, and in Poems, 1645 he dated many in partial
excuse. But a second body of work received no excuse: the six poems
composed under the stimulus of his reception - as a Latin poet - in Italy,
1638-40. A solitary last poem follows Poems, 1645, the extraordinary 'Ode
to Rouse'. Consequently, most of thefirstgroup represent the learning of
skills whose successes come later. Nonetheless, for the theme of the
development in his knowledge and use of his languages, we need the full
context. That is thefinalprecritical point, or condition of understanding.
The Latin verses move him, from simpler to more compound acts of
eclecticism; from set exercises in known patterns of Imitatio, to interlin-
gual acts of appropriation, moments of self-discovering choice.

THE LATIN POEMS! PLAYING WITH OVID 9

The process of self-discovery begins early, in the engagement with Ovid,

in metre, manner and matter. Though one would not expect sober
Milton to choose sexy Ovid as exemplar, he often does so. Indeed, the
Ovidian Elegiae receive prominent placing in Poems, 1645. This whole
paradox alerts us to something seminal in the choice. The engagement is
no straight-line graph. It resembles zigzags, or probes from a moving
centre. Throughout these (incompatible) acts of appropriation I see him
as playing with Ovid.
We must grasp all that is meant by saying Milton 'plays with' Ovid,
because if the metaphor is to be properly heuristic it needs taking both
seriously and diversely. We play games either strenuously or casually,
with detachment or passion; hence self-expressively, provided we
recognize that play can uncover new selves. I have seen pacifists play
snowballs aggressively, bank managers shine at cheating-games. The
younger Milton plays with Ovid in ways that are exploratory, eristic,
unexpected. Ovid takes him to extremes, including incompatible ones.
Each elegy is a new game, a new pushing of limits. I take them in order of
writing (which is not quite their order in 1645), to show the development
more clearly.
34 Milton's exercising of his languages

To play any game, one learns its rules and develops the necessary
skills. We can watch Milton, aged about 14, learning the arduous rules of
elegiac couplets. 'Carmina Elegiaca' is a school exercise which survives
in manuscript. It survives complete with scansion errors, corrected; and
other errors, some caught, some not. The manuscript, which turned up
with the Commonplace Book in 1874, started off ebulliently on the
theme of 'getting up early5:
Surge, age, surge, leves, iam convenit, arcere somnos
('Arise, haste, arise! Now that the time isright,arrest your gentle slumbers').10
However, subsequent thought revealed that 'arcere' was unmetrical (not
being dactylic where a dactyl is required). So Milton substituted 'excute'
('shake off slumbers).
It is pure exercise, for it says nothing and says it repetitously. The set
theme hardly sounds Ovidian, either; but the metre is, and its rules are.
'Apologus de Rustico et Hero511 seems to be a slightly later exercise. It
renders a familiar fable into elegiacs with no errors, some nice turns of
phrase, but no surprises. It is in the manner yet not the metre of
Phaedrus: the metrics, again, are Ovidian. Both exercises, then, imitate
Ovid as to metre and diction, not ideas or spirit.
The next known elegiacs engage with more of Ovid. They are Elegiae
II and III from 1645™ composed at the age of seventeen to lament the
deaths of two Cambridge worthies. These are probably set verses, for
occasions which someone else decreed should be written upon, and to
that extent they are again exercises. But now Milton rises to the occasion.
For one thing, the two laments are distinct, in purport and tone as in
length.
The lament for the dead beadle (II, 'In Obitum Praeconis') says
suitable things correctly, but also coolly. To say 'Death, the ultimate
Beadle, cruelly hustles you along, fellow-beadle' has a touch of Ovid's
detached, playful spirit, found especially in the frisky repetition mid-line:
Ultima praeconum praeconem te quoque saeva
Mors rapit . . . 13
The lament for Lancelot Andrewes (III, 'In Obitum Praesulis
Wintoniensis') enlists Ovid's material and spirit more overtly. It ends in a
blaze of glory: Milton wakes from a vision of another sort, the vision of
Andrewes in bliss among saints - a decorous, pious thought. But last of
all he wishes he could often dream like this. He echoes a prominent line
of Ovid's:
 Milton's multilingual verse 35
Talia contingant somnia saepe mihi (68)
echoes
Proveniant medii sic mihi saepe dies,
in which Ovid wishes many more such midday sleeps befall him with
Corinna. Respectively the lines say, 'May dreams like these often befall
me!' and 'May middays often turn out like this for me!514 Whereas critics
have worried, or scoffed, that Milton's heavenly bliss should be
expressed in words shaped by pagan erotic bliss, erotic bliss is still bliss,
and Ovid its outstanding celebrator. Milton contests with Ovid to
propose, like Guyon to Mammon, 'another bliss'.15 What is more, even
this early he draws on his other languages to do it, naming 'nablia' as the
music of heaven just before the ending - the Hebrew name of a Hebrew
harp, (nebel) one of very few Jewish imports to Rome and Latin at the
time. Ovid makes a startling explicit entry to the final stage of the vision,
only to find himself (like Shakespeare's Bottom) 'translated'.
In Elegia I Milton responds to a chosen, not set occasion, being a
verse-letter of news to his closest friend, Diodati. Since Ovid had written
verse-letters in elegiacs from exile, Milton's poem is to be read as a
comparison piece, of Ovid's literal and hated exile with Milton's
metaphorical and delightful 'exile', from Cambridge to London. Yes,
fate could be crueller than this. Just as he turned Ovid's levity to gravity
in III, he now turns Ovid upside down the other way.
The poem bubbles along describing the pleasures of London life,
chiefly play-going and a sociable street-gazing. The plays sound less
English than Roman (Plautus or Seneca), so Milton is Romanizing. But
rather, he is combining Ovid and other Romans with his Englishness, to
make a city which is an 'amalgam' of reality and literature. Thus a
play-scene that sounds especially Ovidian could equally be Shakespear-
ian, that of the girl who is in love without knowing it:16
Quid sit amor nescit, dum quoque nescit amat (36).17
(She knows not love, and while she knows not, loves)[my version].
Here is an appreciative Ovidian flourish, in the way syntax achieves
chiasmus not despite but through the symmetry of the pentameter's
prosody ('amor nescit'/'nescit amat').
The poem has brought up a fundamental principle of neo-Latin
creativity, in that phrase the 'amalgam of reality and literature'. Imitatio,
whether it be of Ovid or any other classical exemplar in Latin, empowers
36 Milton's exercising of his languages
the neo-Latin poet, to create a landscape and characters and attitudes
and themes which transfigure both the exemplar and the poet's own
reality. They come from a world which never existed because instead it
combines the worlds which existed through the whole of the classical
tradition; what the Romans took over from the Greeks, together with the
further legacy of Rome. When humanist poets bring in their own life too,
they clothe it and enrich it with these colossal riches of experience. What
Gordon Williams so aptly says of the Greco-Roman world of Roman
comedy applies equally to the ambience of Ovidian elegy, and further to
all neo-Latin poetry.

What happens here - and elsewhere in Plautus - is that the dramatist transfers
the action from a setting in a Greek city to a world that is neither Greek nor
Roman, but both - a purely imaginary world . . . [He] made full use of the
tension between the Greek milieu and the Roman audience.18
So in the quick sketches of plays seen in London Milton is not consulting
his diary entries under Tlays Seen Whilst Rusticated', but creating a
composite London from reading Plautus and Terence, and perhaps
from seeing Latin college plays.
More overtly Ovidian is the passage where Milton praises London for
its beautiful women. Not only does Ovid release an unusual thought in
Milton, Milton makes it his own. Ovid had written that 'Rome has as
many nubile girls as the sky has stars', as an excited fornicative
parenthesis; the tenor is the welcome number of the women. But Milton
(as at the ending of III) appropriates the thought to alter the feeling, into
a slower comparison of female beauty to that of the stars; the tenor has
become panegyric of London. Without claiming that he surpasses Ovid
here (since anyone in their right mind would prefer the latter's prodigal
swiftness), Milton turns Ovid's indelicate thought to one almost tran-
scendentally delicate. Moreover, he heads for the most challenging
points of the Imitatio. Accordingly, out of Imitatio issues an individual,
esemplastic, Latin voice.
The remaining four Elegiae are more assured and ambitious in this
appropriating of Ovid. In IV (aged 18) he writes another verse-letter
about exile, this time to a friend, Thomas Young. Young is Milton's
former tutor, and is now undergoing religious exile (though 'expatri-
ation' would be a more accurate name for it) in Germany, and is at risk
from the Thirty Years War: the Ovidian theme of exile emphasizes the
contrast in gravity of the issues underlying the exile, which are Milton's
own choice of issues. The contrast is handled adeptly. The poem starts in
 Milton's multilingual verse 37
quiet Ovidian playfulness, addressing the letter as it sets off overseas, but
builds to a prophetic comforting of Young. The prophetic element takes
over from the Ovidian, citing biblical Yahweh-rescues in a Virgilian
more than Ovidian sonority. The metre and diction remain Ovidian,
nonetheless, making the poem a very striking and personal combining of
exemplars, across genres and even cultures.
In Elegia VII (age 19) Milton strives to outdo Ovid in a totally different
way.19 He writes of being shot by Cupid's arrow, and describes the
Cherubino-like erotic flutter which follows. He plays Ovid at his own
game now. Although he loses, naturally, the point here is that he goes to
another extreme in his playing with Ovid. A palinode is again written and
placed just as Ovid did it. It rejects this erotic, in the name of academic
(Platonic) austerity - Greek restoring the balance.
In Elegia V (age 20) he goes in yet another direction, not that of witty
reversals but to another extreme. The extreme is of pagan joy in nature
naturing, nature seen as divine, with the help of a deity-crowded
countryside.20 The poem plays with the spirit of Ovidian polytheism.
In Elegia VI (age 21, and conscious of this age of maturity) he writes to
Diodati again. Again he writes about how each spends his time, which
brings out the contrast with the earlier letter; for Milton talks especially
about poetry, both in general as a vocation with an associated austere
regimen, and about recent poems in particular.21 A Roman type of
conversation is conducted, with much of Horace now, yet it remains
Ovidian in metre and diction. For good measure, though, it ranges back
to Greece (Pindar, mentioned in lines 23-6); then sideways to the birth of
Christ, subject of the poem he has just written (the Nativity Ode, on his
21st birthday). Finally, the 'conversation' with Diodati comes up to the
European, multilingual present since its signing-off point is to mention he
is sending Diodati his recent poems in Italian.22
In this whole sustained, extreme, wide-ranging playing with Ovid
Milton is exploring himself and his languages. The playing encourages
him to seek out points of contact. Connection underlines difference, yet
here with a joy in the difference. The Latin of these Elegiae*3 shows a
Milton more relaxed than elsewhere. They show a Milton who is ready
to follow a genre and exemplar for not simply metre and diction but
thought and attitude. Milton uses Ovid as a lever or hypothesis, a
poetical weight-lifting sport.
38 Milton's exercising of his languages
THE LATIN EXEMPLARS! DIVERSITY AND CHOICE

We cannot be sure that before he was twenty-one Milton's Latin

composing inclined as heavily towards elegiacs as the selection and
arrangement of 1645 suggest; but the existence of manuscript elegiacs,
together with a further group of elegiac epigrams, does imply that he was
most regular in practice of elegiacs. If so, it is easy to see why. They were
beloved of teachers, and were the most exacting of metres; a tautology
perhaps. Milton, nonetheless, went in search of other technical difficul-
ties, and practised quite numerous other exercises, to judge by the poems
he selected and how he arranged them for 1645. In this search he was
obeying technical challenges, which appeal - as 'the fascination of what's
difficult' - to multilingual poets who are worth their salt. He obeyed a
more spiritual challenge, too: what did those Roman exemplars in each
kind and metre have to say, to him and through him, and how might he
reply to them? Is it merely fanciful to see in the succession of metres and
masters within his Sylvae a sort of dead poets' society, a speaking for
himself in answer to their best achievement? That achievement is
assessed not dismissively, but from a base of understanding, of which
Imitatio made a part. At any rate, their diversity and their sequence alike
demand attention.
I address diversity, first, and sequence in the next section.
He wrote other elegiacs, but short ones, epigrams; having not Ovid
only but Catullus or Martial as exemplar. The caustic invective-
epigrams are early, set-pieces on the Gunpowder Plot. Epigrams as
praise-poetry, of the singer Leonora Baroni, come from his Italian
journey. He is attempting most of the traditional uses of Latin elegiacs.
Twice, though, he writes in the ode metres of Horace. The stanza-
form is peculiarly demanding when he writes on the death of a
Vice-Chancellor. Their stanza-form is Alcaics, beloved of Horace.
(twice over)

The first two lines combine iambic with dactylic, so that the line speeds
up after the caesura. The third line slows things down, being mainly
iambic throughout (two regulation metra); whereupon, in most elegant
contrast, the fourth and final line is mainly dactylic, yet the close varies
even that, into trochaic. The accomplishment, of getting Latin into such
a metre, was considerable for Horace: because the metre is Greek, and
suits Greek more easily, Horace had risen to the challenge.24
 Milton's multilingual verse 39
I hope the reader can sense the firm beauty of this varied structure: it
resembles the structures of Mozart or Beethoven for keyboard, because
these too depend on pacing, entail rhythm, and encourage melody. So
Milton girded up his loins. Just feel the zest as he rolls out the last fourth
line, the resounding dactylic close for the vision of yet another
Cambridge worthy gone to heaven,
Interque felices perennis (steady and solemn, ~ - x)
Elysio spatiere campo.25 (freer, -~~-ww-~- x)
This zest shows the love of difficulty, and helps explain the unprece-
dented pyrotechnical metres of the 'Ode to Rouse' at the end of this
oeuvre.
In opposite vein - perhaps ringing the changes - he imitates the
hexameter of Juvenalian satire (harsh, not Horatian-kindly) in his longest
Latin poem, In Quintum Novembris.26 Because its Satan-journey fore-
shadows that of Paradise Lost, this long and limp action has been
overrated. In the present connection its interest lies rather in local,
stylistic effects. To the manner and tone ofJuvenal Milton - unprece-
dentedly, I think — adds a neo-Latin exemplar, Buchanan: he owes
words, subject, tone and scorn to that poet's attack on the Franciscan
order.27 Beyond that, he coins more Latin words of his own in this poem
than in all his other poems together.28 Despite or because the poem is
intellectually null, Milton's creative talentsflowinto words and images of
his own; 'Mavortigenae', 'Tricoronifer', 'panificos [deos]'29 and so on,
almost all of them resounding epithets which match the tone perfectly -
grandiose but mocking, inflating the object in order to scorn it. He is
unsubtle, but zestful: even if his Protestant sympathies are having a
self-indulgent workout, the language enjoys a glorious freedom. So does
the metre; not through invention, though, but through his most varying
exploitation of antiquity-sanctioned hexameter practices. Examples
include the spondaic
Et mendicantum series longissima. fratrum (58)
(stressing that the mendicants make a long crocodile) and the Greek
clausula

Orgia cantantes in Echionio Aracyntho. (65)

Latin avoided four-syllable words at a line-end, excepttor Greek names. 30
These virtuosities must be recalled when we consider the development
rather than diversity of his Imitatio in this arena; for he later restricts
40 Milton's exercising of his languages

vocabulary and metrical virtuosity in moving closer to Virgil (and he will

move from end-stopped lines to verse-paragraph). Here he avails himself
of the freer Latinity practised by satire, to have fun.
His next hexameters, nonetheless, are philosophical and Lucretian.
Arguing that the universe does not decay though it will burn up in a final
conflagration, Milton plunders Lucretius for words, phrases, ideas,
cadences, thesis, indeed just about everything. How does it come about
that the indignant Protestant of In Quintum Novembris takes up here with
the atheistic Epicurean? Philip Hardie has shown how much Paradise Lost
owes to Lucretius for its conception as an epic of knowledge;31 but the
affinity begins much earlier, in this Latin poem of rational scorn. Some
of the Latin well suits a poet who was of £a very satirical temper', and so
trilled or growled his rs:32 hear them growl in

Heu quam perpetuis erroribus acta fatiscit

Avia mens hominum, tenebrisque immersa profundis . . .
(Alas! how persistent are the errors by which the wandering mind of man is
pursued and overwearied, and how profound is [his] darkness)33

Not only the topos, but the words, foreground Lucretius ('fatiscit/Avia').
Milton has struck gold here, and mines it throughout.34
I bypass the remaining metres and their exemplars. The metres
include iambics, scazontes and so on; often as mediated through the
ebullient, youthful exemplar Catullus. These are bypassed, because it
should be clear by now that Milton went amongst his Latin and other
authors to experiment; to try out sound and scope and tone and vision.
He even - surprisingly for such a dogmatic and vocationally driven
Protestant - experimented with other people's visions, by taking them
over for the duration of a poem; and not in small doses or half-heartedly
either, but to an extreme, in intensely imaged multicultural fusings of
perception.
Such experimentation is unique to his Latin poems. It gives them their
unique importance to the reader who is mainly interested in this Milton
for the sake of the later sage. Yet equally it guides those - fit audience
though few indeed - who are prepared to read this body of poetry for its
own merits. Milton is trying things out, in continual new combinations
and tones, which leads him to his best moments; best in terms of Latin
poetry and perception alike.
 Milton's multilingual verse 41

THE LATIN EXEMPLARS! RISING TOWARDS VIRGIL,

AND BEYOND

Within Milton's 'playing' with Ovid and the others, there is a hierarchy
as well as a deliberately cultivated diversity. One cannot miss a
gravitational pull within the second half of the Poemata, the iSylvae\
towards Virgil. First, we meet hexameters based on other exemplars. But
then, 'Ad Patrem', written straight after Cambridge, begins a series of
Virgilian hexameters. Mansus and Epitaphium Damonis close the whole
collection with Virgilian hexameters. But indeed, Virgil is even more
conscious to Milton's mind in the editing and self-presenting of the 1645
volume. A choice is being made.
To understand that choice, we should remember certain things about
Virgil's reputation and influence. For a thousand years he was regarded
as a sage, prophet or magus. One of his eclogues was interpreted to
foretell Messiah's birth. He appears in medieval romances as a
wonder-worker. Dante chooses him as the best of the pagans to guide
him in the afterlife. Still in the Renaissance his text was used for
divination, in the sortes Virgilianae (fortune-telling by seeing where the text
randomly opened). It is said that when Charles I opened up his copy of
Virgil he read of a severed head, rolling. To renaissance poets, though
they demythologized him, his life as a poet gave a normative shape to
vocation. The aspiring poet should follow Virgil by starting with
pastoral, and come to epic last; as Spenser therefore did.35
Milton cannot have been unaware of Virgil in writing smaller poems
before his big pastorals in English then Latin. His hopes of attaining to
epic or tragedy (equal highest genres since Aristotle linked them) were
linked with his emulation of Virgil. So was his practice of referring within
a poem to ones he had written before and to the higher ones he hopes to
write. Though other ancients could have provided the same guidance, it
was Virgil whose career was schematized in the Virgilian 'rota'. Virgil's
sequence of genres had become a hierarchy and career-model for poets,
with associated schemas of decorum and diction.36 It was natural for
Milton so to edit his Latin poems in 1645 as to make a Virgilian
gravitation appear towards its later groupings, and most strongly on the
title-page and in the final poem. We see what he wants us to see. He
wants that gravitation to be felt by us because he first felt it.
But this gravitation can be felt in local details, too; in the detail we
explained precritically (diction, prosody, allusion and eclecticism), and
in tone as the oeuvre and its volume conclude on Epitaphium Damonis. I
42 Milton3s exercising of his languages
take these seriatim once more, to show how Milton's Latin poems grow
towards Virgil, in the writing and the 1645 placement.
Diction shows Milton's growing into Virgil both negatively and
positively. Most of Milton's Latin coinages occur early: in his latest, most
Virgilian poem I found no coinages. This restraint is matched by the
increase in Virgilian diction and usage. Much of it comes from the choice
of subject and model, for example from the use of a refrain like that of
Eclogue VIII, but also in rephrased half-lines from Eclogues VII and
VIII. Though these of course are not separable from the choice of model,
the whole Imitatio, they are recognizedby the reader in this verbal detail.37
Prosody demonstrates more fully how Virgil was gaining possession of
Milton's Latin ear. Consider, for example, the verse-paragraphing. It
gains in shape and coherence by diminishing. The average length of a
verse-paragraph moves from 25 lines (In Quintum Novembris) through 23
('Ad Patrem') to 11*5 in the Epitaphium. Milton is learning to curb his copia.
Moreover, the quality of the paragraphing improves in that epitaph; for
now paragraphs are defined by the refrain, but also move from really
short to long to longer as the passion rises; indeed finally it so rises that
the refrain drops away. The verse-paragraphing has become onomato-
poeic. Manifestly a debt is owed to Virgil here, because the poem's shape
is based on Eclogue VIII.
The case is similar with the development from more to fewer
end-stopped verses. To identify mid-line pausing as larger than the
habitual, required caesura-pause will involve subjectivity (nor can the
punctuation 0^1645 be trusted far).38 Nevertheless, whether one relies on
1645 or on one's own sense of major pausing, thefiguresmove from fewer
to more numerous. My counting showed a trend from seven in 225 lines
of In Quintum Novembris to eighteen in 218 lines of the Epitaphium -
compare (and contrast) the ten in 70 lines of Virgil's Eclogue VII
Verse-paragraphing, and mimetic suppleness within it, seem not to have
come readily to Milton, or he saw little need for them; even so, he moves
dramatically towards Virgilian practice in the Epitaphium.
It is the same if we measure a subtler relationship of sound to rhythm,
the degree of symmetry between accent (word-stress) and ictus (quanti-
tative length of syllable) in the fourth foot of the hexameter. Milton
moves towards a proportioning like Virgil's.39
Allusion tells the same story. Virgilian allusion stands out most in the
Epitaphium, being foregrounded as the borrowing or adapting of whole
phrases, even half-lines, from the Eclogues. And yet it is his best, and his
most independent Latin poem to date: that is the paradox.
 Milton's multilingual verse 43
Milton's development is towards Virgil and autonomy together. He
does not emulate Virgil too early; he does it late, when ripe. No doubt the
preexistent hierarchy (the rota) helped. Nonetheless, Milton enters into,
and endorses, the general judgement of hierarchies. He does it without
servility or haste. He does it more as he grows into it and appropriates it.
Nor had he finished with Virgil as mentor. Virgil, whose influence is
proclaimed from the title-page onwards in Poems, 1645, had been deeply
absorbent of Homer yet changed him when composing the Aeneid. In
doing this he was Milton's own best model of how to absorb both Virgil
and Homer for his own epic.

FROM LATIN TO GREEK

In many respects Milton's Greek poems work as his Latin ones do, or fail
as they fail. He chooses an ancient exemplar and metre, and pours into
that mould thoughts of his own. His conception of the required diction
and prosody is again synchronous, and this time surely to excess. The
diction, for instance, may range within one poem between Homer and
Hesychius, approaching 1500 years of language-change!40 The charge of
pastiche is more relevant to this dictionary-hunting than to the mere 150
years of synchronicity in his Latin verse. Even so, he captures selected
portions of a Greek spirit, which not only enliven these few and simple
pieces but point to a crucial interlingual development over the years to
1645.
To call them Tew and simple pieces', and to recognize they contain
more blunders than the whole of Milton's Latin, is to make their
difference from his Latin plain enough. Some explanation of the fact is
needed, since Milton's Greek scholarship (as we shall see) was extended
and high-powered. The natural cause is the one which Milton implies
when sending his Homeric version of Psalm 114 to his friend who had
taught him Greek: 'since I left your school, this is thefirstand only thing I
have composed in Greek'.41 He did much less of this kind of composing,
and was usually rusty when he did. The reason he gives is lack of
audience; 'in this a g e . . . Greek composition runs a risk of singing mostly
to the deaf. It is an extreme instance of the fit-audience-though-few
syndrome.
It did not make him less of an occasional poet. Certainly if he had no
occasions, he would write no poems. But twice out of three times he rose
splendidly to a Greek occasion. One is for the Psalm mentioned. The
other is beneath the botched portrait in Poems, 1645, where the Greek
44 Milton's exercising of his languages

epigram engraved by the botcher conveyed self-ridicule to those, alone,

who did read Greek. At the least, then, his interlingual wit stayed awake
in his Greek. Accordingly, a more sympathetic precriticism than was
needed for the Latin poems may uncover points of interest even in the
worst of his published Greek ones.42

THE GREEK POEMS

The little poem about the philosopher's words to the king who was
having him executed has a strong theme, and some strong things about
its embodiment. The theme resembles the paradoxes of wisdom; of
Socrates to the jury, or Christ before Pilate, or Diogenes speaking from
his barrel to Alexander the Great: 'You need me more than I need you.'
The young Milton thrilled to the heroic sang-froid just as the mature one
did. And Greek, this sort of Greek, befits the thought. The diction and
metre are Homeric, that is, they recall the acme of 'heroic' verse, songs
about heroes heroically fashioned. There was a long tradition of writing
in predominantly Homeric Greek, as did Parmenides or Apollonius
Rhodius, a Greek which included later words and malformed Homeric.
Milton certainly shared that last trait. Yet the emulation itself was
sanctioned and high-aspiring.
Some elements, moreover, win praise. Beginning 'O ana, ei oleseis
me' he shows a good ear, for he is observing Homer's apparent hiatus
between 'O' and 'ana'.43 He does it long before that was explained by Dr
Bentley as the relic of a lost letter, digamma (re;, wau) - something
observed by the oral composer and bards, but omitted in the written
versions whose dialects lacked that sound. The third word, 'oleseis', is
picked up in the poem's last word, 'olesas': if you 'destroy me' your city's
best defence will have been 'destroyed'. It is a kind of pun, interlingually
speaking: there is no word in English to cover the respective applications
of this verb ollumi, first 'kill' then 'lose'. Throughout, he achieves a
Homerical weight and swing in the metre; as in the closure,

Toidnd' *ek pole'6snperi6num6n 'alkar o'lessas.

(because you have made an end to so famous a protection of the city).44
His next Greek poem, of anything up to ten years later, is again
Homeric, in metre and in other respects. But this time a covering letter
explains the attempt quite fully. Though the poem is a Psalm version, he
speaks of it as an 'Ode'. This may be simply a broad term for 'poem' as
 Milton's multilingual verse 45
'song5; but it may rather be because if any genre is higher than epic it will
be ode (as later in his Latin the Rouse ode has a higher style even than the
Epitaphiurri). If so, he hedges his bets, in that the 'ode5 is in Homeric
hexameters. The ode has joint authorship, he says, belonging not to
himself only but 'also to the truly divine poet5, 'whose ode I was adapting
to the rule of Greek heroic verse5 ('ad Graeci carminis Heroici legem . . .
concinnabam5). The metaphors propose an interlingual enterprise, in
fact; a finding of points shared between King David, Homer and himself,
points not peripheral but fundamental to a vision.
This process and its product are of course my own topic in little. Here
is a signal example of both, the earliest perhaps where he became
conscious of his own multilingual powers and chances. For the letter
speaks of the combining as mysterious. It came 'with no deliberate
intention, certainly, but from I know not what sudden impulse before
daybreak5 ('nescio quo impetu5).
Milton's changes to the original tell us the most. They are most
obviously expansions: the laconic parallelism of the Hebrew, reflected in
the terse King James version, becomes a resonant Homeric, hinging
rather on energetic verbs and amplitude of epithetizing. Epithets are a
paramount feature of Homeric style, and Milton is enjoying himself.
'The mountains5 become 'boundless5 ('apeiresia5):45 what a fine adjec-
tive, since except when airborne you can not see the 'bounds5 of a
mountain. (And contrast the epithetizing of his earlier English version a
la Sylvester, whose 'froth-becurled5 waves are fancy not imagination.)46
More dynamically, Egypt5s 'strange people5 gets an interpretative
supercharge, into 'a people hateful and barbarous of speech5, with all the
Greek disdain for non-Greek-speakers in 'barbarophonon5, 'saying
bar-bar, unintelligibly5.)
Verbs are revised the most dynamically. God now 'thunders out
greatness5, rocks 'weep5 with living water for Israel in the wilderness
(lines 17, 22). Best of all, to mimic the universality of 'Judah was his
Sanctuary5 (AV) he finds a special effect, the striking tmesis.
En de theos laoisi mega kreion basileuen
means literally, 'Among, God, the peoples, in great might, he ruled.5
The verb is the compound em-basileuein; but because the inflection of
Greek preserves the interlaced figure from the ambiguity it would have
in English, Milton can place the word 'God5 literally 'among5 the peoples
of the earth. The splitting of the verb is most Homeric, and a similar
effect occurs at Odyssey 15. 413.
46 Milton's exercising of his languages
Milton has forged a splendid paradox. The idea of a sole God,
dwelling among his chosen people on earth, and rescuing them by
visionary wonders on their long pilgrimage to the land he promised
them, could hardly be less like the anthropomorphic limitary godlings of
Homer (whom Fate, moira, governs, not they it). The strange, exciting
feature of line 4 - and by extension of the whole poem, mysteriously
given to Milton - is this: the least Homeric of ideas rings out from the
most Homeric expression. Yoking the sound of Homer to the vision of
David, he has himself sung a new song to the Lord.
He has also for the first time found how to fuse Hellenic with Hebraic,
at points where both are themselves intensely. It happened first in late
1634 in Greek: it lies at the heart of Samson Agonistes (see chapter 10).
The tone and level of occasion of the 1645 epigram (Hughes, p. 142)
are very much lower. Iambics were the metre of spoken interchange,
especially of insult. As something has been said of them already, I make
only this point. The epigram has been faulted for not advancing in the
second two lines beyond the punch of the first two; and for being
anticlimactic, therefore. This is unfair. The second pair does advance,
from saying that anyone would reject this rotten likeness to bidding 'you
my friends', please laugh the artist to scorn; a different address, which is
an imperative aimed at action. Thus in detail as well as in opportunism
the lines perfectly suit their occasion, purpose, and twin audiences.

Whereas with the Latin and even the Greek poems we could discern
development (and progress) over time, the Italian poems belong to one
act of composing, at whose sequence we can only guess. They are as we
read them in Poems, 1645:fivesonnets enfolding a canzone, the whole six
in turn enfolded by the sequence of the English sonnets (of which they
are numbered II-VI). I therefore consider their development in another
sense, that of their development of a single central idea, the idea of
language as love - a new form of playing. The Italian poems require
different assessment here for the further reason that they are Milton's
only known experiment in playing on a living language. He is playing
tunes on a language whose criteria of performance do not come from
codified or traditional rules but from the actual practice of its speech-
community. The issue of audience, or rather audiences, bulks larger.
I perceive at least five audiences, considered one by one here. A first
audience is situated within the poems, as addressees or recipients or
 Milton's multilingual verse 47
listeners (whether named or implied). Another is constituted by the lan-
guage-community of Italian, from 1630 till now. A third is the language-
community of English. A fourth is Milton's friend with the Italian name
and lineage, Charles Diodati. Last comes Milton himself, the experi-
mental language-player of the 1630s who goes public in 1645. Of the five
audiences, the second may hold the greatest interest, for it shows us
Milton's emulation uniquely extended to a living language that is not his
own. Nonetheless, the fourth and fifth hold as great a significance.
Our sense of internal audience is being deliberately varied. Possibly
because the love-situation stays much the same through the six poems,
Milton varies his stance and means of address, foregrounding it to
become a play of wit and virtual theme. Itfitswell with his overt theme,
of the learning to love his Italian lady through the use of Italian itself.
'Donna leggiadra' concentrates at once on address to the lady. By
these opening words, he praises her. Then he names her, but obliquely in
the approved (witty, protective) way of such sonnet-cycles; she is 'Emilia'
because her name honours Emilia the region of Reno and Rubicon.48
Finally he commits himself to a stance, pronominally, choosing the
familiar or intimate ta-form (line 4). By exploiting these formulas of the
Italian sonnet tradition he is amplifying his sense of the lady as audience,
because he is always implying emotion and commitment. But the
following sonnet so extends its simile and prosopopoeia, of his Italian as a
fragile exotic plant lovingly nurtured by a shepherdess, that its address to
the lady is barely noticed ('te', line 8). Greater heed is paid in the terzetti
('sestet') to those who listen in, his fellow countrymen who hear his
Italian but do not understand it. Most heed is paid to personified Amor,
subject of lines 11-12. The canzone, next, shows the compatriots more
forcefully, as mocking his attempts at Italian, but surges past them,
asking the canzone directly to answer for him. He speaks Italian because
'his lady says it is the language in which Amor takes pride'. That is a
climax at mid-point of the sequence (of which it is the mid-line, too). Not
only is she hinting encouragement: he is extending the sense of audience
very widely, from this song (canzone) to all song. The last three sonnets
pivot on further stances and directions of address to audience; for
instance, we meet Diodati again, his Italian name giving a fine opening
flourish to IV. By such means the sense of a varying audience becomes
not simply a source of variation or continuity or entertainment but of
thematic energy, for this risky performance. It really is risky, because he
is experimenting with a medium and its possible voices whose standards
are the birthright of other people, not his, nor equally shared.
48 Milton's exercising of his languages
The Italian language-community, these poems5 second audience,
outweighs the shadowy personages of the poems: what has it made of
Milton's experimenting? Significantly, he did not seek to know. In Poems,
1645, his action of publishing these poems amidst his English sonnets set
them in the half of the double volume which would not be sent to, and
read by, Italian friends. He wanted English readers for them (see next
paragraph). Italian appraisals all come later. By and large, they dislike V
and enjoy VI49; V as a late and flaccid Petrarchanism (the conceit of the
tale of the sigh), but VI as a strong thought, in the heroic mould of
Horace and Tasso, and thus surpassing the usual 'gioco letterario'
(literary sport oxjeu d'esprit) of Italian written by stranieri.50 For VI they are
made to look through the Italian lens, whereas in V the slightness of
content makes them stare at the dirt on it. I suggest, however, that Milton
aimed steadily at a particular segment of this native-speaker audience;
an ideal Italian audience, being his sense of what his greatest prede-
cessors in the Italian love-idiom had achieved. He is trying out the voices
of Petrarch, Dante, Tasso, by the very direct method of writing on
subjects like theirs and using words and images like theirs. This not only
explains his once-again synchronous diction (drawn this time from the
300 years of the greatest Italian love-poetry, a category embracing for
him Dante's Divine Comedy). It also shows us where this experimentation
was aiming, what it was emulating. No other contemporary poetry
comes anywhere near the importance of these Italian poets for Milton as
exemplar and antagonist in his best English poetry. To repeat by the
converse, English poets come nowhere near the importance of these
Italians for his own English poetry.
The English language-community was aimed at in two main ways. As
said above, the general public were targeted in 1645 to be impressed by
this multilinguist, who switched without warning within an English
sonnet-sequence, into Italian which strongly justified the purpose of
doing so - to express love of the Italian lady. This could hardly fail to
impress, either. Testimony is lacking, but the competition was not
severe. Earlier printed poems in Italian by English writers are awkward,
quaint or ridiculous.51
Another English audience was their first reader, the friend to whom
they were sent; the same Diodati who is apostrophized nobly in one of
them. Milton says in a verse-letter to Diodati that 'Tu mihi, cui recitem,
judicis instar eris' (Elegia Sexta, 90).52 It is a fascinating remark in the
present context: after sending Diodati the manuscript of the poems 'in
your ancestral language', he says that Diodati, 'you to whom I am to
 Milton 9s multilingual verse 49
recite them5, shall be 'like a judge' of them. The details need probing,
more than anyone has done. Italian is Diodati's 'ancestral' tongue
('patriis'): how well does that mean he knows and speaks it? Elsewhere,
Milton insists his friend is English, while stressing his Italian (Luccan)
origins and European connection. I suggest that Diodati was born the
cosmopolitan Milton himself became, but that his multilingualism was
not so much of a goal for Milton, the better linguist. He would understand
this Italian verse, but not from a base of threatening native-speaker
fluency, nor from rivalry in versifying it. I take this view partly because of
the next words, 'judicis instar\ The unusual word 'instar' intends some
qualification - he is not simply and absolutely to be the judge - but what
qualification is it? 'Instar' could mean 'equivalent to' a judge, or 'in
effect' a judge. I take it to imply that his friend will be less than a hanging
judge, anyway, and that Milton knows he will need mercy as well as
justice. The reciting will in any case continue a longstanding multilingual
friendship with a teasing rivalry to it. Lastly, note that sending the poems
is not the part that matters to Milton, but the reciting. And 'cui recite'
appears to mean, 'to whom I am to recite them' or 'intend to recite
them': the subjunctive implies purpose and perhaps desire. Milton is
keen to try them out on the fittest and trustiest audience he knows of.
And as for the performing aloud, though he recited Latin verses too as a
matter of course, the yardstick of oral performance of these concoctions
in a living language implies a certain pride and confidence after all. (If
only something more could be found out about Diodati, it might explain
much about Milton's attitude to languages in the whole period up to
Diodati's death, if not beyond.)
The final audience is Milton himself, the multilingual performer. If I
am right in arguing that the poems owe more to Dante even than to
Petrarch, the risky emulation of such exemplars, in such a vernacular,
may be the first signal that Milton knows where the best of all audiences
and judges is; in that poet who wrote first and best about the Questione
della Lingua, who wrote poems in several tongues, and who made Virgil
a character and guide in his greatest poem. With suitable modesty,
these six slight poems hold something prophetic, to which I return in
chapter 8.

CONCLUSION

Milton's verses in his other tongues demonstrate such qualities as skill,

pride, and deference. They show such tendencies as experiment,
50 Milton's exercising of his languages
improvization, revision and retention (both in memory and on paper).
The languages and the periods of his earlier life receive each a different
treatment, which results not just from varying competence but from
personal and cultural factors. Distinctions notwithstanding, all alike
show a youthful zeal for languages themselves, as instruments on which
fine music has been played and he must make some too. 'Playing' is our
best heuristic metaphor for what is going on: a playful, strenuous,
competitive game, played with the living and the great dead alike.
 CHAPTER 3

The Italian journey (1638-9) and language choice

In Italy Milton received acclaim for his poems in several languages, yet
came back resolved to write in English for the English. Why should his
enjoyment of Italy change a polyglot poet into a monoglot?
The question can be restated in terms derived from Leonard Forster's
study of multilingualism in literature.1 Forster distinguishes two kinds of
polyglot, whom we may call 'occasional and 'romantics'. Whereas the
first select the tongue most apposite to a poem's occasion, heeding
decorum in the choice, the second select in such a way as to declare
spiritual allegiance to a single or mother tongue. Occasionals predomi-
nate among the older polyglots, such writers as Huygens or Weckherlin,
while romantics (as might be expected) cluster during and after the
Romantics. Accordingly, Milton might be placed as an early-modern,
transitional figure. One could hypothesize that the experience of Italy
revealed to him his English identity and an allegiance to English; and
that, just as Germany propelled Wordsworth to write of his native
Cumbria, Italy turned an occasional polyglot into a romantic one.
Yet the tempting hypothesis is over-schematic. Instead, though
making use of Forster's distinction, I proceed more inductively, examin-
ing passages which illustrate the polyglot poet's choices - before, during,
and in the wake of the Italian visit. There emerges a winding and
individualistic 'journeying' among his languages, in which that meta-
phor of journeying explains more than is gained by the simple
supposition that Italy triggered a doctrinaire patriotic monoglottism. In
his moments of choice may be understood, not so much why he chose
English, as how he chose it; with what elements of a maturing
personality. But indeed, to answer questions about how he chose
(questions on which his writings about the Italian experience tell us a
good deal) may after all illuminate why.
52 Milton's exercising of his languages

LANGUAGE-CHOICES BEFORE I 6 3 8 : LATIN, ITALIAN, GREEK

Three poems from before 16382 show Milton's awareness of choice of

tongue, while also displaying his unusual range of choice. They are the
poem to his father ('Ad Patrem'), Sonnet 4, and Psalm 114 - in Latin,
Italian, and Greek respectively. Milton writes 'Ad Patrem' as his only
possible, and fitting gift in return for his father's gifts:3

Hoc utcunque tibi gratum, pater optime, carmen

Exiguum meditatur opus, nee novimus ipsi
Aptius a nobis quae possint munera donis
Respondere tuis, quamvis nee maxima possint
Respondere tuis . . . (6-10)
(Whether you approve or not, best of fathers, [my Muse] is now engaged on this
poem - this little offering - and I do not know what I may give you that can more
fittingly repay your gifts to me. In fact, though, even my greatest gifts could
never repay yours.)4
Then, after praising his father's negative gifts (his not forcing his son
into a commercial or legal career (lines 68-75)), he moves over to the
positive ones. At once, lightly leaping over the usual kindnesses of fathers
to their sons, he dwells lovingly upon 'greater ones', 'maiora [officia]':
Officium chari taceo commune parentis;
Me poscunt maiora. Tuo, pater optime, sumptu
Cum mihi Romuleae patuit facundia linguae,
Et Latii veneres, et quae Iovis ora decebant
Grandia magniloquis elata vocabula Graiis,
Addere suasisti quos iactat Gallia flores,
Et quam degeneri novus Italus ore loquelam
Fundit, barbaricos testatus voce tumultus
Quaeque Palaestinus loquitur mysteria vates. (77-85)
(I will not mention the kindnesses which a loving father usually bestows upon his
son: there are more considerable kindnesses5 which demand my attention. Best
of fathers, when the eloquence of the Roman tongue had been made accessible
to me, at your expense, the beauties of Latin and the high-sounding words of the
sublime Greeks, words which graced the mighty lips ofJove himself, then you
persuaded me to add to my stock those flowers which are the boast of France,
and that language which the modern Italian pours from his degenerate mouth
(his speech makes him a living proof of the barbarian invasions) and also those
mysteries which the prophet of Palestine utters.)
In other words, once his son had mastered Latin and Greek ('patuit
facundia'), the father urged him to study French, Italian, and Hebrew
 The Italian journey (1638-g) and language choice 53
('addere suasisti') and paid for the tutoring. Who would have supposed
that the love of languages in Milton needed fatherly persuasion?!
Whether or not the words are strategic exaggeration (to win continuance
of subsidy) Milton binds together his language acquirements and his filial
gratitude, to suggest that his love thereby becomes unusual, ergo
heartfelt.
In the two passages together there join the ideas of language
endowment, poetic vocation and the love a son has for such a father. The
poem glows with a sense of occasion, although we do not know what
occasion. It enacts the gratitude it describes.
Then what about the choice of medium for this occasion? Why should
he choose Latin, and hexameters, and Virgil as exemplar? Latin is
Milton's first foreign tongue, the tongue of humanist discourse and of
commemorative permanence. Hexameters are the highest and gravest
Latin metre. They are particularly the medium of Virgil in the Aeneid
where he celebrates 'pietas', dutiful love.6 The poem teems with words of
relationship, especially for the bonds and gifts between father and son:
'Aptius a nobis quae possint munera donis / Respondere tuis?' ('What may I
give you that can more fittingly repay your gifts to me?'). The words I have
Stressed are brought together and enjambed by hyperbaton, striking
departures from ordinary word-order, to mime the idea of reciprocity.
Such observations demonstrate how Latin makes part of the decorum,
and equally of the subject. Through Latin, precisely, the poet glimpses a
bond between love for a person and the love of languages, together with
wider-reaching intimations of the nature of love.
Such connections are sought differently, and more explicitly, in the
Italian poems. The climax of the canzone is the declaration, 'Questa e
lingua di cui si vanta Amore' ('This, Italian, is the language on which
Love prides himself'(i5)). Though the idea has ample precedent,7 it has
especial force here - the force of rightness of occasion, as he writes in
Italian for an Italian lady whose worth includes her skill with languages
(rv. 10). The truth and worth of his love are shown in his risking mockery
to attempt the 'strange tongue' (in. 7, and Canzone passim). For 'Love
has willed the attempt', 'Amor lo volse' (in. 11). That this is said not as a
mere conceit but in earnest, is affirmed by the echo of Dante ('Amor lo
strinse' at Inferno v. 129); for along with Dante's words Milton assimilates
Dante's steady, idealizing tone.8
Sonnet 4 best shows the interlocking of choice of language with ideas
about language and about the love-occasion:
54 Milton's exercising of his languages
Diodati, e te'l diro con maraviglia,
Quel ritroso io, ch'Amor spreggiar solea
E de' suoi lacci spesso mi ridea
Gia caddi, ov' uom dabben talor s'impiglia.
Ne treccie d'oro, ne guancia vermiglia
M5 abbaglian si, ma sotto nuova idea
Pellegrina bellezza che'l cuor bea,
Portamenti alti onesti, e nelle ciglia
Quel sereno fulgor d' amabil nero,
Parole adorne di lingua piu d'una,
E '1 cantar che di mezzo 1' emisfero
Traviar ben pud la faticosa Luna,
E degli occhi suoi awenta si gran fuoco
Che P incerar gli orecchi mi fia poco.9
(Diodati, I'll tell you something which absolutely amazes me: I, the coy creature
who used to scorn love, I who made a habit of laughing at his snares, have now
fallen into his trap (which sometimes does catch a good man). It is not golden
tresses or rosy cheeks which have dazzled me like this, but a foreign beauty,
modelled on a new idea of loveliness, which fills my heart with joy: a proud, yet
modest bearing; and that calm radiance of lovely blackness in her eyes and
lashes; her speech which is graced by more than one language, and her singing
which might well draw down the labouring moon from mid-air. And such bright
fire flashes from her eyes that it would not be much good for me to seal up my
ears.)

Much here is purely conventional of course, and modelled on

Petrarch. Nevertheless, all hinges on the attraction of what is foreign,
alien, different - a 'pellegrina bellezza', a 'foreign beauty'. Milton is
extending the range of his admirations, to his own and other people's
surprise. But the role of language and of language-choice is crucial.
Behind the manifest influence of Petrarch are sensed those of Dante
and Plato. Allusion to Dante, whom Milton preferred as a love poet
along with Petrarch ('the two famous renowners of Beatrice and
Laura'),10 is instrumental in creating a steady ideal ardour: 'sotto nova idea
/ Pellegrina bellezza che'l cuor bea! (rv. 6-7), 'modelled on a new idea of
loveliness, which fills my heart with beatitude'. 'Idea' is convergent
testimony to the hyperbole: both the Platonic absolute of beauty, eidos or
idea in Greek, and the sonnet tradition's neoplatonizing of the particular
lady as epitome or standard of all beauty. The rhyming of 'idea' with
'bea' sounds out strongly at the point where the sonnet turns from
negation to affirmation. What is more, Milton is sharing the new love
with his closest friend, Diodati, whose Italian name and understanding
 The Italian journey (1638-g) and language choice 55
of Italian launch the sonnet. The meeting of friendship and eros within
the Italian hints at the Platonic belief that other loves contribute to
perfect love - presumably because in loving persons for ideas seen
embodied in them, and in loving an idea which is found in Italian, the
speaker finds the persons and the language coalescing into a single
life-expanding excitement. Since the lady's accomplishments include
being multilingual, and he loves her for that, the love of languages is
integral to this love. Italian itself resembles a ground where love can
meet, a source upon which they draw.
In his Greek version of Psalm 114 further loves meet.11
6T6 TTOCTSES, 6T* dyAaa cpOV 'IOKCO(3OU
AiyuTTTiov A lire 5fj|jiov, &nv$kcx, (3appapo9covov,
Ar| TOTE JJOOVOV ir|v oaiov ysvos vies 'Io08a.
'Ev 6e 8sds AaoTai \xkya Kpsicov (3C«TIAEU6V.
(When the children of Israel, when the glorious tribes of Jacob left the land of
Egypt, hateful, barbarous in speech, then indeed were the sons of Judah the one
devout race; and God ruled in great might among the peoples.)
The occasion now being the awed love of God, the tongue chosen has a
different relation to the subject. One might expect no relation: what has
Old Testament theophany to do with Homer's anthropomorphic
polytheism? No doubt Milton chose Homer as a model so as to match
elevated subject with elevated metre, but I see more of challenge: the
challenge to find out whether two opposing loved grandeurs can
enhance one another.
At times they can. In thefirstline, the Greek preserves the parallelism
which is so typical of the original, but reshapes it to the elegant
asymmetry of the hexameter line, which hinges by caesura earlier than
mid-line. A mingling of symmetry with asymmetry is gained by the
joining of anaphora (on 'hote') with amplification (a three-word unit
balancing one of two words): 'Israel hote paides, hot' aglaa phuP
Iakobou' ('when the sons of Israel, the glorious tribes ofjacob ...'). The
third line squeezes a most Hebraic thought, the exclusive holiness of
Israel, into Homer's Greek. Whereupon, the fourth line does the same
yet more strikingly. The very Homeric tmesis which divides the prefix
'em'- from its verb-root '-basileuen' mimics sense by syntax, because
thanks to Greek's inflectedness and the hyperbaton together 'God' is
positioned, literally, 'among the peoples'. 'Among, God, the peoples,
reigned'. Milton weds the two loved languages.
Nonetheless, the challenge which I have inferred was not so much
56 Milton's exercising of his languages

conscious as mysterious to him, since he writes that 'with no deliberate

intention certainly, but from I know not what sudden impulse before
daybreak, I adapted... this ode of the truly divine poet, almost in bed, to
the rule of Greek heroic verse' ('nullo certe animi proposito, sed subito
nescio quo impetu ante lucis exortum').12 Now, this being the time of day
at which he begins his Nativity Ode, and at which later he habitually
composed for Paradise Lost, we should note that the Psalm, like those
works, came to him unbidden: can we conclude that it came in answer to
some hidden imperative, an imperative to combine Hebraic and
Homeric by idealizing each? At all events, the combining was an act of
obeying, of unwilled allegiance.

BEFORE AND AFTER I 6 3 8

If we now refer the choices so far examined to our opening distinction

between occasional and romantic polyglots, we find Milton to be both at
once. The choice of tongue suits an occasion and declares an allegiance.
The choosing becomes part of the subject. If so, however, why did
Milton abandon his polyglot excellence to write in English for the
English? At least from the present perspective it seems like voluntary
self-diminution.
Common-sense explanations have not been lacking. In thefirstplace,
his decision has the normal fitness of occasion, because if his best work is
to be a national epic for his own countrymen, and for as many as possible
of them, he must address them in their mother-tongue. Secondly, it
would be natural for him, given the changes wrought in him by extended
European travel, to want to renew his sense of roots. Thirdly, he declares
that during his visit to Italy he became preoccupied by the political crises
back home.13
Yet even these truisms do not wholly suffice. The epic of England did
not eventuate - not in the projected form of an Arthur-epic, nor in any
epic of national history. Milton's subsequent poetry does not interweave
the subject and the chosen tongue by the sense of occasion which we
have come to expect. He does not renew that romantic allegiance to the
mother-tongue which wefindin the early 'Hail native language...' 14 We
expect self-sacrifice of Milton, but hardly self-diminution. Part of the
conundrum remains.
My own view is this: he did not give up his languages, and did not
diminish himself; rather, the interinanimating of his languages increased
through abrupt zigzags of development, in the course of the Italian visit
 The Italian journey (1638-9) and language choice 57
and in its wake; until his languages came to intersect where they could
best intersect, within his English. And this, I believe, is what my inductive
method reveals, if it is applied to the crucial, albeit sparse, evidence of
Milton's poetic development between 1638 and 1645.

IN ITALY AND IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS

A striking, yet indecisive passage occurs in Mansus, written about January

1639 when Milton was leaving Naples to return north. In this familiar
passage, weaving in a complimentary linking of his host Manso with his
poetic aspirations, he adumbrates a poem on the kings of his native land,
and singles out Arthur:
O mihi si mea sors talem concedat amicum
Phoebaeos decorasse viros qui tarn bene norit,
Si quando indigenas revocabo in carmina reges,
Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem,
Aut dicam invictae sociali foedere mensae
Magnanimos Heroas, et - O modo spiritus adsit -
Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges!
(78-84)15
(O may it be my good luck to find such a friend, who knows so well how to
honour Phoebus' followers, if ever I bring back to life in my songs the kings of my
native land and Arthur, who set wars raging even under the earth, or tell of the
great-hearted heroes of the round table, which their fellowship made invincible,
and - if only the inspiration would come - smash the Saxon phalanxes beneath
the impact of the British charge.)
Milton does not say what language the poem will be in. One could
argue it either way; that he writes of Arthur in Latin here, and only in
Latin could Manso and his ilk receive it; or that Italians like Manso
would well understand that a national epic went best with the national
vernacular. We simply cannot decide the question. What is clear, is the
manner of the proposal: his eager enthusiasm for the subject of Arthur,
the simple British (Celtic) patriotism which leads him to envisage joining
Arthur in the Saxon-smashing. I infer he has just possessed the subject,
or it has just possessed him. It has not struck him that Arthur may be a
myth, nor that an English poet may owe more to the Saxons than to their
British predecessors. 16
T h e key passage regarding the choice of English for his British epic is a
long passage (lines 125-84) towards the end of Epitaphium Damonis17
which, in its eloquence and informativeness alike, best reveals the
manner of his choosing of English.
58 Milton's exercising of his languages
The context is quite complex. Milton is writing of his Italian
experiences of 1638-9 from the perspective of England in 1640, that is,
from the perspective of return. The reminiscences have a mixed value,
for even while 'Thyrsis' (Milton) was enjoying Italy, his friend 'Damon'
(Diodati, the addressee of Sonnet 4) was dead in England. Accordingly,
it is pain to reminisce; yet not entirely so, for Italy was worthwhile, and
good to recall; and indeed it has permanently enlarged his being. 'O ego
quantus eram...' (129), 'how great I felt then' - and by extension still do,
in recalling. Besides, since the dead friend came from Lucca (128), to visit
Italy including Lucca was in a way to visit him; it was an act of pietas.
So, indeed, is the entire reminiscence, and the poem itself. It is a gift: a
conversation with the dead, and a praising of the dead. And thefitnessof
Latin is therefore extraordinary. Latin was the language in which Milton
had previously written letters to his friend,18 as well as the language in
which Milton had composed the poems which won him reputation
among the 'shepherd-poets' of Italy (132-8).
This is an internal fitness, of Latin to occasion. The external, wider
fitness is simply that Latin is the language of commemoration, be it on
statues or on graves: it has the needed dignity and tradition, gravitas and
permanence. The excellence of the Latin, then, adds worth to what is
already the natural gift.
More still, however, this most ambitious of Milton's Latin poems is
also virtually his last.19 In view of the further fact that this poem
announces his next major poem will be in the mother-tongue, not Latin,
is Milton in some way laying Latin verse itself- his medium as well as his
message - as a votive tribute in Damon's grave? Be that as it may, the
sense of occasion in the using of Latin for this farewell is even richer than
in our previous examples.
To all this in the manner of Milton's choosing of Latin must be added
the manner of the reminiscence itself. He says he felt excited and proud
as he lay beside the Arno and listened to the 'singing contests' there (132).
He made so bold as to compete himself ('Ipse', 133). He did well,
moreover, for the Florentine poets (Tastores Thusci', 126 and 134) gave
him gifts (134-5) - including poems recording his friendship with Damon
(136-8). Still imagining himself back in that past, he had turned in
thought to address Diodati in England, who he thought was enjoying an
equivalent pastoral life but alas was already dead (142-54). He imagined
Damon collecting healing herbs (150-2); and these jolt him back to the
fact, that herbs could not heal the healer (153-4). A tumult of feelings is
felt in the manner hereabouts - in the twofold 'Ah' (142, 153), or the
imprecation upon medicine for failing (153).
 The Italian journey (1638-9) and language choice 59
Moved by grief and love together, he nevertheless continues the
reminiscing (156).20 The time referred to is complex, because it is excited:
two times have been conflated, the happy past and the wretched present.
A third time is now introduced, antecedent to the first recollected time.
'Eleven days ago, my pipe was sounding out some grand song: I had just
set my lips to a new set of pipes, but they fell apart, broken at the
fastenings, and were unable to carry the deep sounds. I hesitate to appear
a little puffed up, yet I shall tell the tale. Give place, you forests' (Vos
cedite silvae'). His state of mind was (and remains) ambitious. The new,
grand subject proves too much for his instruments, in spite or because of
their newness. He remains proud of attempting. He must confide it,
whether in the time recollected or the time of the memorial poem; he
must, even at the risk of hubris. Let pastoral therefore stand aside: that is,
the next passage will rise above the typical pastoral register (as do some
parts ofLycidas); and the poem which he now describes will as a whole
rise thus higher. The excitement is conveyed by the number of the times
incorporated, and if these times coalesce, so much the better for the
theme of friendship that mere clock-time can be thus transcended.
The following paragraph,21 mainly given to summarizing of the
British material of the new work, likewise conveys a mingling of concern
with the medium and a sense of undergoing rapid (and multiple, hence
undifferentiated and unclear) change. 'If I have any time left to live, you,
my pipe [= 'fistula', at 169 as at 156], will hang far away on the branch of
some old pine tree, utterly forgotten by me; or else, transformed by my
[or, from your] native muses, you will whistle a British tune. But after all,
one man cannot do everything, or even hope to do everything. I shall
have ample reward, and shall think it great glory if, although the outside
world does not read my English, all Britain does so.
The passage is central to our topic, yet is not exactly transparent. Is he
giving up pastoral, or Latin, or both, or what? Does he really know yet?
My view is that he does not, and that that is the point. Let us consider the
various ambiguities, one by one.
Lines 155-60 clearly reject pastoral (the 'fistula' broke, therefore
'cedite silvae'). But from line 169 onwards, he states some alternative,
since 'aut' is the conjunction of exclusive alternative (as distinct from
VeP): either he will give up his pipe or else he will exchange muses,
Roman for British. This latter option would leave him the possibility of a
pastoral in English, since an epic in English is not the sole alternative to a
pastoral in Latin. Moreover, giving up his pipe might be a rejection of
the 'fistula' by synecdoche for all poetry. It is not simply that the rejection
of pastoral glides somewhere into the rejection of Latin. The passage
60 Milton's exercising of his languages
glides between at least four options. Thus C. S. Jerram took 'fistula5 to
mean all poetry whatsoever (and Milton of course did write a prose
history of England soon afterwards). But David Masson took 'fistula' to
mean Latin poetry (embracing Latin pastoral, but not excluding Latin
epic).22 We might conclude that 'fistula5 denotes the one at 156 but some
wider class at 169. Yet to localize the shifts of meaning thus upon a glide
within one word, albeit a repeated and emphatic one, seems mechanical.
My sense of the entire passage is of excited, expansionist self-discovery:
the more options, then, the better. Why should a poet know exactly in
advance how he would treat material which is susceptible to varying
treatment, and which in the event he does treat in more than one
language and genre? Instead, the passage (partly because it incorporates
three different times and states of thought) throbs with unseparated
possibilities.
A further reason for thinking so is that the passage depends on Virgil,
in a way which may resolve the problem without being mechanical and
reductive. Virgil explains that curiously specific 'eleven days ago5. His
Eclogue viii. 39 says, 'Alter ab undecimo turn me iam acceperat annus5
('My eleventh year being completed, the next had just received me5):
compare Milton5s 'ab undecima iam lux est altera nocte5 (156). That
eclogue, and the one before it, supply Milton with much of the verbal
texture hereabouts. For instance, the idea that a poet5s limitations are a
special instance of human ones comes from both eclogues (vn. 23 and
VIII. 63). Both eclogues are singing contests, therefore are poems about
poetry. In the second of them Virgil asks himself whether he will ever rise
to higher genres (VIII. 7-13): so, too, does Milton. Milton places a tag
from the other eclogue (vn. 27-8) on the title-page of his published first
fruits, the Poemata of 1645.
That same eclogue provides the allusion which I find decisive, where
Corydon enters the singing contest with a 'do-or-die5 statement of
exclusive alternatives:

Nymphae, noster amor, Libethrides, aut mihi carmen

quale meo Codro, concedite (proxima Phoebi
versibus ille facit) out, si non possumus omnes,
hie arguta sacra pendebitfistulapinu. (vn. 21-4)

(You nymphs of Libethra, my delight, either grant me a song like the one you
granted my Codrus - he makes songs which come closest to those of Phoebus -
or else, if we cannot all attain such heights, here on the sacred pine tree my
clear-sounding pipe shall hang [henceforth].)23
 The Italian journey (i638-9) and language choice 61
I have emphasized the words which Milton takes over, not so much to
show how many words they are as to show that they are clearer than his.
Corydon prays that the Muses will inspire him: if they will not, he vows to
give up composing. In Milton, the alternatives are more numerous, and
less clear-cut. But the feeling of standing at a cross-roads is transferred.
So too is the atmosphere of do-or-die. Damon has died, and his friend
voices the thought of himself dying before he has written the poetry
which it is his vocation and desire to write: 'O, mihi turn si vita supersit'
('Oh, if I have any time left to live').24
In short, the passage is a Virgilian palimpsest. Latin, especially
neo-Latin, adores the effect of palimpsest (signalled and reworked
quotation), and hence a poetic meditation upon poetry emulating Virgil
works best in Virgilian Latin. But it is palimpsest in subject as much as in
verbal correspondence: the subject is poet-singers at their respective
cross-roads. The question for Virgil had been how to rise above pastoral,
and it was Milton's also at first; but soon, out of sight in the subtext, the
question is becoming whether to do it in Virgil's tongue or some other.
An answer lurks in the sequel, that resounding march-past of British
place-names (never heard in Virgil). Usa, Alauni, Abra, Treantae, Thamesis,
Tamara and Orcades (175-8): Ouse, Alne, Humber, Trent, Thames,
Tamar, the Orkneys. That British places are celebrated by the sound
and sequence of their versified Latin names, in the moment of turning
away from Latin, is a triumphant paradox.
To summarize, Milton does not write informatively so much as
excitedly. And some regret is intermingled, since he is forfeiting the
European audience he has just found and gloried in. Self-discovery and
self-assertion remain dominant, as seen in the threefold anaphora on
'ipse' (133,155,162): '/shall write all this', or 'To think of me doing it!' But
another element is tension, the conflict between his languages. When for
the first time a language choice means loss as well as gain, the poem
weighs them.

AFTER THE EPITAPHIUM DAMONIS

Both excitement and uncertainty continued. In 164225 Milton expresses

an obligation to his native language and native land together: like
Ariosto, he would seek 'the adorning of my native tongue; not to make
verbal curiosities the end . . . but to be an interpreter and relater of the
best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this island in
the mother dialect.' Zest and zeal are projected. But in the following
62 Milton's exercising of his languages
sentences we find him undecided about everything else - the genre and
the subject and whether it should be sacred or secular.
Such uncertainty seems odd, in view of his two previous proclaimings
of a British theme which should climax with Arthur. Likewise he plays
down British (as distinct from Saxon) history in the Trinity Manuscript
list of themes, made 1640-2. Arthur, in particular, is deafeningly absent.
The usual explanation given is that an intensive study of his nation's
history upon his return from Italy had exposed the British historiography
of Geoffrey of Monmouth and his like as untrue; and if untrue, then unfit
to be celebrated or serve for instruction. Roberta Brinkley26 argues that
Milton may have found the Arthur story pre-empted, and contaminated,
by the Stuarts, and certainly he becomes rather suddenly more
interested in the Saxons than in the Britons (the reverse being true at the
time of Mansus). At all events, Milton goes on at once to declare that
'England hath had her noble achievements made small by the unskilful
handling of monks and mechanics'. Thus we have the ironical situation
that he abandoned Latin for Arthur's sake, and then Arthur for the sake
of England and English. Where would he look next for his subject? And
how secure was his grasp of its medium, too?
Even where truth was not in doubt, he faced a dilemma. Should he
honour England's history by seeing it under the eye of God, as history is
seen in the Old Testament? Or by appropriating the history of Israel to
England's destiny? Somewhere in the period of the Trinity Manuscript
lists27 he cuts the knot, going beneath both fallen histories to the Fall
itself. The manuscript has more entries on Adam than on any other
subject, they are longer entries, and each of them is fuller than the one
before it. The tide is turning towards 'Adam Unparadiz'd' as his epic
subject.
In Satan's address to the Sun, that early portion of Paradise Lost, he has
found his medium also, has chosen his tongue. How early is that passage?
As early as 1642-3, perhaps? Aubrey's Life of Milton dates it to 'about 15 or
16 years before ever his poem [Paradise Lost] was thought of'.28 The
figures are not inherently absurd, nor their product unlikely: if we take
1658 as the time when Milton 'thought of his epic because by then he
had retired as Secretary of the Foreign Tongues, then 1658 minus 15 on6
equals 1643 or 1642. Edward Phillips says only 'several years' before the
poem was begun; but since he wrote that in old age and had talked with
Aubrey much earlier, Aubrey's specific numbers may be more nearly
right. Certainly Phillips connects them with the opening of a draft
tragedy on the subject of Adam, such as figure in the Trinity MS, yet a
 The Italian journey (1638-9) and language choice 63
draft later than the four sketches there (none of which begins with Satan
and his address). But one hesitates to trust Aubrey on figures, despite the
neatness of an inference that Milton searched for a subject and medium
together.
Assuredly, he had now found his voice and tongue. Though his choice
still rests with English, it is an English made personal and multiple, and
given a needed tension, by a domiciling of words and allusions and
structures of words from his other tongues. I shall explore the 'hybridized5
character of this last of my proof-texts before advancing the hypothesis
that its English differs from the style of his English, and his other tongues,
of before 1641.
O Thou that with surpassing Glory Crown'd!
Look'st from thy sole Dominion, like the God
Of this New World; at whose sight all the Stars
Hide their diminish'd Heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly Voice; and add thy Name,
0 Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy Beams
That bring to my remembrance, from what State
1 fell; how Glorious once above thy Sphere;
Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down,
Warring in Heaven, against Heaven's Glorious King.29
It has long been thought that the address to the Sun takes off from the
Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus. Although some scholarship has ques-
tioned the idea, it seems probable enough, because Milton knew that
play, and to him Prometheus signified a principled, yet ambivalent
rebellion.30 Satan, however, rejects the Sun as well as the ruling deity: the
first, with rancour, because of the second. So there emerges in subtext a
comprehensiveness and (so to speak) idealism in his hatred, but also there
emerges the worth of what he contemns. Milton has made a stunning
advance from the idealized loves of earlier poems we have examined.
And yet the new idiom is related to them, because the tension between
valuations of rebellion - Greek-heroic and Hebrew-diabolic - now
proceeds within the English language itself. More than that, since the sun
was a divine image in the Greek cosmologies, then in Plato and the
Neoplatonic tradition through to Ficino, no fewer than four of his
foreign cultures cohabit in his new-forged English.
'Sole dominion' is made of two words borrowed from Latin, and hints
at a pun on Sol, the Latin for cSun\ In 'their diminished heads' we find
the combining of Latin-derived with Anglo-Saxon words which works
powerfully for English poets. By artful placing, too, 'diminished'
64 Milton's exercising of his languages
becomes both attributive and predicative, as in Latin: heads which have
been, and go on being, diminished. The density and emphasis of
'diminished' bring out Satan's obsession with status.
Greek and Latin conjoin in the adjective-phrase 'no friendly' voice. As
well as being the figure litotes - the negative not of absence but of
understated oppositeness - the phrase is a litotes of idiom. Latin inimicus
is the negating of amicus, friend, and the Greek aphilos works similarly.
('He who is not with me is against me'.) For good measure, the litotes
glances at Hebrew 'Satan': the Opposer, the Accuser, the Adversary, he
who exposes human offences at God's court. The word is verb, noun,
then a title, then (as he becomes over-zealous at his work, and is poisoned
by it) his individuating name.31 It becomes Milton's frequent practice in
Paradise Lost thus to etymologize names, for the sake of explanation but
further of a witty characterizing, of name and nature together.
With the words 'I call' we have reached the main verb of this
single-sentence utterance. But instead of moving forward smoothly
henceforth, the syntax at once writhes more than ever: 'I call, / But. . .
no friendly... and add... to tell... how... That bring... from what...
how . . . till. . .' Of course the syntax by its twists and turns enacts the
writhing increase of grudge, but we should remember as instigator of
that mimesis the many patterns and hyperbatons by which Bembo and
Delia Casa gave suspension, hence energy and distinction, to literary
Italian.32 Nor does it qualify, but rather reinforces, the point about
Milton's style being hybridized to remember further that his Latin
authors practised the same sort of syntactical arts: presumably the
Italians went back to source, too. After which Milton lets in a ray of New
Testament light: 'O Sun . . . I hate thy beams' calls up St John's words,
'Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light', with their context.33 To hate
the sun, the source of life on earth, is virtual blasphemy in most cultures:
Milton had read it in Euripides, for instance.34 His cultures again
corroborate one another as he draws them into his English.
To engender such magnificent self-exposure as Satan's in English,
then, no single cause sufficed. A prominent contributor, all the same, is
the fertilizing interplay of Milton's languages with his native tongue. The
forms of interplay fluctuate. We expect contact between his Latin and
English. I myself notice the lively joining of Greek and Hebrew in his
English, probably because those two languages stand further apart from
each other and from English. But in truth, none of the possible
conjunctions of his five major languages can be safely ignored.
So whether in Italy or upon return, Milton took firmer grasp of
 The Italian journey (1638-g) and language choice 65
something fundamental to English: not simply the fact that it had
absorbed much from Latin and from other tongues, but that - in syntax
as well as words - it could absorb more; in short, that absorption suited it.
English itself has grown by being eclectic and assimilative, a cheerful
borrower; hospitable to what is different, and thereby rendered creative.
Milton's English in the early 1640s grew likewise: in its egotistically
sublime way it drew other languages to itself.

OBJECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Three natural objections must be stated and given an answer. First, it is

possible to agree that Milton's English of Satan's address is superior in its
complexity and force to the foreign-language poems here considered,
but also to find that there is far less difference between the English of the
address and his English of the poems composed before Italy, for example
Lycidas. I grant that Lycidas owes much to the eclogues of Virgil for its
ideas and pastoral ambience, and that at times Milton approaches
translation in his English.35 He deploys classical names, including the
Latinized names of native entities. Less prominent in lycidas, however, is
the etymologizing sense of the roots of words borrowed from other
languages which is growing in Satan's address ('sole', cno friendly'), and
which grows further in Paradise Lost as a whole. In fact, I notice in Lycidas
some tendency to use native English words or things just where a
Virgilian or classicizing flavour might have been added ('Or taint-worm
to the weanling herds', line 46). Doubtless, though, the increase of
etymologizing which I perceive is a matter of degree rather than of kind;
and since too the question of Milton's Latinism is a vexed question, it is
examined more fully later.36
As with diction, the choosing of words, so a second objection might be
made regarding syntax, their ordering, namely that Italian influence
predates his visit to Italy, and is seen in Lycidas. My reply is, first, that
Milton's sonnets in Italian itself are a very important part of this poetic
development; then, that the syntax of the English sonnets written after
Italy is more Italianate than the syntax of their English predecessors. But,
obviously enough, the influence of Italianate syntax will be different,
perhaps greater, where it is not played off against rhyme: to my sense,
Comus in A Masque does not do through syntax what Satan in his address
does. We have still to explain the surge forward to the mature style of the
satanic voice, and I propose that the Italian journey and its immediate
sequel go some way to explaining it.
66 Milton's exercising of his languages
To the third objection, that the present perspective makes Milton's
growth too purely linguistic and too conscious, a similarly modest answer
is appropriate. It is not my design to make the process of 'domiciling'
foreign languages in his English a conscious, or deliberate one. Paradise
Lost is not Finnegans Wake (though that comparison would bear some
fruit). The choice of a second tongue to compose in does have conscious
purpose, because the choice regularly becomes part of the sense of
occasion. Yet equally regularly the occasional performance seeks an
allegiance which eludes us - and eludes Milton. Whenever, too, he writes
in a tongue that is not native to him it admits willy-nilly an English
language part of his sensibility, be it the feeling for his father in 'Ad
Patrem', or the sense of being an outsider to Italian in the Italian poems.
For this very reason, however, the sensibility can make the leap forward
(out of sight, so to speak) to Satan's 'multiple' English. For one thing,
there is an element of impersonation in speaking any foreign language,
some degree of role-playing and self-experimentation; and so to go
playing among languages made Satan easier to impersonate, in a general
if opaque way. More important, Satan's English is the reverse case of the
process (whether of self-suspension or of self-inclusion) involved in
composing in the other languages. It is the English with which his other
tongues can most readily intersect.
To return to our point of departure, finally: more can be learnt from
tracing how Milton chose among his languages, than from conjecturing
why. To trace how, reveals why we cannot know why; and why he
himself may not have known, beyond a limited extent. Into several
passages he writes a discussion with himself about the grounds of choice
of tongue, and gives a sense that, as he begins to write, the choice of
tongue has already been made. How does any poet begin to find a
poem's words (as distinct from its subject, though subject and first words
may in fact originate together)? Often enough it is from a phrase or
rhythm found somewhere within the poet. Milton, then, having the
wider resources of competence in his several languages, is a special case
of what is very generally intriguing. His language choices obey personal
imperatives which remain interestingly obscure. His uncertainty as to
why Psalm 114 demanded to be written in Greek before that winter dawn
shares something with the fact 'That his Vein never happily flow'd, but
from the Autumnal Equinoctial to the Vernal...' Should we speak, not
of Milton choosing a language, but rather of a language choosing him?
 CHAPTER 4

Milton's arts of language: translating and philology

Besides theflairfor multilingual verse-composing which was displayed in

Poems, 1645, Milton cultivated further arts of language. They included
Latin prose composition, translating, philology, lexicography, and
pedagogy with Latin as its medium. Of these, the first will receive
attention in chapter 5. The present chapter will focus on translating and
philological scholarship, with a glance at the remainder.
His translating centres on rendering verse originals from four
languages into English; yet it goes wider, for example when he translates
prose, or verse into another language than English. I take translating first
now because whenever it approaches autonomous verse-composing it
extends the survey of his multilingual verse which has been the subject of
chapters 2 and 3. And by closing with an account of his translating from
Hebrew we move across to his philology; for whereas Hebrew was not a
language in which he composed, it has a vital place in his philology,
whether pursued for its own sake or applied to purposes of polemic.
By 'philology51 mean, first, the more confined attention to linguistic
matters which the word signifies in English. But then also I mean, built
on that linguistic foundation, the access through languages to other
cultures. This is the wider-than-linguistic scholarship, or Altertumswis-
senschqft, to which Greek and Latin lead in continental Philologie. It has
its equivalent in Old Testament studies as entered through Hebrew,
and the whole body of world-history which his classical languages
and vernaculars opened up. This chapter will focus on his philology
in the narrower sense, mainly textual criticism in fact, while the
next will address the wider sense. His other language-arts, while not
negligible, seem more routine activities or adequately served by existing
scholarship.
68 Milton's exercising of his languages

TRANSLATING

Milton's translating is unusual, full of invention and variety, as reference

to his younger contemporary Dryden illustrates. Dryden distinguishes
'metaphrase', close to the original in words and word order, from
'paraphrase', where an author's words are followed less strictly than his
sense, and both from 'imitation', freer still, verging on adaptation or
recreating.1 Milton practises imitation in his two early Psalm versions,
and experiments with metaphrase in his Horace ode version. And this,
being 'rendered almost word for word . . . as near as the language will
permit', shows him aware of the options and problems.2 More normally
in his maturity, however, he favours a mixture of metaphrase with
paraphrase, moving perpetually in the course of a version from the one
to the other. I would term it 'appropriation', a series of moves from
author's words and meaning into possessing that meaning as his own
idea. The impact is that of a small epiphany, an apprehending - his then
ours - of the point of the particular translating. Something out there, in
the cultural past, has come to live down here, in Milton's working mind.
We begin with his sole complete prose translation, because in it
(besides illustrating his practice) he vents some feelings about translating.
The Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644) shows Milton
shortening his author where Bucer is verbose or moves away from
Milton's own interests; amplifying where explanation is needed for the
'mere English' (monolingual) reader; simplifying the diction; and
avoiding Latinism of word or construction. In other words, Milton mixes
Dryden's options, to achieve his goal of enlisting a favourable advocacy
of divorce.3 He is explicit, italicizing his additions (as he would do later in
some of his Psalm versions). The impression given is of a clear and
confident linguist, appropriating through translation.
Yet he does not, this time, rejoice in the process. It irks him:

Others may read him [Bucer] in his own phrase on the first to the Corinthians,
and ease me who never could delight in long citations, much less in whole
traductions; Whether it be natural disposition or education in me, or that my
mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator.4

In short, he felt life had more to offer him than translating, especially at
this length, on the subject of divorce. Elsewhere, accordingly, his
translating is always briefer, always of verse, and always done into verse.
He shows the zest which was lacking in the Bucer version.
Thus even his three versions from Italian poets, which do no more in
 Milton's arts of language 69
their published context than corroborate a polemical point about the
Papacy, do it with a glad appropriation.5 Eagerly, he calls up Catholic
witness to condemn the Papacy. Milton shifts Dante's lament over the
'Donations' of Constantine to the Papacy from 'dowry' ('dote') to 'rich
domains', as the 'cause' not 'mother' ('matre') of evil: compounded by
the loss of rhyme and of the maternal image, the change is from lament
mingled with anger to plain denunciation. Similarly with Ariosto's
allusion to the Donations: 'se pero dir lece' ('if one may be blunt')
becomes 'if you the truth will have'. The tone is no longer Ariosto's sly
deprecation but a challenge: 'do you want to have the truth?' Milton
hammers where Ariosto insinuated. Through modals, Milton annexes.
The modal additions perform a fuller appropriating on the title-page
of Areopagitica (1644). Euripides' Theseus says liberty prevails in a state
when any citizen who wants to advise the city does so; or if he doesn't,
stays silent: what is juster than this? The verbs are straightforward
indicatives, Theseus being very calm and regal. But Milton's English
version rams in modal auxiliaries: 'He who can, and will. . .' and 'Who
neither can nor will, may hold his peace' for 'What can ^juster.. .?'6 He is
turning 'is' into 'ought', conveying the same enthusiastic urgency as
throughout his 'Speech' to Parliament which follows. No mistranslating
occurs, since what Theseus as king in a fiction declares to be the case is
becoming advocacy, by a living citizen in a national crisis. The modals
empower Milton to rise to the occasion.
Appropriation animates the translations in another way, which we
met in chapter 3; an interlingual, interactive way. Milton's tendency
noted in Bucer to eliminate words from the English which would recall
the wording of the Latin original, and to prefer Anglo-Saxon derivatives
in his versions, is part of the prevalent appropriating. But for this very
reason, when he does choose words which look outside the native
resources in some way, the impact is of a special effect, an impact of
concurrent testimony between languages, between their cultures. One
striking instance comes from Horace.7 Horace describes a public man
whose private life is squalid as 'introrsum turpem, speciosum pelle
decora' ('disgraceful within, despite the fair-seeming skin'). Milton hits
harder, starting with a verb and closing with a damning image: everyone
close to him 'Sees his foul inside through his whited skin.' 'Whited'
connotes concealment and leprosy, from Matthew 23. 27 (where
Pharisees resemble 'whited sepulchres'); so that a Christian judgement
enters the Roman thought through the English. Hypocrisy becomes
more loathsome since Roman and Christian testimonies concur; Christ
70 Milton's exercising of his languages

and Horace, meeting in Milton, make a devastating triad of witnesses.

In these examples we discern a characteristic 'surge3, the moment
when the demands of the original have received enough and Milton
surges across to seize the whole at its close for himself, and English.
The History of Britain shows a different, more intriguing example of
interlingual sparking. The murder of the young king Kenelm is
discovered miraculously when a messenger pigeon delivers a message in
Early Middle English at the altar of St Peter's in Rome (!!!): 'In clenc cu
beche Kenelm cunebearn lith under thorne haudes bereafte' ('In a
cattle-meadow the king's child Kenelm lies under a thorn tree bereft of
his head'). Milton's source, the Flores Historiarum, adds a translation into
Latin hexameters:
In clenc sub spina iacet in convalle bovina
Vertice privatus, Kenelmus rege creatus.
When Milton in turn renders the message, does he straightforwardly
render the Latin, or go back to the EME, or mix both, or what? Is this
example the sign we have been awaiting, that he did know Anglo-Saxon?
He gives the sense as:
Low in a mead of kine under a thorn,
Of head bereft li'th poor Kenelm king-born.8
Milton removes the weird macaronic effect of including 'clenc' in the
Latin. He uses no Latin-based words whatever, nor 'clenc'. He employs
word-order, and sound, to retain the pre-Latin phrasing: 'of head bereft'
('haudes bereafed') and 'Kenelm king-born' ('Kenelm cunobearn'). So
while he might be following the principle of his Bucer version, to avoid
Latinism for the sake of 'mere English' readers, and he might have the
the further motive of scorn for the credulity of its monkish chroniclers,
the life of the rendering is aural, alliterative. We need not think he knew
Old or Early Middle English, but he was captivated here by the music of
an older English. A double purpose, of pity for 'poor' Kenelm and scorn
for monks, is served by his interlingual palimpsest.
To remove any remaining doubt about this intersectivity in transla-
tions, recall (from earlier chapters) his rendering of Psalm 114 into
Homeric Greek hexameters. An entire poem is born from multilingual
imitation, and operates where Homer and David intersect in heroic. A
simple instance is the beginning. The Hebrew parallelism of 'When
Israel went out of Egypt, the house ofJacob from a people of strange
language' is rearranged:
 Milton's arts of language 71
Israel hote paides, hot' aglaa phuP Iacobou
Aiguption lipe demon, apechthea, barbarophonon . . .
(When the sons of Israel, when the renowned tribes of Jacob left Egypt, that
hateful nation, barbarous of speech . . .)
Thereby Milton gets the effect of doubling within the single hexameter
line, swelling finely from three words to four, a balancing of unequal
metrical units at the caesura. Israel 5 and Jacob 5 enfold the meaning
from their positions at the beginning and ending of the Homeric line.
The majestic thought of the Exodus combines the strengths of Greek and
Hebrew expression.
A third tendency which stands out, after appropriation and interactiv-
ity, is experimentalism. While it can be felt everywhere in his emulations,
it becomes overt in two of them: Horace's ode, Tyrrha 5 (date uncertain)
and the Psalms 80-8 (dated very precisely to April 1648).
He describes Horace's Odes 1. 5 as being 'Rendered almost word for
word without rhyme according to the Latin measure, as near as the
language will permit.' 9 Even if 'measure' refers only to the metre,
'language' must mean English, so he must be thinking wider, about what
English will - and will not - 'permit'. It certainly permits the Latin words
to show through, and on this occasion and for its special needs Milton
carries over more Latin words than usual; single words like 'admire' for
'emirabitur', a phrase like 'liquid odours' for 'liquidis . . . odoribus', but
even whole clauses:
Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea;
Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem
Sperat
becomes
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant always amiable
Hopes thee . . . [my emphases]
But in fact this third stanza shows the limits all too well. English, forced
into the Latin word-order, cannot make clear who is 'credulous' and
who is 'amiable' nor what 'vacant' means. What inflection can clarify
readily, English fails to: the syntax crumples into nonsense. Horace was a
stiff test, of course, because the Latin of his odes is exceptionally
compressed - compressed even more than Latin normally is, by metrical
exigencies. Three of Milton's stanzas out of four pass the test; and in the
other one, Milton found what he had sought, the limits, by exceeding
72 Milton's exercising of his languages

them. If this version comes from after 1645 it comes from a time when he
was experimenting equally with the hyperbatons of the beginnings of the
grand style of Paradise Lost ('O thou, that with surpassing glory crown'd /
Look'st. . .')
Milton is overtly experimenting again in 'Nine of the psalms done into
metre, wherein all but what is in a different character, are the very words
of the text, translated from the original'.10 The nine are Psalms 80-8.
'Metre' means Common Metre, the fours and threes of ballads or of
Psalms used liturgically by most churches; so were these versions,
uniquely among his translations, aimed at public reading and even use?
This natural assumption lacks supporting evidence. What we know is that
the versions came out - complete with their 'different character' (italics,
as in Bucer) and a few notes on the Hebrew - in 1673. And we know they
seek to render the Very words' of the original. This they achieve, because
the italicized words are never alterations or modifications but expan-
sions made to explain the sense orfillout the metre (or both). Not that the
experiment results in beauty: even Milton's fours and threes are
doggerel, especially through the distortions of word-order. 'But now it is
consumed with fire, / And cut with axes down...' (80.16) (Imagine singing
this!) Still, experiments do not seek beauty but discovery. Milton is
discovering a way to achieve absolute fidelity to a sacred text, in the
literal sense of coverage; after which, to the devout maybe, incorporated
exegesis is no detriment tofidelitybut a bonus. All the same, none of his
departures from normal English syntax ever again sound so painful and
gawky. By flouting its limits and by uniquely privileging the source
language, he indeed finds out what English will not endure.
Finally, because Milton translated Psalms more than he did other
authors or texts, I survey this little group of verses, to bring out its
experimental variety. In school exercises (1624) he freely adapted Psalms
114 and 136. In 1634 he rendered Psalm 114 again, into Homeric Greek,
this time of his own volition or rather by some mysterious dawn impetus.
In 1648 he rendered Psalms 80-8. In 1653 he rendered Psalms 1-8, into a
different English for each (and no more fours and threes). Whatever the
subjects and moods of these attempts, the recurring factor is variation in
the medium and conception of translating - a process, or meditation,
which becomes more not less self-conscious. It waxes multilingual at
times, but only in 1648 does he explicitly and fully confront the Hebrew. I
read that as meaning that he did not so confront it except when he said
he did: 1648 is the exception not the norm.
The subjects and moods of the Psalms seem to suggest an attitude
 Milton's arts of language 73
behind each choice.11 This reasoning, however, can be overused. It must
mean something that he returned to Psalm 114, 'When Israel came out of
Egypt. . .' It must mean he then, even if briefly, shared the joy of the
Exodus for Israel, and it may mean he felt such a hope for England. But
as for Psalms 80-8, what they spell most clearly to me is experimenta-
tion; and all the more so because their subjects and moods are various.
The common factor is only the cultic life, and Exodus-hope, of Israel.
More still with the 1653 group, experimentation stands out. One might
wish to emphasize the personal distress of Psalm 3 there. Yet confidence
is present too (Psalm 1). Indeed, perhaps he was meditating the
coronation of Messiah in Psalm 2 for the sake of Paradise Lost, Book III?
It's anyone's guess. The common factors are: return to the songs of
worshipping Israel (songs par excellence according to the Christ of
Paradise Regained, iv. 347); and an appropriating of their devotion through
one or another of his languages and their mediums. The range of his
versions is marked by extremes: from the glorying in free Greek
expansion in 114, to an ultimate of metaphrase in the annotated metrical
English.
The marginal notes to Psalms 80—8 have the special interest of being
his only published philology; indeed, if they date from 1673 when he
made additions to his collected poems, they are one of the latest of all his
acts of scholarship. Like other printed marginalia from the Renaissance
they can be located on William Slights's scale of interactions between an
author's text and marginalia.12 Slights lists as examples of how margin
may relate to text: amplification, annotation, appropriation, correction,
emphasis, evaluation, exhortation, explication, justification, organiz-
ation, parody, pre-emption, rhetorical gloss, simplification and transla-
tion (pp. 685-6). Thus clearly the purpose and effect of the interaction
vary, modifying the reader's sense of authorial persona.
Milton does not play Erasmian extravaganzas through marginalia,
and certainly ridicules a theological opponent who overloaded his
margins with biblical confirmations.13 But his usage still emerges as
personal. For one thing it comes as a late afterthought within his
translating, probably as part of the attempt at a more scrupulous fidelity
in his psalmody. The Very words of the text' make up the substance of
the first eighteen marginalia, being the Hebrew words hefindshardest to
render precisely, transliterated according to his Sephardic pronunci-
ation: C!lJehemajun', 'fjagnarimu', and '*Jithjagnatsu gnaP in 83. 2-3,
where the thunderous 'gn' represents the guttural ayin.1* But then he
alters course. His next note points out that the Hebrew 'bears both' of
74 Milton's exercising of his languages
two senses, to explain why his English is giving both. His literal fidelity
includes fullness this time (contrast his Horace ode), and marginalia help
justify his procedure.
The next six marginalia exemplify another of Slights's interactions,
explication; for instead of simply annotating (citing) the Hebrew original
he gives an English prose version of it. 'fHeb. The burning heat ofthy wrath'
(85.3) explicates his verse rendering, 'thy ffiercewrath'; but it shows, too,
that he has moved from literal Hebrew idiom to something nearer
paraphrase (conveying thought not words). This example comes nearer
to appropriation. Similarly, his last two notes explain that he has
rendered both possibilities of a Hebrew ambiguity at 88.7; and has made
an emendation to help himself understand some difficult Hebrew (88.
15).15 Consequently, while the versions remain predominantly literal, the
notes move in the direction in which Milton's verse expansions move,
namely explication. The notes latterly show Milton grappling with the
complexities of Hebrew for their own or understanding's sake, as a
philologist.
That extends to the scholarly interaction par excellence, one not listed
by Slights but paramount in the handwritten marginalia, namely
emendation. Milton's printed marginalia thus, by their own change and
impetus, move us forward from translating to scholarship. Even here, in
ostensibly serviceable and humble print, his annotations share the
experimentation and restlessness, the wish to appropriate, that distin-
guish his translating. The changes of direction, the inconsistencies,
confirm his pride in not being born to be a translator (or philologist).
Tensions add energy to his practice.

Whereas for Psalms 80-8 Milton practised philology for the sake of
translating, he more often practised it for its own sake - to determine
meaning, usually by rescuing it through emending a poorly printed text.
I seek to show the spirit, competence and idiosyncrasies of this
annotating practice. Though they were written for his own eyes only, it is
a fact of the first importance that his Euripides marginalia entered the
mainstream of philological scholarship.
In view of current theoretic interest in marginalia, as intertextual
dialogue, or interplay of personae, I first situate Milton's handwritten
marginalia within that now-emergent genre.17 All marginal notes that a
reader writes in beside a printed text are dialogic, personal, self-assertive
 Milton's arts of language 75
and critical, as HeatherJackson claims. That is, by their nature they talk
back to the print, are a person-to-person response, in which the reader
becomes active, and interprets or re-interprets or criticizes the original
or its print version. Most marginalia are economical, thus brusque or
laconic, thus self-assertive again, because of space-constraints. Why
worry? Annotators write to themselves only, or to the absent author. But
Jackson goes too far for my annotator, Milton, when she claims that
marginalia are by nature 'self-indulgent'. Not only do most readers
deface their books' margins, but serious readers do it more. Such pavings
aid precision of thought by being positioned exactly where the text
prompts a response. They may accumulate (as with Richard Bentley) to
the materials of an edition. Far from implying that the reader's ego
outweighs the author's, marginal corrections of a bad printed text seek to
remove an extrinsic obstacle to understanding the author, whose claims
are in fact prime. This is perhaps why Jackson belittles 'professional'
(study-aid) marginalia, as 'suppressing' the annotator's personality. Is
this not over-severe, to reason that marginalia must be either self-
indulgent or boring? I want to protest that scholarly annotation is neither
impersonal nor an ego-trip, but personal in the way that emphasis and
zeal for truth (philaletheia is allied to 'philology') are personal traits. In
Milton's, at any rate, we see his personality exercised in philological
annotation, through the Latin he writes alongside Greek texts.
Among the handwritten marginalia the emphasis falls very heavily on
Greek and on poets. In total contrast to all his other marginalia he writes
numerous, searching, varied notes to his copies of the poets Lycophron,
Aratus and Euripides. I therefore proceed from instances drawn out of
these three books from his library.18
Lycophron (born c. 320 BG) was famously obscure even in antiquity,
being known as ho skoteinos, the 'dark one'. He had some reason to be
'dark': he dramatizes Cassandra's raving, riddling prophecies, doomed
to be disbelieved yet true. His obscure diction and allusion suit the
character well enough. But there is a whiff of the imitative fallacy too, the
mismatching of form to subject: just as characters who are bores must
not be boring to read, so obscure tragic prophetesses should not be
impenetrable either. Milton, at all events, read the book- wisely only the
once, in the 1630s - to test and perfect his understanding of Greek. The
reasoning is an a fortiori: Lycophron's sidelong way with meaning, and
perpetual neologism, make most other Greek texts seem transparent.
The result is a stream of notes, on textual or factual matters or matters
of literary allusion. But whereas manuscripts of Lycophron show a
76 Milton's exercising of his languages
winding causeway of obscure text surrounded by a sea of puzzled or
hopeful commentary, Milton though thorough is brisk. After halfway, he
begins to marginalize more thriftily: like any right-minded reader he
decides that Lycophron is not absolutely worth the effort, and that the
repetitions are decidedly not incremental. This needs saying here,
because if the examples chosen seem disproportionate to the worth of the
text and its human issues, well, Milton thought so too; but first he read it
all, and so entitled himself to cut things short.19
Milton starts commenting as a literary not textual critic; he wishes that
the adjective 'karkharos', 'jagged,' were the ampler, Homeric 'kar-
kharodous', 'jagged-toothed', Tor this would be grander' ('hoc enim
grandius').20 But he does not alter it, respecting the text where no reasons
of sense or metrics or logic compel emendation.
Soon enough, however, Milton has to make changes to secure sense or
metre or both. An example of both at once is line 224.21 By changing the
nonsensical and unmetrical 'homos' to 'houmos' he restores both metre
and sense. 'I wish my father [houmospater] had not ignored the oracles of
Aesacus, etc' There is great scope for this kind of emendation, since
Milton is reading a bad printed text of a purposely obscure poet: Milton
often rises to the occasion.
At other times, he comments on the content or on the Latin
translation which runs underneath his Greek text.22 An interesting note
at line 43523 is also Milton's longest. It objects to a translation of Zeus's
title 'muleus' ('guardian of mills') into 'Juppiter Pistor', on the grounds
that Zeus the 'Baker' is too Roman a concept; it refers to a very
particular, faintly comical rescue of Rome by Jupiter, as narrated in
Ovid (Fasti vi. 353). Milton wants Lycophron to stay Greek, and to keep a
sufficiently Greek decorum in Latin. A translator's appropriating, in this
instance, must not flout an author's tone.
Aratus (271-213 BC), writing didactically in hexameters on stars and
weather-signs, was another Alexandrian but his was a more important
text: important in itself as a guide to working life, and as an influence on
Virgil's Georgics. Milton's annotations,24 accordingly, show increased
interest and warmth. The interest appears in the fact of his annotating
the text at least twice, his 1640s hand in some cases revising a 1630s note.
The warmth, I come to in a moment.
A word of cautious explanation is needed first, regarding the
ascription to Milton of marginal notes in Aratus and Euripides. Without
claiming much expertise in deciding the date and authenticity of
Milton's handwriting in these Greek annotations, I have not yet found
 Milton's arts of language 77
occasion to doubt the ascriptions and datings of Kelley and Atkins, in
their essays on the Aratus and Euripides annotations. For present
purposes I have kept to the fullest, therefore least disputatious instances.
As a rule of thumb, the difference between Greek and Italian small V in
Milton's Latin annotations suffices to distinguish 1630s from 1640s. In a
sizable extract it is confirmed by smaller matters, grasped by feel.25
Milton's 'warmth', or even affection for Aratus, appears in the first
two notes. On the title-page he adds - in his 1630s hand - Ovid's praise of
Aratus as a poet who will endure as long as the sun and moon he wrote
about: 'Cum sole et luna semper Aratus erit' ('Aratus will endure for
ever, along with the sun and the moon [which he helps us understand]').
Ovid says this at the close of Amores I, dreaming of fame for himself: is
Milton having his own dream of fame?
Then - in his 1640s hand - he endorses the famous statement that 'we
(humans) are all the children of God' ('tou gar genos esmen'); not as
might be expected from Paul's reference to this sententia in Acts 17. 28,
but from Lucretius — a reputed atheist, yet another didactic poet.

sic Lucretius, denique celesti sumus omnes semine oriundi.

omnibus ille idem pater est &c. lib. 2. p. 265
(So also says Lucretius. 'Finally, we are all heaven-born: we all have the same
father, etc' Book II [of De Rerum Natura], p. 265)

Milton is reading with attention, and with empathy. He mentions both

poets again, but not Lycophron, in the educational syllabus of the
treatise Of Education (1644).
The bulk of his Aratus notes, nevertheless, are textual. As so often,
early printed texts of ancient authors swarmed with typos, and especially
Greek ones because of the intricacies of Greek diacritics and their
unfamiliarity to printing-house workers. Consequently, much of the
vigilance, issuing in penmanship, of readers like Milton who wanted to
be reading the actual words of the author had to be spent on textual
criticism. This art has been denigrated as 'glorified proof-reading', and
in many cases for Milton it was. But sometimes the printers had
preserved a manuscript error, or their own mistakes induced the
serendipity of an inspired correction. In the Aratus these are few; yet a
couple of Aratus examples will set the scene for Milton's more arduous
and productive reading of Euripides.
At line 74 his text had left four words out, thus making a hole in the
sense and metre: Milton supplies the lack from other editions ('ex aliis
78 Milton's exercising of his languages
editionibus supplemus'). Note the editorial 'we': sitting judicially or
judiciously above the received text. Perhaps because his own copy was
bad he read with other texts around him, collating into his own copy.
That was in the 1630s. At line 100, however, hefirst(in the 1630s) changes
an unmetrical verb-form from another edition (De Gabiano's); but then
(1640s now) alters that editor's strained verb-form to a simpler solution
from a better scholar, Stephanus; from 'edeixen' to 'edeixen' to
Stephanus' 'eeiden'. So on this occasion he saw a need not only to
correct the text but to go on thinking about the problems till he had
recovered the pristine sense.
This all-round strength and integrity of Milton's scholarship are best
viewed in his Euripidean annotations. From the mass of material26 I
select two views of Milton at work as a philological scholar. First, I
examine which plays he annotated most, and for what reasons we can
infer that he did so. Then I group (and illustrate) the main emphases in
his annotations.
The plays which are most annotated by Milton's undisputed hand,
whether 1630s or 1640s, are: Hippolytus (Volume I); Supplices, Helena and
Ion (Volume II).27 The Hippolytus contains unusually many of Milton's
private attention-markings - * from the 1630s,x from the 1640s.28 As the
play's themes include male purity, female lust, misogyny and theodicy,
the markings have been linked to Milton's marital vicissitudes. But they
show, if anything, that the themes attracted him long before his marriage
(1642): they more certainly reflect his idealism and empathy (since
Milton did not have to face Hippolytus' problems!) Still, if the incidence
does support the idea of a temperamental interest in the Hippolytus, then
the similar incidence of notes on the Ion supports the inference of a
cognate identification with the trials of a young man self-dedicated to a
divinely sanctioned vocation; for in this case we have the intense reliance
on Ion in his Latin ode to Rouse. The Helena more certainly lies outside
the range of his own life, and its unusually numerous annotations reflect
interest and editorial need; empathy with a genre, tragicomedy, which
he did not himself practise. The Supplices, different again, centres on a
debate about a king's responsibilities to his people and to the laws. He
quotes from this play several times in his prose works on government in
the 1640s, for example on the title-page ofAreopagitica, and here is where I
would see the most direct relation between this scholarship and his
English writings.29 The 'most direct' remains not very direct. His
annotations still aim chiefly at understanding Euripides' texts, all of them,
on their own terms.
 Milton's arts of language 79
The simple fact is, the demands of establishing text preponderate.
Milton's emendations draw on diagnostic, etymological, metrical and
dramaturgical skills. Thus his diagnoses extend to the process of
transmission of the texts, the sort of errors common in the scribal process
before the printing process added new sorts: a line's botched metre is
because a word I n versum sequentem ex margine irrepsit' {Ion 1423,
'crept into the following verse from the margin'). He corrects the
misprint 'agiatides' because he knows this title of Apollo as protector of
streets relates to 'aguiai', 'streets' {Ion 186). Metrical error arouses him to
something like irritation, as his comments escalate from 'restoring the
integrity' of metre to saying metre 'demands' to be changed ('flagitat', Ion
408) or metre even 'spits out' the offending typo ('respuit', Ion 1360). His
grasp of dramaturgy is more extensive than might be expected of one
who wrote Samson Agonistes to be read, not performed. He aims for
completeness of dramatis personae; he adds speech-entries everywhere
they are missed; and he sorts out a huge tangle of muddled speech-
entries at Supplices 754-8.
His supreme gift with regard to emendations is contextual. He has the
good textual critic's comprehensive grasp of context, without which the
diagnostic and other skills avail little.30 So at Bacchae 218 it is context -
characters, theme, the whole situation - which invalidates the received
reading. For one old man to say to another 'Being old men we have
forgotten what pleasures are like [hedeon, literally 'sweet things']' is not
absurd, only flat, out of key with the context of Dionysus-worship as
having rejuvenating power. Milton alters one letter, and the old man
says, 'We have gladly \hedeos\ forgotten that we are old men.' From the
tradition of Euripides editing ever since has come loud cheering and
ready acceptance. Milton has his place in more than one Valhalla.
And that is still only emendation. He attends, as a matter of course, to
gaps or problems in the accompanying Latin translation - symptomati-
zing his determination to understand the text, down to its last minutiae
(yes, he cleans up punctuation too, see Iphigenia in Tauris 1040). The
thoroughness, absorption and sheer empathy are remarkable. Taken as
a whole, these jottings represent the most eloquent of tacit tributes to a
great author, by a scholar who thinks differently enough but suspends that
sort of judgement for the sake of empathy, using judgement wholly to
serve imagination. It is not ridiculous to think of Keats here: reading of
'the suffering of human hearts' Milton attains a version of 'negative
capability', uninfluenced by any 'egotistical sublime'.
Personal in a different way is the occasional note of commentary. At
80 Milton's exercising of his languages
Heracleidae 822 should the text read 'bloody sacrifices' or 'human
sacrifices' ('brotoenton' or 'broteion')? His text read 'human': he wants
to read 'bloody'. Not beside the text but buried in the editor's endnotes
Milton has a long debate with himself on whether Athens, his revered
and freedom-loving Athens, practised human sacrifice. 'Only rarely, and
then for strong reasons', he concludes. This hardly exculpates Athens, or
makes its practice much different from human sacrifice elsewhere.
Milton is not so much emending as wrestling with the profound
cleavage, between the normal revered rationality of Greece and its
moments of glaring cruel irrationality. The moment passes, and he goes
on cheering for Greece; but the reflective moment in his study (1640s)
may help explain why in Paradise Regained Christ rejects Greece for Israel:
the Old Testament abominates human sacrifice, as Milton abominates
Moloch worship, and as enlightened Greece - even Athens - did not.

OTHER ARTS OF LANGUAGE

Besides translating and annotation, in which arts he excelled, Milton

practised the more mundane ones: lexicography, teaching of and
through languages, and what would nowadays be called study skills. He
practised all of them lifelong and systematically.
He compiled a Latin 'Thesaurus', a vocabulary book, amounting as it
grew over time and reading to a dictionary. This is mentioned several
times by pupils, and used by one of them (Edward Phillips) for his 1693
Dictionarium. It may have been absorbed into still later Latin dictiona-
ries.31 He had kept it from an early date. Likewise, he kept a thesaurus of
his Greek reading. If these ever turned up, they would not be enthralling
to read; but they would hold great value for Milton studies, as a check on
Leo Miller's research into the authorship of state papers, or to test the
authorship of the De Doctrina Christiana?2
Of Education includes Milton's languages as part of the ideal curricu-
lum he wrote up as a letter to Hartlib. The languages are valued
educationally, not for themselves or even their literature so much as for
access to useful thought, be that Varro's on farming or the Bible in its
original tongues. The essay conveys Milton's own fluency with lan-
guages, not least by implication: witness the airy way in which he
suggests the pupil can pick up Italian 'at any odd hour'. That phrase
means 'at any time in the regular, working week that is not already
occupied' (that is, still regularly, not as in the modern slang, to mean
'casually'); nonetheless, the implication remains that pupils can master
this fourth or fifth foreign language without special effort, as a natural
 Milton's arts of language 81
addition. Natural, indeed, to the language enthusiast! It shows, better
than any earnest injunction on the subject would do, how at home
Milton felt with languages.
And he synthesized and systematized his reading onto paper lifelong —
by a method based on Aristotle's topics, into sundry 'indexes', as the
Commonplace Book especially demonstrates. This work too holds great
interest for the intellectual biographer, since it shows his thought
developing. He found arguments in favour of divorce and tyrannicide
worth recording there before any need for them came up in his own life.
More to the present point, it is written in several of Milton's languages -
Latin, Greek, French, Italian. To link or summarize such quoted
material Milton writes in Latin, English or Italian. I take this to mean he
felt more fluent and at ease in those tongues. The reasons are mainly
self-evident. English was his mother-tongue, and Latin was the tongue of
judicious or scholarly commentary (as in the case of the Lycophron and
other annotations). However, the presence of Italian and the absence of
French, must draw further enquiry. Is it some dislike of French, or rather
a preference for Italian among vernaculars?33
The Commonplace Book itself is a normal not exceptional instance of
its type. To keep one was natural to a life in which study was engrossing,
yet was meant to be practical too. In otium, when available, the humanist
studied to be ready for negotium.34 And even if some humanists in that
posture seem pathetic or at any rate doomed to disappointment,35
Milton shared to the full the humanist aspiration to connect the life of
studying 'sound authors' (pagan, biblical or humanist) with the whole life
of his times.
To repeat, these lesser arts were systematic and lifelong for Milton. He
kept up his languages, in all sorts of ways. They were ready and
organized. It is not just accident that when his Commonplace Book
turned up it did so along with three school exercises - a Latin prose
theme with Greek inclusion, and sets of Latin verses in different metres.
He kept his papers, he kept them in order, and brought many if not most
of them before the public in print towards the end of his life. He added
some early Latin verses to the second edition of his poems (1673). He
published textbooks written back in the 1640s for pupils of grammar and
logic. He sought to be a complete humanist.
Completeness, a formidable versatility, is what he proved to the
European intelligentsia when the awaited opportunity did come. As
chapter 5 will show, he attacked Salmasius with all the weapons of a
redoutable humanist philology.
 CHAPTER 5

Milton's Latin prose

The study of Milton's Latin prose works in their original tongue

continues to languish. The three main monuments of his Latin prose are
the three Defences of the 1650s. These are as important, and certainly as
influential, as his English prose works; yet most Miltonists work on them
from translations, translations which leave something to be desired. I
dwell on this, to alert readers of those translations to what is being
omitted or distorted.
The Columbia translations (besides particular faults of rendering or
tone) have a tendency to break up Milton's sentences, in a way which
unduly differentiates his Latin prose from his equally periodic English
prose. The different Columbia translators move different distances
towards paraphrase, so that their reader gets different Miltons. As for
Yale, the absence of any Latin text seems to me a terrible editorial
blunder, preventing the reader of this series (which looks so authoritative)
from seeing the words of Milton himself. Even the non-Latinist should be
able to see them, because to see them suggests ideas and provides
correctives. Naturally, too, the Latin text being absent, Yale's notes pay
scant attention to matters of Latin tone or style. Irony, especially, works
differently in the Defences from what the translation and commentary
present.
Furthermore, analysis languishes along with texts and versions. The
increased interest in Milton's English prose,1 which has developed
linguistic and statistical tools of analysis, must eventually apply them to
his Latin prose, this being a corpus of bulk and importance. At present,
nonetheless, this has not happened - not even though the lack prevents
reliable authentication-tests being done on one crucial Latin text in
particular, the De Doctrina Christiana.
In the hope, then, of calling attention to the Latinity of this oeuvre - as
distinct from its ideas, or politics, or psychobiography, or whatever
currently preoccupies Milton studies — I offer a simple chronological
82
 Milton's Latin prose 83
survey. It moves from a school exercise and a college prolusion, through
the notes and letters of two decades, to his published Latin prose. The
examples move gradually from private towards more public, until in
February 1651 he went from obscurity to European fame in one leap. He
did it thanks largely to the qualities of his Latin prose style. He could seize
his chance because the Latin composing which I unfold had made him
ready.
By what method should it be unfolded? I attempt to describe Milton's
composing from the inside, showing in examples why he did each the
way he did. Discussion works from whatever features of style assume
most prominence in the particular instance. Of necessity it works
flexibly, since the chief constant of his Latin is its inventive variety;
indeed, all that is meant by Latin humanism. I seek, by continuing to use
Erving Goffinan's distinction between 'impression' and 'expression', to
show what impression he sought to make on each of his audiences.
Expression, however, matters equally with impression. His Latin style is
equally revealing when directed to no outward audience, but to himself—
in his own mind — as a striving with dead masters.

SCHOOL EXERCISE: MANE CITUS LECTUM FUGE . . .

The little prolusion on the theme 'Early rising is best'2 gives a
starting-point, by showing the skills he mastered in Latin composition
before he had anything of his own to say. It begins:

Tritum est vetustate proverbium. diliculo surgere saluberrimum est nee sane
minus verum quam antiquum: etenim si ordine supputare conabor singulas
hujus rei utilitates opus ardui laboris obire videbor: surge igitur, surge deses nee
semper teneat lectus, nescis quot oblectamenta praebet aurora. Oculos
delectare cupis? aspice solem purpureo colore orientem, coelum purum . . .3

The only advance which this makes on saying that early rising is a good
thing, is to insist that getting up late is a bad thing. The emphasis
therefore falls on the skills with which the meagre topic undergoes
amplijicatio.
Consider, for example, the syntactical variation: simple sentence; then
double affirmation; then a longer less simple one, which branches first
left, then right.4 Or consider the rhetorical urgency injected, first, by
repeated imperative ('surge igitur, surge': 'get up, therefore, get up!');5
then by question and answer. Or take the neat and idiomatic diction:
84 Milton's exercising of his languages
'supputare conabor', literally to 'prune [a tree] underneath' but used
figuratively by Ovid and Seneca to mean 'reckon up5. The persuasion
continues into allusion, half a line of Greek from Theocritus, two from
Homer. This displays skills of another language, and of apt allusion, and
does it in the Roman way of enlisting Greek precedent where possible,
for purposes of conviction and elegance alike. The relative lengths show
taste, also: Homer, being the more normative author, gets more space.
On the debit side, the composition ends some sentences with a rhythm
which is that of a line of verse. Classical Latin prose avoided doing this,
both in theory and practice, as if to preserve the boundaries between
verse and prose. The dactylic clausula in Milton's 'obire videbor', and
'praebet aurora' offends against Roman taste. He is not yet hearing
Latin prose with a Roman ear, or perhaps he has not yet read ancient
authorities like Quintilian on the subject.
In the main, nevertheless, the prolusion is a correct, even fluent,
exercise; still an exercise, however, in the limited sense of a set task, in set
form, on a trite theme.

PROLUSION VI
Contrast a later, Cambridge 'exercise', the Latin speech which leads to
the English verses At a Vacation Exercise. This exercising is splendid, being
voluntary press-ups. He now chooses what to say, though genre and
occasion govern some choices. Having done his part on a debate theme,
which admittedly is almost as futile as the virtues of early rising,6 he
introduces the pageant in his own way, fascinatingly half in and half out
of the persona he will play there. As Ens, Father of the Aristotelean
categories, he can choose to modulate between several registers, and
tones, and apparently even languages.
Thus in the prolusion he runs the gamut from tedium through
vulgarity to a sonority of varying degrees of seriousness. Tedium
threatens at first, as (228. 3-8) he tells his hearers to laugh by eight
synonymous descriptions of laughter. It reads as if he had swallowed a
thesaurus; and though it might be funny if acted portentously, the pacing
is funereal.
Vulgarity has more life, especially when helped by wit, usually puns.
Thus he argues (228.13-16) that those who are not joining in the laughter
must have indigestion, forcing them to speak with another orifice:
'aenigmata quaedam nolens efiutiat sua non Sphinx sed Sphincter anus',
exploiting the homonymity of'anus' = old woman with 'anus' = anus.7
 Milton's Latin prose 85
As to sonority, it is never unalleviated: thus it is saved from bombast by
its reductive application, to homely or silly things nearby. He calls two of
the College dignitaries 'Vestal Virgins' (232. 12), surely a backhanded
compliment. Likening another functionary to Cerberus, he pours a
torrent of hellmouth cliches on him (230. 10-14). He overloads cboves'
(oxen) with the epic epithet 'insigniter caudatos' ('extraordinarily tailed').
He mixes extremes, too, combining sonority with vulgarity when he
claims that eating 'certain Irish birds' causes 'pediculos inguinales' (236.
15). The orotund polysyllables both excuse and emphasize the crudeness,
these birds 'give you lice in the balls'. Both extremes of register, then, are
guarded by playful irony.
Midway, and on the serious side of halfway, he utters a digression -
very much of his own choosing - about his nickname, the 'Lady' of
Christ's. Being dressed up as an aged Father, 'Ens' or Substance, he asks
how can a 'Lady' have become a 'Father'? Because, as he lengthily (240.
1-242. 8) explains, he never was a Lady. Granted, he was not a
stereotypical male; but does one have to prove one is stupid to prove one's
manhood?8 He clinches his rebuttal stylistically as much as substantively:
by the strong, one might almost say 'masculine' verb amolior, 'toss away'
the insult (242. 6).9
The staple is a fluent urbanity, showing himself conversant with all the
kinds of literature. This urbanity, besides being the norm, gives the
performance its focus at points of undoubted good taste (images or
phrases which anyone would be proud of): 'lepidulos nebulones', 'witty
little rascals', said in his character of Ens about his Aristotelian offspring
(242.14). This has just the right tone of dry affection, achieved by joining
the deprecatory noun with the diminutive (coined?) adjective.
Granted, then, that he manages the vulgar better than the elevated, he
is playing a voluntary on the organ of the Latin language, and also
scripting with zestful invention for a persona.
One quality he does not display, however, is conciseness. This is the
fault of amplijicatio and the humanist syllabus, I feel, since it likewise slows
down his Latin verse. This sluggishness was certainly not the fault of
Latin - of all languages! Latin's inflectedness and lack of articles let it say
more by less, and without contortion. Where and when did he move
away from this dangerously licensed fluency? I suggest it was in Horton,
in his voluntary Lehrjahre, when he annotated Greek poems by
marginalia in his copies or summarized readings by topic into his
Commonplace Book.
86 Milton's exercising of his languages
MARGINALIA (1632-8)

For his marginalia he appropriates the editorial brevity which prevailed

before him among humanists, whether acting as editors into print or
simply annotating their own copies. Thus in their apparatus criticus
verbs of saying or being are omitted, because they are understood from
the technical context: in 'sic Canterus', 'so Canter', supply 'dicit', 'says'.
Milton follows this idiom so exactly that most of his emendations to
Greek texts consist of a single Greek word or a meagre 'fortasse'
('perhaps'), itself shortened to 'f.' in his 1640s notes. Even his longer notes
are usually still single sentences, which he keeps concise. Thus at
Euripides Helena 1145 he comments, 'planior erit, ni fallor, sensus si pro
hote legatur hoti. scil: ad Troiam strages et ad Euboeam naufragium nos
exhausit quia tu Pari Helenam abduxisti, aut Helenae spectrum.' 'The
meaning will be clearer, unless I am mistaken, if hoti is read in place of
hote; understand, "Slaughter at Troy and shipwreck at Euboea have
ruined us because [riot 'when'] you, Paris, stole away Helen, or her
phantom."' Milton makes his point as succinctly as he can without
surrendering to the sort of private abbreviations which lose clarity and
accessibility. Although he writes for his own eyes only, he uses the
language and register of a public community of scholarship, all those
who care about such things. He plays the role of humanist editor, in and
through his Latinity.
In this little genre, it becomes a matter of personal pride to make one's
point in as few words as possible. For the publishing commentator, pride in
style continues to matter because in going public one seeks to impress
others (or at any rate not alienate them by bad or flabby Latin). Further
considerations are those of space (to say it shortly) and beauty (not
allowing the page of the classic author to become usurped by editorial
ancillarities). None of this concerned Milton in his private studies. He did
it just the same. It was a point of honour.

FAMILIAR LETTERS TO 1647

Milton's 'Letters to Friends' (Epistolarium Familiarium Liber) was a very late

publication, of May 1674. Its title encouraged comparison with the chief
ancient exemplar, Cicero's Epistulae ad Familiares. We should therefore
first ask, how far the selected letters are acts of Milton before 1647 and
not rather the self-editings of the old man? And what is Milton's own,
rather than Cicero's? On the first point, two letters which survive in
 Milton's Latin prose 87
handwritten form from 1639 and 1647 show that only few and minor
changes were made editorially. For example, in the letter to Holstenius
he toned down a few stylistic audacities and youthful jeux d'esprit.10 As to
the second point, I focus on whatever Milton saw fit to make most salient,
whether by repetition or placing or quality, because this will point to his
chosen persona on each epistolary occasion.
Ironically enough, Milton in many of his letters does not follow Cicero
into brevity or density. Cicero, so orotund in his public speeches, sought
an idiomatic brevity in letters; yet not so Milton, not at first. Amplitude
continues in the two to Charles Diodati; not so much as neo-Latin copia
or amplification, however, but in a slowness to emerge into specifics from
the ponderous opening civilities. But he may have a reason. Both letters
are written out of turn, begging Diodati to reply to a previous one sent
him. Accordingly, though they maintain a teasing tone as between old
friends, some embarrassment shows too — in tortuousflightsof fancy. He
should not worry about balancing the numbers of letters, because 'Your
probity writes for me in your stead, and inscribes letters on my inmost
consciousness', 'scribit vicem tuam apud me tua probitas, verasque
literas intimis sensibus meis exarat.' (24. 13-14) He has a neat idiom in
'scribit vicem' (perhaps 'writes out your role' = speaking part in a play),
and again in 'exarat' (writes as on a wax tablet, so helping to Romanize
the correspondence and the friendship). Yet the conceit remains frigid:
does it evince anxiety? Milton was lonely in Hortoh, depended on letters,
received not enough, and his own letters show it.
Full and formal for quite different reasons, is Milton's letter written in
Florence to Benedetto Bonmattei (1638). Here, he is repeating in written
form, what he has said to Bonmattei in conversations (36. 18-22), in
order to press the point of an earnest request on an issue of importance to
him. That issue is the well-being of Italian (or Tuscan, rather), and how
best can foreigners understand it, so as to love it more deeply; Milton
urges Bonmattei to add to his book on Tuscan something on pronunci-
ation and recommended authors for the benefit of stranieri, non-Italians.
The formality and amplitude now assist the cause. So does the
intelligent praise, of Bonmattei and his language. Beginning 'Quod
novas patriae linguae Institutiones adornas (Benedicte Bonmathaee) jam
jam operi fastigium impositurus . . .' n Milton honours the work which
honours that native tongue ('adornas . . . patriae' both imply absolutes).
He hints at blessing in the Latinized Christian name of the recipient
('blessed be the man who loves his native language so worthily'). He
quickens into urgency and drama with the double 'jam', completion of
88 Milton's exercising of his languages
the task being 'any day now'. In a vivid, apt metaphor Bonmattei is
about to complete the 'fastigium' (roof or roof-ornament, the /<zrtpart) of
the notional 'building'.12
The letter has intriguing subplots, or subtexts. It is Tuscan, not any
other dialect of Italian, which Milton wants to promote - in Italy itself
and amongst cultured Europeans. To these, Tuscan and Bonmattei have
a responsibility (36. 1-6). He leavens a rebuke with elegant Latin: 'You
might seem, you Italians, to know only what lies within the bounds of the
Alps': 'intra Alpium duntaxat pomoeria sapere voluisse'. 'Pomoeria'
stands out, meaning the bare strip of land surounding the walls and
defining the boundary of an Etruscan or Roman town.13
He takes the appeal and the letter, finally, onto high moral and
imaginative ground. Milton has brought Latin as a 'venerable mother',
'from Latium', 'with authority deserving reverence', to help him plead
the cause of her Tuscan 'daughter' (39. 10-15). Tuscan owes this duty to
Latin, and the duty is a piety, a natural bond. Milton brings the old lady
'from Latium' to imply that primacy or authority is moving geographi-
cally. The tendentious claim is a strong compliment. He is creating a
little scene, a personification or prosopopoeia, something verging on
allegory or Platonizing myth. This makes a strong ending to an excellent
letter, strong because of the invention which its Latin medium and its
topic of languages together encourage.
In excellent Latin, on an issue dear to his heart, the letter enacts the
persona of a passionate, principled pleader, (even though Bonmattei
took no notice).
Milton adopts a related but different persona towards Lucas Hol-
stenius, the Vatican Librarian (1639). The letter has greater formality,
being directed to a greater personage:
Tametsi multi in hoc meo Italiae transcursu multorum in me humaniter &
peramice facta, & possum, & saepe soleo recordari; tamen pro tarn brevi notitia,
haud scio an jure dicam ullius majora extitisse in me benevolentiae indicia
quam ea quae mihi abs te profecta sunt. (38. 17-21)
(Although I both can and often do remember many courteous and most friendly
acts done me by many in this my passage through Italy, yet, for so brief an
acquaintance, I do not know whether I can justly say that from anyone I have
had greater proofs of goodwill than those which have come to me from you.)
We note as a matter of course the Ciceronian pairing of expressions,
(two words, for the sake of copia, where one would do), and the love of
comparative expressions. More unusually he carefully balances the two
 Milton's Latin prose 89
lengthy clauses, 'tametsi . . . tamen', where the lead-words echo to
guarantee the signposting of the syntax. Is Milton afraid Holstenius
won't understand? Or is he anxiously clinging to the shape of his own
opening period, like a life-raft? I suggest, rather, that what he wants to
signal is not meaning but his control of this Ciceronian periodicity. The
signal is not expression but impression: the evidence of being a
competent young humanist. Similarly, further on in the sentence we
have the carefully idiomatic bunching of pronouns fea quae mihi abs
te3). It was the regular practice of Latin, and of Milton in Italian also, to
congregate pronouns like this. But here we sense why: to gather them up
by word order and by penultimate placing underlines that they make up
a relationship. 'I am now related to you by them, "ea", the tokens of your
goodwill to me'. The immediate purpose is to claim (humanist) kinship.
The larger purpose is to show appreciation of the Librarian's kindness
in showing him round the treasures of his great library. And since this
entails telling Holstenius many things he already knows, the tenor of the
message is not to convey information but to remind the man of their
contact, and to convince him of Milton's own humanist credentials. The
conviction must come, and can only come, from style. The medium — an
epistolary Latin prose, of higher register than normal for a letter - is the
message.
Theme does also vindicate the obsequious opening, because Hol-
stenius was a great scholar, editor of Greek texts galore, and may be
returning hospitalities offered to him in the past by Oxford. The theme is
simultaneously humanist scholarship, and the admirably reciprocal acts
of goodwill pertaining to it. Yet still one may find Milton's deference
excessive, excessive where it matters, in the style. For half a page he
avoids the first person singular though talking about himself: he is
overawed, perhaps, not a usual posture for us to find him in.
We can contrast the letter to his Italian friend, Carlo Dati, of 1647.
Hearing at long last from him, Milton writes him his longest, most
fervent letter. The tone says this, at once: Terlatis inopinato Literis ad
me tuis, mi Carole, quanta, & quam nova sim voluptate perfusus . ..' (my
emphasis).14
The affectionate address is unprecedented- he does not address even
Charles Diodati like this - and the hyperbole of the following phrase
impinges as that of surprised joy. 'Quanta', 'quam nova', Voluptate', all
are strong or exclamatory words, and as a collocation are unprecedented
in these letters. Over against joy is soon set 'dolor', distress, at not
receiving three previous letters. He pours out other strong feelings: he
go Milton's exercising of his languages

recollects the pain of leaving Florence in 1639. (And this takes the tone
beyond formality into sincerity, since who can't share that pang?) He has
sent one poem, and will now send his collected Poems, notwithstanding
their offensive tone concerning Dati's religion: he apologizes for that.
Finally, he talks optimistically about more frequent exchanges in future -
easy, there are merchants' messengers running to and fro between
England and Italy every week! 'Tabellarii singulis hebdomadi ultro
citroque cursitant'. The eager 'cursitant' is delightful: a frequentative
form, like a hithpael in Hebrew, it means 'run about the whole time'.
Milton has by now forgotten that the correspondence has hitherto been
difficult, not easy at all. But the amnesia itself communicates the sheer
delight of resuming the friendship.
It does so not least by apparent artlessness, the youthful hyperbole of a
middle-aged writer recalling his happiest young days. But equally we
should applaud the intelligent way he skates on thin ice. He has spoken
'asperius' about the Roman Pope; but the comparative adverb may
mean either 'rather harshly' or 'too harshly' - let Dati take his pick. To
call the Pope 'Roman' reminds Dati of grudges felt from Florence
towards a bullying Papacy; and the previous incumbent, Urban VIII, had
been a Florentine, so doubtless of finer character . . . And next let the
greatest of Florentines, Dante, be summoned in aid:

Nunc abs te peto, ut quam veniam, non dico Aligerio, & Petrarchae vestro
eadem in causa, sed meae, ut scis, olim apud vos loquendi libertati, singulari
cum humanitate, dare consuevistis, eandem impetres (nam de te mihi per-
suasum est) ab caeteris amicis, quoties de vestrisritibusnostro more loquendum
erit.
(Now I beg of you that the indulgence you were wont to give, I say not to your
own Dante and Petrarch in the same case, but with singular politeness to my
own former freedom of speech, as you know, among you, the same you, Dati,
will obtain (for of yourself I am sure) from my other friends whenever I may be
speaking of your religion in our peculiar way.)15
Milton aligns his critique with that of two shared culture-heroes, in a
sly parenthetical figure (mentioning what he will not mention). He
appeals to former tolerance, to continuing humanitas - the word
combines good nature, humanity, cultivation of shared humanism. The
offending satire (very visible in the gunpowder plot poems) is merely 'our
[English] way of referring to your [Italian or Catholic] rites'. Knowing
that Milton never had a good word to say about Catholic spirituality or
liturgy, one may still find this apology insincere. But indeed many
 Milton's Latin prose 91
Catholic thinkers have detested Vatican bureaucracy and autocracy,
with at least Miltonic ferocity.
All in all, then, these swirls of less than regulated emotion thoroughly
suit what is a fascinating, unexpected, unguarded letter.16 Art helps
create the warm tone, and the fervent persona; but it is not controlling
them to the usual degree. So much the better, then, for the speech-act as
a whole. It is better, likewise, for the 1674 collection, as the presentation
of a developing self, developing itself and unfolding itself to the reader
through varying personae. To repeat, Latin letters - be they Pliny's or
Milton's - were published to display the self in a stylish way, to prove the
self to be stylish. Other aspects of display find their place in the
impression, and the same goes for expression; yet the style is in high
relief, and was expected to be. Stylish Latin was central to impression and
expression.

MILTON'S FIRST PUBLISHED LATIN PROSE (1640 AND 1645)

Though Milton composed no more than two paragraphs of Latin prose

for publication in the 1640s, they are his first to reach print. One is the
'Argumentum' explaining the occasion and pastoral allegory of the
Epitaphium Damonis, privately printed by Milton in about 1641 as his
epitaph to Charles Diodati. The other introduces, and mitigates, the
commendations from Italian friends which herald the Latin half of his
bilingual Poems, 1645, The former gives a rare specimen of impersonal, or
self-effacing prose: it describes then praises another person. The latter is
the opposite, self-deprecatory while quoting the praise of himself by
others.
The Argumentum says who 'Damon' is, or was, whilst not saying that
Milton was 'Thyrsis':
Thyrsis et Damon ejusdem viciniae Pastores, eadem studia sequuti a pueritia
amici erant, ut qui plurimum. Thyrsis animi causa profectus peregre de obitu
Damonis nuncium accepit. Domum postea reversus, et rem ita esse comperto,
se, suamque solitudinem hoc carmine deplorat. Damonis autem sub persona
hie intelligitur Carolus Deodatus ex urbe Hetruriae Luca paterno genere
oriundus, caetera Anglus; ingenio, doctrina, clarissimisque caeteris virtutibus,
dum viveret, juvenis egregius.
(Thyrsis and Damon, shepherds of the same neighbourhood, had pursued the
same interests from childhood, and had been very close friends. Thyrsis, abroad
for the improvement of his mind, received the news of Damon's death. After he
had returned home and ascertained that it was true, he bewailed himself and his
92 Milton's exercising of his languages

loneliness in this poem. 'Damon' here represents Charles Diodati, whose origin
through his father's family was in the Tuscan city of Lucca, but who was in every
other respect English. While he lived he was a youth distinguished as a man of
genius, learning, and other honourable virtues.)17

T h e emotions here are only implied, but understatement emphasizes:

the unelaborated 'friends from boyhood', friends 'ut qui plurimum' (to
the utmost); and Thyrsis' vain hope that the report of death was false
makes it worse when upon returning home he 'found the fact to be
indeed so'. From here, he moves on to description then praise of the
dead. (Note in passing that he uses 'persona' in the classically correct
sense, of a 'role' or 'figment': Milton will castigate Salmasius for using it
in the much later sense of simply 'person'.)
In 1645, choosing to include the written encomiums of his Italian
friends (including Dati), Milton had to perform a balancing act. Since
they all praise his abilities, and some to an extreme which might offend
or dissuade readers, he guards himself by guiding the reader into the
right spirit or posture of reception. He does it with elegance and wit:

Haec quae sequuntur de Authore testimonia, tametsi ipse intellegebat non tarn
de se quam supra se esse dicta, eo quod praeclaro ingenio viri, nee non amici ita
fere solent laudare, ut omnia suis potius virtutibus, quam veritati congruentia
nimis cupide affingant, noluit tamen horum egregiam in se voluntatem non esse
notam; Cum alii praesertim ut id faceret magnopere suaderent. Dum enim
nimiae laudis invidiam totis ab se viribus amolitur, sibique quod plus aequo est
non attributum esse mavult, judicium interim hominum cordatorum atque
illustrium quin summo sibi honori ducat, negare non potest.
(The author knows that the tributes concerning himself which follow are not so
much words of praise as overpraise,18 because men of remarkable talent who are
also friends are wont, for the most part, to eulogize and fashion all things with
excessive warmth according to their own excellence rather than be consistent
with truth. However, the author was not willing that their good wishes for him
not be known, especially since others have earnestly urged that he make them
known. For while he seeks with all his strength to ward offthe odium of excessive
praise, and prefers that he should not have attributed to him more than is fair,
nevertheless, he cannot deny that he considers these judgements of wise and
distinguished men a supreme honour.)

It is the difficult yet clear and strenuous syntax which first commands
attention, so that in experiencing its sinew we concede distinction of
mind, so that in turn praise seems fitting. The praise may be excessive, he
says, but that only goes to show what good friends are speaking it: he will
cite them for their own honour more than his — a generous, if precarious
 Milton's Latin prose 93
position is being sought. Also precarious are the double negatives at the
close of both sentences, yet of course by being double negatives ('cannot
deny') they avoid a crude or bumptious affirmative. Besides, this author
'thrusts away' or heaves aside all envy, using again that strong verb
amolior which stood out in his prolusion. A personal, strong voice is felt in
this verb, in the thought, the firm contempt for envy and malice.19 The
voice is felt most of all in the muscular periodic sentence. Here, to use
Thomas Corns's distinctions20 again, of 'left-' and 'right-branching'
sentences from 'embedded' ones, whereby subordinate clauses precede,
follow or bisect the main clause: the whole thing is really one single
thought, one complex period whose first sentence is embedded then
right-branching, whereupon its second sentence expands and explains,
hinging on 'enim', with a balanced left-branching.
The persona emerges as no shrinking violet, but a cross between
Erasmus and Houdini; a humanist well-befriended by fellow-humanists
on the basis of accomplishment. On the other hand, when occasion
requires, as in 1640, he can efface himself; choosing the persona of
praiser, eye on the object of praise.
Decorum rules, and elegantly.

THE FIRST DEFENCE (PRIMA DEFENSIO), 165I21

By now Milton could choose and project a persona through his Latin
prose. So when it came time to adopt that of humanist controversialist,
against a more famous and ostensibly formidable opponent, he was
ready.
The sequence of events is well known, but notice its swiftness. The
King had been tried and executed by Parliament (January 1649). Milton
had of his own volition defended those actions in the Tenure of Kings
(February 1649). Employment by Parliament followed - the Secre-
taryship for the Foreign Tongues (March) and the answering of Eihon
Basilikeby Eikonoklastes (ordered March, completed October). In January
1650 the Council of State ordered Milton, by now its chief mouthpiece-
cum-propagandist, to answer the Defensio Regia, which had been commis-
sioned from the French humanist scholar Salmasius by Charles II, and
had reached England in May 1649. Now Milton was to defend the
English Revolution, the cause of religion, and his native country, to the
whole of Europe. He would do it in Latin, the lingua franca of politics
and thought. Being unknown in Europe, he was David to the Goliath of
Salmasius (an old and famous philological warrior). Milton would show
94 Milton's exercising of his languages
what he could do, not only with reasoning but with Latin. Such was the
importance of Latin as medium that, to many European readers,
especially the more uncommitted ones eyeing someone else's quarrels,
good Latin could help if not win the argument. Milton the Latinist girded
up his loins, as never before.
Consider the exordium of the Prima Defensio. The opening sentence,
which at 113 words long is too large to quote, comprises syntactically a
left- then right-brancher, both with subordinate clauses inside one
another, followed by a lengthy final apposition which itself branches into
further dependent clauses. Logically, it hinges on an a fortiori: if even an
ordinary subject merits a proportional exordium, what must this defence
deserve, being 'on well-nigh the greatest of all subjects'? Ethically, it
glances at Aristotle's Ethics, the desirable mean state, by neither omitting
nor overdoing introduction. Allusively, it adduces Tacitus, most scath-
ingly dense of ancient authors: let me not be as 'empty of matter' ('vacuus
rerum', line 2) as my opponent Salmasius. And when the sentence at
length concludes, it does so on a weighty clausula, 'ipse nihilo minus
judicer'.22 The word 'judicer', CI may be judged', invites the audience to
do just that; judge the performance now set in motion, but do so in the
all-round humanist way, style and matter and their interaction. The
period resounds, it employs numerous humanist weapons adeptly, it
displays complexity and variety, density and energy, it ends mightily:
what should he then fear from this 'judgement'? No single feature of style
has salience now, much rather the impression given is of versatile
strength, strength through being a very compleat humanist.
Several more periods roll forth, and each ends with a sonorous
clausula that amounts to onomatopoeia. Next comes 'securi percussam',
Charles I 'smitten with axe' in the Roman phrase for legal execution.23
The third period closes on 'facile defendam', the freer running short
syllables embodying the idea of easily refuting a futile opponent. The
fourth sentence clinches this sense of confident, many-weaponed ease: it
is short (20 words), it is balanced (the claims of the people and those of
God), and God gets the last word ('ubique testantur Deum'. The speaker
has the biggest artillery of all, it appears, the clausula giving mimetic
finality to the Deity (cretic, then iamb: - - - 1 - - - - ) .
And still Milton can go one better. To demonstrate God's backing he
now cites Virgil and the Bible. 'Superbos et effraenatos reges, supra
humanum modum sese efferentes, solet [Deus] deturbare' (VII. 4~6)24
must evoke the prophecy to Virgil's Aeneas that Rome's mission is to
'debellare superbos', 'overcome the proud'. And it evokes even more the
 Milton's Latin prose 95
words of the Magnificat (Luke 1. 51-2): 'Dispersit superbos mente cordis
sui / Deposuit potentes de sede' ('He hath scattered the proud in the
imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their
seats.5) Convergence of independent testimony, authoritative to human-
ist and Christian respectively, must carry conviction. Note the qualifying
phrase, too, 'supra humanum modum', in which speaks the Christian
humanist, about human limits. Six sentences into the speech, Milton has
employed a wide array of humanist weapons. He has conveyed his
humorous contempt for an ill-informed and rash oppponent. He has
done all this without committing hubris either, because he is recognizing
first principles, greater glories.
The unknown David, fighting the humanist with the giant reputation,
carries on with equal verve. Mention of God suggests an aligning of
revolutionary England with the image to end all images: England as
Israel on Exodus, we 'followed God as our leader' ('ilium Ducem secuti',
VII. 6. 4). For good measure, we are 'venerating the divine footsteps,
printed far and wide' ('impressa passim divina vestigia venerantes').
There is an elegant phonological patterning to this, using s and v. And
though the thought is not a Roman one it is a very Protestant one.
Protestants, as well as humanists, are the constituency to be persuaded,
and this both by force of argument and rhetoric and by pleasing. Not
only is Milton having the biggest gladiatorial fight of his life: he is
enjoying it.
On the next page he is more obviously mingling the useful with the
pleasurable, in a fusillade of small but cumulative felicities, all dear to the
humanist palate: (a) apt quotation, (b) the mot juste, (c) precision of
compound verbs (a favourite instance of (b), this), and (d) final demolition
by massive hendiadys. I take these in turn, (a) The phrase 'verborum
lenociniis' (Verbal pimpings', vn. 8. 12) to describe the Eikon Basilike is
drawn from Minucius Felix: he, significantly enough, was a third century
Christian apologist with a flair for ironic debating on confessional
matters, (b) 'Populo se venditantem' (Charles I in Eikon Basilike was
'selling himself to the people', ibid.) hits home because of the exactness of
the verb: the frequentative/desiderative suffix on 'vendit-' suggests
eagerness to be bought, as it were prostitutiveness.25 (c) Milton character-
izes himself, replying, as a vigorous defender by the string of strong
verbs, whose precision stems from the right choice of prepositional prefix
fraiargui atque summowi, refellam atque &cutiam': 'throw the proofs
back, thrust them aside, knock the lies in all directions', 'dis-', that is to
smithereens), (d) At the climax of the same sentence, not only these strong
96 Milton's exercising of his languages
verbs are paired, but adverbs and nouns. I mark the joins of the four pairs
to show Milton's vehement fourfold hendiadys: 'redargui et summovi,
tarn . . . feliciter tamque vere, petulantiam et mendacia, refellam atque
discutiam'. Note incidentally that he varies the conjunctions by synony-
ms, lest these obtrude. Note more essentially the sheer weight of the
ending of this period (another very long one): 'declamatoris huius exotici
petulantiam et mendacia refellam atque discutiam', 'I refute and
demolish this interfering-foreign rhetorician's impudent lies.' Since
'exotici' has two meanings, 'foreign' and 'meddling', just about every-
thing here goes in twos. Milton hits out with a stylistic two-handed
engine.
To repeat, he is having fun. He wants it to be fun for the humanist
reader, because what else could sustain even that reader through
hundreds of pages of demolition-job? And so he intensifies the insulting
fun in the next three pages (8-14). He does it by starting off a series of
inventive insults. These intersperse the whole of the rest of the refutation,
like a cross between running gags and comic subplots. First he calls
Salmasius a 'busybody', 'ardelio'. Apt word, fair comment; for the
waspish satirist Martial used it, and after all why is a foreigner joining in
an English dispute? (Answer in a moment, 'for money'.) Then Salmasius
is summed up in yet another hendiadys: all that Salmasius brings to this
argument, on life-and-death matters, is 'arrogantiam et Grammaticam',
his presumption and his grammar, which are made to denigrate each
other. Soon his 'professoriae linguae' ('expert's tongue') is mentioned (10.
18). 'Professoria' can mean either 'expert' or 'typical of a teacher of
rhetoric', but as it is used about Seneca by Tacitus (him again) we know
that Milton is emphasizing the derogatory sense while playing on the
other.26 Humanist readers of Tacitus, the mordant exposer of phonies,
surely enjoyed this hit.
These were all quick thrusts, almost asides. But soon, warming to his
work of dismissing the opponent by derogatory yet apt caricature
images, Milton slows the pace. He depicts Salmasius in two little scenes,
one more or less true, one imagined with the help of Roman comedians.
First, he describes vividly how Charles IFs chaplain brought the coins of
payment to Salmasius at his house - in a 'purse with beads on it'. Milton
neatly conjoins the word 'sacred', 'Sacellanus' ('custodian of the shrine
or holy things') with the vulgar word 'crumena' ('purse', a word most at
home in the satirist Juvenal and the comedian Plautus). Now follows a
deliciously absurd caricature of Salmasius pretending to embrace the
man of God, but actually embracing the money! We need not feel Milton
 Milton's Latin prose 97
was wasting his creative talents on this prose, because his fictional,
image-making powers are well engaged.
At once these powers blossom. Launched perhaps by 'crumena' -
diction as virtual allusion - Milton imagines a whole scene from a play,
starring Salmasius: 'here comes the man himself; the door creaks; enter
the actor' - to start quoting from Terence, the Eunuch. It would be that
play: Salmasius is going to be seen as a eunuch. Thus the humanist
reader, who loved Plautus and Terence and for whom those writers
constituted the living ideal of comedy, is laughing as if at a hitherto
unknown scene from Roman comedy. It is at this precise moment that
Milton begins quoting from Salmasius' treatise, before the laughter and
the analogy can subside.
Jokes continue in a varying, abounding stream: a fantasia about ears,
such as the long (asses') ears of grammarians (14. 15-23); exposure of a
non-regulation usage of the word persona (— 'role, mask', not 'person' in
classical Latin), making the pundit out to be a barbarian; describing his
speaking by the verb ampullari (deriving from 'ampulla', a bulbous
wine-jar, so here comes some more diverting image-making); punning
on Salmasius' name and that of Salmacis, a very choice and Ovidian
metamorphosis now because Salmacis was an insatiable nymph who was
united with Hermaphroditus into a bisexual entity; and so on. The point
is not that such insulting is distasteful or childish. It is simply the
street-fighting aspect of any political acrimony: it had to be funny and
effective; and it was. (Those on the receiving end of Parliamentary
taunting feel affronted, but bystanders can enjoy it in a spirit more
sportive than anything.) To make humanists laugh like this, to make
them laugh equally from pleasures of recognition and aptness, was an
integral part of the (Parliament- and God-given) task.
Like most seventeenth-century satire, Milton's satire attacks. He
mocks, ridicules, lampoons, and convicts his opponent whilst entertain-
ing humanist Europe as diversely as he may. Like Dryden (who learnt
from Milton and used him) Milton is waging 'immortal war with wit'; a
war of wit, by wit, and about wit. The war is fundamentally serious even
in the knockabout.

CONCLUSION
And it worked. How humanists reacted to these aspects of the Prima
Defensio is not directly recorded. The demand for a sequel suggests it was
a triumph; and on the sequel and its style, there does exist apt comment.
98 Milton's exercising of his languages
Consider the words of Elie Bouhereau: 'II est partout si brillant et il dit
des injures de si bonne grace que quelque peu malin que tu sois, tu ne
laisseras pas de t'y divertir' ('He is everywhere so brilliant and he says
insults with so beautiful grace that, however little malicious you may be,
you won't stop being diverted with it'.)27 This Bouhereau may have been
Protestant, which would make him more readily amused, and he wrote
in 1672; but the comment is apt and true, indeed the approach is my own.
Milton played his part, as humanist wit-satirist-orator-logician, not to
mention prophet, to the fullest. He played it very well. It was the acme of
his whole life's and study's development to date. He played — in a spirit of
enjoyment of totally serious play — all the parts of the humanist, before
the humanists of Europe, regarding a great issue, with a fervour that
included the patriotic but went wider, to first principles of a more than
patriotic scope. It is really no wonder that he postponed the writing of
Paradise Lost, nor even that he defied blindness and illness to write two
more such Defences.
We can go further. The feeling, often voiced in books on Milton, that
he ought to have stuck to his poetry, and maintained a dignified silence
on nasty politics, is a ridiculous anachronism. I would like to hear his
own (Latin) comment on it. The newer view, that we should heed his
Defences because they had political importance and interest, does more
justice to them, yet still to the context rather than to the texts themselves.
He was performing, in his fattest role to date, to his largest and most
cosmopolitan audience (far, far larger and more diverse than his
audience in Paradise Lost), his most congenial part, to great and pleasurable
effect.
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci
(The writer who both profits and delights the audience deservedly wins all the
prizes.)
The Horatian tag is incessantly quoted by renaissance humanists,
usually as critics or poets. Yet it applies with equal force here, to Milton's
prose polemic in the crisis of 1651. The whole development of his Latin
prose writing now reaches its culmination.
 CONCLUSION TO PART ONE

Multilingualism in Milton's Latin prose

The First Defence not only became the climax and practical justification of
Milton's writing of Latin prose: it provided splendid scope for his whole
multilingualism. To close part one of the enquiry, and before part two
shows the impact of multilingualism on the three major English poems, I
stress further how fundamental his languages were to the scope and force
of the Defence, with some reference to other prose genres.

PHILOLOGY AND COMPOSITION

Against Salmasius, Milton's philology emerged from his study into the
European cockpit; from theory to unforeseen practice, from private to
very public. He corrects Salmasius on all sorts of language-arts, in all
three classical tongues: usage, translation, interpretation, even composi-
tion. For example, drawing on his protracted Greek studies, he contests
the meaning of passages from Aeschylus and Euripides.1 Again, drawing
on his Hebrew studies, he tackles Salmasius on the meaning of 'mishpat',
because it bears on the rights and duties of kings.2 Or again, he
re-composes a poem of Martial, tofitthe new occasion. It is in scazontes,
the 'limping' metre: the line is iambic till the last foot, which by switching
to trochee makes the line as a whole 'limp', to an effect of comical
bathos.3
The impact of such varied applications of language-arts is naturally to
convince the humanist audience, that the writer possesses multiple
humanist credentials. That aids persuasion.
But it confirms, equally, Milton's attitude to himself. As in Poems, 1645
he is both impressing and expressing. He gives himself intellectual fun.
Even if the Defence as a whole was drudgery, the elements of multilingual
play could relieve it. He could perform again, on a spectacularly wide
stage now, those language-arts which he had seemed to set aside.

99
ioo Milton's exercising of his languages

ROOTS, COMPREHENSIVENESS AND CHOICE

At least three principles govern Milton's recourse through his languages

to multicultural proof texts. These are: his going back to roots or origins;
his comprehensiveness; and his selectivity.
The going back to originals is an important part of the proof. It
coincides with Milton's whole commitment to languages. Going back to
originals in their own tongues is going back to the roots of knowledge.
This is why etymology (digging for root senses) or textual emendation
(recovering authorial sense), and all philology in the broad sense, are
hardly to be separated from his going back to the origins of one human
problem after another - kingship, covenant, social contract, law. The
language-arts not only image the thinking - they aid it, they are
continuous with it.
The comprehensiveness of Milton's learning shows best in his sense of
history. In the First Defence he has to explain all history, because in history
both kingship and covenant originated. He sweeps through the history
narrated by the Old and New Testaments; then on into ecclesiastical
history; then takes his dragnet to pagan history; and so to British (Celtic)
- all the history he had studied during the 1630s, and the 1640s, when he
also wrote history. The Commonplace Book amply demonstrates how
varied was the history he read, and how systematically he moralized its
meanings. Much of it was drawn upon in 1651.
Yet his selectivity in the Defence and elsewhere tells us even more. For
instance, he dwells on Roman history to show that supreme magistrates
are not above the law. To make this central point against Salmasius and
Charles I, Milton instances the expulsions of Mezentius and Tarquin,
and the deaths of Caesar and Caligula, Nero and Domitian. To do this
he uses the words of Roman authors upon them (Virgil, Cicero, Seneca,
Pliny).4
Selectivity works with comprehensiveness. The choices are apt. The
coverage (from the foundations of Rome through to the first two
dynasties of the Emperors) is complete; for this covers all the greatness of
Rome, from its origins to its status as world power at its greatest extent.
Through knowledge of those authors in their original, he as it were gets
an 'ought' from an 'is':5 Rome taught a duty, to get rid of tyrants.

THE CONVERGENCE OF TESTIMONY

Moral themes emerge, not simply from history, but from Milton's
seizure of points where his languages show him historical convergence of
 Multilingualism in Milton's Latin prose 101
testimony among their cultures. Most strikingly, since in terms of
interaction or even dialectic Rome and Israel learnt rather little from one
another, he seizes on the essentials of his view of history from crises of
both. They show him how salvation and failure came about. And since
one and all in Milton's day believed history was instructive (because
recurrent), historiography led straight to choice now. That choice
embraced the moral, political and spiritual, without separation or
differentiation.
The simplest illustration has just been given: the recurrent Roman
need to rescue the state (respublica, = that state of social living which is
'public', has come down to and belongs to all citizens). Not to act, for the
Roman, is failure and betrayal Exactly the same passion and absolutism
runs through all biblical history. Milton found it further on in Gildas, the
Celtic historian of Celtic collapse. He found it in Sallust, his preferred
classical historian.6 He found it in Cicero, who not only held that as
consul he had saved Rome from Catilina,7 but tried to do it again against
the Triumvir Antony, and died as a consequence.8
And if knowing the past and its patterns qualifies Milton as historian to
advise for the future, the moral bases qualify him to speak on politics -
past, present and future - as a prophet. Very often he affects the tones of
a Jeremiah as well as a Cicero. It is a heady, powerful combination.
He opens the Defence like the prophet, claiming that England has
survived Charles's tyranny by 'following' the cLord and his clear way, the
divine footsteps imprinted everywhere'.9 He closes the Defence by an
astonishing reliance on Cicero.

THE ENDING
It is Cicero who breathes the fire into the first, 1651, ending to the work.
Milton emulates Cicero's impassioned appeals (the Philippics, of 44-43
BC) to the Romans, urging them not to throw away what Brutus and
Cassius had won for Roman (well, Senatorial) liberty. Especially, let
them not throw it away in appeasement or credulity with regard to the
Triumvir, Mark Antony. The same fire is in Milton's belly in his final
appeal.
Yet on reflection, how very odd the ending is. The Defence is in Latin
for consumption by the uncommitted humanists and others of Europe;
yet Milton closes it by direct appeal to his fellow-countrymen. Do not now,
'O Cives' (fellow-citizens), subside into faction or greed or fainthearted-
ness (VII. 551-2). Suddenly the European audience find themselves
listening in, on an internally directed debate.
102 Milton's exercising of his languages

The reasons, I suggest, are these, (a) The continental audience receive
a hint to stay out of this English quarrel; which suits the Commonwealth
cause nicely, especially in 1651 (just before the Protectorate), (b) More
important, Cicero can be heard all the more resoundingly. The late
turning of the utterance is towards a new philippic, making more overt
what had long been implicit, (c) Cicero, the Roman, suits this perfervid
appeal. Romans were a practical, secular, pragmatic people. But
therefore they felt towards Rome as towards their mother; with pietas,
religiously. So Milton makes his appeal, which is simultaneously biblical
and prophetic, an appeal to the sacredness of things Roman; to the
Roman, and therefore to the practising humanist.
Style supports stance. Milton ends with a cataclysmic peroration
(ninety-nine words long), itself culminating with an authentic massive
Ciceronian clausula:
. . . vosque multo iratiorem brevi tempore experturi estis Deum, quam aut
infensum inimici vestri, aut vos benignum et faventem, prae caeteris omnibus
terrarum orbis gentibus hodiernis, experti estis.10

(And in a little time ye willfindGod far more wrathful against you than either
your adversaries have found him embittered, or ye have found him aforetime
gracious and favourable beyond all other nations at this time on earth.)
The sense pivots on the contrast of future and past in verbs: 'experturi
estisV'experti estis'. The echoed 'estis' ensures recollection, hence
control. The double comparison, God 'embittered' against adversaries
but gracious towards 'ye', keeps up the need for complex attention to the
end. The reward of staying tuned is the crashing clausulaic pattern:
spondaic, resolving, then more than ever massively spondaic;
1 _ w w - w - - 1 #n

Cicero would have approved. Humanists did approve. 'I find him so
brilliant and so agreeable everywhere that I should prefer to read entire
volumes of his rather than a single page by his adversary, who seemed to
me everywhere very pedantic and not at all witty', said Elie Bouhereau.12
He thought that even opponents would laugh with Milton. That was the
governing aim, which Milton's languages - and only they - could
achieve.13
 PART TWO

Multilingualism and the major English poems

 It is scarcely possible to interpret coherently the rhetoric of
European literatures, the key notions of sublimity, of satire, of
laughter which they embody and articulate without a just aware-
ness of the Latin 'implication', of the unbroken, often almost
subconscious negotiations of intimacy or of distance between the
author in the vulgate and the Latin mould. (George Steiner)1
Now we apply the methods and perspective of part one to Milton's major
English poems. Thus in so far as his languages interact within the grand
style they may solve, or ease, or redefine the problems which that style
poses nowadays. Again, once we recognize how his languages helped
him as best access to best minds we are well placed to appraise influences
on Milton — where 'influence' means not merely the pervasive presence
of notable exemplars within the grand style, but precise voices or
'signatures'2 of those whom Milton emulates. For one thing, the key
contributors in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes tarn out
all to be from foreign languages, authors whom Milton had read in those
languages. (Even the Bible; not least the Bible.) Secondly, moreover,
Harold Bloom3 need not have exempted Milton from the 'anxiety of
influence'. Something strenuous, and persistent, and at times conten-
tious enters into his emulation with Virgil and Latin. Ambivalent
elements of his composing are understood better when set alongside his
multilingual exemplar, Dante.
 CHAPTER 6

Latin and Milton's other languages in the style of

Paradise Lost

'Latinism' within the grand style is the felt presence of Latin diction and
usage within the English, interacting with it. Most readers of Paradise Lost
felt it, and liked or loathed the poem accordingly, until Alastair Fowler
expunged many supposed instances; and concluded that the poem is the
'most colloquial secondary epic ever written'.1 Thomas Corns's recent
study has continued the tendency to expunge, along with the polemical
tone. The present study, on the other hand, is committed to the view that
Latin — and Milton's other tongues — are an important interlingual
intertext for Milton's poems. I hear more such interactions than the
current orthodoxy allows. Moreover, the precedent of Dante, relevant as
usual, persuades me that an epic may be colloquial and interlingual in the
sense I intend: as Tuscan and Latin for Dante, so a more English
hybridizing for Milton.
Accordingly, I shall summarize the debate hitherto, then propose
different terms of reference, to focus attention on the most profitable,
least contentious interactions. Though their proportion is indeed smaller
than used to be claimed, their placing, clustering and local impact enrich
the text in important ways. So of course do the contributions in diction
and usage from Milton's other languages, albeit by less frequent
interactions.

THE DEBATE HITHERTO, AND THE DEFINITION OF LATINISM

We can accept, to start with, that
Eighteenth-century critics and editors left to a credulous posterity a consider-
able legacy of comment and annotation which attributed to Milton a penchant
for using Latin words in senses which are redolent of their classical signification
rather than their current English meaning (Corns, p. 95).
Broadly, Corns is right that 'What has disappeared are those cases where
105
106 Multilingualism and the major English poems
Milton uses words of Latin origin in senses which were contempor-
aneously current3 in English. Resorting to the Oxford English Dictionary
confirms that 'where the editors' knowledge of Latin surpasses their
knowledge of seventeenth-century English they have simply duped
themselves'.2
I am less certain that 'Such supposed "Latinisms" have traditionally
been invoked to substantiate claims for Milton's unEnglishness and to
support an adverse assessment of his achievement.' How many English
readers have ever wanted an 'unEnglish' Milton, and how much has that
ever mattered? It is all too clear that the campaign by F. R. Leavis to
dethrone Milton by these and other means is itself insular; which
Milton's style is not. It is equally clear that the resistance to Leavis from
Fowler has tilted the balance the other way. It is very clear indeed that
Fowler's commentary discovers new Latinisms as busily as it disallows
old ones. What is lacking in Fowler, and still in Corns, is any weighty
rebuttal of the view of (for example) Christopher Ricks3 that Latinism
enables puns and echoism to make the grand style denser, so command-
ing a more complex attention and thus persuading more completely.
Yet once more, therefore, I shall ask, what is - and what is not - a
Latinism? Here Fowler did a notable yet insufficient service by distin-
guishing four 'bands' of Latinism:
There is a spectrum of possible Latinity of diction in which four bands may be
distinguished; i. The Latin usage is the primary sense or chain of discourse; and
is completely new in English... Milton very rarely innovates so extremely... 2.
The Latin usage is the primary sense; and occurs in English only or mostly in
poetic contexts... Paradise Losthas few Latinisms of this kind. 3. The Latin usage
is a secondary sense only. The primary sense is an ordinary English usage, but a
Latin usage is present in addition, as an allusion or ambiguity . . . There are
many 'Latinisms' of this type; but they could never be said to weaken the native
sinews of anyone's style. Such effects enrich and deepen. 4. The primary sense is
an ordinary English usage, occurring in prose contexts, which happens also to
be a Latin usage. This, if it were to be considered Latinism at all, would be
Latinism at its faintest and least objectionable. Examples of this type naturally
occur throughout Paradise Lost in great numbers, (pp. 432—3)

That is all well said; so well, though, that it provokes a swarm of further
questions. Why stop at four 'bands'? Is there any sense in which the four
stand equal? Is it not a lopsided classification, having two bands tiny and
the other two huge? Would we not rather expect a continuum, or bell
curve? Can we accept so simple a sundering of'poetical' from 'ordinary'
usage, or 'primary' from 'secondary' senses? What if most of the cases
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 107
worth considering are 'borderline'? What if they bunch within the third
band, for the simple reason that only by being of that sort will they reach
the ideal readership, those who care about the theme and about epic?
Why suppose that Milton did not hear what was heard by his
contemporaries, also Latin-educated but less so than he? Who precisely
is hearing or not hearing the interactions?
Such questions deserve a more open address than both Leavis and his
opponents have given. The polemical tone is felt unduly: 'native sinews',
'least objectionable' - who is still objecting? It should be salutary, this late
in the day, to consider instances rather than declare principles; to
explore interlingualism in a few of Milton's myriad particular combina-
tions of Latin usage or diction with English. No one conclusion or
position will emerge triumphant, except that we find an experimentalism
of bilingual engagement, Milton using his entire intellectual - which
means, multilingual - armoury in his best poem. The ensuing discussion
will attempt a more inductive analysis, building on Fowler but arriving
through induction at more numerous, overlapping categories than his.

PARALLEL CASES: SPENSER AND MILTON

To recover a context of understanding, one more apposite than that of

eighteenth-century editors or twentieth-century critical warfare, let us
glance at parallel cases: the Latinism of Spenser in the Faerie Queene, as
Milton's only English epic exemplar; and coinage in Milton's other
languages, to see how he neologized outside English verse.
Sir Guyon, Spenser's champion in his legend 'Of Temperaunce', is on
quest to destroy the Bower of Bliss. He comes his nearest to failing in the
quest when he is almost deflected by 'Two naked Damzelles' in a
fountain.4 What slackens the hero's stride is their alternate concealing
and revealing of their bodies: '[they] th'amarous sweet spoiles to greedy
eyes revele' (64. 9). 'Amarous' is one of several 1590s spellings of
'amorous', = 'lovely, arousing desire'. That is clear. But Blount's 1656
Gbssographia.. .[of] hard words.. .as are now used gives 'amarous' = 'bitter,
sharp, froward . . .', all of which go back to Latin 'amarus', bitter. The
sweetness of the 'spoiles' will leave a bitter aftertaste, then. Now, here is
just the sort of double entendre by which Spenser keeps up a moral
vigilance in the alert reader alongside the seductive onomatopoeias of his
description of the Bower. I find it more natural to suppose that his
readers were to hear 'amarus' within 'amarous' = amorous, than that
'amarous' = bitter was current in 1590 with no sense of its Latin. It is
108 Multilingualism and the major English poems
more economical, as part of a transaction between a Latin-educated poet
and his readers. To insist we argue backwards from Blount in terms of a
sufficient currency for 'amarous' = bitter seems unduly circuitous. But if
so, how many of Fowler's band 3 examples, and even of his band 4,
similarly read best as transactions in Latinism between poet and readers
experienced in Latin, and especially in its poetry? Spenser being Milton's
chief English exemplar, it is a question worth asking.
A second suggestive context is Milton's coinage in his other languages.
In his Latin verses he makes up rather few words, and when he does it he
forms them on principles implied by existing wordstock. Thus his verb
surdeo, 'I am deaf, resembles pre-existent 'denominative' verbs (called
'statives' in Hebrew), such as albeo, calveo, or claudeo ('I am
white/bald/lame'). 5 Mostly, though, his coinages are adjectives, since
Latin verse liked (and metrical exigency might require) amplification, of
which epithets gave the readiest supply. Examples include 'coelifuga'
('heaven-fleeing', said of Christ), and 'stellipar' ('star-begetting', said of
the sky at the Nativity).6 Since the parts are common words, and kindred
compounds existed, the new word is more like grafting than coining. It
uses ordinary things and established law to create.
Actually, coinage does not flaunt itself after the early In Quintum
Novembris, The somewhat special needs of this satire in epic hexameters
on Satan's failure to blow up King James on 5 November make coinage
more rife than elsewhere, usually as bombastic polysyllables to inflate
then expose the wicked Papacy. Examples include 'tricoronifer' ('triple-
crown-wearer'), said of the Pope. Otherwise, Milton's Latin moves away
from coinage. His most striking effects are found in the new usage of
received words, as in 'fractaeque agitata crepuscula silvae',7 in which
Latin had not conceived of an 'agitated twilight', light on the move, till
Milton.
For his Italian, having less confidence, he used only a pre-existent
poetic wordstock; but here we noticed successes, as well as failures,
among his novel uses of existing words. Dantean compound verbs with
in- as prefix can signify both process and joining, to embody a new state
in its moment of formation. Tasso in the Discorsi had discussed and
recommended this practice, and Milton heeded Tasso. The enthusiastic
following of this pattern in the Italian poems modulates into English
coinages for Paradise Lost; such as 'imparadised', 'imbrowned' and
'imbrute'. And even if somebody were to turn up these words in a plainer
context in English from before 1667, it remains more likely - even aside
from the perspective of the present study - that he was infusing his
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 109
English with a Dantean spirit in these rare Italianisms; crare' in both
senses.
Consequently, whilst conceding that no strong inference can be made
from innovative diction and usage in his second languages to his practice
in Paradise Lost, we can at any rate combine the cases of Spenser in
English and of Milton himself outside it to frame expectations as follows.
Boldness will be spasmodic, perhaps clustered. Coinages will conform to
the language's implicit rules. New uses of existing diction (band 3) will far
exceed outright coinages. Yet the boundaries between bands 2 and 3 will
be hard to draw (as will those between 3 and 4).
Accordingly, as a matter of method now, we should not set limits or
insist on categories in advance of meeting Milton's imagination within
particular utterances. And we should be looking for interaction, not so
much at the cellular level of the word as in phrases, lines or clauses. For
then we see the multilingual interaction in the context where it seemed
good to Milton that it should interact.

THE TROUBLE WITH BOUNDARIES

The trouble with boundaries, and for that matter the importance of
borderline cases and the resultant need for pragmatic delicacy, can all be
seen in the marvellous words describing how Adam waits for Eve after
she has fallen:

Great joy he promis'd to his thoughts, and new

Solace in her return, so long delay'd;
Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill,
Misgave him; hee the falt'ring measure felt;
And forth to meet her went . . .
(ix. 845-9, m y emphasis)8

In the first place, 'divine + of inhabits the borderline between diction

and syntax. Secondly, the OED tells us that the usage, meaning
'prophetic of, is rare in English and first occurs here. Thirdly, if being
unsure whether Milton coins it from Latin we consult the Latin
dictionary, we find the usage common in Latin, and exemplified by two
notable occurrences - both with the same 'objective' genitive, directed at
future evil - in Horace. Fourthly, we then notice that not only is Horace
in general a favourite author of Milton's,9 but has been echoed as the
climax of Eve's preceding speech (ix. 832-3, her twisted version of
'tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens'.)10 Thus the phrase gains
no Multilingualism and the major English poems
impact by its Latin connection. And lastly, that is even more the case if
we admit other senses of'divine': the diviner part of Adam 'divines' the
nearness of danger.
And we should admit this nuance derived from philology: the newness
of the English idiom alerts us to multiple, ironic meaning. What I have
termed pragmatic delicacy seems, accordingly, more useful than an
insistence that 'divine of be either solely a Latinism or else not. For those
who read Horace, it probably is; for those who do not, the context steers
the sense; but Milton himself did read Horace. A final conclusion from
this example is that no general conclusion, and no method, should be
drawn from it. Any Latinism may be particular, unique, local, invented
for its occasion - though equally it may have a parallel elsewhere, or
indeed many.

LATINISM IN SYNTAX
I take next three examples of probable Latinism of syntax. For once, it
seems, syntax may illuminate more simply than diction does — perhaps
because it looks beyond the lexicographical monad, the word, towards
clauses or sentences, which Milton makes so long that they give strong
contextual guidance into meaning, complex and multiple yet lucid. Be
that as it may, the three examples offer us two pervasive usages, and
another that is unique (so illustrating that a Latinism may be unique, and
occasional, or not). And of those two, one is more surely Latinate than
the other.
(a) Absolute constructions point to our issue at its most intractable.
How did Milton, or his contemporary readers, react to the likes of this:
God says that by the help of his rebel angels, 'This inaccessible high
strength, the seat / Of Deity supreme, us dispossess^ I He [Satan] trusted
to have seized' (vn. 141-3, my emphases)?
Readers of Latin soon become familiar with the ablative absolute, as
readers of Greek do with its genitive cousin. Yet absolute constructions,
whether or not taken from ancient languages, are plentiful in Middle
English. So the question arises whether in Milton they are felt as Latinate
or native, or indeed both. I submit that it is an open question which way
Milton himself would vote if he had ever had to; but that for his readers it
depends whether they have read the absolute construction most in
English or another language. For Milton's first readers this seems to me
very much an open question. That is, they would meet the absolute
usage early on in their Latin reading (in Caesar's Gallic Wars, for
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 111
instance), very possibly before they met its English counterpart in their
English reading, if Latin doings edged out English ones in their local
syllabus. It was not only in Latin verse composition that Latin took
educational priority: after all, it was the medium as well as subject of a
grammar school syllabus.
So much in general. The particular utterance, however, is so inverted
in its word order that the absolute construction is to be subsumed under
that quality, to give us Milton's Father at his most condensed and
difficult. Those who hear no Latin will find it only condensed and
difficult. Those who hear Latin will hear Roman models who cultivate
difficulty: Sallust, Lucan, Augustine. To side with the latter group seems
to me not absurd, though certainly optional: the gain in complexity of
understanding is offset, yet not overwhelmed, by loss of immediacy.
Either way, we must ask why God is made to talk like this. Perhaps such
density is a shorthand, the occupational hazard of theological mind.11
(b) A second pervasive type of locution strikes me as more decisively
Latinate. This is the use of a predicative past participle to avoid abstract
nouns, which Latin disliked: thus 'navis capta', literally 'the ship
captured', is idiomatic for 'the capture of the ship'. The idiom is familiar
in the Roman dating formula 'Ab urbe condita' (AUG), 'from the
founding of the city' though literally 'from the city founded'. It was
enshrined in the epic tradition, too, by Milton's time: 'Gerusalemme
Liberata' means 'the freeing of Jerusalem'. So Milton's own title means
'the losing of Paradise,' not 'the lost Paradise'; thus declaring itself in a
Roman tradition by its grammar, and in an epic one by the parallel with
Tasso. Other instances include 'since created man' (i. 573), or 'Adam
Unparadiz'd' from the Trinity Manuscript.12
(c) Nonetheless, many Latinisms of syntax do not become a class, but
remain a once-only local effect. When Belial during the Great Consult
advocates inaction, Milton gives him an English equivalent of Latin's
'licet' + subjunctive for a concessive clause: 'Who knows, / Let this be
good, Whether our angry foe / Can give it?' (11. 151—3). The reader
(thanks to the punctuation, which is original) is not baffled because there
is nothing else 'Let' can mean but 'even supposing'. Any momentary
obscurity suits the speaker's purpose: to slither, through lengthy talk of
action, into convenient sloth. The weird quick idiom helps to character-
ize him. Whether or not the reader actually hears any 'licet' in this
prominent 'Let', that is the missing link.
Similarly at vin. 577-8 with the quite different effect of the play on
'see/seen' (the figure traductio): 'with honour thou may'st love / Thy
ii2 Multilingualism and the major English poems
mate, who sees when thou art seen least wise'. This makes little sense in
terms of unfallen Eden, where there is no one but Eve for Adam to be
seen by. The point lies rather in the different sense carried by the passive
of 'see' in Latin video: videor (like German aussehen) meaning 'I seem, I
appear' is a commoner sense than 'I am seen'. That sharpens the sense of
Raphael's veiled rebuke, into 'Eve is the one who observes you when you
appear most foolish' - and so, let your desire of her itself keep you
rational, save you from passionate subservience. The usage may be
abrupt and elliptical. It is certainly unusual. But it suits the situation,
enabling the archangel to make a quick, indeed critical hint, with a
leverage which Adam ('half abashed') feels. Even unfallen man winces,
to think how he looks to his wife when at his worst. Latinism, the Latin
idiom underneath the plain-seeming monosyllables, keeps the critique
subtle and rational: you have to be quick yourself to 'see' it for what it is, a
searching critique.

THE INADEQUACY OF CURRENT CLASSIFICATIONS

'Latinism' often seems like a loose assemblage of distinct particular

effects within the style; resisting ascription to this or that band. Here is
another instance which hangs — in a fashion all its own — between syntax
and diction, between Latinism and allusion, between English and Latin.
The Father has told the loyal angels that he will repair any
depopulation of heaven by a new creation, mankind, who after trial will
enter heaven, with earth and heaven becoming one another. He goes on,
'Meanwhile inhabit lax, ye Powers of Heav'n . . . ' (vn. 162). The phrase is
odd, first, syntactically: 'inhabit' is not recorded intransitively by the
OED after 1588. An intransitive usage occurs in Latin, but governing a
dative rather than absolutely. 'Lax', on the other hand, in the sense of'so
as to have ample room' is firmly declared a Latinism by the OED (under
'laxity' as well as under 'lax'). My own guess is that it was wanted thus for
conciseness, and for the assonant slack a pairing; and hence comes the
Latinate syntax, made out of hybrid diction, one obsolete anglicism and
one clear Latinism. Again, if we ponder the phrase rather than its parts,
we are told by one editor that 'the phrase is a Latinism, and imitates
"Habitare laxe et magnifice voluit"' (Cicero, De domo sua xliv. 115)'.13
Fowler, who says the phrase 'imitates' Cicero but does not speak of a
Latinism, may perceive a case where Latinism verges on allusion, or
becomes it. Yet even the allusion is odd: what have Cicero's theme and
scathing tone to do with the Father's? The relationship of tenor to
vehicle in the allusion is either lax or distracting.
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 113
I find something prefabricated about the phrase at large, as if
language and thought were for once being subordinated to requirements
of sound; or to a leaden play of mind, be it God's or Milton's.14 At the end
of analysis, it remains true that a commonplace idea is taken from a
mundane source: something remains to be explained here, and even if
we invoke an erratic working of the hooks and eyes of imagination, it still
seems a pedantic doodling. The value of such analysis is only heuristic:
we have diagnosed one of the poem's 'flats', as Dryden or Addison called
them.
Quite opposite value accrues from a passage with a similar blurring of
terminological boundaries, where the new-created swan

with Arched neck

Between her white wings mantling proudly, Rows
Her state with Oary feet . . . (vn. 438-40)
The cognate or internal accusative is found in Latin and English alike:
dicta dicere = to say witty sayings; and 'fight the good fight'. So why detect
any Latinism? Yet since the phrase feels odd, one might as well say, why
not feel the oddity as partly Latinism? Next, indeed, we meet a further
Latinism. For after the charm of Anglo-Saxon in 'oary feet' (humanizing
the swan) we may recall that Latin remigium = rowing is regular poetic
usage in Latin for the movement of legs in swimming or wings in flying
(OxLD. b.), as in Virgil's 'remigium alarum', the 'oarage of wings'. The
phrasing as a whole, then, almost even-handedly balances the native
English with the learned Latin - for an effect, finally and upon reflection,
of sublime emotional onomatopoeia. The swan rows across the line-
break. The onomatopoeia lies in the smooth and stately enjambement.
The emotion is ofjoy in this beauty from the new creation. It is seen as if
new-created because defamiliarized by diction and allusion and syntax,
all swimming into and out of each other. The impact is sublime because
the words are full-blooded new creation. To its poise as an act of thought
the Latinisms are essential: they balance the English.
The reader may have noted that most instances so far have come from
Books VI-VII, Raphael's instruction of Adam. Is this accidental, or a
significant clustering? Do heaven-dwellers use more Latinism than
Adam and Eve? Is its presence a mark of their possessing greater insight
or experience than Adam, listening? It will be suggested later that the
incidence of Latinisms does increase in the middle books, as not only
archangelic instruction for Adam and defamiliarizing charm for the
reader, but as part of a technical-philosophical-theological tone of these
books, itself part of a larger style of multilingual thought. Did it always
114 Multilingualism and the major English poems
matter to Milton as thinker whether an idea came to him in English words
or Latin ones, since his two most-used languages had long ago
interpenetrated as far as concerned his thought - about the Bible
especially? He is a compound, not coordinate, bilingual.
To conclude this section, 'minims of nature' (vn. 482) is a charming
instance of his integrated bilingualism. I risk crushing the charm by
analysis, because the instance shows the many-sidedness, energy and
thrift. 'Minims of nature' alludes to Proverbs 30. 24, 'Quatuor sunt
minima terrae'. ('There be four things which are little upon the earth', as
the Kingjames Version has it). The phrase connotes wisdom, as the verse
ends by claiming minims - such as the ants - are 'sapientiora
sapientibus', wiser than the wise). And it appropriates that wisdom by
echoing the Bible in an English, personal assimilation. Such tiny touches
add up to the poem's continuing power to please, even in a less than
dramatic place, and equally its power to convince, because the small
effects like the minims themselves point to the larger wisdom, of the
'doctus poeta,' the 'learned' poet.

COMPOUND EPITHETS

By doctus in this context I mean something between the special and

general senses. The special sense in Latin was somewhat pejorative,
being the epithet of the 'neoterics' or 'new/young/modernizing' poets
who, after the more rugged versifying of Lucretius, sought to be correct,
stylish, well-informed by doing for Latin what Callimachus and other
Alexandrians had done for Greek. Virgil began like this, but moved
steadily away from what he came to see as narrow and pedantic. The
general sense of 'doctus poeta' is broadly that poets were thought to be
wise, and to impart wisdom. Between the two senses lies the truth that (as
one sees from, say, star- or other lore in ancient poets and their humanist
emulators) the poet was expected to offer apt, correct knowledge, on all
points that came up. This is why one can make diagrams or time-charts
of the night sky in Dante, Chaucer, or Milton. Milton had expressed his
aspiration in 1642, thus: 'to be an interpreter and relater of the best and
sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the
mother dialect' (italics mine).15
It comes naturally to a poet who is 'doctus' in this sense to coin epithets
which sum up a discourse of learning or thought. Such epithets sum up
almost as a technical term does, definingly and nomenclatively. (Nobody
but a theologian would coin and use words like 'salvific' or 'soteriology'.)
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 115
It is in this vein that Milton coins 'omnific', in 'Silence, ye troubl'd
waves, and thou Deep, peace, / Said then th' Omnific Word' (vn.
216-17). Corns comments16 that 'omnific' merely completes a set of
similar divine attributes ('omniscient, 'omnipotent5 . . .) which occur
frequently in Milton's writing and in contemporary theological English.
Precisely: it sums up a set of commonplaces about God in the Bible and
theology.
Hardly more startling in formation and novelty is another £-fic'
coinage, Death's mace 'petrific' (x. 294), because 'petrify' and 'petrifi-
cation' were well established. We should not be amazed that Milton
could make up such a word, if he did: to do so is not much more than
literacy.
Rather more personal flavour occurs in the playful 'wondrous Art /
Pontifical' (x. 313-14), punning on bridge-bulding/Pope as 'Pontiff
(pontijex — priest).17 Milton enjoys his smack at the Papacy, as bridge-
making but deathly, so much so that he repeats it. It reminds me that the
biggest of any clusters of Latin verse coinage comes in the heavy-handed
satire of'In Quintum Novembris'. The presence of Latinism does not
entail subtlety, being only as subtle as the thought which produces it.
But therefore the most cogent of the three '-fie' coinages is 'omnific'
after all, for the reason given above, that it sums up the most thinking,
and for the wider reason that in its phrase it comes to life. The 'all-making'
agent is 'the Word'. It remains a paradox (even after allowing for the
prevalence in common life of what lawyers and philosophers have called
'performative' utterances) that a voice can make by its sounding; can
'make' all things. The idea is of course ajewish and Christian orthodoxy,
proclaimed at the opening of Genesis ('God said . .. and it was so'), and
reiterated at the opening of John's gospel ('In the beginning was the
Word [logos]9). The orthodoxy is more startling in Greek, where 'word'
and 'deed' routinely oppose one another: Hebrew dabar extends wider
than 'saying', and the routine opposition is absent. Milton's ostensibly
dry or technical coinage is thus foregrounding the crucial fusion, by
moving the reader from 'said' to 'Word' by way of 'omnific'. 'Omnific'
joins word to Word.
'Omnific' alerts us to Milton's credibility as 'doctus poeta'. He is at
home in languages, worlds of words; he coins correctly and aptly. He is at
home among ideas, barely distinguishing in the act of thought between
ideas and the language they come to him in, to make a new composite
attribution to God. He is at home with deeds, to bridge where
appropriate the gulf between words and action. It is all thanks to his
116 Multilingualism and the major English poems
multilingualism, giving access to the varying languages which clothe the
ideas about divine action, and combining them in his poem's texture.

PARTICIPIALS OF PROCESS

Elsewhere Miltonfindswords which embody ideas about action in away

which mimes or foregrounds its processes. He does it prominently in his
Latinate passive participles. These are adjectives and verbs simulta-
neously, the former aspect expressing state or product, the latter
expressing process or becoming.18 Instances include 'abrupt' (n. 1049),
'absolute' (VIII. 420), 'adust' (xn. 635), 'circumfused' (vi. 778), 'convolved'
(vi. 328), 'deified' (= absorbed in, or is it into, the divine nature: vm. 431),
'denounced' (x. 210), 'devote' (in. 208, ix. 901) with 'devoted' (v. 890),
'extinct' (1.141), 'gemmed' (vn. 325), 'instinct' (xi. 562), 'interrupt' (in. 84),
'intervolved' (v. 623), 'levied' (11.905), 'obdurate' (xn. 205) with 'obdured'
(vi. 785), 'obtuse' (xi. 541) . . . Moreover, Milton wields the Latinate
active participle with equal force ('congratulant', 'serpent'), or adjectives
deriving from Latin verbs by other routes ('irriguous', 'obsequious').
The question to be asked is, naturally, why suppose the Latin root of
all such words is operative in them if the word has the same force in the
English of 1667; and especially so where the Latin root was no longer of
force in that English. My answer comprises not only (a) the expected
lexicographical checking but more especially (b) hearing the word in its
phrase, and even more (c) in its line, and (d) noting whatever features of
syntax or metre or rhythm foreground it. It is the predicative placing of
such adjectives which beckons us to a more complex and phrasal
scrutiny. Milton as it were holds up the word for inspection, twirls it like
a faceted ball, for us to pay it a multiple - including multilingual -
attention. By contrast, a purely lexicographical approach rushes to
judgement, assertive or dismissive, but uninteresting either way. It is too
much of a pigeonholing, not global or contextual enough. Words in a
poem are not monads. Most of all, some of their crucial element, pleasure,
is drained away by such monadism. The loss is most clearly seen in those
passive participles.
Take Eve, 'lost, / Defac't, deflow'r'd, and now to Death devote' (ix.
901). The sense 'cursed, consigned to destruction' is Elizabethan. But
Latin devoveo meant a Roman's voluntary giving of himself (and his army)
to the infernal gods for the sake of Rome's survival, a voluntary (or in the
army's case unwilled) suicide. And if perchance they survived they had
no status in life, having been vowed ritually into a state of non-life. What
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 117
with the deafening alliteration, and iteration of idea, I am loth to deny
Milton recall of this Latin nexus of sharply relevant ideas - sacrifice, vow,
suicide, self-denial, complicity in the deaths of others, one life and death
bound up in another's; a whole condition of forfeited life. It seems false
economy to deny them entry, at any rate at the edges of the explosive
field of meaning.
Or take a clearer Latinism, 'convolved' (vi. 328): 'then Satan first
knew pain, / And writh'd him to and fro convolv'd; so sore / The griding
sword . . .' It means 'contorted, twisted'. The OED gives it as obsolete,
with this passage as first recorded use. What clinched for me the idea that
it is Latinism, and activates the fullest force of the verb convolvo, was
finding that in Latin it means (a) 'whirl' (b) 'sweep to destruction' (c)
'writhe' (of snakes) (d) 'enfold': the spread of senses is simply fuller and
more dynamic, more haunted, if we hear the Latin as equal or primary.
Satan twists his body in pain, he hugs it on the way to his ruin like a
snake. Certainly the verbal force of '-volved' is felt on the tongue, its
onomatopoeia.
A kindred 'rolling' meaning accompanies Milton's other words from
this root.19 Thus at vi. 623 the 'mazy' movement of the stars, most
regular when seeming most irregular, is an 'intervolved' movement: the
in-and-out of a cosmic 'dance' (620). This is the first occurrence of
'intervolve' in English, yet the word is not in classical Latin: is it then
personal to Milton's vision of words and things? Whether or no, the
contrast is radical, between Satan's state of convolution in on himself,
and that of the universe engaged in the ennobling interchange of dance.

THE BREADTH OF MILTON'S LATIN AND RESULTING LATINISMS

Next, I turn away for a moment from Latin elements within the epic
style, to consider their sources. It is easy to forget how much of Milton's
education, but also of his self-education and continuing intellectual life,
came to him via Latin. The pages of the Commonplace Book, or a list of
authors cited, make this manifest. He had read much of that 'well-nigh
forgotten intellectual Latinate culture that was widespread in Eliza-
bethan and Jacobean England and affected every area of intellectual
life'.20 He may even have read more of it than of its coeval English-
language culture. Certainly he had read deeply and widely in continen-
tal Latin culture — in historiography, for example, for otherwise he would
have had scant sense of world history. Just because we, now, value the
links of English back to Chaucer and Beowulf, there is danger that
n8 Multilingualism and the major English poems
through interest in the later achievements of an English culture we may
neglect the greater importance to Milton - and his readers - of Latin
culture, and its Italian offspring. Consequently, we should be surprised if
Latin did not make an impact on his English high style. And the Latin
which is meant is not simply the agreed best of Roman Latin, but
another 1600 years of Latin thought, from all the countries of Europe. If
only to avoid this further distortion, then, I exemplify the breadth of his
Latin sources which appear in his epic as Latinism, be it of diction or
syntax or allusion, or combinations of these.
A simple instance is the phrasing 'delicious Paradise' at iv. 132. In the
Church Fathers the original phrase was 'deliciarumparadisum', literally
'the paradise [or garden] of delights5.21 Milton takes over the Latin
thought, but - or is it therefore? - changes its grammar to defamiliarize
it, and to make it more his own. Latinism of thought, rather than of
diction or syntax, still demonstrates his allegiance to Latin; a Latin later
and other than the Latin of Roman literature.
The Latinity of the Bible, his Bible, can work in the opposite way, as
neither thought nor words but purely sound. It does so whenever he
spells a biblical name by neither its English nor its original Hebrew
spelling, but by a Latin one: Siloa, Sion, Msroc, Basan. I cannot be as sure as
Fowler that he is following the Vulgate - there were many Vulgates, and
Latin versions other than Vulgate - but I am sure he preferred Latin
sounds in some instances. Latin and euphony often coincided. Nowhere
in his epic does he favour transliterated Hebrew. These two facts alone
show the importance of an aural Latinism in his English.22
A final example of contribution from later Latin shows how Latin is
inseparable from Milton's thought-forms. At vi. 669-77

all Heav'n
Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread,
Had not th5 Almighty Father where he sits
Shrin'd in his Sanctuary of Heav'n secure,
Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen
This tumult, and permitted all, advis'd . . .

Lucretius and Ovid are adduced by editors, as each has part of Milton's
phrase. But the truth is, Milton had already combined their phrases, to
the exact sense of the present passage, in his own early Latin poem: cAt
Pater omnipotens fundatis fortius astrius / Consuluit rerum summae...'
[Naturam nonpatisenium, 35).23 Milton is his own source. Is it by thrift, or by
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 119
unconscious recall? By simple grasp, I suggest: having got hold of the
idea, with the help of Lucretius and Ovid, he did not let it go.24

DIVERSITY, AUTHORITY, GRAVITAS

Though we may distinguish a Latinism of thought, of diction, of sound,

of syntax and of allusion, in practice we meet these in varying
combinations, whether fused or collocated. The combinations, by being
such, show Latinism to be second nature to Milton. Latinism may not be
deliberate, therefore, but present nonetheless because deeply appro-
priated. As thought, Latinisms enable him to relate his theme to a wider
than Christian orJudaic witness, and hence more convincingly because
where pagan Latin witness supports a Christian view it is so to speak
disinterested. Contributing to style, whether diction or allusion or other,
Latinisms convince the senses, enriching the texture to an effect of
weight. Latinisms conduce to a continual varying gravitas.
The diversity of this gravitas, this authority, is increased by a further
sort of combination. Latin was the channel for other tongues to flow into
Milton's mind, and out again as texture. Here is one example from
Hebrew:
God made
The Firmament, expanse of liquid, pure,
Transparent, Elemental Air, diffus'd
In circuit to the uttermost convex
Of this great Round . . . (vn. 263-70)
Once again the passage is from the middle books, where Milton is at his
most explanatory-learned. Moreover, loan-words of Latin origin here
make up half the total. While not all retain a sense of Latin root, those
which do not are making a background to those which are foregrounded
because they do. The world-picture is explaining the Hebrew one of
Genesis, but is eclectic too. Thus the 'firmament' is penetrable, made of
air, not as in Hebrew hard like a beaten-metal plate. Yet this rather
adjectival cair' still does what the Hebrew metaphor does more bluntly, it
is a 'Partition firm and sure'. We do not ask how: Milton's air is
unpicturable, all concept. What concept, then? The key word is
'expanse', following and explaining the too familiar 'firmament'. He-
brew raqi'a meant a beaten-metal plate, the vault of heaven understood
as a solid dome, enclosing the earth like a cosmic dish-cover. The King
James version put distance between its 'firmament' and the dish-cover,
120 Multilingualism and the major English poems
by glossing 'Heb. expansion'. This detaches the idea of'spread out' from
the shape of the dividing element. Milton, here, is orthodox, using the
current cosmological term, a Latin one because science was interna-
tional. The whole area was controversial (as well it might be) but Milton's
choice, even as eclectically and vaguely elaborated here, sides with
contemporary Latin science against any probing of the Hebrew meta-
phor. His gloss rambles round, in the end, to a glimpse of the dome, at
'the uttermost .convex / Of this great round' - still unpicturable, but at
least we get back the Hebraic curvature of the presumed boundaries of
space, curving away as in Genesis to the eye of God.
This is a complicated, problematic instance of something very general
in the explanatory parts of the poem, namely that it reflects by Latinisms
how Latin was the main European medium of theology and exegesis and
science, and of the interchanges of these. Simpler instances include
almost every allusion to a Greek myth - Pandora, say, or Demeter and
Proserpine - because these were taken over holus-bolus by Roman
culture. They come on to Milton's English, accordingly, Romanized- in
the spellings of names, for example ('Jove', 'Proserpine', 'Jesus'), and
more thematically as moralized by Rome (notably by Ovid in recounting
the metamorphoses of or by gods). A further permutation of this Latin
influence is the rhetorical impact of Latin on Milton through the
Romanizing of Italian poets, seen in word order,figures,coinages, sense
of linguistic origins and much else.
Latin, therefore, enters into most things which Milton does. And to
come back to our original crux, Latinism may be at work when not thrust
forward. The differences between instances, in fact their frequent
uniqueness, may matter more to the present state of debate than the
similarities.
Plato would have closed with a myth, but I will make do with a crude
extended simile. As when a chef using garlic or curry powder, blends
those flagrant ingredients with care and patience over time into a dish
which has multiple ingredients yet becomes one single though multifar-
ious delight - so that the gratified diners exclaim about the taste, and
argue whether it has garlic or curry powder or neither in it: so should the
delighted reader of Milton's grand style applaud the multiplicity of its
language ingredients, and struggle in vain to identify the proportioning
let alone sequence of the blending - yet not deny there is blending.
Perhaps, too, as no two curries (unless they come out of a packet) are
identical, neither are any two instances of Latinism.
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 121

GRAECISMS
Latin was a conduit for other languages and their cultures to become
prominent in the texture from time to time. They could, however,
contribute directly: Milton, like English, was a cheerful borrower.
Examples are given next of direct borrowing from Greek and other
tongues, in respect of both diction and syntax. This is done, however, to
stress the mwMingual, because his resort to these tongues is briefer and
more subdued to interlingual effect than was the case with his Latin. It
remains important not to gloss the small markers of these languages in
isolation from their surrounding phrase, line and clause.
Greek idioms are especially intriguing. They had intrigued the
Romans also, and what looks Greek in the poem may equally be
continuing Latin's admiring reception of Greek high culture. For
instance, 'Hear'st thou' (in. 7) is odd in English to mean 'Are you known
as . . .?' But does it arrive from Greek akoueis direct, or through Latin's
imitative audis? My vote is for both, because the idiom marks the join
between a more Latinate and a more Greek wording of his apostrophe to
the 'holy Light' of m. 3; from the Latinate 'Bright effluence of bright essence
increate3 to 'pure ethereal stream'.
There are still some idioms which Latin could not take over. One is
where Eve 'Knew not eating death' (ix. 792): Latin participles will not
work this way. Greek differs from Latin in a number of constructions
with verbs of cognition, which may mean Graecism at v. 860: 'Know
none before us' (gaining a Satanic superacute brevity, for 'Know [that]
none [existed] before us'). It may also explain x. 540-1: 'for what they
saw, / They felt themselves now changing', which is not the English
idiom which 541 could be by itself, but means 'because they felt
themselves to be even now changing into what they beheld [i.e.
serpents]'). The double ellipses ('to be,' 'into') push the utterance into
multilingualism by condensation. Such idioms are useful to the swift,
long-striding compression of this epic style. Though not 'native', they do
have 'sinew'. Another such is 'unanswered lest thou boast' (vi. 163): this
can only mean 'Lest you boast yourself to be unanswered', and we
mentally supply a pronoun and infinitive, a la grecque. This holds, even
if Roman authors had domiciled such Greek idioms in Latin.
Greekish again are phrases which leave out words to create point, by
rapid, almost tacit antitheses: 'them aware themselves' (vi. 547), 'fearless
unfeared' (ix. 187), 'all places else . . . Nor knowing us nor known' (xi.
305, 307). It is striking how often these candidates for participation in
122 Multilingualism and the major English poems

Greek idiom involve knowing, and struggles between cognitive agents

about cognition. The Greeks invented epistemology, and a concrete
vocabulary to discuss it. Milton remembers them, and by his ellipses
moves English towards them.25
Many of the more certain Graecisms of diction are simply Homeric
allusion: 'broad herds' (vn. 462); 'sceptred heralds' (xi. 660). 'Ocean
stream' (1. 202), 'rhoos okeanoio' = floods of ocean, is both allusion and
idiom. Lively consequential queries arise. We may wonder if the
Homeric 'ridges of grim war' (vi. 236) should read 'bridges' with Bentley,
because Homer actually said 'gephurai polemoio' ('bridges of war'),
whatever those were.26 And at vi. 355, 'where the might of Gabriel
fought', do we have a mere Homeric (metrically conditioned) periphrasis
for 'where mighty Gabriel fought'? Or a Hebraism as well, since 'might'
is part of his name's meaning ('Strength of God')?
But since Homerical touches can be expected in a secondary epic, it is
time to point out the sheer breadth of Milton's Greek texture of allusion.
This was as great as for his Latin, because Greek literature in the classical
period was much more voluminous than classical Latin, though Latin
caught up later. From other poets to the Bible (Septuagint and New
Testament), to geographers, to cosmographers to mythographers to
philosophers . . . From out of all this wealth of allusion I make some
simple points on how Milton puts this knowledge to use for local effect:
by euphony; by caique; by puns; and by conjunction of provenances.
By euphony is meant Greek's vocal music, which is not like Latin's.
This may come in groups of sounds as much as of meanings: he dwells on
'hyaline' (VII. 619) and 'hyacinthine' (iv. 301). Here, the euphony is
melodious. Elsewhere he likes rather the precision and bite of Greek
sounds (hearing some onomatopoeia?). One example is 'Asphaltic Pool'
(1. 451, 'Asphaltick' in the MS). Others are 'amarant' (in. 352-3) and
'marasmus' (xi. 487) because he likes their sound in context. Indeed,
'marasmus' was a 1674 addition, really quite needless for meaning amidst
an already sufficient catalogue of gerontological miseries. In both
passages the root meaning (from maraino, to waste or decay) is also
glossed nearby, as if euphony might become briefly an end in itself.
By caique is meant that instead of availing himself of Greek sound, or
Greek sense with sound, Milton transfers sense without sound.
Examples are clearer with syntax, but the practice is clear enough in
'this habitable' (viii. 157): though it is an instance of Milton's frequent
changing of adjective into noun, Latinism as much as Graecism, it also
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 123
renders he oikoumene (with ge> earth, understood). This is the regular
Greek expression for the Greek, or civilized, or inhabited, world -
learnt early on in studying Greek, as a participle become autonomously
substantive.
By Greek puns is meant the characteristic sidelong etymologizing.
After the rare mot juste, drawn from Milton's languages, comes an
English rendering of it, to explain then extend the effect. The 'abyss' is
'un-bottomed' (n. 405).
To exemplify conjunction of provenances, we can take 'gliding
meteorous' (xn. 629). Note the placing of the accent, meteorous, which is
the Greek placing, not that of English except here. In fact, it is not just
Greek, but Homeric Greek.27 The phrase beautifully conjoins a blunt
and plain-style Germanic word with this Greek word, one of great
dialectal and diachronic variation, in its most archaic sound - anapaesti-
cally suiting the movement of mist and of angels, come to expel Adam
and Eve.
When the elephant, to make them mirth, 'wreath'd / His Lithe
proboscis' (iv. 347), is the reader to register a Greek tang in 'proboscis'?
More than in 'elephant' itself? Certainly less so than with 'meteorous',
since here as everywhere we have a continuum or bell-curve; but I would
still say, yes. The reason is the foregrounding of 'proboscis'. Caesura,
word-length, vowel-progression, but most of all the conjunction of a
scientific and classical name with plain Anglo-Saxon, giving Greek again
the last word - the combination of these choices holds up to linguistic as
well as other forms of inspection the word, in its onomatopoeic
playfulness. Milton shows he has more than most to play with.

HEBRAISMS

The last of Milton's classical (dead, but sacred) languages has a standing
similar to Greek in the style, but different in proportioning. Hebrew
names, and the whole Bible, make this tongue seminal; yet its message
like its sounds have passed through much translation (Greek, Latin,
English) and Latin interpretation en route. Hebraisms, of diction or
syntax, are few. For this, we should not impugn Milton's Hebrew studies.
He worked hard enough at these. So it seems that the need did not arise
for epic. He liked to be read to from the Hebrew every morning (his
version of press-ups or cornflakes); yet the sound of Hebrew is seldom
heard. Why?
124 Multilingualism and the major English poems
Three explanations suggest themselves. First, whereas Latin and
Greek were within reach for numerous readers, not even in the seven-
teenth century did Hebrew rank so popular. Next, the sound and
syntax and vocabulary of Hebrew were too alien from Milton's other
languages, which (including English) lay all within the Indo-European
group and hence shared many and common roots. Lastly, the simplest
explanation would be that the Hebrew Bible was best mediated to a
reader through its translated forms, the Greek and Latin ones as well as
English.28
There remain occasions where Milton does seize on Hebrew, for a
special effect, or lets the English glance at Hebraisms familiar from
English Bibles. Such occasions include these, (a) Idioms: 'tree of
prohibition' (ix. 644) or 'sole daughter of his voice' (ix. 653).29 (b)
Caiques: 'God's holy rest' rendering 'Sabbath/shabbaf (vn. 91), or 'the
Mountain of the Congregation called' (v. 766).30 (c) Rhythmic wordplay:
'hard be hardened, blind be blinded more' (in. 200).31 (d) Naming:
angels' names, hypostatizing qualities of God as substances.32 At vi. 29,
Abdiel is addressed eponymously as 'Servant of God', (e) Entitling: 'I am
who fill' (vn. 168) plays on the Hebrew divine name YHWH as a
modification of the Hebrew verb 'to be', and carries on into an invented
attributive phrase, (f) Spelling/pronunciation: 'Asmadai/Asmodeus'
(vi. 365/rv. 168), or 'Joshua whom the Gentiles Jesus call' (xn. 310). (g)
The unsolved conundrum, what was Satan's name in heaven, now
forgotten or erased.33
A density of brevity is experienced in all of these locutions. Yet they
are rare. Biblical phrasing is much more frequent and emphatic in
echoes of the English Bible (especially at the start of Book X, where
Adam and Eve receive judgement). Specifically Hebrew idioms and
other nuances are kept for an occasional flourish or piece of wit; and
especially for appearances of deity, theophanies which stay close to the
Bible's presentation.
We have noted 'I am who fill / Infinitude' (vn. 168-9). This moves
from a gospel image ('My overshadowing spirit') through a Hebraic pun
(Yahweh/Hayah, name of god/verb 'to be') to an abstraction of Milton's
own. God 'fills' (Heb, male) the waters with fish and the air with birds,
and fills people with their characters:34 Milton generalizes this, using a
biblical word to appropriate its implication, and build it into his act as
interpreter and relater of biblical wisdom. The doublet first familiarizes,
then at once defamiliarizes. The act of appropriation resembles the
'surge' within Milton's verse translation, discussed earlier; only, now it is
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 125
found rammed into a pair of words, demanding a fuller and quicker
attention, for these words of his own.
At times the appropriating is not so much a 'making one's own' as a
revising. The theophany at which Abdiel is commended accumulates an
image of God in power, judging. Greek accoutrements of godhead, from
Homer and Hesiod, prepare the way. At the climax, however, Hebraism
dominates: from the unseen 'seat supreme' (vi. 27) the voice is heard.
Clouds, as often, hide the deity in majesty. Only they are not the thick,
dark cloud typical of Exodus theophany. It is a 'Golden Cloud' (upper
case being used for both in 1667), more typical of Christian depictions of
God in majesty; a giant halo, or the all-gold background of (say) Fra
Angelico's paintings.
Such effects are rare, yet climactic where they occur. To anticipate,
we have it again in Paradise Regained at 'Holiest of Holies': whereas 'Holy
of Holies' is Hebraic superlative, for 'the most holy', God is holier even
than his most holy place, Sion (iv. 349). Milton moves past the familiar
absolute, pointedly capping it. At the climax of Samson, God is 'our living
Dread' (1673, semichorus speaking). The familiar epithet of God is
followed by an unfamiliar personification by attribute: God as 'Dread'
appears in a special idiom, linked with 'Isaac', ancestrally. Milton keeps
the ancestral claim but merges it with the more usual title, 'living'. Three
words, three aspects of God, merged in the coinage.
Such interlingual effects amount to an apprehending and interpreting
of the received worship-tradition, through Milton's languages, here
especially Hebrew but not solely Hebrew.

ITALIAN AND OTHER LANGUAGES

The primacy of Italian among modern languages is axiomatic, being the

only one in which he composed, and by whose literature he judged. The
primacy is confirmed by the ways in which his epic draws in Italian
diction, syntax and allusion. These include coinages, new to English but
learnt among Italian authors especially Dante: 'adorn' (as adjective,
adorno — adornato, vm. 576), 'fugue' (= flight, xi. 563) and perhaps
'umbrageous' (= 'shady', iv. 257) and 'outrageous' (= 'excessive', 11. 435,
vi. 587, etc.); the Dantean inceptive compound verbs 'Imbrown'd' (iv.
246, Purgatorio iv. 21) and 'Imparadis't' (iv. 506, Paradiso XXVIII. 3). They
include conceits, too: the cold hell; the Paradise of Fools; the Dantean
pain of recalling lost happiness, or closeness of absolute opposites in
desire, the paradise and hell of desire.35
126 Multilingualism and the major English poems
It will bear repeating, nonetheless, that the single greatest boost to the
growth of the epic voice came to Milton from those Italian poets, Delia
Casa especially, who gave their language a Latin dignity by modelling
their word-order and its figures upon that of Latin. And they did it the
more strikingly because they had to do it without much inflection to steer
the sense: Milton's own position with English was harder still because
English was still less inflected.36
French seldom figures in the poem, to judge by editions and
commentaries: whether from lack of interest or from active avoidance,
who knows.37 My guess is that Italian monopolized his attention as far as
culture went, even though naturally Italianate words ('umbrageous5,
'outrageous') in his English might have derived through French as well
or even instead. Undoubted French terms like 'puny' (puisne) would have
come to him from within English.
So also would examples of the older forms of English. At any rate, he
had an ear for its sounds and rhythms, which continued into his own
English. That would account for iv. 642 and 651, the 'charm' of birds
(OE chirm): 'charm' meant 'song'.38 At 11. 827, 'this uncouth errand',
Satan picks up the narrator's word for his space-ride (407), but in doing
so activates almost every one of the OED's array - 'unknown', 'strange',
'wild', 'disgusting', 'shocking.' Since some of these were obsolescent by
1667, we might again be glimpsing Milton in a lexicographical mo-
ment.
It may rather be a Spenserian one, however, for not only is 'uncouth' a
favourite in the Faerie Queene, but Spenser is his obvious predecessor for
epic and Anglo-Saxonizing simultaneously, the latter as means to the
former. At n. 600 'to starve in ice' uses an obsolete or at least obsolescent
sense, to die (OE steorfan, OHG sterban, mod. G sterben). Spenser had used
it (FQu. vi. 34. 3), which could mean it was an archaism revived in 1590.
Now this concurrence, for once, with Spenser emphasizes how normally
Milton avoided that poet's archaizing road to epical diction. Milton was
not deaf to the music of Old English, it seems, but keeps it as a sub-song
to a song more modern and European-multilingual than Spenser's.
What is main in Spenser becomes subsidiary here.
The converse also holds. Milton relies proportionally more on
Latinism than Spenser does. In view of the fact that early Milton was
markedly Spenserian, I infer that he turned away from Spenser as a
guide for diction, obeying some negative impulsion, alongside the
positive one towards Italianizing. The balance is made up from Milton's
other tongues, especially Italian and Greek, where once again Spenser
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 127
was a forerunner but an ungainly one. Spenser, like the dramatists,
practised multilingualism in the safer area of names, and in a crude and
not entirely accurate form; the unwanted h of 'Braggadocchio' or
'Pyrochles'. Had Milton read and heeded Ben Jonson's strictures on
Spenser, as writing his epic in a sort of non-language? At all events he
went in a more deeply multilingual direction.

FUSIONS AND COLLOCATIONS

Fusions of Milton's languages within an English phrase present us with
a long continuum. At one end, the fusion has happened already, in
others' langue rather than Milton's parole (though not necessarily only
in English, since for example Latin has much Greek in it). At the other
end, Milton has sought a point of junction for special effect, something
heard which is hard to tease out without spoiling it. Collocations of
derivation-worlds in a phrase pose a distinct problem. They are so usual
in good English writing, so powerful in Shakespeare for example, ('the
multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red') that it is a
delicate thing to grasp just what is multilingual in a specimen from
Milton.
Fusions regularly occur when Latin has used a Greek word or idiom,
and Milton's English borrows from both languages at once. As men-
tioned above, 'hear'st thou' = audis = akoueis = 'are you known as' (m. 7).
A richer case is ix. 795, 'precious of all trees', a superlative which trails
clouds of epic glory from both Homer and Virgil - Homer therefore
Virgil. But considering what tree this is, there may well be rather the
Hebrew superlative, which is not a specialized epic option but Hebrew's
main way of expressing the superlative.39 And what is true of a word or
an idiom is true for major elements of thought: the divine scales, in which
consequences are weighed, belong equally to Homer and to Isaiah (iv.
994—1004). This fusion is of course ubiquitous, in that Homeric epic is
being composed on a Hebraic theme throughout; but such moments as
the scales enforce contemplation of the fusion. Hebrew is made to be
Greek, or Greek Hebrew, as part of the especial tone of Book IV, and of
the unique boldness of the whole epic.
Harder to probe is a phrase like in. 564, where Satan 'Down right into
the world's first region throws / His flight precipitant, and winds with
ease / Through the pure marble air his oblique way . . .' Marble being
especially solid, as an attribute of air it gains a paradox, which might be
oxymoron but for the preparatory effect of'pure'. Even so, OED gives as
128 Multilingualism and the major English poems
alternative only the sense 'coloured like marble' (veined, mottled, still
opposite to 'pure'). Latin, however, gives a figurative range, from 'white'
to 'smooth' to 'bright' (so Virgil has a marble sea, aequor). The choice
begins to seem a variant on air that is liquidus, 'clear'. It is Greek which
has the single most explanatory usage, marmareos, 'sparkling'. Nonethe-
less, I find I lose the original sharp impression and paradox by wandering
in these byways: Milton surely meant bright/white, going back to no
single contributing tongue. We cast this one away, then, as insulated - by
word order — from too rigorous inspection. It lacks the foregrounding of,
for instance, 'precipitant' before it, made so actively participial by
predicative placing that the Latinism is felt. We must see Satan'sflightas
Jehu-headlong, fast and rash.
We should think, then, of a continuum, from fusion subdued and
pre-existent in the langue, to coinage or rarity saying a thing strongly
through a latent multiplicity which is a joy to tease out, to more overtly
meaningful double entendre. A good instance occurs at vi. 884, 'jubilee'.

To meet him all his Saints, who silent stood

Eye-witnesses of his Almighty Acts,
With Jubilee advanc'd; and as they went,
Shaded with branching Palm, each order bright,
Sung Triumph, and him sung Victorious King . . .
This word meant either specific rituals of atonement or else general
rejoicing; from Hebrew yobel (the amnesty, every fiftieth year, pro-
claimed by the ram's horn, yobel) and from Latin jubilare ('rejoice')
respectively. But though langue has already fused the meanings, Milton
makes us notice both, to catch the progression and fusion of his thought.
We are moved, from Judaic jubilee through messianic 'palm' to a
Roman triumph: 'sung triumph' alludes to Roman victors shouting 'Io
triumphe' on entering the Capitol; and Christ 'rode / Triumphant
through mid heaven' (888-9). I* *s a messianic anthropomorphism;
victory is made gratifyingly palpable; the effect is made through echoes
set up by multilingualism.40
Collocations have been treated in a previous chapter. They abound.
In 'thwart obliquities' (vm. 132), for instance, we get the same rhythm
and similar impact to Lear's 'thick rotundity'. Milton has no lien on the
procedure and its potential. Yet still the joy of the contrast, bluntness
with grandeur, is audibly being rediscovered, as the differance between
linguistic provenances.
More distinctively Miltonic, however, is the collocation of native with
 Latin and other languages in Paradise Lost 129
Latinate adjectives, placed in Italianate sequencing. In 'the sacred fruit
forbidden', for example, 'sacred' first carries the meaning 'holy', from
sacratus but then secondly means 'declared tabu' by 'forbidden' - both
purity and danger - in which the sequel is helped to dominate by the
joining affect of alliteration.
In other words, where Fowler spoke of the 'primary' and 'secondary'
chains of meaning, we might conceive rather of bifold meaning,
sequential within a split second; a meaning which the reader's eye, voice
and ear meetfirst,instantly afterwards modified by the meaning thrown
back onto that first meaning by the revising impact of subsequent words,
all held firm by the well-defined boundaries of the Italianate unit. And
bearing in mind that the adjective-noun-adjective grouping is only the
simplest version of such units, I would conclude that Milton not only has
a most enjoyable time, playing among his multilingual resources, but
that they add up to a major dynamic of the grand style, at the cellular
level, which then becomes the moment-to-moment pleasure of the
reader's strenuous attention.

CONCLUSIONS
If nothing else has emerged from these detailed analyses of multilingual
interactions in the style of Paradise Lost, at least the emphasis has been
placed where it should be, on the detail itself, the particularity of the
interchanges between each phrase examined and its surroundings. So
many examples are composed ad hoc, uniquely, as a miming of the flow
and change of thought itself at that moment of the long poem.
For too long Milton's Latinism has been reviled or upheld - or denied
- as if it were a single or uniform phenomenon. It cannot be that. For one
thing, Latin is not the only language to contribute. But further, Latinism
(or Graecism, and so on) is not a clear or single concept. It is not to be
divided into rigid bands, certainly not Fowler's lopsided four. At times its
congeries of local effects shapes as a continuum, a graph. But the pattern
of incidence along it then defeats graphing. As soon as we have thought
we can draw boundaries, we find them blurred or defied. Consequently,
as with individual features of style, proposed Latinisms are better taken
along with the allusion they also make; or with the figures - especially
onomatopoeia - which they help to bring to life.
The approach through Latinism has much to offer: not through
lumping or splitting, nor in carrying on the sterile debate between 'native
sinew' and alien poshness, but more simply, as a heuristic device.
130 Multilingualism and the major English poems
Latinisms are phrases which stand out. How, then, do they stand out?
That has to do with the wordstock of English and of Milton and their
interchanges. It is foregrounding which leads the reader to the multilin-
gual aspect, and onwards into whole acts of thought. Whether as style, or
by giving Milton access to the springs of his thought, it is these acts of
thought which his languages empower.
 CHAPTER 7

Milton's languages and the voices of Paradise Lost

Chapter 6 sought to show that Milton's languages contributed to the

texture of the grand style. Analysis of the poem itself had to come second,
in the organization and direction, to the more methodological enquiry.
Next, reversing the emphasis, I shall survey the poem's many Voices', to
explore how the languages enhance them.
First, what is meant by Voices'? The term is invitingly flexible yet
resistant to adequate definition, and not least because so many critics or
theoreticians have written on it. Although their work has benefit as a
heuristic device, its fluidity leads me to replace it by a model inferred
from Milton himself. I summarize the long debate, selecting from it
points of heuristic value, before explaining my main model.

THEORIES OF VOICE AND VOICING

Aristotle distinguished in Homer between mimesis by a narrator and by

speeches of characters.1 Aristotle's distinction holds good, though an
epic narrator may at times speak like a character, with passion or by
intervention, and though characters often narrate.
All reading experience tells us that characters speak with voices
differing from one another. Major characters differ within their speech
according to situation; they vary, change, develop, or become more
wholly what they always were.
Further, when Blake urged that Milton was of the devil's party he was
perceiving that Paradise Lost in particular has both orthodox and
heterodox voices. It may speak against itself, may contradict its declared
allegiance. A similarly valuable tension has been understood as between
'majority' and 'minority' voices for Shakespeare, as the 'dialogic'
imagination at work by Bakhtin, or as the 'rhetoric of irony' by Wayne
Booth. Bakhtin had Dostoyevsky in mind, a writer in whom the rival
voices stretch fiction to a distraught relativism. However, this insight
132 Multilingualism and the major English poems
suits Dostoyevsky far more than it suits Milton, to the point where
Bakhtin's current popularity may do some disservice to understanding
Milton.
I have found more relevant the temperate and independent thought of
R. O. A. M. Lyne, writing about voices in the Aeneid.2 It is the 'further
voices' that play off human losses against the imperial theme, so that for
instance the ending speaks - literally and metaphorically - with the voice
of Turnus; and the tension there for us to absorb from Virgil was there
for Milton also (as in his own ending). At the same time, it would be
fallacious to hypostatize a category of'further voices', as if'furtherness'
had any constant essence. Dido and Turnus share nothing but negatives.
Indeed, 'further' voices are perhaps the necessary vitality of a good
narrator, altering the perspective of the narrative, line by line or even
word by word. Milton learnt much here from Virgil: he developed it way
beyond Virgil.
In the end, the theorizing of voice may become centrifugal, arid, or
overcomplicated. Thus I have not found Gerard Genette in Figures as
illuminating as I had hoped. He blurs for me what Aristotle had clarified,
and buries his points under neologistic technical terms ('autodiegetic'
and the like). The application of his thought to epic, to Homer, by Irene
J . F. de Jong in Narrators and Focalizers. The Presentation ofthe Story in the Iliad
(Amsterdam: B. R. Grliner, 1987) similarly impedes reflection, by its
hideous jargon ('focalizer', focalization', 'focalizee' and so on). The
hoped-for freshness runs to waste into glossary and diagrams.
Whatever else 'voice' may mean, the discussion of it should keep
contact with how voices speak. It should stay aware that voices are to be
heard; that, indeed, Milton composed out loud; and that, for their
greater pleasure, readers read him aloud. Milton keeps faith, by
conviction and habit and the misfortune of blindness alike, with epic's
original orality.
Accordingly, whilst availing myself of insights from the critical debate
for particular occasions, I offer as my main vocabulary of analysis the
following, modelled on Milton's own awareness of his voicing.

MILTON'S MODEL

How does Milton use the word voice in his poem, along with voices and
vocal, and also word, words, language, tongue and so on?3 The axioms are: (a)
that the poem is so unified that all major words lead us to its centre; (b)
that these are major words, indeed a major semantic group; (c) that in
 Milton's languages and the voices of Paradise Lost 133
any case the words selected belong naturally to the present discussion of
voicing; (d) that voicing, for an epic bard, leads us to the poem's
self-awareness; and (e) that Paradise Lost, even among secondary epics, is
exceptionally self-aware. The theoretical underpinning of this model is
Leo Spitzer's 'philological circle', with its often-vindicated axiom that
when reading a text to understand it - on its own terms - we move in a
circle between detail and whole, interpreting the one by the other till (in
an adequate reading) we have got them all in without loss of coherence.4
With that aspiration, then, let us 'Hear the voice of the Bard'. We will
hear some of it by addressing such features as the frequency and
clustering of words about voicing. And we shall thereby gain an apt
context for examining how the bard's languages enter his voices;
especially, yet not solely, his chosen epic voice.
Which parts of the poem use the key words most? Books VII, IX and
X contain the most occurrences of voice, voices and vocal; respectively,
seven, six and nine.5 In Book VII the passages comprise: Milton's own
voice talking about itself in the invocation which launches the poem's
second half; God's voice, the Word creating by using voice for speech-act
(the mother of all performative utterances!); and creatures' voices
responding in praise. 'Voice' here takes us straight to the centres of a
straightforward narrative. But in Book IX, a book of conflict and
conflicting voices, 'voice' belongs by turns to: Adam and Eve, disagree-
ing; the serpent's preternatural 'vocal' organ; and God's voice, in the
sense of commandment, diminishingly present as the Book proceeds. In
Book X, the conflict remains, now painfully clarified as the clash in
Adam of his listening to the voice of God or to that of Eve. 'Listening to' a
voice means, not simply hearing it but heeding it, all the way up to
obeying it, or disobeying it. Eureka! Is Milton reviving the etymology of
these key words for response to voice, since in Latin and Greek6 the words
for obedience and disobedience are compounds of the verb 'to hear':
oboedire (ob + audire), hupakouein (hupo + akoueiri)? If so, etymology de-
familiarizes what the Bible also emphasizes: 'If thou wilt diligently hearken
to the voice of the Lord thy God . . .'7
Next, we survey the entire incidence. Voice, voices and vocal are
summarized for each Book in turn. In Book I it is mainly Satan's voice
and words, in contexts of obedience and fear (274,337). Book II is similar,
but now we also notice 'voice' as vote or advocacy m, debate (188). In
Book III the 'voice' becomes God's, ordaining and creating; to which
creation's voices respond in praise. Book IV has a greater dynamic:
Milton wishes for a 'warning voice'; Satan sees his own speech-act as 'no
134 Multilingualism and the major English poems
friendly voice5; newly-created Eve hears God's voice and it leads her to
Adam; she and Adam lift their voices in praise. Book V emphasizes the
Satanic dream-voice, and another new voice is that of an army. Book VI,
although or because it tells of the War in Heaven, upholds the voice of
God, authoritative in theophany by voice (27, 56, 782). Book VII has
been mentioned, but we may note that Voice' brings in Orpheus
(self-image of Milton as 'singer') and Raphael (for Adam's unfallen
communion in speech). Book VIII offers us God's voice, in a line added
in the 1674 edition (436), and repeats that unfallen Eve was led by God's
voice. As Books IX and X have been mentioned, I will add only that the
judging of Adam and Eve relies (as in the Book of Genesis but more so)
upon a bandying of the word voice: whose Voice' is to be sought, fled,
believed, obeyed? In Book XI God's voice is lost to Adam, sadly
reminiscing (321). And in Book XII that voice is now 'dreadful' (235) -
not but what 'man's voice commanding' may make the 'Sun in Gibeon
stand' (265).
We can also relate the incidence of voice and its cognates to that of word
and words, which though more frequent is simpler. Baldly put, word
(singular) tends to mean the word of God (as injunction or as made flesh
in the Son), whereas 'words' (plural) means the speech just ended, or
speeches, or the power of speech.8
All this evidence together would enable a summary of the progress of
the theme, in each Book and in the whole. More to the present purpose,
it enables me to define and arrange a set of ideas about voicing, and so to
illustrate how Milton's languages enter into each sort of voice. I define six
categories, and arrange them in a pragmatic (not narrative) order.
The six comprise: (a) the poet's voice, joining with the Muse's to
represent the poem's inspiration as theme, and its reflection upon itself;
(b) Satan's voice, taken early because it dominates the beginning and
fades out by the end; (c) voices of heaven, meaning not only the ex cathedra
deliverances of God but deity mediated by whatever other means -
whether seen in derived glory, or reflected as praise of worth, or
immanently in the Book of Nature, or revealed in the Bible as God's
other 'book'; (d) creaturely voices; (e) the voices of Adam and of Eve, not
only creaturely but voices of change; and (f) the voice of the Serpent.

VOICING BY POET AND MUSE

The poet does not discuss his own voice directly in the opening
invocation, but something is implied in his second main verb, 'I thence /
 Milton's languages and the voices o/Taradise Lost 135
Invoke thy aid...' (1.12-13). More clearly than Virgil or Homer, he names
the speech-act he is performing; what we routinely term the 'epic
invocation' recognizes itself as such.
The verb 'invoke' may not include Latinism since it is common
enough; yet the root idea of Voicing-into' does impinge, because the
poet's voice is 'calling' the Spirit 'into' the speech-situation, the opening
speech-act. The emphatic positioning of the verb at the line-beginning
encourages the possibility of Latinism. And Latinism indeed weighs in
when, soon, the purpose of the invoking is declared, at the close of the
paragraph; 'That. . . / I may assert eternal providence'. 'Assert' means
'uphold', 'vindicate': the OEDh sense 11. 4 (first recorded 1649) 1S
pertinent, and so is in. 7 'to affirm the existence of. But Latin offers
further to 'claim as a god', 'deify' (OxLD 4. a) - the most forceful relevant
sense of all.
Nearby comes the resplendent composite caique:
with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss . . .
'Sat'st brooding' is a single idea, that of hatching. Whereas the spirit of
God 'moved on' the waters in the AV, and in the Hebrew
'merachepheth' was 'hovering tremulously', the patristic 'incubabat'
('was incubating') comes nearer. But Milton improves on this, too, as
caique pushes the Hebrew towards an icon of power.9 Hatching birds do
not keep their wings spread out. But 'dovelike', heralding the verb, has
already brought in the New Testament image, the dove/Spirit descend-
ing on Christ at his baptism. By glancing at the language-origins of his
words, then combining them, Milton makes a more packed, conclusive
affirmation about Creation.
Or take two nearby words, 'vast' and 'abyss'. 'Vast', as often, connotes
Latin vastus, waste as well as huge, while 'abyss' from Greek a-bussos
('without bottom') renders the Hebrew 'deep' with the same connotation
of the measureless unformed as in 'vast'. The awe of such hugeness
mastered in the act of creation helps the rise to 'assert' providence two
lines later. The multilingual voicing of the theophany prepares and
vindicates the vindication.
In each of the other three invocations (III, VII, IX) Milton describes
the Muse's voice and his own. In each, he draws in his languages.
But a more startling, revealing self-voicing comes when he passionate-
ly desiderates a 'warning voice', to alert humankind to the invading
Satan (rv. 1-12):
136 Multilingualism and the major English poems
O for that warning voice . . .
This leads on to an analytical voice, which probes Satan's hellish state of
mind, whereupon Satan diagnoses his as cno friendly voice'. That
address to the Sun we have examined in an earlier chapter, and shown to
be replete with multilingual effects: so, too, is the whole dynamic
opening to Book IV. I shall illustrate briefly. He refers to Revelation as
'Apocalypse'; the less English, more commanding name, which is Greek
but also Latin.10 He renders the actual verse from John by a wording of
his own; not the AV's 'Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea'
(12. 12), but cWoe to the inhabitant on Earth' (rv. 5). The sea is left out, as
not relevant to context; the definite article also, for density (compatible,
at least, with Latinism since Latin has no article); 'inhabitants' is the less
frequent, but more participial form of the word; and sure enough, the
verb-force carries over into the preposition, dwellers 'on' the earth, as if
dwelling were an action (as, hebraically, it is). Lastly, at mention of
'Satan' (10) Milton at once glosses the name as, etymologically, a role, in
fact two of several: 'tempter' then 'accuser'.
In a moment (36), Satan himself etymologizes, as speaking to the Sun
with 'no friendly voice': the litotes used about his own 'voice' spells
awareness of language and self, the language of the self.11 The pairing of
the two strongest voices, Satan's and the poet's, is made at this crisis of
the poem; it calls attention to the dialectic set going between them. Next,
I consider Satan's voice.

SATAN S VOICE
That voice is many things (which is why I consider the serpent voice
separately) but always self-preoccupied. I mean this not so much as
egocentric, more as self-referential; aware of its existence as a voice. This
awareness is our focus now.
Furthermore, we note the unusual range of Satan's interlocutors,
those to whom he wields his voices. They comprise: angels, Sin, Death,
Chaos, various unfallen angels and Eve. He does not talk with Adam, the
Son or the Father.12 And in soliloquy, by means of apostrophe or
personification he always addresses someone or something else (Sun,
Earth, his own 'Thoughts') to think himself out once again. In the first
group of his speeches, though communicating with others, he is
self-referential because the speech-acts hinge on status, self-worth,
self-esteem. In the second group, though expressing, he links and
 Milton's languages and the voices of Paradise Lost 137
measures himself to outside things. In the present connection, however,
his opening speech attracts particular notice because it is the only one
delivered to another person yet expressively, without ulterior purpose. It
is also one of his most multilingual.
It shows passion beyond control:

If thou beest hee; but O how fall'n! how chang'd

From him, who in the happy Realms of light
Cloth'd with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright . . . (1. 84-7)
Because Satan cannot securely recognize his oldest friend, he swings
between second and third person address ('thou', che', 'him', 'didst'):
through this telling rhetorical ploy Milton confirms the changed
appearance which is all Satan can focus. Soon, he applies it to himself:
c
N o r . . . / do I repent or change / Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt
mind / And high disdain...' (96-8). The change resembles that between
the glorious living Hector and the dead spirit seen by Aeneas at the sack
of Troy:

ei mihi, qualis erat, quantum mutatus ab illo

Hectore qui redit exuvias indutus Achilli13 (Aeneid 11. 274-5)
Milton is repeating the pivotal pronouns ('mihi'/'illo'), and the stronger
syntactical stutter mimes a greater amazement. 'Qualis' and 'quantum'
aid the shocked recognition of changed countenance, meaning changed
selfhood (Hector dead not living is like, but less than, angels in the loss of
bliss). 'And so, without any more direct description Milton makes us feel
the atmosphere of anguish, and foreboding, and defeat'.14
This voice is a 'further voice', maybe the first of the poem. It expresses
the moment of waking up to irreversible loss; loss of face, loss of a part of
the self. The name for this in literature and life is 'tragic'. If we are awake
ourselves, we experience pity and fear. Straight after the epic narrator
had zestfully plunged Satan and cohorts from high to the lowest, with
implied spectator or even victor viewpoint, the reader is wrenched into
pity. But then scorn is felt, then fear, as Satan becomes self-pitying then
obdurate. These are violent surprises for the reader. We are rushed
along by change, and sheer range, of voices.
They are the voices of a dialogic imagination. They resemble the shifts
in speech-acts, or internal genres, found in Dostoyevsky by Bakhtin.
Except that, because the medium is poetry and so more condensed, the
shifts come quicker. Allusion may come by diction or syntax or naming —
138 Multilingualism and the major English poems

here it is by the first two, with the third aptly incognito - but however it
comes, it exploits the languages of the relevant human experience, to
engage the reader in a plural, complex way. This way is often tragic, and
(so to speak) unofficial. Aeneas was founding Rome (Good Thing), and
the Father is punishing Satan (Serves Him Right); but further - thanks to
the texturing by languages - that is not the whole of the matter, nor the
end of it.
Nor is it even the end of the texturing, since alongside Virgil we have
Isaiah: 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer' (14.12). This has the
topos, 'How are the mighty fallen', David lamenting Saul andJonathan,
but adds a judging sarcasm. Similar misgiving is created by the following
phrases, scampering round the ring of languages to pile up self-glorifying
images (brightness and royalty, in 'realms', 'transcendent brightness',
and 'myriads'). These suggestions are mainly etymological, but soon
when we hear of Satan's 'fixed mind' and 'high disdain', the texture is lit
up by the calquing summary of Dante's Capaneus. 'High disdain' is, as
Fowler notes, the proud man's 'alto sdegno', the valuing of self by
scorning others. The fixed mind, as Virgil tells Capaneus, is his greatest
punishment.15 So the new emotions, pity and compunction, which Satan
has felt will not grow into anything. The longer Satan's sentences
continue, and the whole speech, the more - as with Capaneus -
self-expression is exposed as fixity, having all the ambivalence of the
phrase 'fixed mind'.

VOICES OF HEAVEN: THE FATHER'S AND OTHERS'

God speaks in the poem with many voices. One such voice is of course
where the Father appears in a judicial majesty combined out of the Old
Testament and Homer (Book III). Zeus pushes back onto mortals'
wickedness the blame for their suffering;16 so does the Father. Rather
simply, Latinism aids his sarcasm, Psalm 8 his satirical scorn.17 But
Milton has a far wider repertoire of deity, presented from many
standpoints through many Bible genres to gain a convergent conviction,
and making correspondingly diverse use of his languages. I illustrate
some now.
His Hebraism itself manifests huge variety. He starts Book III with the
Johannine image-theme of light, fusing Greek and Hebrew. Elsewhere
(vn. 9) he seeks a holy wisdom which joins the Wisdom literature with the
Greek Urania and the patristic Holy Wisdom.18 Coming nearer to the
image of voice, Eve calls God's veto on eating of the Tree the 'sole
 Milton3s languages and the voices of Paradise Lost 139
daughter of his voice' (ix. 653). Is this like the four 'daughters' of God,
Justice and Mercy and so on? or does it rather mean 'epitome' (as in
'Belial' meaning 'son of inquity')?19
Whereas that idiom was personification, further usages move beyond
personifying God's voice, towards and then all the way up to equating
God with God's voice. At x. 97-8 'the voice of God they heard / Now
walking in the garden' makes it seem for a moment that the voice is
'walking'. The same ambiguity is in the AV; but not in Latin (because of
genitive inflection, 'vox ambulant^'); yet it works again in Hebrew - as if
God is the voice (as well God might be from the human point of view
since by it he speaks to humans).20 In biblical theophany God is heard,
rather than seen.
Finally, the full Hebraic cultic sense of deity as voice is found at vi.
25-8:

On to the sacred hill

They led him [Abdiel] high applauded, and present
Before the seat supreme; from whence a voice
From midst a Golden Cloud thus mild was heard.
Servant of God, well done . . .
Theophany is by voice. God is unseen, just as when sitting unseen on the
Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Abdiel after his aristeia
(Homeric episode of special prowess) has his Hebrew name at last
explained: out of the cloud of the presence (Shekinah) God declares that
'Abdiel' has lived up to his name, 'Servant of God'. Milton here shapes
his most completely Hebraic theophany.
Yet it is not solely Hebraic. Abdiel gets a gospel, Greek accolade as
well - the Homeric one in his aristeia, and a gospel one because he is the
'good and faithful servant' who has 'fought the better fight'.21 Similarly
the Theogony of Hesiod shaped the numinous place of time just before,
that 'Cave / Within the Mount of God, fast by his Throne, / where light
and darkness in perpetual round / Lodge and dislodge by turns . . .'22
Though Milton at times insists that pagan gods are lesser or futile, at
times like the present one he takes a syncretic option. Here he is
manifestly drawn towards the Greek/Hebrew one.
The fusion of Greek with Hebrew, just seen and frequent in the poem,
achieves a strong sense of deity, half-revealed as glory. John Rumrich has
argued that God's glory is kabod, infinitely weighty.23 It is also Hebrew
shekinah, presence, imaged (as in the opening of Book VI, above) as a
'golden cloud', in fact as light (for example in the Light imagery of the
140 Multilingualism and the major English poems
opening of Book III). Greek doxa and Latin gloria equally image
transcendence as light. (A 'glory' still means both 'halo' and 'anthelion',
OED 9.)
The fusions become even richer when God is sensed indirectly, by
immanence. Milton draws on his "book of knowledge fair' to voice God
immanent in Eden. Convergent witness from languages and their
cultures abounds here:

In shadier Bower
More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph,
Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess
With Flowers, Garlands, and sweet-smelling Herbs
Espoused Eve deckt first her Nuptial Bed,
And heav'nly Choirs the Hymenaean sung,
What day the genial Angel to our Sire
Brought her in naked beauty more adorn'd,
More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods
Endow'd with all their gifts, and O too like
In sad event, when to the unwiser Son
Ofjaphet brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd
Mankind with her fair looks, to be aveng'd
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire. (iv. 705-19)

'Sacred and sequester'd' (706) is an orderly hendiadys of Latinisms,

befitting the deities then named. 'Espous'd', 'nuptial', 'heavenly' and
'hymenaean' originate in (respectively) Latin entering English through
French, Latin entering direct, mainline Anglo-Saxon, and Greek via
Latin. Such derivations are not merely retrievable by philology: their
root-senses are activated by context (the excitement of viewing beati-
tude), and by their own co-presence and interaction. They are so
arranged as to converge and corroborate; for example, by the alliter-
ation of 'Espoused Eve' (fronting its line), or the ascending series
of adjectives 'espoused-nuptial-heavenly-hymenaean-geniaP. 'Genial
angel' unites the Roman worship of generation with the Greco-Christian
angelos. The confluent languages guide us into agreeing that this human
union is blessed because all available heavens contribute.24

CREATURES VOICES
It hardly needs adding that a further indirect witness to deity comes from
what angels and humans say in praise of God. Whether transcendent or
 Milton's languages and the voices o/Taradise Lost 141
immanent or revealed, languages help them praise. But also, being
creatures, and endowed with choice, they use languages which may
draw in their own history, replete with the contrast deriving from other
choice. Such contrast only sharpens the sense of beatitude by adducing
clouds of loss, serving a poem whose theme is loss. I illustrate each point
briefly, reserving examples from the speaking of Adam and Eve
themselves to the next section as Voices of Innocence and Experience'
(both at once, with shifting proportion of contrast).
When Messiah returns from the war in heaven,

To meet him all his Saints, who silent stood

Eye-witnesses of his Almighty Acts,
With Jubilee advanc'd; and as they went,
Shaded with branching Palm, each order bright,
Sung Triumph . . . (vi. 882-6)
'Jubilee' connects the Hebrew amnesty rite (fromyobet) and Latinjubilare,
rejoice. 'Triumph' is Roman ritual. 'Almighty acts', 'saints' and 'palms'
span all history; everything from Creation and Exodus through Palm
Sunday to the Apocalypse.25
Such creaturely voicing admits change because good will come from
evil. The passage describing the Bower of Eve will again make the point.
In Greek 'Pandora' means 'having all the gods' gifts', but she lost them.
Milton describing this pagan act of special creation dwells on the loss ('O
too like / In sad event'). Next, Greek is blended into Hebrew when
Pandora's father-in-law Iapetus becomes 'Japhet', Noah's son: perhaps
this is done to hint that fall within marriage recurred soon after the
Flood, but certainly Milton collocates the HebrewJaphet with the Greek
'Hermes' (717). So then the contest of Prometheus with Jove (718-19)
links marriage with the warfare of mankind with gods. The clausula,
'stole Jove's authentic fire', contains a linguistic hint: Greek authentia
means 'original authority'; and this has become subject to theft.
Immanence as blessing modulates in the passage towards awareness of
Covenant breached.

ADAM AND EVE - VOICES OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE

How can humans sound innocent? And if they can, how can they voice
change? This dilemma of voicing is the dilemma of the story itself. The
Book of Genesis gives Milton no clue whatever. The thing just happens:
the mischievous serpent is just a serpent, and serpents just happen to be
142 Multilingualism and the major English poems
mischievous. His languages, however, give Milton much of the di-
lemma's resolution. T o put it baldly, because his languages have a huge
past of lived experience they embed, willy-nilly, ironies of the human
future when Adam and Eve are given them to speak with (and all the
more so when others speak about them, as incessantly takes place in the
poem).
Eve has a special place in this process: she leads Adam linguistically
too. For example, when (as everyone notes) she is given Ovid's words
about Narcissus' self-love

I started back,
It started back, but pleas'd I soon return'd,
Pleas'd it return'd as soon . . . (iv. 462~4)26
the impact is not necessarily a moralizing one ('Ah! She is vain, there is
self-love in Eden this early'); but there is sophistication in Eden, in the
clever syntactical mimesis, and there is the smell of Ovidian metamor-
phosis, the change of potency into permanence. She is insistently linked
with change anyway, as the future mother of all mankind; but what sort
of change will that be, the poem keeps asking.
Less ambivalently, Eve undergoes 'trouble' (v. 34) before Adam does,
and 'trouble' is change. It is ironic that she even has words for trouble,
like 'offence' and 'irksome', in the dream-narrative. And the dream
alters her vocabulary as she recounts it, as if Satan were again violating
her mind by imposing his idiom. First he insinuates his 'gentle voice' (v.
37). From simple diction she moves to the more august 'interdicted
knowledge' (Adam-talk?). But soon she sees the dream-figure, 'like one of
those from Heav'n / By us oft seen' - she does not know the word 'angel'.
Yet irony replaces naivety when she says his 'dewy locks distill'd /
Ambrosia'. Dew, she knows; but not ambrosia (v. 56-7). It comes from
Virgil, where Venus leaves her son Aeneas:

Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem

Spiravere . . . (1. 403-4)27
T h e application is ironic, as what is blessing to Aeneas becomes a
theophany of corruption. T h e sleazier we feel it to be, the more Eve's
consciousness is contaminated by the dream: to have one's dreams
controlled by another person's designs is nearly the ultimate in subjec-
tion.
As for Adam, in his talk with Raphael about Eve he declares that
delight 'works in the mind no change, / Nor vehement desire' (vin.
 Milton's languages and the voices of Paradise Lost 143
525-6) - or no delight except that which he takes in Eve, 'weak / Against
the charm of Beauty's powerful glance5 (533-4). In the Argument to Book
IX, read shortly afterwards, 'Adam at first amazed, but perceiving her
lost, resolves through vehemence of love to perish with her . . .'
'Vehemence' guides us to the authorial comment: Adam is never
vehe-mens or ve-mens/vae-mens, 'out of his mind, except with regard
to Eve.28 Which suffices for ruin. He talks of his fallen state as if by
hyperbole: Raphael's response arouses a premonitory shudder.
Even nearer to the brink Adam voices innocence looking down the
precipice into experience, when he perceives that Eve is
Defac't, deflowYd, and now to Death devote (ix. 901)
Though the line has been discussed before, it bears repeating and
extending, to register the heightened awareness, Adam's uncanny
recognition of what he could hardly, as innocent, recognize. It draws on
almost all Milton's language-resources. It has Spenserian alliterative
thunder. It insists on the romance languages' prefix of fall and loss,
'de-' = 'down', 'downfall', 'loss'. The roots which follow the prefix are a
series in crescendo: 'face' lost, 'flower' lost, 'vote' (vow, word, voice) lost.
'Devote' (past, passive participle) shows Eve has been taken over by
something, some other agency - Satan and/or the moral law. 'Devote'
in Latin means 'given over to death', and voluntarily too. Addfinallythat
Virgil had used the word at a climax: Dido, given over to unlawful love, is
declared by the narrator to be 'pesti devota futurae' (1.172), 'doomed to a
plague to come'.29 Adam could have said this, too. But the astounding
thing is that, in Milton's version, Adam not the narrator perceives the
meaning. Of course he must: the insight itself tips him off the edge. But
the depth and breadth of the line's implication are not simply multilin-
gual, they are piercing because it is not the wise narrator but the unwise
Adam who speaks here. Here is the very voice of innocence passing over
into bitter experience.
Languages, then, help voices of innocence express experience, and
not least by ironies from etymology.
But does the reverse hold too? Can words of experience regain their
original innocence of guilt? Can Adam's 'liquid Lapse of murmuring
Streams' (vin. 263) be simply Latinism, 'gliding flow'? I think not. The
word's other occurrence (xn. 83) is 'thy original lapse', said to Adam
again; and the word is too frequent in the sense of 'fall' or 'fault' to be
ring-fenced here. What we register is, the purity and the fence; the first
more, and all the more because of the second. It is not as dreadfully true
144 Multilingualism and the major English poems
as the reader finds it, just as Vehemence' makes Adam's words ring truer
than he yet knows. A similar question arises with the brooks of Eden
which 'with mazy error under pendant shades / Ran Nectar' (iv. 239-40).
'The evil meaning is consciously and ominously excluded. Rather than
the meaning being simply "wandering" [and "shadows"], it is "wander-
ing (not error)" [and "shadows not death"].' 30 One and all, such
precisions of irony depend on language-knowledge, and are the preci-
sion which gives each line such weight and authority. His languages help
Milton say multum in parvo.

THE VOICE OF THE SERPENT

Because it is unprecedented for a snake to speak, Book IX naturally
yields plenty of occurrences of voice and vocal around that surprise. A kind
of a fortiori is involved: a snake speaking is unheard of; here is a snake
speaking; so either it cannot really be a snake or else it is a snake with a
vital truth to tell. Eve falls for the second alternative, being the only one
the snake offers her. Since the logic is false, how does it succeed? Does its
success owe anything to Milton's languages?
It does not work through any erudite or high-flown diction, at any
rate. Eve must seem to understand (and not seem stupidly taken in by big
words). But syntax and figures work hard, as do ellipses - 'Not just, not
God' (701). Clever tricks use simple words, in order that she will seem to
follow and assent - 'a Goddess among Gods' (the one unique being in
Heaven!, 547). Circular patterns drive home the ideas which will best
c o r r u p t - 'Wonder not, sovereign mistress, if perhaps / Thou canst, who
art sole wonder . . .' (532-3).
T h e languages are seldom wielded, as this must seem a plain style
(making the better argument appear the worse, like Belial the Sophist, 11.
113-14). Do we hear as Latinism the play of active against passive voice in
'who sees thee? . . . Who shouldst be seen / A goddess'? We might, since
Raphael used this figure to rebuke Adam recently (vni. 578), and it
admits the ironic pun ('seem' a goddess, yet not be one - the other force
oivideof). Similarly, allusion may be helping the flattery: 'Thee all things
living gaze on, all things thine / By gift', where the word order and
adoring repetition of the intimate pronoun recall Lucretius' 'prayer' to
Venus. A surer allusion resides in Satan's final rhetorical question:

Or is it envy, and can envy dwell

In heavenly breasts? (729~3°)
 Milton's languages and the voices of Paradise Lost 145
This is Virgil's question about Juno, to which Milton is returning us.31 It
is heavily ironic here, for envy indeed dwells within this spirit's breast.
The pot is calling the kettle black, and letting Eve think she thinks it: she
knows nothing about blackness, yet she is about to find out.
In the main, however, Milton chooses a pseudo-plainness for the
serpent voice. It must be for contrast's sake that the epic voice, to
introduce the serpent's voice, employs so much higher a style. First, we
hear of 'tract oblique' (510), then an epic simile ('As when a Ship . . .',
513), then the ominous allusion to 'Circean call' (522), and so to the
climactic Italianate locution 'Serpent Tongue / Organic' (529-30). And
similarly before Satan's conclusive speech, under the Tree.

PARADOXES OF VOICING

Multilingual voicing assists ironizing. It helps set innocence off from

experience. Contrast helps meaning; in fact, contrast- the system of the
differences — is central to meaning. Complexity is not, however, sinister.
It does not hide, it uncovers, it gathers and connects meaning. Hence
angels, teaching, use more not less of Milton's Latinism. And the epic
voice uses more not less of it than the tempter does.
Decorum governs and explains the paradoxes. Milton wins authority,
gravitas, dignity and weight from his textural tact.
Whatever else voice may mean, the discussion of it should keep contact
with how voices speak. It should stay aware that voices are to be heard,
that Milton composed out loud, and that readers read him aloud. I
contend that Milton's own conceptions of voice do remain aware of what
voices are for, namely for people to express and communicate, and be
heard. All voicing, and not least that of the narrating voice, is
transaction; part of responsive, responsible living. Hence, the voice of
Satan is arresting in an immediate way. The official voice of the Father,
on the other hand, is bluntly affronting; but Milton proclaims God by a
host of other voices. His own epic voice is a major one among them. In
fact, that voice is not only the most often heard, it is the most varied, most
learned, most multilingual, and even most orally satisfying. It had to be;
and it is.
 CHAPTER 8

Multilingualism and epic

Such being the manifestations of multilingualism within Paradise Lost, it is

time to ask whether Milton is normal or unusual or unique in enlisting it
for epic. The question is really several questions. Is epic more multilin-
gual than other genres or discourses? How does Milton relate to his epic
exemplars in this respect? Is his epic style any more multilingual than
language is, or than English is? Is his undoubted distinctiveness of style
simply a variant of something done by all secondary epic?
My view is as follows, (a) Milton's epic style is multilingual in a way
and to an extent he had not used in earlier poems, (b) He learns from
predecessors in secondary epic, and from some more than others. And (c)
while his multilingualism works with the grain of English itself, it is a new
departure, fulfilling the nature of langue and of epic parole together. In
all three respects his achievement is sanctioned by precedessors,
emulative of them, and distinctive if not triumphant.
To show this I first summarize relevant contexts, which explain his
traditionalism and emulation, but not his distinction. That distinction
emerges better from comparison with two predecessors, Virgil and
Dante.
LANGUAGE, HUMANISM, TRANSLATION

Most languages are multilingual in the sense in which Paradise Lost is.
They borrow words, also phrases and syntax along with names and
allusions, from communities and cultures which come into contact with
them. Yet languages vary greatly in their kind and degree of borrowing.
Some languages import ideas complete with names for them. The
extreme case happens when every third word seems a recent import, and
the parole resembles a pidgin. Other languages borrow the thing but not
the word for it, their speech community having developed a disposition
to caique (Russian, French). The extreme case happens when a language
develops a resistance to loan-words, ideologically, as if they were
146
 Multilingualism and epic 147
unclean. Some languages have a syntax so strong as to resist all
modification from new surroundings and alternative method (German
word-order). English over the centuries has proved absorbent without
becoming subjugated: maybe this has something to do with its candidacy
for being the world's language. At all events most English poetry, not
only Milton's nor epic's, is multilingual in the absorbing of words,
phrases, usages and the rest.
However, whereas all languages do it, and English more than many,
language-users vary enormously in what they do on the basis of this
absorbency. Most are unaware. Thus academic and scientific writing
nowadays abounds in Latin- and Greek-based polysyllabics, but in the
name of impersonality or objectivity, not from any awareness of roots or
resultant ironies. Today's humanists may be more aware. In Milton's
time, they certainly were. Poets were occupationally so. Nonetheless,
poets till Milton did not demand attention to this feature. There are no
good inkhorn poets. Spenser's medievalism did not last. But Milton's
epic style - for better and worse - did.
One good reason why it did, is that he had thought hard about the
Questione delta Lingua. His Latin, including verse, was so good that it might
have been his chosen tongue, for an international audience. When, like
his Italian exemplars, he chose the mother-tongue, so as to speak to a
smaller but more unified speech-community, he used Latin to extend
that speech, in fact to help him teach and preach in it.
He did it in two ways, corresponding to his own lifelong interest in
translation: by putting a Latin (or other) thought into English words (like
paraphrasing, or caique), or by coining or reviving Latinate meanings in
English (like metaphrase, or Latinism). Yet both practices aspire to the
status ofjidus interpres. In his long poem, he does both, kaleidoscopically
varying and mingling the balance. He is continuing and applying the
language-arts at which he had long excelled.
Another strong reason why Milton's multilingualism requires atten-
tion is that his blank verse medium powerfully foregrounds his multilin-
gual effects. It does so, not more but yet no less, than it does with the
other features of that medium (puns, for example, or collocations of
names). Such foregrounding draws attention to the multiplicity of
apposite meaning, and resultant lively emotion, in whatever is fore-
grounded. We should enjoy those effects as served by the lively interest in
other languages, their etymologies and literatures. I say 'should', because
his earliest readers certainly did: the enjoyment remains a heuristic
device of great power and flexibility.
148 Multilingualism and the major English poems

OTHER POSITIONS! THE BIBLE AND THE PROTESTANT

As a student of the Bible, too, Milton was a linguist. If there had been no
other prompting to enhance and use his languages it would have been
imperative for such as he to work up Hebrew, Greek and Latin in order
to understand - in a Protestant, individualistic, Bible-centred way - the
Jewish and Christian sacred writings, ab origine. Accordingly they find a
role in Paradise Lost. They find it not simply as correctness of allusion or
diction, but with a vaguer control, for instance of euphony in names, and
an experimenting with special effect.
All the same, this centrality of the Bible brought him its own version of
the Questione. For liturgical purposes, the language-choice is tricky
enough: should worship be in the language spoken by the founders and
recorders of a religion, or in the tongue of each worshipping community?
The former option keeps up authenticity and awe, at the expense of
incomprehension and an entrenched role for priestcraft or her-
meneutics. The latter attempts full comprehension and accessibility, at
the expense of the failures endemic in translation itself and in language
(whose nature is change). Historically, mixtures have been favoured,
though they are harder still to be theoretically satisfying since they could
always have been a greater or lesser or different mixture than as
encountered in religious communities or traditions. The problem was as
old as the Septuagint, however, and some have always thought the best
answer was either pragmatic (do whatever works) or pluralist (the more
translations and mixtures the better).
The early Christian answer was to use the koine, the Greek of widest
circulation; and then, after the new religion's centre became Rome, to
use Latin for the same reason. But within the koine certain words of Christ
are kept in their Hebrew or Aramaic.1 Later the Latin of the Mass keeps
some few phrases of Greek,2 along with embedded Aramaic or Hebrew.3
So ritual, too, has behaved pragmatically: the mixture, with the most
sacred utterances embedded in the vernacular, is kept because it works.
Nonetheless, the Reformers had to think it all out again. Latin, assuredly,
must go, qua inaccessible to the ordinary Christian, and tainted by
association with the Papacy. Yet the King James Version keeps the
Aramaic and other fossils. Milton keeps the more universal ones
('Amen5, 'Hallelujah', 'Osanna'), on the Protestant principle of intelligi-
bility. By keeping 'Hallelujah' and 'Osanna' one has more ways to praise
God. Indeed a residual conservatism, or conservationism, is as percep-
tible in English Bible translations as it had been in the New Testament
 Multilingualism and epic 149
Greek. (Hence that mysterious 'Selah' that in old Bibles peppers the
Psalms incomprehensibly: not although but because its meaning is lost it
is to be retained.)
As for Milton, then, he had committed himself to Protestant as well as
humanist and patriotic purposes by composing his Adam-epic in
English. Yet because the Bible was so important, and because that fact
had occasioned a long tradition of philological scholarship in exegesis, he
could in practice — in thousands of local details — avail himself of the long,
lived language-history of the faith. This helped, not hindered, accessibil-
ity. It enabled him to address the many learned amongst his co-
religionists. A poet who is doctus gains in attention from the learned and
the devout. He took his chances.
All the same, the chief thrust of biblical into his epic is in the form of
native expression. In one reared on Latin composition, and so excelling
at it, there is an element of conscious sacrifice about this; for neo-Latin is
inherently intertextual, more so than any other Latin, and than most
other languages. We find him glad to make that sacrifice; yet willing also
(where appropriate, and safeguarded by adjacent synonym or etymo-
logical gloss4) to enrich his texture and the reader's pleasure by giving the
more exact and learned name or word as well.

EPIC AND LANGUAGES

European epic was multilingual from very early on, by dint of Homer's
form of Greek and of his early supremacy. Three reasons stand out.
First, the texts of Homer preserved older forms of Greek, as part of his
epic axiom of praising the former glories, to his own lesser world. Such
forms included: words with the extinct consonant digamma; paratactic
syntax; ancient words, hardly Greek at all, ending in -nthos.
Secondly, because Homer's epics were virtually sacred texts to the
Greeks (who agreed on little enough else) the successor epics drew almost
perforce on his diction, scansion, dialect, syntax and epic features. Even
while epic remained Greek it was an intertextual, indeed interlingual
Greek, and increasingly so. Words which were ancient in Homer
continue, ever more ancient and obscure, in the Hellenistic and
Alexandrian epics. And Homeric lexis mutates in the hands of the
Epigoni. Thus Apollonius Rhodius invents weird back-formations,
made up from Homeric words whose meaning or form have ceased to be
understood.
Thirdly, moreover, what is thus customary and indeed sanctioned in
150 Multilingualism and the major English poems
later Greek will necessarily be magnified in the Roman reception of
Greek epic. But equally, what held in Greece then Rome for the highest
genre need not hold for other poetic genres, or for discourse other than
poetry. The ancient pre-eminence of epic ensured that some sort of
multilingualism, and a heightened and heightening intertextuality,
remained a source of epic formula. Multilingualism was formulaic and
normative for epic, almost alone among the genres.
Literary as opposed to oral epic began long before the Roman epic.
Still, secondary epic is rightly identified with Virgil. His practice became
virtual law for secondary epic after him. Certainly that was the case for
Milton, who looked up to Virgil as the source of his title-page
self-signatures, and back to Virgil for the actual practice of epic. For
Virgil was the one who first saw and solved the Questione as regards epic.
He began as a 'neoteric', or cultivator of 'exact' late Greek imitation, a
Roman Callimachus; but he grew away from that conception of
homeric. Again, he inherited a more native tradition from Ennius, both
subject and language and decorum; yet he modified that too. In his
maturity he matched admiration for Ennius with contemplation of
Homer, so as to unite the two aspirations in his Aeneid, very much as
Milton in his turn would unite the classical and biblical.

VIRGIL S EXAMPLE
Epic had been intertextual, accumulative and bilingual before Virgil,
alike in Greek and Latin — in the Homeric embroidery of Apollonius
Rhodius, or the translation of a Homer passage for his own purposes by
Ennius. The new thing that Virgil does is to owe everything essential to
Homer yet to subdue it to the needs of his own nation and tongue.
His intention to emulate and alter Homer is declared at once, by the
structure and the opening of the Aeneid.
Structurally, its twelve Books declare the intention. Whereas the Iliad
and the Odyssey have twenty-four Books apiece because that was the
number of letters in the Greek alphabet at a time when long after their
oral composition the two Homeric epics were written down and edited,
Virgil's twelve has nothing to do with alphabet, and everything to do
with the base of twelve established and hallowed by the two Homeric
exemplars. Just so, Milton's eventual twelve Books link him to Virgil.5
Virgil's opening, too, declares the intention: 'Arma virumque cano
qui. ..' ('Arms I sing, and the man who ...') As Derek Williams puts it:
 Multilingualism and epic 151
Thefirstword, indicating war as the subject matter of the poem, challenges a
comparison with Homer's Iliad; the second challenges comparison with the
Odyssey, of which the opening words are 'andra moi ennepe Mousa ...' ('Sing,
Muse, of the man who . . ,')6
Indeed, Williams goes on,
Throughout the Aeneid Virgil sets his Roman theme in tension with the heroic
world of Homer; Aeneas has to leave the one world and enter the other, [my
emphasis]
Just so, in Milton's opening we hear of'Man's' first disobedience and the
rescuing greater 'man': these link it back to Virgil and beyond to Homer.
But Virgil pays his dues to Roman epic also, to Ennius5 Annales
(composed after 189 BC). At Aeneid WI. 845, in the underworld the spirit of
Anchises shows his son Aeneas the hero Quintus Fabius Maximus
'Cunctator', so nicknamed because he saved Rome after Hannibal's
victories by his delaying tactics (cunctationes). 'Tu maximus ille es, / Unus
qui nobis cunctando restituis rem' ('You are that greatest Fabius, / That
one man who restored our state by delaying'). Virgil has adapted this
judgement from Ennius, who had said 'Unus homo nobis cunctando
restituit rem' ('One man restored our state by delaying'.) Virgil is paying
tribute to the earlier poet and the saviour-hero alike.
However, the allusion is all the more unmistakable and deft in that it
suspends Virgil's own metrical preferences, to dwell on the rougher older
rhythm: 'restituis rem' is unlike Virgil's practice of ending the line with a
word of either two or three syllables. While the line honours this Fabius,
its sound and pause honour Ennius. Just so, Milton's rescuing 'unus
homo'7 reappears in his opening sentence, 'Till one greater man /
Restore us'. What is more, he reappears in order to 'regain' the 'blessed
seat' - Aeneas in context had been shown, precisely, the souls of Elysium
in their 'sedes beatae' ('blessed seats'). As Virgil had honoured Ennius, by
a small thought and a tiny stylistic signature, so Milton honoured them
both, whilst praising a more than Roman saviour.
Virgil, then, has set himself to combine Homer with Ennius, and to
overgo both. To take a further instance, where Ennius had translated a
simile from Homer, Virgil makes the wording on the whole less
dependent, whilst however restoring the key adjective 'kudioon' (Iliad vi.
509, 'exulting') as the weighty 'luxurians' (xi. 497, the escaped horse is
'exulting in his pride and strength').8 Virgil restores the imagined
emotion: the joy of freedom, the joy of strength. Just so, though his theme
152 Multilingualism and the major English poems
does not admit much battle-joy, Milton makes sure as a principle that his
epic similes achieve an energetic bonding of tenor and vehicle, in which
strong, complex emotion is communicated. Satan is like a sleeping
sea-beast to whom the lost sailor anchors because the anchorage holds
fear, Satan's steps on the burning marl bring him pain.
Finally, whereas these examples (though thematic enough) are on a
small scale, working as local effect, Virgil sometimes makes Homer the
mainstay of an extended or pervasive effect.
An example of extended effect is the aristeia of Mezentius (x. 689-768).
Of this, Williams writes:

The passage is made particularly Homeric by the frequency of similes... Three

are very largely based on Homeric originals. Virgil is closer to Homer than
almost anywhere else in the poem; this is deliberately done to portray the archaic
nature of Mezentius5 qualities as compared with those of Aeneas.(II. p. 366) [my
emphases]
The intelligent and thematic use of a predecessor as a placing device
resembles Milton's lavishing of heroic on Satan: the lavishing implies
critique.
As for pervasive effect, having instanced the exordium earlier I will
here use the ending, the resolution of the agon, when Jupiter at last
overrules Juno, and Turnus must fight Aeneas alone and unaided. To
quote Williams again, 'The similarity of the narrative itself with Homer
. . . is extremely marked, as Virgil re-enacts the famous and familiar
scenes of Iliad 22 (the pursuit of Hector by Achilles) . . .' The thematic
effect is 'to add a new chapter to the Homeric story; this time the Trojan
is the pursuer and will be the victor'.9
The moment is heightened by simile, Aeneas as a mountain - Athos,
Eryx, or Father Apenninus himself. A tiny detail here shows what care
Virgil is taking. Mount 'Athos' scans iamb, x / ('quantus Athos aut
quantus Eryx . . .', xn. 701).10 Virgil had given the name a short 0 in an
earlier poem; but in Greek it has long 0, as here. The point is not merely
that Virgil has corrected himself on a tiny detail of Greek language, but
how and why. He wanted, at this high point of the story, to be heard in a
more than Latin way, a Latin-am/-Greek way. Sound and metre and
rhythm help him do it, a Roman poet hearing in a Greek way for a
special impact. Just so, Milton cultivated accuracy, and changed error or
unclarities, even at a cellular level where no one else would have noticed.
He is on his mettle, because Virgil was: he too is a doctus poeta, finding
self-respect to be threatened by error, and by the same token restored by
 Multilingualism and epic 153
care for linguistic detail. Instances include the changes to i66y in 1674,
which include the similarly infinitesimal.
Small or large, these intertextual touches betoken the poet who is
learned qua self-aware - aware of the self through awareness of roots.

DANTE S MULTILINGUALISM

First of all, we need to ask whether Dante's poem belongs at all in

discussion of epic. After all, it is a dream-vision poem, consciously
seeking a sermo humilis rather than a grand style. But I admire the Divine
Comedy as a poem excelling poems after Virgil which are more
technically epic: it excels in epic sublimity because it makes us read
through the plain style to the transcendence of the thought. To that end
Dante uses with splendour, as local effect, almost all of epic's best
distinguishing characteristics (invocation, catalogue, speeches, similes,
prophecy and so on). More to the present issue, the style of thisfirstgreat
vernacular non-oral poem is incessantly multilingual, in a way which
illuminates at every point how he is standing on the shoulders of the giant
Virgil. These considerations suffice to make Dante a key figure in my
case that Milton learnt most from Dante among preceding multilinguals.
As Dante to Virgil, so Milton to Dante.
Dante's attitude to languages and the practice of them is much more
complex than Virgil's. He is multi- not bi-lingual. He is multilingual by
temperament and situation alike. Of course he wrote a whole work on
the language question and its depths, De Vulgari Eloquentia. Here,
however, I focus on his practice in the Divina Commedia itself.
At once we encounter his fascination with language. The poem itself is
entitled a 'Commedia', with accent proparoxytone; yet in the text he
uses comedia (and tragedia), with the medieval accent. The less of
tangible reason we can find for this, the more we perceive his interest in
word-behaviour for its own sake.
Dante abounds (as in that small instance) in awareness of languages
and delight in them, but most often he is also exploiting them for special
effects of character or irony or theme. He does it for special effect; so not
all the time; but when a chance comes. I use seven examples to illustrate
his delight in the differences and changes in languages, then two more to
show his equal delight in their continuity. I conclude each instance with
connections to Milton's practice.
(a) The word for 'yes' was used as a test and marker of language
variation among the romance tongues. So 'Langued^' is the region
154 Multilingualism and the major English poems
where they say oc for 'yes', as opposed to si, oil and so on.11 Dante
identifies the Bolognese in hell as saying sipa for 'yes' (Inf. xvm. 61).
Elsewhere he notes how Italians preserved the Latin ita for 'yes' [Inf. xxi.
42), even though their usual trademark was 'si' (XXXVIII. 80). He is using
these synonyms as national or regional identifiers. Yet although many of
his instances work simply enough in that role, others develop past the
simple to the curious and word-fancying, in fact to the linguistic:
language-variation becomes synecdoche for communal identity. Dante
writes from amidst language-change, and is aware of it at first hand:
Milton's knowledge of vernaculars is more bookish.
(b) Dante alludes to matters of register also, defining childhood as
when 'pappo' and 'dindi' are said for pane (bread) and danari (money)
respectively (Purg. xi. 105). The babyish reduplicatives stand out charm-
ingly but also tellingly from the austere discourse of Oderisi surrounding.
One must put away childish things, the swift lexis is ordaining. As for
Milton, his linguistic range includes the colloquial, but not these even
more informal registers, whether in English or not.
(c) In the same canto (Purg. xi. 81) Dante refers (in Italian) to the
French term for Oderisi's art of miniature-painting, miniare in Italian, as
'illumination'. Dante's alluminar is enluminer in French (cf. English
'limning'), his al- 'reflecting a typical mispronunciation of the nasal
sound' of the French.12 Dante is being learned here, without being
phonetically accurate. I can see no great point in the whole allusion to
how people term the art elsewhere. Dante either needed the rhyme
'fisi'/'Oderisi'/'Parisi', or enjoyed the multilingual flourish. I suspect the
last. Similar playfulness about language vivifies Milton's language
compositions. Nor is it wholly abandoned in the high seriousness of epic,
whose puns and ironies are his multilingual play - the strenuous play of
contest with Dante.
(d) Puns occur in Dante too, whether forceful or ironic in effect. Thus
'dai denti morsi de la morte' (Purg. vn. 32), 'bitten by the teeth of death',
uses hyperbaton to collocate 'morsi' with 'morte'. It is a pun but not an
etymological one. Rather than being playful here, Dante is endorsing the
Vulgate Latin of Hosea 13. 14: 'O death, I will be thy death', ('O mors,
morsus tuus ero'). Is there a countersuggestion of hope (the biter bit) on
the part of Dante within Virgil's hopeless contextual statement that he is
in limbo with the infant dead? And is this yet another tributary stream to
the multiple pun that Eve 'knew not eating death'? Or a phonological
onomatopoeia, Milton remarking like Dante that words for 'eat and
'death' resembling one another in working off the lips and teeth?
 Multilingualism and epic 155
(e) Latinism comes easily to Dante's Tuscan, it goes without saying.
Thus he can make a prominent symbolism of the seven Ps traced on
Dante's forehead {Purg. rx. 112) without any need to explain that T '
stands for Peccata, sins. Latinism in fact occurs in matters so small as to
suggest this is the ordinary, instinctive way of Dante's dialogue with Virgil
- character with character, as writer with writer: consider 'luogo e'
(= locus esf), Inf. xxxiv. 127, or the hybrid phrase 'ab antico' {Inf. xv. 64).
'Vosco' {Purg. xi. 60) must be vobiscum. And so on. Milton does not use
Latinism in these ways, for it is not possible to English, and may be
uncongenial as too medieval or macaronic.
(f) More often, however, Latinism brings gravitas, of a sort and by a
way which may even have reached Milton from Virgil through Dante.
Possible instances include Milton's predilection in Book I, plunging his
poem like Dante's into hell and medias res, for 'horror' and 'horrid'. Dante
liked the word, and found it in Virgil's description of the 'hell' of burning
Troy {Aeneid n. 559). Nearby we have the verb ruinare, and rovinava:
compare Milton's intransitive 'ruining' (vi. 868). Dante too stresses the
'livid' flames of hellfire.13
(g) More centrally, Dante does something Milton never does: he
employs his other tongues directly in his poem. He writes in provengal
for a proven£al soul (Arnaut Daniel, Purg. xxvi. 140-7).14 He creates a
gibberish for Pluto, with childish echo-patterns {Inf. vn. 1). He creates
another - a babel-deriving nonsense - for Nimrod {Inf. xxxi. 67). And he
embeds all sorts of Latin. The Latin is never Virgil's, though: it is always
a biblical, or liturgical, or theological Latin, which meant in his day a
living Latin. The effect can be solemn (as when the beatitudes are cited in
apposite cantos of Purgatory). Or it can be deflating ('Vexilla regis
prodeunt infemi, Inf. xxxiv. 1: 'forward go the standards of the king of
Hell', where the added final word wrenches the hymn-line into bathos).
O r technical (the quia of the scholastics, Purg. in. 37). But sometimes the
Latinism is one of calquing or appropriating; the souls who work through
an expanded praying of the Our Father, do so in Italian {Purg. xi) - to
make it their own, perhaps, appropriating it (like Milton as translator).
T o sum up provisionally, Dante's poem is macaronic and hybrid at
times, whereas Milton's never goes that far. Is this the difference between
Catholic and Protestant, or between English and Italian, or solely
between Dante and Milton? At any rate the difference invites us to look
at causes, in liturgy, in placing, in spirituality. The Catholic view of the
Latin of liturgy marks a dimension of that language which Milton lacked
or denied himself. Dante (1265-1312) stood closer in place and time to the
156 Multilingualism and the major English poems
formation of the Romance languages, the myriad changes which turned
Latin into vernaculars. Spiritually speaking, by his languages he offers to
God a representative rather than individualist synthesis of praising.
While both are poets of exile, Dante is more of a belonger and less of a
loner.
(h) After this diversity of language-behaviour is recognized in Dante's
poem, we must recognize its nature as equally centripetal. It has startling
continuity with, and through, Latin. He implies this in several places. He
proclaims it when Sordello hails Virgil at Purg. vn. 16-17.

'O gloria di Latin', disse, 'per cui

mostro cid che potea la lingua nostra . . .'
('O glory of the Latins' said he, 'through whom / our tongue showed forth its
power').

Virgil demonstrated what 'Latin' could do, and is its 'glory' - straightfor-
ward enough compliment, so far. But he is the glory of 'lingua nostra \
Latin is our language, our language(s) are Latin. Sordello was Italian and
wrote in provengal (as did other older Italian poets). Brunetto Latini,
Dante's teacher, wrote in French. Hence Dante's own proven^al in the
poem. And not only are all romance tongues Latin equally, but Dante
seems to have believed that 'the Italian dialects dated from antiquity and
had always existed simultaneously with Latin'15; so that Sordello and
Virgil, being Mantuans, can talk Mantuan to each other, and never
mind that some 1300 years of language change have intervened! This
insouciance conflicts with the preceding awareness of language-change,
but Dante wants to make a witty local effect; so he does that.
Nothing like this attracts Milton. However, just as Dante plays fast
and loose with diachronicity upon occasion, so Milton avails himself of
the whole body of literary Latin word-formation (or that of Greek or
Hebrew) for his own occasions.
The sense that his own idiom is in unbroken continuity, in fact living
contact, with that of Latin's best poet helps to empower Dante to speak
comprehensively about his own world, and magisterially for his own
time. So much so, indeed, that Oderisi hints Dante may become the new
'gloria de la lingua' (Purg. xi. 98), making Tuscan the new koine for Italy.
Other regions would of course contest this; but Milton believed it,
witness his letter to Buonmattei.
Milton never even hinted at such zeal to be the glory of English, since
his tongue - though unknown abroad - was an established and national
 Multilingualism and epic 157
not regional idiom, with a considerable and normative literature
achieved before him. He is both more, and less, modest as a voice about
himself within his poem. He talks about himself far less, but since Dante
so centralizes and confesses himself he can also rise higher, to express
aspiration for himself and his language-community. Milton, on the other
hand, moved away from patriotic themes, to universalize the Fall. Does
not the felt presence of his multilingualism have something to do with
this universalizing? That is, far from alienating native readers he is
drawing them into a wider community of culture through language,
where 'culture5 means 'experience lived and expressed and passed
forward'?
If so, Dante's position as a multilingual in his age and place had many
powerful advantages that were not Milton's in his age and place. In
particular, Dante's relation to Latin was more natural, strong and varied
than Milton's could be. Conversely, Milton's mastery of languages and
their literatures was more scholarly than Dante's could be, lagging
behind Milton in Greek and Hebrew. But most of all, the key difference
is a distance. Latin was closer to Dante because it was alive in his age and
country in ways it was not in Milton's, and it lived especially for Dante in
his spiritual centring (Bible and worship). Milton writes in a mother-
tongue which has its taproot outside Latin and its offspring, so that to lay
them - or further sacred tongues in their classical (dead-language) form -
under contribution for his epic is to bring them a different distance, for a
different impact. There is a less established feeling-tone, a more
conscious intelligence.
Finally, nonetheless, we should keep in clear view the tendency for
Dante to work multilingually, as part of his appropriating of Virgil and
Latin and epic method. As Virgil stood to Homer and Ennius, so Dante
stands to Virgil and all that had happened after him (yet not Homer, not
having Greek). Just so but even more so, Milton stands to Homer and
Greek, Virgil and Latin, and adds Dante and Italian; to which again add
lesser exemplars, and the whole biblical tradition known in its own
languages and the languages of its translations to boot. Milton's
emulating of Dante will be a mighty, and equal contest.

MILTON'S ENGLISH MULTILINGUALISM IN THESE CONTEXTS

I have already made a number of connections, whether of continuity or

departure, between Milton's languages-practice and that of his two key
predecessors. Now, using those connections along with fresh evidence
158 Multilingualism and the major English poems
from Paradise Lost, I shall draw conclusions which show the diversity of his
epic multilingualism. That diversity outstrips Virgil's, whereas com-
pared with Dante we perceive equality within difference.
Four points deserve emphasis, (a) Virgil's use of Greek and Homer for
verbal texture alerts us to the same or related habits in Milton, namely in
his use of Virgil and Latin (and Homer and Greek), (b) Dante's Latinism
alerts us to the different Latinism in Milton; 'different' in respect of
frequency, angle and profile, (c) It is different especially in the range of
his language-influences, Milton being a language polymath: this oppor-
tunity, taken most diversely for a myriad local effects, is Milton's newest
departure from precedent, (d) The local awareness of languages is a form
of allusion, which Milton extends and makes his own: readers recognize
it essentially as they do allusion of other sorts - less by intuitive or
quantifiable means, than through their sense of context and foreground-
ing, combined. Here especially Dante is emulated and equalled.
Now I expand each point.
(a) Virgil's use of Greek and Homer for verbal texture, so far back in
time yet integral to his setting of norms for secondary epic, alerts us to the
kindred habit in Milton's use of Virgil and Latin (and Homer and
Greek). Naturally, the effect and method will not be identical. No two
pairs of languages stand in identical relation to one another. This applies
equally for parole and langue; above all when the parole is speech at its
most distinctive, in great epic. Granted all this, we cannot expect
Milton's different metre and syntax, with English's different history of
absorption of words and names, to correspond closely to Virgil's: we
must seek for the same kind of debt, mutatis mutandis. Nonetheless, what
Virgil does to Homer alerts me to its counterpart in Milton.
The best particular example is still the opening, adduced already but
now seen more fully. Announcing his subject and claiming both
originality and status for it, Milton follows and adapts Virgil's exordium.
Just as Virum' had sufficed to link the Aeneidwith the Odyssey, and 'Troiae'
to announce the changed focus, so does Milton's patterning of'Man's /
man' declare a more comprehensive humanity as theme. Virgil shapes the
detail too: the emphasized words in 'Till one greater man I Restore us, and
regain the blessed seat' return us definingly to Virgil, and to Ennius
through Virgil. Christ is 'greater' than Adam, internally, but 'greater' too
than Aeneas or Fabius Maximus within the allusion. 'Blessed seat', finally,
is Virgil's phrase for the Elysian Fields where Aeneas is meeting the
happier souls, like Fabius (vr. 639). The method throughout is Virgil's,
extended to a greater complexity by Virgil's method.
 Multilingualism and epic 159
The best general example is Milton's admiration for the Virgilian
verse-paragraph (expressed in the 'Note on the Verse', 1669). He
composes similarly, to gain Virgil's 'sense variously drawn out from one
verse into another', that is, enjambment. This gains especialgravitas from
the first word of the line following. As Virgil's bolted horse (xi. 495-7)
aut adsuetus aquae perfundi flumine noto
emicat, ['bursts out', at start of new line]
and again
. . . arrectisque fremit cervicibus alte
luxurians [the feeling, foregrounded by weight and positioning]
so with Milton's 'thus they relate / erring' (1.746-7).16 It is an impact which
betokens control, of response as well as utterance. From such as this
derives the unusual command we sense, the unanswerable authority of
the poet within his poem.
Tiny changes, trivial in themselves, may yet say the most. When Virgil
alters the scansion of'Athos', or Milton the spelling for sound of biblical
place-names, it is precisely because no one but the author would bother,
or know how to judge of such minutiae, that they are a sure sign of that
author's internal constraint. Should we term it conscience, fidelity,
independence? I prefer to call it an unformulated language-sense, of the
same kind as a native-speaker's sense of what is and what is not idiomatic
- unstatable, irreducible, but still controlling the utterance.
(b) Dante's inventing of non-languages, and composing in languages
other than Italian, and quoting of the Bible or liturgy in Latin, are not
paralleled in Milton. His epic has no macaronic moments. Possible
reasons have been offered, but the chief one is that which pervades his
whole grand style: whilst drawing on his knowledge of languages, it shall
not cease to be English; and in this respect he sides with Virgil and the
majority. Nonetheless, Dante's more visibly eclectic, even macaronic
practice as regards Latinwm proves instructive.
It has a different distance to travel, Italian being so much closer to
Latin than English was. But in terms of frequency, angle, and profile
Dante helped to instruct Milton.
Although that frequency might have been universal since almost all of
Dante's words trace back to Latin, Milton instead learnt selection from
Dante, and tact, and dramatic placing. The Latinate words or forms or
spellings are quite sparingly used, for a special stylistic impact such as
onomatopoeia (ab antico) or a thematic one (rhyming Italian with Latin
160 Multilingualism and the major English poems
line-ends to insinuate harmonious continuity). It turns out that Dante's
sparseness of Latinism fits my general account of Latinism: it is neither
ubiquitous nor trivial, but found in significant clusters or individual
moments of onomatopoeia or irony. (For after a certain point, the
greater the frequency, the more marginal the utility.)
By 'angle' of Latinism I mean that it makes us receive meaning more
freshly or richly. 'Aequare' (Inf. xxvm. 20) means 'to level' or 'match' in
an ordinary Italian way; but - with help from its Latin spelling, square -
it further recalls Virgil's use of it. That most apposite context is Aeneas's
sense of his own 'inadequacy' to express the grief of the fall of Troy (11.
361—2).17 The Latin ancestry of the verb revives the dead metaphor
within 'adequacy' to emphasize the poet's worry, shared by Milton and
T. S. Eliot, to find a speech that can match the greatness of the subject.
By means of it, acquiring a cultural prestige, a Roman virtue, the verb
calls up Roman values: the Roman Church and Roman Empire still
both exist and interact, so that the article of his faith is that both may be
purged, or the one purify the other, to better his unjust world. To have
continuous access to the mind of both Romes through language helps to
encourage the wronged exile; not as a pastime or nostalgia, but as a
creed. Examples of such Latinism are frequent in Dante, made
unmistakable by spelling.18
Did Milton, too, keep himself going by a (so to speak)fortifying effect of
languages used like this to corroborate sense, to place oneself in a scheme
of life on earth that preceded and would survive the defeated present?
Even if that expression of the claim is too speculative, Latin - and for
Milton his other tongues - do fortify the style, and so help to uphold the
value they express or hint at.
I call this profile, or relief. The tongues have a lower profile, or stand in
lower relief, than in Dante. They hint, they support, they come in aid of a
simpler primary sense which lies open to the ordinary seventeenth-
century reader. The hinting matters most here: it is mostly the secondary
senses of a common Latin-rooted English word which return the thought
to classical rooting. To ignore the hinting as alien or needless is to ignore
a living and central quality of Milton's style.
(c) What is newest in Milton's multilingualism, is the number and
diversity of the languages which he can bring into his English grand style.
This holds, whether we think of his borrowing, modification, calquing,
or paraphrase, all these being among his language-arts.
Their force lies in the fact of versatile, end-specific combinings of
tongues. I have already instanced the poem's exordium, 'Dove-like sat'st
 Multilingualism and epic 161
brooding5, and Satan's first speech, recollecting the Latin of Virgil's
Hector. From the other end of the poem, I could adduce 'gliding
meteorous', with its Homeric stressing (xn. 629). Instead, take the
marvellous aptness of the expulsion by the 'brandished sword of God',
'that flaming brand' (xn. 633 and 643). Milton simultaneously recovers
the Middle English connection of 'brand' (sword) with the verb
'brandish', links 'brand' as burning light with the flash of swords in
action, and all of this with the Hebrew verb from Genesis; mithhapecheth,
literally 'turning itself this way and that', but here condensed into a
threatening passive, the 'happy seat' now 'waved over' by that flaming
brand.
At times like this Milton is movingly brilliant. Not in the way ofjoyce's
cold fireworks, but rather in Shakespeare's way, the linguistic imagin-
ation fusing the distinct parts of a many-sided idea into a single
summating image.
Such effects are many, without being routine or ubiquitous. They
include some of Milton's most dramatically powerful moments, as well
as being among his most characteristic. Whatever may be the case with
intensity or penetration, their intellectualrarcgtf surpasses Virgil's or even
Dante's because the confluent language^ and their thought-worlds go
wider, which in turn assists the conviction of comprehensive vision.
(d) Multilingualism in Dante or Milton often amounts to allusion.
Their parole refers outwards, not to its world or its langue but to other
langues and their paroles. Yet effective allusion is allusion which is
controlled. Control means we do not stay outside, but return at once
illumined to the passage
A good example of control is Paradiso vn. 1-3:
'Hosanna, sanctus Deus sabaoth
Superillustrans claritate tua
Felices ignes horum malacoth!'
So singsJustinian, in Dante's Latin hymn-fragment, weaving in liturgical
Latin and Hebrew: Justinian praises God in the languages of Jerusalem
and Rome. However, the effect is not Miltonic. For one thing Dante may
have mistranscribed 'mamlakoth'19, kingdoms, as 'malakoth'. (But
scribes can err, too.) More significant, Milton would not push so far into
macaronic. Though accused of linguistic pedantry, he never risks a
'malacoth'. Again, the two other Hebrew words embedded in this Latin
amidst his Italian - 'Hosanna' and 'Sabaoth' - do not receive a
translation or expansion within the surrounding Latin. Dante instead
162 Multilingualism and the major English poems
has his eye on the alliterative chain, sanctusl'sabaoth/'superillustrans; that is,
on sound as part of image, of the radiance of the deity perceived in glory,
'doubly illumining with your brightness the happy fires of these
kingdoms5. Further beauties include the shapeliness of the alliterated
triad (Latin, Hebrew, Latin again); and the sense of heaven's spacious-
ness, since he has casually asserted 'kingdoms' within it.
The image is not as Milton would or could have have done it. Milton
would have had heaven's dwellers performing a symphony for God at
stage centre, having much less feeling for differences of beatitude. Dante
is strong where Milton is not; but also vice versa. Milton's 'dark with
excessive bright' (in. 380) conveys the same human-viewpoint sense of
'too much', but intellectually by oxymoron rather than by image helped
by allusion. He makes a caique of the Hebrew sense of the unassimilable
brightness of the shekinah (dwelling, presence) of God.
But there are so many reasons why Dante and Milton do their
multilingual effects differently. Just as Milton's language-knowledge
differs from Dante's, so must his deployment of it in his poem's texture.
For example, because Milton is present in his poem as a voice or
voices only whereas Dante is both travelling character and narrator,
allusion is more seldom for recognition than for defamiliarizing. Very
often we notice that the substance of Dante's allusions is ordinary or even
homely - as befits a 'sermo humilis', explaining that the visionary's
emotions are everyone's, or that the afterlife is like our life. Milton's, even
when they seem homely, are directed at the feeling of the extraordinary-
portentous, transforming the too-familiar fallen mundane. Take again
the poem's close:

on the ground
Gliding meteorous, as Ev'ning mist
Ris'n from a River o'er the marish glides,
And gathers ground fast at the Labourer's heel
Homeward returning. (xn. 628-32)
Though we recognize the way mist seems to follow our steps, the
treatment is aimed at its uncanny animation, a sense of mass pursuit: the
fear of God, in no pious sense of 'fear', is felt.
Yet the closing note of this attempt to understand Milton's emulation
of Dante should not be difference. My claim is rather that Milton learnt
from Dante the fundamentals of a multilingual vernacular epic, doing by
his own means the same sort of thing. Just because Milton so distances
himself from Dante's views (except when castigating papal politics), we
 Multilingualism and epic 163
recognize the strong affinity of vision.
The nature of their contest can be glimpsed in one of those many
allusions where similarity once noticed stresses Milton's habit of
imperious appropriating. Few similes in Paradise Lost are more character-
istic of his egotistical sublime than that where he compares the fallen
angels to the fallen leaves of Vallombrosa:
[Satan] stood and call'd
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbow'r . . . (1. 300-4)
Editors duly note that classical epics (and the Bible) had equated fallen
leaves with the numberless dead. But the angels are not dead, they are
lost and futile; and these are the grounds of tenor and vehicle in Dante's
version [Inf. in. 112-17):
Come d' autunno si levan le foglie
Tuna appresso de l'altra, fin che '1 ramo
vede la terra tutte le sue spoglie,
similemente il mal seme d'Adamo
gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una,
per cenni come augel per suo richiamo.20
Like Milton's,21 this powerful image comes early on, as part of the first
wide-angle view of hell's company. Like Milton's, though quick, it is
double: the behaviour of leaves then (connectedly) of birds, as Milton
moves from Vallombrosa to Pharaoh's Egypt. Like Milton, Dante ani-
mates or humanizes the dead leaves, to keep the tenor active within the
ostensibly separate vehicle (the deprived branch 'sees' its 'despoiled'
leaves below it, the leaves 'strew' the brooks as if that was their purpose).
Like Milton, Dante puns: it is the 'seed' of Adam who have become these
waste leaves, while the name 'Vallombrosa' plays on the Psalmist's 'val-
ley of the shadow' of death. Less certainly, I wonder whether Milton's
'imbower' is spelt with im- not the usual English em- to align it with his
many Dantean process-verbs; and whether the grouping of elements
from salvation-history in the follow-up (sedge, Red Sea, Pharaoh, Ex-
odus) has been influenced by another of Dante's beginnings, his thresh-
old of Purgatory (where the reeds express penitence). Assuredly, both
double similes begin with 'autumn' and 'leaves', the keywords, together:
Milton resembles Dante more than he does their shared models.
Now no diminution whatever is felt from the recognition of Dante
164 Multilingualism and the major English poems
within Milton, here or elsewhere. Instead, the deep coherence and
individuality of both poets is felt. Thus both similes imply that souls are
free yet governed. Dante does it by likening Hell's new inmates to birds
(falcons) obeying the call ('per suo nchiamo', being called back to the
glove). Milton does it by the pun 'intranc't'. In trance they have made
entrance to a dismal new life. He does it more by 'Etrurian shades', in
which the epithet does wonderful multiple work for him - dark-sounding
name of a long-fallen empire, name of the larger region balancing within
the line that of the specific 'Vallombrosa'. More simply, Milton had been
there: he is doctus, this time, from personal experience. Most simply of all,
he gestures in the direction of the great predecessor poet, the Tuscan
who had 'been there' in the other sense, he had 'seen' hell.22
This is how Milton enlarges his vision by working inside the tradition.
He is inward with it through multilingualism, in strictly linguistic and
extended senses alike; as Virgil and Dante had been, only more so.
Milton is not a greater poet than they. But he is a greater multilingual
poet, and one who emulates them best through that capacity.
 CHAPTER 9

Multilingualism and the style of temperance

in Paradise Regained

The multilingual features of Paradise Lost reappear, most of them, in its

sequel. The difference is that they are used more sparingly, and as a
more evidently local effect. As Milton matches an austere style to his
austere conception of temperance, upheld by the second Adam, his
multilingualism shares in the general austerity. He has not thinned out
the texture uniformly, however. He has set up internal contrast between,
on the one hand, stretches of narrative or dialogue in which hardly any
texturing occurs except an obligatory biblical texture from his gospel1
subject and, on the other hand, irruptions of richer multilingual effect,
for effects which I shall infer from a seriatim approach now.
Yet contrast with Paradise Lost is not all we find in Regained from our
perspective. Contrast also helps us understand Samson Agonistes, with
which it was published in 1670-1, in such respects as that poem's further
and different austerity of style, which in turn helps to render a changed
presentation of theodicy. Even if Paradise Regained were (in the heretical
view of one of my students) the dullest of all Milton's works, it bridges and
illuminates his two greatest.
Its being transitional may explain why it has proved hard to classify.
Rather than seek to identify it as a 'brief epic' or 'didactic poem',21 see its
resistance to generic classification — despite being the work of a poet with
such a strong sense of genre - as a sign that Milton's style is altering. As
Northrop Frye remarked, the poem is suigeneris. Milton changes from full
epic towards dramatic poem by way of this austere agon of speech,
between tempter and temperance, because it is brief and intellectual
more than passionate, whilst Samson has focus more on passion. Some
signs of this austerity appeared in the prophetic books of Paradise Lost,
and in the cooling of style in Book XII contrasted with Book XI. More
can be perceived in the altered emphasis on multilingualism; for it is now
laconic and intermittent, yet when occasion demands it becomes
pungent and witty or playful, even flamboyant.

ife
166 Multilingualism and the major English poems

An opportunity to approach completeness of treatment is offered alike

by the shortness of the poem and by the sparseness of interlingual effects.
I take the opportunity, for the sake of a more inductive application of my
previous method. What is revealed, as each of the four Books is combed
for evidences of Milton's languages?

BOOK I
The main material and texture of Book I are biblical. The synoptic
gospels' enfance narratives are foremost, but so are the early chapters of
the fourth gospel, together with Psalms and Job. This staple is relieved,
however, by two Latin contributions: allusion to Virgil; and intermittent
Latinisms of diction. Still, compared with the preceding epic, the texture
is plainer, to the point of being surprising.
Virgil is massively present at the outset. With
I who erewhile the happy Garden sung
must be linked Virgil's
Ille ego qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
(I am the one who formerly tuned my song on a slender pipe, and then leaving
the woods made the nearbyfieldsobey the husbandman . . .)3
Then with 'one man's disobedience lost, now sing' and 'one man's firm
obedience fully tried' (2, 4) must be linked Virgil's 'Arma virumque
cano', 'Arms and the man I sing'.4 Milton links his temperate hero with
Aeneas, as heroes of pietas and founders of a new and better world.
Correspondingly, he closes Book I with a series of Virgilian signatures.
'He added not' (497) is the formulaic 'Nee plura [dixit]', understood.
When Satan 'disappear'd / Into thin Air' diffus'd' (498-9), the phrase
(not yet become cliche) calls up Virgil's 'in tenuem .. . evanuit auram'.5
And 'with sullen wing to double-shade' (500) improves on 'fuscis alis',
'with dusky wings'.6
In between the opening and ending come glancing allusions, direct
echoes, and suggestive adaptations. The first include 'A gloomy consis-
tory' (42), deriving in part from the 'concilium horrendum' of the
Cyclopes, Aeneid in. 679; and 'rudiments of his great warfare' (157-9),
'belli rudimenta'j exact wording but no carry-over of dire context. Direct
echoes include idioms appropriated, like phrases for meditation: 'much
revolving in his breast' (185, 'Aeneas per noctem plurima volvens', 'sub
pectore volvens': Aeneid 1. 305, 11. 10).
 Multilingualism and the style of temperance in Paradise Regained 167
More suggestive adaptations include clustering echoes of the mission
of Rome (218, 222, 226: Aeneidvi. 851-3). To evoke the Son's childhood
dreams of heroism Milton takes over, and interprets and subtly stretches,
the prophecy of Anchises: 'rule with government.. . add civilization to
peace . . . spare subjects and vanquish the proud' becomes
To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke,
Then to subdue and quell o'er all the earth
Brute violence and proud Tyrannic pow'r
. . . the stubborn only to subdue.7
And even so, the Son came to think, persuasion should precede coercion
and fear (223), temperance replacing violence however controlled.
Virgil, as poet of the world'sfirstepic of thinking choice, helps to keep up
expectancy for the reader as Christ thinks out his mission; Virgil's noble
version of Roman vocation is considered through interpretative quota-
tion, but placed and rejected, in favour of the inward kingdom. Milton is
embedding Virgil in Christ's musing so as to summarize, and forestall,
Satan's offer of the kingdoms of this world (in Book III, and especially
Book IV's parade of the glory that was Rome).
Apart from Virgil, however, unmistakable allusions or Latinisms are
rare in Book I (though more questionable examples abound). I review
the incidence by clause, then phrase, then word.
The syntax of 60-2 sounds like Tacitean oratory to me:
At least if so we can, and by the head
Broken be not intended all our power
To be infring'd . . .
'By the head / Broken' means 'the prophecy about the breaking of my
head'; a Latin idiom as in 'Paradise Regained', =the regaining of
Paradise, but more condensed and abrupt than usual for Milton. Then
the gawky accusative with infinitive ('intended that all our power should
be infringed') sounds oratorical, as contextually it should; but it sounds
precious or specious too. (As is the shift from 'broken' to 'infringed'.) Is
the example contributing to a shaky speciousness of Satan's rhetoric in
this poem? or to a 'ludic' dimension going wider than this Satan?8
Though it is certainly so striking as to deserve an explanation, my own
speculation would instead be, to see the style neither self-ridiculing nor
ludic but experimental. Did Milton attempt such a mannered condensa-
tion of style a la Seneca, or other model from the period of'Silver' Latin?
And if so, was it because as Stoics they were among the false models of
168 Multilingualism and the major English poems
temperance, with Milton keeping decorum because Christ lived on earth
in the time of Silver (ergo declining) Latin?9
As to phrases, one which demands thought describes the heavenly
music at 171-2, 'the hand / Sung with the voice'. The unusual idiom
recalls that in Latin trumpets regularly 'sing', while its paradox hints at
the angelic harmony, vocal with instrumental.
Among individual words, only 'unconniving' (363) is both neologism
and Latinate. The sense is either literally 'never closing the eyes' or
spiritually Vigilant'. Although the OED gives no earlier English
examples, in Latin the verb (conivere/connivere) has the requisite senses,
and the exact adjective (inconivus) is used by Apuleius and Aulus Gellius -
again later, in fact post-Silver writers.
Most candidates for Latinism of diction wane or vanish upon closer
inspection of the OED, One which remains is 'fraud' (322), seen from the
victim's standpoint, to mean 'the state of being deceived'. This is Latin,
not English, and Milton had used it of Eve (PL ix. 643).
Rarer again are expressions based in Greek. When Satan boasts to
'the throng / Of his apostasy (145-6), the noun conjoins, as Corns10
observes, 'companions' and 'results' of his rebellion. But the noun in
Greek has verb-force more than abstractness, so can be causative:
Thucydides has 'apostasis' = instigation to rebel; suggesting in Milton
'the throng whom Satan made apostate'. Given Milton's predilection for
renewing verb-force in other parts of speech, and the pause in God's long
utterance after the word, I detect a triple not merely double impact in the
Graecism.
The collocation of 'hypocrites' with the 'atheous priest' (487), three
Greek derivatives in a row, may be a twofold irony: Satan is exploiting
Greek subtleties to hoodwink Christ, Milton is attacking priestcraft.11
Etymology is a prime way in which Satan's cynicism can combine forces
with Milton's own sardonic edge.
Hebrew (and Italian) figure hardly at all, yet. One point of Hebrew
detail shows precision and strength. At 1. 33-4 Milton adapts Satan's
answer to God from Job, to say he was 'roving still / About the earth'.
The point to note is that the AV is literal and understated: 'from going to
and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it'. The Vulgate
catches the intensification better, 'circuivi terram et j^rambulavit earn'
('I have gone round the earth and walked throughout it'). But the
Hebrew has a more incremental parallelism, 'mishub haaretz umehith-
halek bahe': the second verb is a hithpael form, reflexive or iterative or
intensive in force. No aimless stroll is to be pictured, but a restless and
 Multilingualism and the style of temperance in Paradise Regained 169
mischievous prowling by the Adversary. 'Rove still5 is a brilliantly
concise rendering of the spirit of the second verb, tossed off in the
prevailing terse laconism.
Offsetting the few uncertainties, and necessarily heightened because
the surrounding texture is plainer and more reliant on the English Bible,
such flashes of the multilingual in Book I attract attention. They arouse
expectancy: if Milton is holding back, what is to come?12

BOOK II
Care with biblical names continues in Book II. At once (1-5) the future
disciples seek
Him whom they heard so late expressly calPd
Jesus Messiah, Son of God declar'd . . .
Though several divisions of the syntax of the titles are possible here, I
take them as they read, a threesome in ascending order. Jesus' = Greek
of Joshua' (Yehoshua), Saviour; name before title. 'Messiah', contrari-
wise, gives the Hebrew title, 'Anointed One', rather than the familiar
name/Greek translation, 'Christ'. 'Son of God' proposes in English the
highest status of all.
A further careful touch occurs where the disciples raise the register of
their yearning by invoking the 'God of Israel'to 'Send thy Messiah forth'
(42-3). Mary's speaking of her 'exaltation' may glance at a possible
meaning of her name in Hebrew ('Miriam', Mariam, Maria, 92).13 To
different effect, 'Asmodai' at 151 is closer to the Hebrew vowel sound in
'Ashmedai' ('destroyer') than the usual (Latinate) 'Asmodeus' is [PL iv.
168); but rather than invoke correctness, or even general euphony, I take
the reason to be metrical (since Milton uses another trisyllabic form,
'Asmadai', at the line-ending of PL v. 365). At all events, a playful
pleasure in exercising the freedom of his language-knowledge, restrained
in Book 1, is increasing.
A new feature of Book II is its use of names in lists, somewhat like an
epic catalogue, but quicker-moving, the impact being factual-honorific
or scathing-dismissive. A first list deploys biblical names from the early
ministry of Christ: 'Bethabara', 'Aenon', 'Salem old', 'Genezaret', and
so on (20-5). Among them, note 'Perea' (24): described as beyond the
Jordan, its name may mean 'beyond' (Greek peran/peraios).
Three more such listings punctuate the beginning agon. Two are
satiric, one of seduced nymphs and the other of heroic feasting-
170 Multilingualism and the major English poems
accoutrements; the last by contrast is a roll-call of saviours.
The list of nymphs is part of Satan's rebuttal of Belial's suggestion to
seduce the Son of God by women: a witty, disparaging tone is felt, both
in the hustled listing and in his concise final 'etcetera' ('many more / Too
long', 188-9: 'too long' to mention, he can't be bothered to finish the
phrase any more than the female casualty-list.
But the feasting-catalogue works differently, since it is fuller, and
comes from the narrator now. First it swells, at the verbal flourish (and
neologism) 'grisamber-steamed'; then the swelling carries on into listed
provenances of luxury foods in antiquity, followed by mythical charac-
ters linked with feasting ('Amalthea's horn', 356). Only, such myths are
lies, be they pagan or of medieval romance (358). The dry deflating tone
shows control, though it may also risk diminishing the coming agon and
victory of temperance.
The final list comes as Christ's rebuttal of a temptation aimed at
human weakness: Gideon, Jephtha, David (439) all saved Israel by
attaining from 'lowest poverty to highest deeds' (438). A Roman
(republican) list gets a more rapid recital, a single asyndetic line of the
four names (446). Simply the pacing of the list expresses a moral disdain
for this first 'temptation'. Satan does not really manage things any better
than Belial's silly brainwave: such is the subtextual suggestion made by
the accelerating listing.
By contrast with Book 1, Virgil makes little contribution here, perhaps
only the symbolic harpies who snatch away the feast (403). 'Harpy'
comes from the Greek harpazein, to snatch: 'harpy' is pejorative, for a
beastly, violent greedy grabbing. But Latin literature and language are
still felt. This time, it is the satirists whose allusion helps Milton or Christ
to denounce conspicuous consumption. I noted Horace, for 'credulous
desire' (166); Lucretius on 'superstition' (296); Horace again for the
fickleness of the hungry mob.14 Horace does more for Milton than
concise castigation: he expresses sobriety memorably, to 'reign' first over
appetite (466). Such morality suits a biblical debate about the 'Kingdom'
of God, since it can be joined with the biblical wisdom writings,
including the many Psalms which are more ethical than transcendental.
Milton combines Roman with biblical sententiae (or his idiom ofjudicious
brief temperance.
Latinism otherwise is again sparse. For syntax, a Latin participial
construction underlies 'Since first her salutation heard' (107,= post
salutationem auditam); and in 'What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat?'
may be heard Latin quid dubitas for 'Why not?' As to diction, 'preface'
 Multilingualism and the style of temperance in Paradise Regained 171
(115) to mean 'what he had said before' (Prae-fatio) is the one clear
Latinizing coinage. 'Demonian' (= divine, 122: not in OED otherwise)
seems from its spelling to come from Greek through Latin.
To keep a sense of the proportion of Latinism in Book II, we can
recognize that puns are more noticeable than Latinism, which does not
here contribute to them. Is such restraint to be seen as a stylistic
counterpart or embodiment of temperance? It seems so. But I would
impute the choice to decorum less than to tactics, since next the style
grows richer - for temptations to intemperance through glory.

BOOK III
Milton exploits two fresh aspects of his multilingualism for Book III.
First, wheti the claims and meaning of 'glory' are debated (7-250), his
languages help him establish a discriminating, temperate glory over
against false glories. Then the offer of 'all the glories of the world'
changes its form: when they are imaged, panoramically, by speech then
narration, something closer to the multilingual style of Milton's epic is
deployed. Both aspects read thematically like a continuing of his epic; yet
the particular prompting model is Spenser.15 To overgo Spenser's legend
of temperance it is precisely his greater multilingual resources, especially
language-scholarship, which Milton exploits.
Satan first tempts Christ with 'fame and glory, glory the reward /
That sole excites to high attempts . . .' (in. 25-6). Exempla follow, all of
military conquest. Christ in reply asks, who is judge of glory, who gives it.
If it is 'the herd confused', it is worthless. So far he sounds like a moralist,
like Cicero or Seneca, preferring the glory accorded by the wise few -
claritas ('renown') as opposed to gloria.16 But he bypasses claritas in favour
of acts which earn God's praise; which, in other words, bring the agent
into relation with God's glory, the source of all value (60-8, 'This is true
glory . . .') Next, by that same standard now it is established, Christ
rejects world-conquering glory as false. It is marked as false by the
blasphemous titles given out by the ignorant or terrified mob: destroyers
are described as 'titled gods', 'benefactors', 'deliverers', and finally
'worshipped'. (The Greek world especially hailed the Ptolemies or the
Roman emperors in these terms, which in biblical tradition - if used at
all - were reserved for the faithful who helped God to 'deliver' Israel.) If
there is any merit in glory, it is attained by different means and for a
better motive. The means is 'patience, temperance' (92). And if the
motive for heroic deeds is to gain glory, that forfeits the glory (100-4).
172 Multilingualism and the major English poems

Nor is God, though he receives and requires glory (109-20), contradic-

ting these discriminations: God creates, to do and share good freely; and
glory is simply what the human beneficiaries return as thanks, recogni-
tion by glory being their sole means of thanks (123-33).
Throughout, Milton reiterates the word, 'glory',17 to think out its
inward nature, so probing much deeper than Guyon's short debate with
Mammon (FQu. vii. 10-11), and thus answers Satanic and human doubts
about the Father in Paradise Lost. Since I have already examined 'glory'
there it suffices now to point out the implicit redefinition of glory; no
longer confined to Latin gloria and its verb gloriari, where glory is a
zero-sum game, but enlarged by the sense of divine bounty which
inheres in Hebrew cabod (weight, worth) and shekinah (Greek doxa: the
shining presence, Dantean life-giving light). The offered glory is Roman:
the Son, and Milton, delatinize it to probe deeper.
The staple texture of this probing is a plain-style sententia: to it, a few
multilingual flourishes add life. Satan mockingly compares Christ's
insight to 'Urim and Thummim, those oraculous gems / On Aaron's breast'
(14-15). (Milton can mock too, shielded by Satan!)18 The narrating voice
closes the debate on glory with the condensed ancient idiom, both Latin
and Greek, 'Satan had not to answer' (146). We can take 'not' to be
condensed for 'nothing' or 'not anything', but more powerfully we hear a
rendering of 'non habuit dicere' or 'ouk esche legein', for 'he could not
answer'.
Throughout the temptation by words, Milton uses his languages to
create a more subtle and demanding temptation than Spenser had done.
The comparison becomes less one-sided, however, when Milton moves
on to present the temptation of the kingdoms of the world by images.
They are presented by image twice over in Book III (not to mention
repeated in Book IV); once by Satan in a speech, once in narrator's
description. The order is Spenser's: Mammon talks to Guyon, then
offers him images. Satan shows Christ Assyrian then Babylonian then
Persian empires, drawing upon biblical and ancient historiography in a
sequencing that ingeniously combines the chronological and geographi-
cal. The texture is one of imposing names, from varying languages,
governed too by considerations of euphony and a sort of interplay
between comprehensibility and erudition: 'Nineveh' (275) comes from
Hebrew and AV, but 'Salmanassar' (278) is Vulgate; 'Persepolis' (284)
explains itself, but 'Hecatompylos' (287) needs and gets its gloss, 'her
hundred gates' ('her' because cities are viewed as mothers, feminine in
 Multilingualism and the style of temperance in Paradise Regained 173
meaning as well as morphology, by the ancients whose historians Milton
is using). The usual topos of the 'Parthian shot5 is wheeled out (306).
Competence, Milton's as well as Satan's, is asserted by the shapes of the
bodies of soldiery ('Rhombs and wedges' and so on, 309).
A further parade of place-names follows in the narrator's voice,
imaging the political grandeurs of the orient. Some of the detail comes
from Ammianus Marcellinus, who had served in the Parthian cam-
paigns of the EmperorJulian (the 'Apostate', we notice). Others seem to
come from maps. Milton does an expert job. Part of it is multilingual,
too. The Parthian archers shoot their showers of arrows backwards — the
familiar image repeated, for its allegorical application (324, FQn. xi.
25-7). Virgilian 'clouds of foot' are present (327, Aeneid vn. 793).
Elephants are 'endorsed' with towers of arches - 'strengthened' and
'backed' (329)19. To climax the majesty and giantism of world armies on
the move, these visionary numbers exceeded even those of Boiardo's
Agrican, who led no fewer than 2.2 million to prise Angelica away from
her father the King of Cathay. World-history is being heaped up, even
romance is being eclipsed. The force of the listing is multicultural,
encompassing fiction with fact, to provoke thought.
The thought provoked by such hyperbole is ironic. Barbara Lewalski
notes that Agrican enticed some Christian knights to this pagan war
party, which may mean thematically that such force is misguided.
Certainly Satan's presentation is itself guardedly categorized, as a 'new
train of words' (266). 'Train' is equivocal, meaning not only 'series' but
'artillery' or a 'line of gunpowder'. So the narrator's image must
continue and amplify the 'train' in these senses, even if in some details —
like the natural imagery and the giantism generally — the exaggeration
implies that the engineer is being, rhetorically, hoist with his own petard.
To put it another way, the colours and flourishes of multilingual texture
in this set-piece are brighter than anything so far in the work. Satan must
make a bigger effort, and not least through imagery because he has been
routed in the debate preceding it. And Milton himself must make a
bigger effort here; and does, equally in the texturing and in the ironizing.
On that basis will be built the still finer imagery of Rome, and the
cultural debate of Greece, in Book IV. Meanwhile, Book III closes upon
affirmation by opposite, glorious imagery of the Exodus: 'Red Sea',
'Jordan', 'promised land' (438-9). The narrator is no less decided: 'So
spake Israel's true King' (44i),20 in which the kingship of Christ is also
affirmed in the redefining epithet, 'true' king.
174 Multilingualism and the major English poems

BOOK IV

Just as Book IV is longer than the others, so its style is more varied: within
the continuing even style of temperance, Milton now goes higher for
climaxes. Debate, imagery and multilingual effects all intensify together.
From this relative wealth of material I select as follows: (a) the imagery
which at once proclaims that a higher register is available; (b) the
intensified probing of identity through meanings of names and titles,
which goes with a deepening of the debate about glory; (c) the more
learned style used now by both contestants as the temptation shifts from
power to wisdom; and (d) the correspondingly more multilingual style of
the narrator.
(a) Clarification is felt first: Satan is 'over-matched' (7), and to express
that Milton follows up with a triple simile (10-20), unprecedented in this
poem.21 First, we have the same agonistic conceit: 'As a man who had
been matchless held . . . overreach't... to salve his credit, and for very
spite . . .' Then comes an image of animals: 'Or as a swarm of flies . . .'
Lastly, moving further away from the human, to the elemental this time:
'Or surging waves . . . ' Milton's main exemplars all contribute. The first
resembles Dante's many comparisons of one agent with a wider class of
persons- a subsuming, rather than transferred image, but equally part of
the triad and the most psychologically penetrating. The second had had
a long life in epic: Homer, Ariosto and (in his legend of Temperance,
note) Spenser.22 The third, less homely and more expressive of the clash
of mighty opposites, is Homeric and Virgilian.23 The combined impact is
to alert us to the universal significance of the contest, nearing its decision;
and to align it with the epic tradition.
The triple, epic simile is multilingual in that Milton's languages gave
him access to this resource: the emulation is masterful in its selections
and appropriations. The fact that the image is epic does not mean the
poem as a whole is epic, nor even brief epic. My point is that the register
is perceived here moving towards epic. The poem is suigeneris, as Frye puts
it, because it is gradually raising its register.
(b) The rise shows multilingualism, too, becoming more prominent.
Small touches,first,show the increased verve. There is a clever precision
in Satan's angels being 'tetrarchs' (201) of fire, air, water and earth,
because not only does 'tetrarch' mean ruler of a fourth part but the
best-known tetrarch was Herod - dubious company. Satan is being
clever, Milton is undercutting.
An opposite impact is found also, in nomenclature which carries the
authority of correct and apposite titling:
 Multilingualism and the style of temperance in Paradise Regained 175

Where God is prais'd aright, and Godlike men,

The Holiest of Holies, and his Saints . . . (348-9)

That is the last, best reason why Christ prefers 'Sion's songs' to Greek
ones. Apdy, then, Christ names the God whom Psalms address by a
hypersuperlative honorific; for temperance includes being absolute
where appropriate.24 The 'holy of holies' is the innermost, most sacred
room within the one and only Temple of the Lord, and the phrase is a
Hebrew superlative (qodesh qodeshim). Doubling the superlative, to
'Holiest of Holies', directs the gaze beyond the holiest place of God to
holiness itself. The phrase is not so much a Hebraism, then, as an
attempt to surpass or supersede Hebrew. The upsurge of praise befits a
passage commending the Psalms as the greatest praise-poetry. (For good
measure, the pair of lines is modelled on the parallelismus membrorum of the
Psalms: each line has three semantic elements, which would be three
words each in Hebrew, and the second line steps beyond the first on a
basis of condensed repetition highlighting the incremental.)
Whereas this splendour is a local rising, the steady overall rising can be
tracked in such tides as 'Saviour' and 'Son of God'. The first of these is
dependent on the second, so draws less probing. The narrator regularly
introduces a speech of Christ or reference to him by 'our Saviour'; and
the only slightflourishcomes at the end when this description of function
is added to the tide of fundamental nature, 'the Son of God our Saviour
meek' (636). A ratifying, 'QED' flourish.
But 'Son of God' lies at the heart of the probing by Satan. What it
means, is just what he wants to know. He says so, at 196-205. And at
500-40, he talks of nothing else. Milton rehearses the different senses, or
emphases, which the phrase has in the Bible. Yes, Christ is 'Son of
David', and this time - a mark of Satan's urgency - he concedes
'virgin-born' also (500). 'Messiah' too (502) may be name and nature, for
Satan has heard the 'voice from heaven' term Christ 'the Son of God
belov'd' (512-13); that is, the Sonship exceeds all usual honorific human
sense. Christ is 'my adversary' (527) - rivalling and supplanting Satan,
mankind's 'Adversary'. The struggle has convinced Satan that Christ is
the 'utmost of mere man [acme of what is purely human], not more'
(535-6). He must adopt 'another method' to find out 'what more thou art
than man' (538). The method is the temptation to blasphemous
miracle-working, a putting of God to the test on the pinnacle of the
Temple (555). No reply in words is forthcoming, nor does Milton try to
wrap up the sense in a definition. That is not only prudent: it keeps the
emphasis on temperance, on nerve and balance of all sorts, human and
176 Multilingualism and the major English poems
understandable qualities of action. But in the 'heavenly anthems of his
victory / Over temptation' we do hear Christ vindicated as 'True image
of the Father', whether throned (as in Paradise Lost) or in human form 'still
expressing / The Son of God' (601-2). The title is named three more
times: simply at 626, where hell learns 'To dread the Son of God'; and
the final salutation,

Hail Son of the Most High, heir of both worlds,

Queller of Satan, on thy glorious work
Now enter and begin to save mankind. (633-5)

Christ most fully expresses the glory of God to humanity, hence can save.
The probing of opaque biblical titling shows Milton arguing questions of
being through his languages and their scholarship.
(c) To do it, Milton gives his characters a more learned style than
hitherto. This especially suits the temptation through learning (195-365).
But it is felt before and afterwards, too; at times drily, at times
exuberantly; at times recalling the angelic expositions in Books VII-VIII
and XI-XII of his epic, and if so, more engagingly. Three early instances
set the tone. When Satan is 'thrown from his hope' (3), the condensed
expression is from a Latin idiom, 'spe deiectus'.25 Rome, in the second,
westward image of world-power, is screened by hills from 'cold Septentrion
blasts' (31). Milton uses the grand word for 'north', but not merely for
display of learning or to fill out the line. It is a sudden switch of narrative
point of view, to empathy, through adopting the subjects' naming for the
thing. It comes as a welcome humanizing touch in the poem; or a
thematic one, if Rome needed to be saved.
A different, ironical impression is made by the doubled coyness about
how Christ can see Rome from Mesopotamia: 39-42, 55-8.

By what strange Parallax or Optic skill

Of vision multiplied through air, or glass
Of Telescope, were curious to enquire . . .

So speaks the narrator, teasingly. One technical Greek-based term offers

an explanation or sop, but the second thwarts it, and the third baffles, till
he says 'you don't need to know, nor will I tell you'. So we are detached
from scientific curiosity by the time Satan gives a fourth version:

so well I have dispos'd

My Airy Microscope thou mayst behold
Outside and inside both . . .
 Multilingualism and the style of temperance in Paradise Regained 177
Having had his frisk, Milton can render Satan's amazing technology
quaint.
Then when the agon warms up, both contestants are given multilingual
scope. Satan gives Rome an authentic solidity of specification (61-9,
including 'lictors' and 'turms') before attempting to dazzle with exotics
like the 'Chersoness' (from Ariosto), 'Turbants' and 'Taprobane'. But
Christ in reply is not to sound obscurantist or sulky, hitting back with a
roll-call of fine wines (out of Roman poets); and luxury 'crystal and
myrrhine' cups out of Pliny (117-19). Moreover, Romans' blood-sports in
the arena render them 'effeminate' (142), where the adjective includes
participial-causative force.
The tension of the contest increases when not Rome but Greece - not
material but intellectual glory - becomes the issue. Satan offers Greek
literature before Greek thought: Christ, concentrating as ever, refutes
the latter first; which enables him to close his striking reply with that
glory of Hebrew, the Psalms. Satan's appeal is strewn with Greek names,
known for glory and used correctly: 'Hymettus', 'Ilissus', 'Lyceum';
'Melesigenes', 'iambic', 'democraty'. Greek poets, especially, receive
intelligent praise, not different from Milton's commendations of the
same authors in prose contexts. Milton must have enjoyed coining
'fulmined' (270): here, and hereabouts, he is drawing in an unusual
source, Aristophanes.26
Christ, replying 'sagely', shows equal learning and a sharper logic. For
example, he reintroduces the glory-debate and shifts its focus from
Satan's bemusing plethora of schools of philosophy, to first principles:
when pagan philosophers deny that there are gods or that they are moral
or care about human life, they can only 'to themselves [humans] / All glory
arrogate' (314-15). If philosophy is thus no more than ministering to
human self-esteem, does 'glory' keep its root sense, of 'glorying' =
'boasting'? God gets no glory from them, and is reduced to mere 'usual
names, Fortune and Fate' - in other words, a let-down, a delusion or
evasion (318-21).
More brilliantly, though, Christ reasons that Hebrew literature, too,
outweighs Greek. This will be a hard position to uphold, surely: how will
he do it? We lean forward expecting him to crash. Yet he rightly points
out that the books of the Law and of Israel's history are 'strewed with
hymns' - the delightful among the useful. (Milton had claimed this in
Reason of Church-Government (1642), when again preferring Hebrew odes to
Greek ones.)27 Moreover, 'our Psalms' are 'with artful terms inscrib'd'
(335). Themselves most artful terms, the words mean 'artistic expres-
178 Multilingualism and the major English poems
sions' (abounding indeed in imagery, andfiguresof thought and speech);
and 'terms of art' (like 'A MaskiP, Tor the chief musician'). 'Artful terms'
suggests that Psalms contain their own critique, too, as Milton had again
claimed in 1642. Thus they export well: they pleased even Israel's alien
captors, and reference to this enters self-reflexively into Psalm 137.28
Above all, they praise what deserves praise ('God is praised aright'),
whereas Greek verse praised 'the vices' of the Olympian gods (340).
Christ wields Plato to discredit Homer and Pindar (and after all, the
Psalms did endure better where odes counted, in liturgy). I stress the
stout reasonableness of Christ's reasoning here because it has usually
been dismissed, as provincial or doctrinaire, or given only the limited
praise of saying what the dramatic situation needed him to say. Milton is
differently engaged, and is not provincial. This is why he lets Christ use
Greek arguments, with ascertainable cultural facts, to discredit the
Greek glory which Satan is offering.
It makes Samson Agonistes, following, a related but intriguingly different
agon of the two cultures. In both works of his final diptych Greek and
Hebrew test each other out. They probe each other in his continuously
evolving, interpenetrative English.
(d) Similarly, at his close Milton allows to himself as narrator a more
learned, vivid multilingualism. Greek is prominent. Satan is 'Antaeus' to
Christ's Hercules in 'Irassa' (563—5): in addition to the regulation
renaissance equating of Christ with Hercules Milton glances at the
Hebrew 'Satan = Adversary' in the name of 'Antaeus', in which 'Ant-'
(anti) means 'opposite', 'hostile'. Christ - Hercules : Satan - Antaeus.
'Irassa' nearby (564) is purely learned, coming from Pindar.
Latinisms, of coinage or revival, continue too. Satan's 'joyless
triumphals' (578) are not only oxymoron but a coinage. 'Plumy vans'
(583) Latinize the angels, who bring Christ from his 'uneasy station' (584,
awkward 'standing' on the pinnacle). They bring him 'food, divine, /
Ambrosial' (588-9), where the word-order conveys to those who need to
be told that ambrosia was the food of the gods. It also puns on its Greek
etymology (ambrotos, not-mortal). 'Ambrosial' drink, next (590), general-
izes the word, to mean both 'divine' and 'fragrant': Greek is being
Christianized.
The Book of Revelation contributes the fount of life (590 again): and
soon 'Abaddon', jointly with the book ofjob (624). That this Job's trial is
over, Milton insinuates by altering the direction and intensifying the
energy of his multilingual allusions.
 Multilingualism and the style of temperance in Paradise Regained 179

CONCLUSION AND TRANSITION

Paradise Regained, then, is a strenuous, intelligent work, whose texture

assists and at times embodies its agon. From the particular perspective of
this study, its restrained then gradually increasing multilingualism well
demonstrates how much Milton could now do with this resource.
And yet I sympathize with that student who found the work
monumentally boring. It does lack something. What it lacks is passions.
And that is surprising, in a work on the theme of temperance, the
governing of passions. Whereas the first Adam fell through passion, the
second triumphs by thinking — by thinking his way through temptations
which arouse no passion in him. For humans who do experience
passions, his agon has demonstrative and encouraging but not enabling
power. And hence, surely, Milton imagined yet a third Adam. In the
other half of his 1671 volume his Adam is one who has fallen through
both passion and stupidity, and who recovers the effective use of heart
and mind, both, for an act of deliverance.
For this agon Milton must find a medium which expresses both
passion and intellect, leading to disclosures of theodicy. He chooses
dramatic form; Greek tragedy's language of passion and intellect and
theodicy, for Hebraic and hence crypto-Christian content. He actually
tells us this: witness his title, hybrid for a new growth, 'Samson
Agonistes'; and his preface, on how a religious tragedy may be written.
For this notable conclusion to his life's work, he creates a strange hybrid
English. Moving beyond that of Paradise Regained, it works by a similarly
rising register, to a more resounding triumphal paradox.
 CHAPTER 10

Hebrew Meets Greek in Samson Agonistes

Samson Agonistes, which I date to 1671/ shows the multilingual Milton

rejuvenated. And so, although it would be easy to illustrate once more his
Latin and other languages irrigating the chosen style, I shall follow the
poem's own attempt at something more strenuous. This is its mingling,
or meeting, and at times fusing, of his two least related languages, Greek
and Hebrew.
The debate about this hitherto has been strange. Whereas Sir Richard
Jebb found the poem more Hebraic than Greek, William Riley Parker
found it abundantly Greek.2 Thereupon the debate moved on to
particulars or to other matters, so neglecting the work's design,
notwithstanding that for this occasion Milton published his fullest
account of a work's aspirations. Here, then, the design will be explored
locally, to show how Greek meets Hebrew in the texture; and pervasively
to show how they meet in the structure and tragic effect.

THE TITLE

'Samson Agonistes', manifestly, joins Hebrew to Greek. Does it even

imply that such joining is to be a principle? Though it would be absurd to
maintain that Milton was literally hinting and no one till I noticed the
hint, he certainly follows entitling practices which can be observed
elsewhere, and so point to a general principle. The Trinity Manuscript
offers such parallels as these: 'Zedechiah neoterizori' (innovating), Jehu
Belicola' (Baal-worshipper), 'Saul Autodaictes' (self-slayer), 'Gideon
Idoloclastes' (Idol-smasher) (all from p. 34); also 'Baptistes' (the Bap-
tizer).3 Most of the Greek epithets are adjectives having the force of a
root verb. Like these, 'Samson Agonistes' announces that a Hebrew hero
is to be presented from a Greek, tragic viewpoint, with focus on
significant and self-summating action; a hero engaged in the action of
agonizesthai (see below).

180
 Hebrew Meets Greek in Samson Agonistes 181
What is more, the MS reveals how Milton's thinking developed.
'Agonistes' replaced Samson-epithets which had arisen from other
episodes in the Book of Judges: Tursophoros' (Fire-bringer, Arsonist),
'Hubristes' (the Arrogant).4 'Agonistes' also replaces a first title for the
episode he did choose, namely 'Dagonalia' ('The Festival of Dagon', not
mentioning Samson). So when he moved on to 'Agonistes' Milton was
rejecting other episodes along with the morally simple notion of Samson
as hubristic; and also moving the chosen episode inward, so as to focus
the meaning of that outward Dagon-climax upon the protagonist. A
similar development, towards the more internal and active, and towards
precise focus on an episode and its protagonist, can be seen with Elijah:
'Elias in the mount. 2 Reg.i. oreibates ['mountain-ranging'],5 or better Elias
Polemistes' [cin his war-making'].6
The meaning of 'Agonistes' itself is a tale often told. Through its
derivation from Greek agon, agonia, and the verb agonizomai it cannot but
suggest a 'contending' or 'championing' hero, or a 'struggling', indeed
'agonizing' one; all which fit exactly. Agon is also the normal word for the
'conflict' or action of a drama, (especially of a comedy by Aristophanes),
which prompts two more applications. First, metapoetically, the sobri-
quet might alert the audience to the action as fictive, as seeking a tragic
effect. But secondly, and bridging the two groups of meanings because
agonistes is the normal word for an actor, it becomes transferred to the
hero being acted (hence 'protagonist'); Samson himself is a play-actor.
He plays a part in the drama of the Judges, as he who 'shall begin to
deliver Israel' (Judges 13. 5). More precisely, he succeeds in doing so,
literally at the last gasp, because of how he 'made sport before' the
Philistine lords (Judges 16. 25). It was a solo, since (line 1628) 'None [was]
daring to appear Antagonist (note the eponymous root).7 Having played
for them, he exposed the sport as mockery when he played his final trick
on them: making the agon - finally, miraculously, paradoxically - 'no
contest'. Without implying that Milton had all this in his head as he
named the work, it comes straight out of his title and his subject
together.8
Its suffix, too, has significance: '-istes3 points to a verb-root, to an
action. (Compare again 'Idoloclastes', 'Polemistes', 'Autodaiktes' from
the Trinity MS.) Not what has been done to Samson, nor his sufferings,
but what he does in his 'agon': that is the eventual title's focus. Such befits
a drama. It further befits Aristotle's theory of the paramountcy of action
and so plot, together with the ubiquitous insistence of the Hebrew Bible
182 Multilingualism and the major English poems
upon God's saving acts. (The conjunction of Hebrew practice with
Greek theory as well as its practice will receive more discussion in a
moment.)

TEXTURE: NAMES AND EPITHETS

Titles of characters hold a related interest. Smaller examples include

'Timnian' and 'Ascalonite'. Major ones include 'paranymph' and
'Nazarite'. And a little conundrum is the twin name for a single place,
'Azza' being simply the familiar 'Gaza'. The examples are taken
seriatim.
'Timnian' and 'Ascalonite' are straightforward epithets formed by the
long traditions of translation and commentary, which had moved like
Milton's own thought from the Hebrew original through Greek and
Latin into English. They are formed as epithets of place-origin on the
usual principles, and sound right (some names defeat English: what is its
adjective for a person from Kirkcudbright or Christchurch?) Milton goes
with the grain, as in his Latin coinages.
'Paranymph', however, is a more deliberated choice, and probable
coinage. In Greek, Paranymphos (adjective, or noun of either gender)
means a groomsman or bridesmaid; etymologically, someone who is
'alongside a bride or groom', or 'present at a wedding'. However, since
Samson's paranymph had taken over the Timnian bride (1018—22), the
careful title is a mordant pun: the paranymph ended up 'alongside' the
bride indeed. The chorus make the irony plainer at once ('Successor in
thy bed', 1021). It is one of many times where an etymological reading is
made clearer in the follow-up, either because this is how Milton worked
out the name as image, or because he wished to share his wit with all
readers.
As for 'Nazarite', the -zar- spelling has of course the primary sense of
'Nazirite', person 'separated' and dedicated to the service of God (Heb.
nazir, noun, from verb root NZR = to dedicate oneself). Yet the more
correct form would be 'nazirite'. Renaissance usage liked the looser form
because it recalled 'Nazarite' = Nazarene, Jesus as the man from
Nazareth. As Milton did not distinguish when he might have done, did
he too wish the glance at the later 'saving of Israel'?9
Lastly, the little conundrum of Azza = Gaza. 'Gaza', being the usual
spelling of the Septuagint and the Latin translations, is Milton's own
usual (so 'eyeless in Gaza', 41). Yet at 146-50, recalling Samson's former
exploits, the chorus say he
 Hebrew Meets Greek in Samson Agonistes 183
on his shoulders bore
The gates ofAzza, Post, and massy Bar,
Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of Giants old,
No journey of a Sabbath day; and loaded so,
like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up Heav'n.
This spelling more accurately renders the Hebrew spelling, initial ayin
with doubled zayin. Is the point, then, that in a context glorifying the
hero's former championing of Israel the register rises to a more faithful
transliteration? If so, the concluding allusion to the Gentiles' legend of
Adas confirms that Milton is comparing cultures, and on his metde to
grade the Hebrew as more authentic. Gentiles only 'feign', but let us hear
the name of Gaza as it should be spoken. In the same spirit, he has moved
from Greek-deriving talk of'Chalybean' steel and 'Adamantean proof
(132-3) to a more celebratory Hebraizing register. He works in a mention
of the Sabbath, with particular sidelong dexterity. 10
The whole passage, certainly, moves between Greek and Hebrew,
both comparing and connecting them. And by the same token, all these
examples show us Milton fusing Hebrew with Greek in his English. A
similar pattern could be traced in the allusions.

T E X T U R E : T H E IDIOM OF T H E CHORUS

The idiom of the chorus just quoted was straightforwardly celebratory,

in a register that rises. Elsewhere, however, their idiom can be puzzling,
until we recognize its multilingualism.
For instance, they seem to move awkwardly from a majestic opening,
God of our Fathers, what is man!
into a groping or grumbling sequel:
That thou towards him with hand so various,
Or might I say contrarious,
Temper5st thy providence through his short course,
Not evenly . . . (667-70)
As against the numerous expressions of misgiving by modern readers, 11
our present perspective discloses correctives.
The chorus, who are of the tribe of Dan, begin very suitably. They
speak in their collective character through the Psalmist's exclamation,
'What is man, that thou art mindful of him?' (Psalm 8. 4). Yet equally
suitably they continue with a Greek-like argumentation: the substituting
of Latinisms, like 'contrarious', for the opening biblical trumpet-blast
184 Multilingualism and the major English poems
registers the style of agonized thought, and attempted gnome. The chorus,
like any Greek chorus, punctuates the epeisodia (divisions of the action) by
musings of their own in their own idiom and metre. And if they then
sound foolish, there are precedents enough in Sophocles: till they know
the outcome, choruses can get things wildly wrong (as in the King Oedipus,
when they look forward excitedly to finding out who Oedipus' birth-
parents were - 'perhaps some god .. .' (1098)). Contrariwise, when they
do know the outcome, at the end, the chorus can sound vague or
commonplace, summing things up with a thought of the inspirational
magnitude of'Well I never...' The point is not that they are foolish, but
that they are ordinary while the tragic events are extraordinary.12 Yet
they have moments of rising to the occasion, as a later section will show.
And lastly, all their utterances proceed by domiciling the Hebrew of the
subject with the Greek (and Latin) of the genre within their strange
gnomic English.
Another instance is when the chorus try to understand women, and
what is it that wins women's love. Lacking the Wife of Bath's instruction,
they know only what women do not want:
It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit
That women's love can win or long inherit;
But what it is, hard is to say,
Harder to hit,
(Which way soever men refer it)
Much like thy riddle, Samson^ in one day
O r seven, though one should musing sit . . . (1010-17)13
It is not the language now but the thought which is fusing Greek with
Hebrew. The chorus are responding, as usual, to the epeisodionjust ended;
and respond, this time, by propounding the essential enigma. They
ponder the perplexities of man-woman relations, like most men do,
without getting anywhere. Women are a puzzle to men, a 'riddle'.
Not only does Samson's story contain riddles like this one, it is one.
Riddles are diverse, they are a theme. More than that, riddles belong in
Greek tragedy as much as in the Hebrew legend. Oedipus solved the
Sphinx's riddle, but then the Delphic oracle's (whose every saying was an
enigma) proved too much for him. Riddles become explicit in Oedipus
and Samson: they saturate sex, life and theodicy. Milton chose a
wonderful story for his tragic poem, then, one which spans enigmas from
the buffoonish or folksy to those of the deepest lift-matters. He makes
Greek meet Hebrew in the riddles of tragic paradox.
 Hebrew Meets Greek in Samson Agonistes 185
I have mentioned the Oedipus, so admired by Aristotle. It is not a
particular source of Milton's poem, any more than any other single
Greek play is. We may recognize features of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus
(blind hero, triumphal death), or of Aeschylus' Prom etheus Bound (immobi-
lized and suffering hero, to whom come varied persuaders), or Euripides'
Hercules Furens (death-agony of womanizer, involving deaths of others),
and so on. But no single play has pre-eminence. The point is, rather, that
Milton — as in this matter of riddles — works in the way of many; so many,
in fact, that we should rather say he seeks the spirit of all. After all, that
spirit is likelier than particular motifs to be found in a biblical subject.

STRUCTURE: SUBJECT, OUTCOME, EFFECT

Milton seems to apprehend the spirit of Greek tragedy in the whole as in

the parts. For example, if anyone should wonder why Milton chose (from
his very diverse listing of biblical subjects in the Trinity MS) such a brutal
and primitive action, it is simply enough explained by our present
perspective. Tragedy is endemically primitive, in its choice of myths
involving barbarism in certain royal families of the archaic age.14 Milton
is making the biblical tragical by discerning the same spirit of tragedy in
the more primitive stories of Israel. By going toJudges he is homing in on
the oldest, most folkloric and primitive parts of the Bible (subject and
narrative). Crudities like Samson's use of a donkey's jawbone as a
weapon, or the secret strength of his hair, may seem to belong in the
world of Obelix and Asterix. They are better seen as the quasi-magical
extraordinary co-existing in heroes with the ordinary; and so to the
finale, where the hero, literally, brings down the house. Tragedy is by
nature primeval in its myths.
Moreover, Milton has seen the necessity of irreversible horrors for
tragedy (telling the secret, the blinding, the closing carnage). Better still,
he has seen - with Aristotle in the Poetics, chapter 14 - that the irreversible
horrors must be done between parties who are as close as possible to one
another. From Medea to Othello, this goes to the heart of things. Dalila
does such horrors to Samson; Samson does them to God, to whom as
Nazirite he is closest. This last is Milton's finest innovation in Greek
theory and practice. It is not exactly innovation, though, because it is so
Hebraic. It is one of his most startling, penetrating fusions of Greek with
Hebrew.
The final bloodbath is both terrible and uplifting to hear of. Of course
the action, and especially its ending, is revolting. Tragedy's best actions
186 Multilingualism and the major English poems
are. The Oedipus, the Medea, the Bacchae all attest this. They end,
respectively, with a suicide and a blinding; a mother's murdering of her
children to spite their worthless father; and a mother's hallucinated ritual
dismemberment of her son followed by her awakening to recognize
whose severed head she is brandishing in triumph. Most of these are
narrated, but the awakening of Agaue, mother of Pentheus, is shown on
stage, to become simultaneously one of the most revolting and heart-
rending and therefore tragic of all endings. I see no point in objections,
from a liberal or Philistine viewpoint, to the gory ending of Samson.15

STRUCTURE: CATHARSIS
Mention of necessary closeness raises the issue of Milton's whole
relationship to the thought of Aristotle in the Poetics. Not only is the
preface to Samson Milton's fullest piece of self-explanation and published
literary criticism, hence deserving constant revisiting: it is also a
landmark in the reception-history of the Poetics. And certainly it shows
how carefully Milton was thinking out his response to tragedy, for details
and for the tragic effect. Affectivity, that of the tragic ending, comes first.
The preface as a whole is on our present topic, how tragedy which is
pagan and fictional may yet edify the devout; and first of all he explains
katharsis, that paradox to explain tragic paradox.
Milton's method of doing so displays one of the lifelong language-
activities we have traced: he translates the key sentence, with fidelity
changing to appropriation, or perhaps mastery. His title-page proclaims
in Greek then Latin Aristotle's definition of tragedy (chapter 6).
Tragoidia mimesis praxeos spoudaias, &c.
Tragoedia est imitatio actionis seriae, &c. Per misericordiam & metum
perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem.
(Tragedy is the imitating of a serious action, &c, By means of pity and fear
completing a 'lustration' of such passions.)16
The translation does not render the whole sentence, though. He omits
the middle of the definition, so as to highlight its last word, catharsis. This
he renders not as 'purgationem', the commoner and broader word in
Latin, but as 'lustrationem', meaning not 'purging' so much as 'pu-
rifying' (so that a 'lustration' is a ritual cleansing). It seems that just as
Aristotle moved tragedy from the domain of religion to that of
psychotherapy, Milton is moving it back again. He is emphasizing its
emotional effects, and the emotions are religious ones.17
 Hebrew Meets Greek in Samson Agonistes 187
It is true that he soon speaks of 'purging' the passions. Yet at once he
redefines this purging as 'to temper and reduce them to just measure', a
mixture of images in which proportioning, music, and restoration
combine with medicine. T o explain the impact of tragedy he is
metaphorical, and eclectic, and refuses to sunder religion from medi-
cine. Thereby, he brings Greek and Hebrew closer together. 18
He is thus availing himself of the best Greek theory of tragedy; but
furthermore he is extending it to guide readers to the more religious
impact he seeks in his own tragedy. He does something similar in the
closing chorus.

All is best, though we oft doubt,

What th5 unsearchable dispose
Of highest wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft he seems to hide his face,
But unexpectedly returns
And to his faithful Champion hath in place
Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns
And all that band them to resist
His uncontrollable intent;
His servants he with new acquist
Of true experience from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind, all passion spent. (I745~5S)

This moves from thought to feelings; and finally emphasizes religious

feelings - 'peace and consolation'. To be more exact, the first ten lines of
this 'sonnet' are thinking, from a standpoint of God's actions, about the
meaning of the agon just concluded, and its meaning for the 'Agonistes'
(now vindicated as a 'faithful Champion' and glorious witness). The last
four continue thoughtfully referring the action to God ('His servants',
meaning the Danites themselves but extending to the wider circles of
witness). But the thoughts move - by way of 'experience' and 'event' -
towards the feelings which thought is prompting: 'peace', 'consolation',
'calm'. 19 Last of all, the poem states these eventuating feelings: the
positive emotions are present because 'passions' - strong and turbulent
internal forces or afflictions - are 'spent'. For the reader, that means that
having been 'well imitated' they are 'brought to a just measure with a
kind of delight'.
One may still find the effect trite, or dispute the guidance. I myself find
the effect no more trite than we find it in Greek closing choruses
188 Multilingualism and the major English poems
generally, and presume that is where Milton was heading. As for the
guidance, it seems both clearer and more unusual than those all-purpose
Greek closures. I conclude from the originality and particularity of this
chorus, and its appropriateness to the poem (and also the preface), that
Milton gave unusual care to the whole rationale of tragic effect, thinking
through with the maximum of important detail how a Greek ordon-
nance could bring a Hebrew subject to life; the sort of life which
mattered, which here was not belief-life but emotional life.

STRUCTURE: ECLECTICISM

The preface merits its status in the theorizing of tragic effect as much as
the poem does in the practice of it. Intelligent eclectic recourse to the
well-springs is manifested in both. And 'eclecticism5 means more than
selection. It means the exercising of clear, innovative choice. Practising
Imitatio in the ancients' own way, Milton renews and extends what he
brings from the ancients to his Hebrew material.
For example, the second most demanding sentence of the preface is
the one on plot. Merely to put this after catharsis, and as a tailpiece to so
many other matters, is to distinguish one's stance from that of Aristotle,
who devotes most of the rest of chapter 6 to insistence on the
paramountcy of plot over the other five elements he discerns within
tragedy. Milton skips all that. In what he does state, he is distancing
himself from Aristotle and from insistence on Stagiritical infallibility:
Of the style and uniformity, and that commonly calPd the Plot, whether
intricate or explicit, which is nothing indeed but such economy, or disposition of
the fable as may stand best with verisimilitude and decorum; they only will best
judge who are not unacquainted with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three
Tragic Poets unequalFd yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavor to
write Tragedy.20
This confronts Aristotle's preference for the 'intricate' (or 'complex' plot,
that which hinges on a sudden change of fortune for the protagonist,
chapter 10), only to sidestep it. He had already placed it third, in a
subordinate phrase. Milton knows, what critics have laboriously found,
that his plot may be viewed variously; as hinging on a late, surprising
upturn of Samson's fortune, or contrariwise as all occurring after his
decisive hamartia, the oath-breaking blabbing, or as proceeding
throughout inside Samson's mind rather than in any outward dealings.
Without saying Aristotle is discarded, Milton shifts the focus elsewhere.
 Hebrew Meets Greek in Samson Agonistes 189
First, he gives his Horatian, neoclassic credentials: Verisimilitude and
decorum', as in 'not produced beyond the fifth Act'just previously.21 Yet
finally the appeal is not to either body of ancient theory, but to the best
practice: to the best Greeks, all three of them.
Note that he makes no compliments or concessions to English drama,
which he must have regarded as an erroneous hybrid ('intermixing
Comic stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity'); and that he names all
three Greeks, even Aeschylus, usually the least revered and known of
them. He wants his preface to be grounded in Greek, its practice even
more than its theory. He wants to make this grounding unmistakable.
This acute, pondered, eclecticism continues. I could happily go on to
argue that he is giving us a Sophoclean hero (like Ajax or Oedipus, faulty
yet upright protagonists, suffering but still choosing) in an Aeschylean
situation and structure (like that of Prometheus) growing to a Euripidean
impact (as Samson moves through bitterness to a late sense of thauma,
wonderment, for chorus then audience).22 But I will not spell this out.
Instead, I wish to locate, in order to genealogize, the moment where
Milton's daring eclecticism makes the decisive shift towards final
wonder; the moment where Greek becomes Hebrew, without ceasing to
be Greek.

THE PINDARIC MOMENT: ZION S EPINIGIAN ODE

The moment comes at line 1660, because here the chorus becomes
Pindaric. Greek meets Hebrew in their victory-ode. It shifts the whole
work from groping to affirmation, celebration, and so catharsis.
Long before, Milton had hoped for an 'occasion . . . to imitate those
magnific Odes and Hymns wherein Pindarus and Callimachus are in
most things worthy . . .'23 Yet then he had found that biblical songs
excelled them, 'not in their divine argument [subject-matter] alone, but
in their very critical art of composition . . .' (So here in Samson we can
expect some 'argument' of divine action, conveyed by a 'critical art': we
find the latter in the preface too, and both as he begins the gradual
articulating of catharsis.) Further, in 1642 he located in odes 'the power
to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right
tune'. This was using the identical metaphors, of catharsis as balance,
proportion and musical harmony, which stand out in the preface. So it is
by a long-held principle that Greek meets Hebrew in the epinician ode,
when it clarifies and intensifies the saving change by which Jehovah
disglorifies Dagon, at Dagon's own festival.
i go Multilingualism and the major English poems
It proves more rewarding, though, to chart the detail by which Milton
makes Pindaric corroborative. First, together, the chorus weigh the
tragic paradoxes: revenge, glorious, at great cost (1660). They struggle to
interpret the tragic oxymoron: Victorious . . . self-killed / Not willing-
ly'.24 Next comes an attempt at understanding: Horace's less exalted,
more secular ode contributes 'dire necessity' (1665-6).25 And so they
move back to a still precarious mixture of Horace with Hebraic
jubilation, Samson's record-breaking body-count (1667-8) ascribed to
the 'law' of necessity ('dire necessity' = dira necessitas).
Only, now the chorus divides. Antiphony - the medium of Pindaric
and tragic chorus equally with that of the Psalms of Israel- heightens the
register, intensifies the search for the sense. We may also glimpse a
Hebraic 'parallelismus membrorum', paralleling of sense-units, in the
paired adjectives of 1669 ('jocund or sublime'); or in the syntactic and
rhythmic balance in 1670 ('drunk with Idolatry, drunk with Wine'); or -
gathering up larger units as we reach them - the larger repetitions within
the subordinate clause to 1674. Whereupon, that clause and its six lines
are counterbalanced, and in the upshot outweighed by the main clause
and its seven lines, stating God's deliverance.26
As in these rhythms and balances, so in the allusion and sense. A
Hebraic title of God is given, 'Our living Dread' (1673): 'living' plays on
the root-letters Y-W-H of the name of God, as in '1 AM', while 'Dread'
means the god 'we' (Israel) fear - respect, terror, and source of life, all in
one. ('Dread', Pahad, is a name of God in Genesis 31.42 or Isaiah 8.13.27)
Greek is not forgotten at all. The 'spirit of frenzy' sent upon the
Philistines is both the ancient idea that 'quern deus vult perdere prius
dementat',28 and the panic fear sent upon armies by the god Pan, who
gives his name to such 'panic'. The madness is also the tragic progression
of hubris-ate-nemesis, as the chorus proceed to moralize:

Who hurt thir minds,

And urg'd them on with mad desire
To call in haste for thir destroyer;
They only set on sport and play
Unweetingly importun'd
Their own destruction to come speedy upon them. (1676-81)
Milton superbly puts the old tag into words of his own, fusing the Greek
maxim with Israel'sfiercejoy. This rendering uses more words: another
uses fewer, 'blindness internal' (1686), so piercingly apt to this action.
Yet the ode has still not peaked. The conception of Greek tragedy
 Hebrew Meets Greek in Samson Agonistes 191
just proclaimed is not the height of Greek tragic wisdom, nor fully
enough what the ode has to say about the action. Similarly, rhyme is
intermittent, and when present is pararhyme only ('desireV'destroyer',
'inviteV'reprobate'). T h e second semichorus is given a different, still
more impassioned idiom to encompass that; the at last fully Pindaric
idiom, of pure images, and of sweeping transitions between them
(together with full rhyme). 29 Partial truths (Greek or Hebrew) are now to
be transcended:
But he though blind of sight
Despis'd and thought extinguish't quite,
With inward eyes illuminated
[contrast 'blindness internal']
Hisfleryvirtue rous'd
[main verb, active in voice]
From under ashes into sudden flame,
[in which the images of light and fire are becoming steadily stronger, like a flame
rekindling]
And as an ev'ning Dragon came,
[from a flame to a flying creature, but the flyer is a fiery one]
Assailant on the perched roosts,
And nests in order rang'd
Of tame villatic30 Fowl; but as an Eagle
[strongest predator bird, fire image now in abeyance]
His cloudless thunder bolted on thir heads.
[The eagle is now Zeus's, therefore capable of thundering too: thunder keeps
lightning, and so fire, impending; the imagery resembles an avalanche more
than it does a kaleidoscope]
So virtue giv'n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem'd,
[momentarily analytical, and suspending images pour mieux sauter, into the
most extended image of all, the nine-line concluding simile]
Like that self-begott'n bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay erewhile a Holocaust,
[Milton chooses from among his languages and cultures here, to climb a big new
step to the conception of the event as a holocaust, meant here solely in the sense
a 'whole and pure burnt sacrifice'.]
From out her ashy womb now teem'd,
['gave birth', or to link vehicle to tenor, 'delivered']
Revives, reflourishes . . .
[a frisky neologism, an onomatopoeia well-placed]
. . . then vigorous most
When most unactive deem'd,
192 Multilingualism and the major English poems

And though her body die, her fame survives,

A secular bird, ages of lives.
['Secular' with 'ages of lives' brings into view not simply Horace once more, of
tyhe 'carmen saeculare', or song to celebrate the new age, but the biblical
'saecula saeculorum', being an intensifying or superlative Hebraic genitive like
'king of kings'.]

So the marvel is permanent. Its effects will last; so will its fame; which
will itself uphold the effects, upon 'Israel5. Manoa's speech, following,
confirms the victory.31 So does the closing chorus, moving (as we have
said) from deciphering the meaning in 'this great event' to its emotional,
spiritual benefit.

COROLLARIES
If the principle that 'Hebrew meets Greek5 in Samson Agonistes does play
this sort of part in the poem, how large is that part? A major part? How
major? Fundamental?
To put it at the most modest level, I have been conducting a
'precriticism5 of the poem, a 'recovery of its conditions of understand-
ing5.32 Milton is pursuing a novel application of eclecticism, an English
dramatic poem founded on Greek and Hebrew. Since Greek and
Hebrew fuse in its careful entitling, we risk misunderstanding if we
ignore or take too lightly its other such fusings - in the preface as well as
in the poem itself. The preface aims to direct the reader's sense of effect,
then implies a subject and design, which keep firmly within a proclaimed
allegiance to genre, tragedy. This is what Milton wanted the reader to
think he was doing.
So much for modesty: perhaps he was doing what he wanted us to
think he was doing. Suppose, amongst the plethora of current interpreta-
tions, the Babel of autobiographical or historical readings,33 we concen-
trated our full gaze where he bade us, on the ending, the effect, the
catharsis . . .
I have two particular reasons for advocating this ostensibly naive
endeavour. The first is my personal, homespun theory of tragic effect.
Seeing tragedy in the theatre or cinema, or reading it as we should at a
single sitting, we finish and strive to think it out. We strive harder the
more it has moved us, and so commune with more other people. The
debate begins, we diverge, we disagree. And no wonder, since tragedy
has to centre on paradoxes in life itself; and no two people see paradox or
life in exactly the same way. But that is only the product of the
experience, in fact only one side of the product. Equally if not more
 Hebrew Meets Greek in Samson Agonistes 193
important is the process, in which emotions outstrip and outweigh
thoughts; and the emotional part, likewise, of the final sense or product.
Thought divides us in our responding, because thought brings rival
emphases from divergent life-experience; but emotion unites us. In the
theatre, just as the end comes, we feel as one. We know this, yet in
conducting critiques we forget it, or take it for granted. Milton, however,
did not. His chorus, regularly, moves between thinking and feeling. And
he gives the last word to their feeling. Just as his preface's emphasis on
catharsis suggests, he seeks to unite, not divide, his readers. He seeks to
unite them on the grounds of feeling, as aroused by the meeting of Greek
forms with Hebrew subject, both profoundly apprehended and unswerv-
ingly directed.
My second reason is more pragmatic. Now is an excellent time to
declare a personal moratorium on biographizing Samson, because we
have so much to do to understand the tragic effect itself. (No one in
Shakespeare studies wins kudos by inferring from Lear's ravings that
Shakespeare himself had just had a scorching row with his daughters!)
There are better tools to probe Greek tragedy than previously. The study
of Greek tragedy has been moving away from religious studies of origins
- as if all tragedy were 'really' sacrifice, or sparagmos (ritual dismember-
ment and communion). It has also moved away from too rigidly moral a
perception - as if, because Oedipus comes to grief he were in some way a
bad man, too zealous for the truth perhaps! Instead, a study such as that
of Brian Vickers34 directs attention where Greek tragedies require it to be
directed (and Aristotle had also perceived this), namely at persons like
ourselves or somewhat better, doing and suffering terrible things, with
respect to those closest to them.
Intellectually, therefore, paradoxes and dilemmas abound. Emotion-
ally, however, this is what lives are made up of. Tragedy's more
concentrated and rigorously worked-out dosage of such acts becomes a
purge of our own fears, a purifying of our own pity, to the extent that we
recognize ourselves in their heightened Passion.35 It would be paying
Samson an unusual and overdue compliment if we gave the poem this sort
of attention, after prolonged immersion in the same Greek exemplars
which he commended to our attention. It would in fact enable all of us,
whether or not we have much sympathy with Milton's religious ideas
and other intellectual baggage, to share in the experience he has to offer.
His late choice of a tragedy as genre, since drama of all the genres most
precludes opinionation, might even mean he thought so too, and (what
with the preface) was coming halfway to meet his readers in 1671.36
 CHAPTER II

The impact of Milton's languages upon his mature

English verse styles

It will not have escaped notice that in treating of Greek and Hebrew
within Samson Agonistes I have spent more time on the idiom of its
choruses than on the speeches given by or to the protagonist. Does this
fact indicate a paucity of illustration that 'Hebrew is Greek' within the
episodes and action? And if it does, is the thesis thereby weakened or
even invalidated? To go wider still, is the 'multilingual' approach to
Milton's other two major poems vitiated by a cognate disproportion,
namely that the languages appear more naturally in the narrator's
commentary than on the lips of the speaking characters? Consideration
of these questions will bring me to conclusions about the role of Milton's
tongues within his best performances as a renaissance Christian
humanist. In respect of this 'disproportion', the performances show a
common tendency.

LANGUAGES WITHIN SAMSON

First, there is a very natural reason why choruses should have the most
Greek and Hebrew in their texture. The reason is genre, and its
decorum. Within a tragedy the narrator's own voice is not to be heard:
no 'tragic voice' can replace the 'epic voice' of Paradise Lost. The latter's
narratorial omniscience is forfeited. On the other hand, though content
to forego telling us what to think, Milton guides how we feel. The chorus
of Greek tragedy is the obvious means, since they respond to each
portion of the action at once after it, and do so emotionally not
normatively. So Greek and Hebrew mingle, abound, and stand out in
the choruses. Less explicitly than the preface, but more so than the
episodes, they are making a scripturally sanctioned subject cathartic.
To enhance that guidance the chorus is replete with the mental
resources of the two controlling languages. They have them in excess of
what actual young Danites might be expected to have; but this is for the

194
 The impact of Milton's languages 195
sake of legitimate communicative force, since we are not interested in the
Danites as personalities. So they not only know the books of the Law very
well, they even proleptically know the Psalms and the Prophets, not to
mention having the odd glimpse of the New Testament. Similarly, they
are given a multilingual vocabulary, to guide the readers emotionally. Its
sudden splendours are precisely what give guidance, because — like
rhetoric, or any grand style - splendours convince through emotion
aroused by imagination. To object to their idiom, then, would be like
complaining that in opera the chorus can sing.
Contrariwise, the Herculean hero might be expected to have less of
languages and their cultures in his speeches. They might impede the
directest expression of his passions, or might distract attention. Certainly
they are less needed in Samson himself to the extent that they abound in
the commentary of the chorus, who are there only to interpret him to us.
The less Samson's self-expression is culturally particularized, the more
his agon and agony are universalized. We might even expect an inverse
proportion to be the decorum.
But this emphasis, though broadly true, is not entirely true, for these
reasons. First, he does benefit from multilingual texture, albeit in a
reduced measure. Secondly, things look different when we reckon in - as
we have not yet done - the Latinism and derived Italianism of the play's
texture. Thirdly, the poem's theme of glory is fundamentally thought out
from a multilingual mind, harnessing philology in the three sacred
languages to the defining of Samson's glory under God's.
First, then, Samson is given language about himself as Nazirite and
about God which evinces Hebraism; Hebraism of thought, though,
rather than diction. Thus he speaks of himself (31) as a 'person separate to
God': the Latinizing passive-participial translates 'Nazarite'. It is the
chorus who first use the actual word 'Nazarite' (318). So finally, and on
that basis, Samson himself can use it, of his relation to the Law which
sanctions it:

Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonour

Our Law, or stain my vow of Nazarite. (1385-6)
Elsewhere, he uses the idea, diversely and thematically: 'consecrated Gift'
(1354) glances at the purpose of the 'separating', while a bleak negative
appears as set-apart-ness of the wrong sort, 'inseparably dark' (154).
A similar calquing tendency is observable in Samson's ways of
entitling God, even quite indirect ones. Thus in 'Heaven-gifted' strength
and 'high gift of strength' the 'gifts' of 'heaven' are taken with utmost
196 Multilingualism and the major English poems
seriousness by 'John5 ('Yah natan5, 'God-has-given') Milton.1 And as for
direct names and titles and attributes of God, they are many but calqued
in Samson's utterance. God is 'deliverer5, but without any hint that this
attribute is proclaimed by the name Joshua /Jesus (contrast Paradise Lost,
XII. 310). Again, Samson calls God 'the living God5 (1140), which exploits
the derivation of 'Yahweh5 from the verb to be, HaYaH, yet only to the
extent that (say) the Kingjames version and plain monolingual homiletic
does. Though the implication or subtext may be learned, the usage is
not, it is distinctly familiar. Simpler still are names like 'Israel's God5
(1150) or the pithy tautology in 'combat to decide whose god is God5
(1176). As for Greek, it is not surprising that a hero who is drawn from
Hebrew myth into a Greek, tragic agon should let loose against the
huffings of Harapha the occasional Euripidean gnomic one-liner, like
1091: 'The way to know were not to see but taste5.
But secondly, the exclusion hitherto of Latinisms modifies the
situation much more, being quite evenly spread amongst characters and
chorus. It is the chorus who receive the coinage, 'obstriction5 (312).2 But
Samson can speak of 'diffidence of God5 (in the active sense, 'failure to
trust5), and of hearts 'propense enough before / To waver5 (453-5, a
cluster, emphasized by word-order). He has another cluster, of de-
nunciatory adjectives this time, at 533-8: 'fallacious-venereal-voluptu-
ous-lascivious-deceitful5. Manoa, and even Harapha, receive the benefit
of Latinizing eloquence. Harapha speaks of testing Samson 'in camp or
listed field5, where 'camp5 means 'field of battle5, as in Rome's 'Campus
Martius5. Manoa waxes witty. When Samson as 'single combatant /
Duelled their armies5 (354-5), 'duelled5 is used in the Latin way to equate
with bellare, of which it is simply the old spelling.3 Milton shows how the
branches of the word join at its root, to gain the ironic progression 'single
- duelled - armies - himself an army5. As to Samson himself, his
Latinism at times marks a surge in register. Thus he lashes himself at 625
with the strong verbs 'Exasperate, exulcerate5, matched by sound and
placing into hendiadys. This is in his homos, or lyric of lament, whose
passionate rising rhythm the Latinisms serve.4
Idioms of Latin are harder to trace, because the whole style seeks
condensation. Nonetheless, we see it helping this condensing in locutions
like 'mine5 = my people (like mei or nostri) at 291, and 'thine5 ('your
people5, to Harapha) at 1169. Elsewhere, syntax which is English may
also be Latinate: the more assured Latinism one finds in the work, the
more likely that marginal cases come thence too. Thus at 291 again, 'Me
easily indeed mine may neglect5, the whole inverted word order is the
 The impact of Milton's languages 197
sort of thing which makes perfect sense in an inflected language, and to
my mind should be heard as Latinism since it already contains the
Latinate usage 'mine' for 'my side'. T h e line's entire conviction comes
from the sense's hinging on the hyperbaton: 'me - mine - neglect'. O r
again, at 'miseries / So many and so h u g e . . . / . . . ask a life to wail' (65-7)
the Latin incremental alliterative of tot tantaque is heard. And the Greek
epexegetic infinitive, 'to wail', belongs with the Latinism; not merely
because the poet knew and thought in both languages, but because Latin
did. Milton imbibed both together. Something similar is attested by
Manoa's patterning,
[Dagon hath] deliver'd
Thee, Samson, bound and blind into their hands,
Them out of thine, who slew'st them many a slain (437-9)
T h e second 'them' is like a Latin dative ('dative of advantage or
disadvantage'). T h e internal or predicative object ('slew'st them many a
slain') sounds like English translating an idiom more at home elsewhere.
Those words in that order are all needed, however, not only for
compression but for rhythms and figures - like the repeated but varied
'their'/'them', placed to mime retaliation by the Philistines, and to mime
disgraceful collapse in Samson ('thee'/'their' : 'them'/'thine' in a
chiasmus, but one which ends with more of 'them', so getting the last
word.)
Thirdly, the matter of glory, discussed above for epic on the basis of
J o h n Rumrich's study, renews itself in Samson, more than Rumrich
worked out. 5 T h e central theme is that Glory has been won, then lost,
then sought and won again by the hero, who fitfully recognizes that his
glory is bound up with God's. And the central method of this thematic
insistence is an inventive, multilingual play upon the word 'glory'. It is
used by Samson or about him, freely. Examples include Manoa's
coinages, such as Israel's God 'disglorified' (442)6 or the new passive,
'gloried' ('Your once gloried friend', 334). T h e root sense of the word in
Latin is felt whenever 'glory' is a pride in winning, as when H a r a p h a
speaks of the 'glory of Prowess' (1097): Samson rejoins that H a r a p h a is a
boaster (1102), in effect a 'miles gfonbsus'. This irony of vaingloriousness
is less certainly present when Dalila finds it 'glorious to entrap / A
common enemy' (855-6), or Samson himself laments proudly that he
had once been 'gloriously rigged' (200) - like a war-ship, a thing. No
irony at all is present in the chorus' apostrophe to
The glory late of Israel, now the grief (179)
198 Multilingualism and the major English poems
for this aligns the hero who was once the pride of Israel with the biblical
'Ichabod', 'the glory has departed' (i Samuel 4. 21).7
To sum up, the meeting of Greek with Hebrew is decisive in the idiom
of the chorus, yet not absent from that of the hero - and the other
characters, when speaking about him. Latin, whether gnomic or caustic
or condensed, is more evenly present. All three tongues are woven into
the whole texture. They enter decisively to raise the tone, and especially
(as Pindaric) to make epinician convincing.

THE SENSE OF DEITY IN MILTON S BIBLICAL POEMS

Consideration of the matter of glory leads me to reflect on the whole
sense of deity in this last of the three biblical poems. That sense of deity is
vital but changing in them, and both qualities owe much to Milton's
languages. In Paradise Lost the Father is a speaking, acting personage,
combined from the Zeus of Homer and the 'jealous' (prerogative-
claiming)Jehovah. In ParadiseRegainedhe is much less in evidence: he acts
through Messiah, and to a large extent speaks through him; and Messiah
draws on his Hebrew thought and culture as well as its law and
spirituality. Samson Agonistes moves further along the road of indirection.
God is the subject of address and of conflicting emotions, but does not
speak. Now this is more than just a donnee of drama, since while that
genre precluded an omniscient authorial voice, Greek tragedy (and not
least Milton's admired Euripides) often included a final theophany.
Milton foregoes this ending, for the more human-centred one we have
analysed. The sense of divine action is therefore more inductive than
deductive, more surprising, it resembles occasions of miraculous nation-
al survival in history (not only biblical).
In place of explicit theophany Milton chose the Messenger-speech
(the exangelos) to describe the miracle. Such narrative could still have
involved deity, to a greater or lesser degree. In the Hippolytus the
exangelos describes how the hero is destroyed by a monster sent by the
god Poseidon; in the Bacchae the wonder-working of the maenads is
narrated. But no voice from the heavens or supernatural invention
occurs in Milton's poem. He centres it all on Samson; on his reviving hair
and strength, but increasingly on his spiritual state. Samson feels 'rousing
motions' (1382). He feels sure he can now act worthily of'Our God, our
Law, my Nation' and himself (1425). Some 'providence' guided the
messenger to Manoa and the chorus after the cataclysm (1545). The
'Cataphracts' paraded (1619), a Graecizing neologistic metonymy for the
 The impact of Milton's languages 199
men in mail, not the mail itself. The Philistines 'clamoured' their god
(1621), but Samson in his display feats found 'no Antagonist5 (1628) - no
one who would 'act' with him in his drama. 'Eyes fast fixt he stood as one
who pray'd' (1638): the absolute phrase may be Latin or Greek. The 'as'
withholds certainty about the praying. We assume it was prayer,
identical with the 'revolving' in his mind which comes next. And so to the
deed itself: heralded by a classical simile, 'As with the force of winds . . . '
(1647), it moves to Samson's 'horrible convulsion' of the pillars (1648).
Here, unusually, 'convulsion' is active not passive, directed from agent to
thing. Since usually the word (and verb) describe how a person is
'convulsed', undergoing not inflicting, the word is suggestive of the
surprise: Samson, and his strength, do what is normally the prerogative
of earthquakes or other 'acts of God'. God, though not seen by direct
theophany or voicing, is felt in the final act of his consecrated agent.
Language is the sole creator of the feeling, and languages (plural) play
a part in that. The part is a quieter one while the exangelos narrates, but
straight afterwards it rises and rises in the choric Pindaric.

SAMSON, PARADISE LOST AND PARADISE REGAINED

In Samson, then, Milton's languages are most in evidence when its chorus
is performing its Greek, reactive role. Yet they shape the protagonist's
voicing, too. Indeed, they shape each character.
This includes the chorus leader (koruphaios) when conversing as a
character. It is a curious linguistic fact that Greek tragedies used two
distinct forms of Greek: chorus-leaders find themselves speaking ordi-
nary Attic (Athenian) iambics when conversing person to person,
whereas in the sung-and-danced tragic choruses they are given not just a
distinct metre but also a distinct dialect (Doric Greek). Milton keeps a
similar decorum, by metre and register though not dialect: we might say,
his more gnomic, multilingual style of the odes is his equivalent of the odic
dialect. But it remains continuous with the dialogue.
Should we expect something similar, or something different, in
Milton's two narrative poems? Can they handle multilingualism and
register as the dramatic poem must? Of course, since they do not switch
metres,8 their continuity will be greater. But are there places, or
purposes, where a choric ruminativeness occasions the onset of a
heightened, and heightening multilingualism? And is rumination the
only sort of climax helped by that onset? And for that matter, do both
blank verse narratives work alike? I shall argue that indeed the two do
200 Multilingualism and the major English poems
not work alike, in this respect and in others; and that whereas
multilingualism in Paradise Lost connects that poem with its exemplars
(Virgil and Dante), it differentiates the sequel sharply from it - aligning it
more with Samson, but chiefly vindicating its own distinctiveness. It is sui
generis precisely because it makes an issue, a central theme, out of the
Questione della Lingua itself.
Choric commentary and rumination are more plastic and integrated
in Paradise Lost than they could ever be in a Greek tragedy. The epic voice
can interject at any time, and at any length - from a phrase to a
paragraph. The epic persona will exert a more continuous gravity and
insight than is required of the Danites. To put it crudely, it helps the
action of Samson if they are occasionally limited or obtuse or silly: no such
backslidings are admissible for the persona of the poet of epic, for whom
the downfall and recovery of humankind is always the issue. He must
practise eternal vigilance.
Now part of that vigilance is a multilingual alertness and resourceful-
ness. We have seen how the sense of godhead is immeasurably
strengthened thereby: the divine is presented by allusion, name, pun,
parallel, myth, the whole conviction that this poet has read God in the
books of nature and culture equally with Scripture itself. I have called
this intensity Milton's possession of the old quality of a votes, the being
doctus. This means more than 'learned': it is what helps the poet fulfil his
own aspiration, 'to be the relater and interpreter of the best and sagest
things among my own citizens in the mother tongue5 (Hughes, p. 658).
Yet we must not pre-empt that voice to the poet-figure, and most
certainly must not conceive it narrowly. Any character in the poem may
speak multilingually, and with the concomitant appropriate density:
hence my unwillingness to downgrade Eve's description of God's
command as the 'sole daughter of his voice'. Her most prominent
Hebraism is her last moment of unfallen linguistic glory. The poet can
express strong emotion, though characters more often do it. Contrari-
wise, characters can be stirred to a wisdom of living among languages, a
little exceeding their decorum for the sake of sublimity, though such
wisdom remains the narrator's regular perquisite.
Indeed, almost half the poem transcends this separation altogether,
since when angels speak Milton is making them his 'interpreters and
relaters'. To do so accords perfectly with the tradition, and indeed the
development, of multilingual epic. Dante had interpreted and related by
such proxies, Virgil and Beatrice, following but exceeding the Aeneid in
this. Milton through Raphael then Michael exceeds Dante. It is not
 The impact of Milton's languages 201
accidental but central, therefore, that Latinism should swell and glow,
increase and stand out, in the books of archangelic instruction. They
enrich the narratives of the heavenly war and creation. They are almost
the only embellishment of the prophetic books. They are this poem's
guides to wisdom, relating and interpreting best and sagest things in the
best and sagest English, drawn from the original tongues of the sages
themselves, and the Latin of the traditions of their interpretation.
Milton's tongues achieve the expression of a holy wisdom, whether by
his speaking persona directly or by holy emissaries. Half the conviction
lies, as for Dante, in his having so many available voices of beatitude.
Paradise Regained, however, although it employs the same tongues, uses
them much more sparingly. Even figures point to it: the epic narrator
speaks fewer lines (558) than the Son (596) or Satan (896), with other
voices not in contention (172). Now figures never tell all. The narrator
does speak multilingually, from the Virgilian outset in fact. Nonetheless,
the poem moves from less to more multilingual, in step with its move to
increasing reliance on dialogue. The main action and substance of the
poem being Satan and the Son talking together, with narratorial linkages
so brief that the poem becomes almost a staid sort of drama, the
multilingualism if any should belong to the characters. To an unparal-
leled extent, it does. It must. It is the action. Milton extends the
traditional gospel temptations into a colossal searching of guides to
intellectual and moral life; world-empires especially Rome, Greece
especially Athens, Israel especiallyJerusalem. The languages of each are
naturally, decorously felt within the presentation of each. More than
that, they are necessary to the conviction of the action. Milton exploits
his languages and their cultures, his lifelong absorption in language
studies, to dramatize the choice, here at the crisis of the ministry of the
Messiah. Milton must 'do the different voices' of each.
He does not oversimplify any of them. No one could make the
Assyrian Empire look charming, but thereafter Satan conveys the
excitement of knowing and viewing the great arc of empires in time as in
place (Milton conflates the two). This is done in narrator-voice then
Satan's. But artfully, Christ knows Roman history (mysteriously cogni-
zant in AD 30 of what Tacitus would write). Satan knows Scripture, since
traditionally 'the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose'; but he knows
Greek literature too, from end to end. The talk of each is made
conversant, and thereby convincing:

Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called (iv. 259)

202 Multilingualism and the major English poems
In context, the salvation-culture must defeat world-culture (or the
second Adam must tumble). Messiah need only draw to win.

THE DIALECTIC WITHIN CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

Yet the debate cannot be won. I have absolutely no doubt that Milton
thought the Psalms the best poetry. Affectively, that is true. They have
done more, for more people, than any European poetry. Nevertheless,
we must see how totally engaged Milton is in his strange, didactic
demonstration; and see how completely it fulfils the side of his intellect
which we have been tracing throughout this study.
Temperance is prioritizing (as reason is but choosing). Milton would
assent to Messiah's prioritizing among songs. But unlike Messiah, Milton
must know the magnitude of pagan achievement in order to place it; and
placing it is not all for him, though it was for the second Adam. Milton
must also use it.
It is a means to an end. Yet paradoxically, it is a means of such
inherent value that it may be safely enjoyed for its own sake. He does so;
not only in his private studies, but here in this work, which would be
provincial, as Robert Adams once challenged, if it were not that Milton
through Satan could once again play among his languages and their
cultures.
This is what makes it such a unique, uniquely personal poem. The
theme hangs over from Paradise Lost. The method, spareness then surge,
looks on to Samson. But the multilingual method becomes theme in
Paradise Regained, the only time it does.
Like a golfer with a social conscience, or Dorothea Brooke with
horse-riding, Milton sometimes looks critically at his favourite form of
play, sometimes gets on with the enjoyment of powerful expression by
means of it. It was the occupational worry of the renaissance Christian
humanist. Anecdote has it that one of the Church Fathers used his copy
of Aristophanes as a pillow. Was he enjoying a good companion, or
punishing himself with a stiff neck? Perhaps both. But Milton knows his
priorities. This poem thinks them out. He is neither provincial nor
schizophrenic.
Contrast Richard Bentley, later, the great corrector of Milton's style:
late in life he confessed he had been 'too devoted to those old pagans'.
Milton's more creative mind need never say that.
 APPENDIX

Translating Milton's Latin Poems into English

Rather than pursuing the goal of consistency and using a single preferred
translation of Milton's Latin, I have been using a variety of versions,
including my own, ad hoc. In the Preface I explained that thereby I hoped
to pick the most accurate translation for each passage of Latin, and
further to give readers the chance to compare versions and methods of
translating. This Appendix confronts the problem of translating more
directly, both in principle and practice. That much seems owed to an
author who did much translating and thought hard about it, one who
had strong preferences and so might even have implicit guidance to offer
to his own future translators.
To recall chapter 4, Milton preferred verse translations for verse
originals. And he preferred afidelitywhich began from literal rendering,
though it might surge away into a final act of appropriating the original.
As opposed to Milton's own preferences, most recent English translations
of his Latin verse favour prose, nor are they as literal as their flatness
makes the unwary suppose. I shall shortly compare several modern
versions of a single short passage to illustrate the two points.
Then, however, I shall go on to propose a different approach, and try
albeit clumsily to illustrate it. This approach turns verse into verse. In
doing so it emphasizes rhythm, in fact approximating to the original
rhythm. Rhyme is ignored because rhyme is alien to the sort of Latin
verse Milton wrote. (He admired Virgil in the Note on 'The Verse' of
Paradise Lost in 1669 for his lack of rhyme.) Even if my practice and
principle alike are rejected, the underlying question deserves to be asked:
in a milieu where the best poems of Homer and Virgil and Dante1 are
eagerly translated into verse by good poets, when will Milton's Latin
(though of lesser stature) get its belated due?
First, to show that most available versions are into a drab prose which
is less literal than it seems, I quote the versions by Hughes, Carey, and
Campbell of the opening lines of Milton's ode 'Ad Rousium'. This ode,
203
204 Appendix
remember, is the most effervescent, excited, and metrically experimental
of all Milton's Latin verses. You would hardly guess any of that from the
following:
Gemelle cultu simplici gaudens liber,
Fronde licet gemina . . .2
'Twin-membered book rejoicing in a single cover, yet with a double leaf. . .'
(Hughes)
'Twin-born book, rejoicing in a single cover but with a double title-page . . .'
(Carey)
'Two-part book, cheerful in your single covers but with a double leaf . . .'
(Campbell)
To their credit, all three versions pivot the sense on the little numerical
paradox, of twin/single/double, which renders the Latin series 'gem-
elle V'simplici V'gemina'. But all miss out the diminutive suffix in
'gemelle', though it suits a first book of verse and betokens a tone of
affection in Milton's personification of his book as offspring. All make too
much of'licet': it means a mild 'though' rather than a firm 'but' or 'yet',
and it is subordinating 'gemina' not 'simplici' (two books in one birth,
Latin and English). It is in fact so easy to be literally exact in expansive,
interpretative prose that I wonder why the emphasis was shifted.
More troubling is the rendering of 'cultu' by all three versions as
'cover'. Even if this word is an elastic, vague one in classical Latin, here it
does not mean 'cover', but 'dress' or perhaps 'dwelling-place'. Though
the contextual or speaker's meaning, as distinct from the word's
meaning, is 'cover', the interpretative rendering 'cover' misleads.
Because Milton has just personified the book, he gives it the human
attribute of owning a cultus. Some of the warm arch affection towards the
twinned firstborn is forfeited by the prose translators quoted, and
needlessly.
My advocacy of verse-translation is made on two further grounds. On
principle, why not give Milton's verse the kind of translation he himself
gave to verse of all sorts? And pragmatically, it seems time to give
Latin-less readers a change from flatfooted prose: to do this would also
give readers who do have Latin something more challenging, and
awakening.
Reasons of principle and practicality converge, as it happens, for the
particular ode here. Its rhythms are so startling and novel that the reader
needs to feel their eccentric abandon, within the English. Let the bold
 Translating Milton's Latin Poems into English 205
translator sweat to determine each rhythm in this poem with its
bewildering eclecticism, its licences and inordinate number of resol-
utions! Such a translator is facing a real challenge on our behalf- the
challenge of deciding what the rhythms are, every single one. No
commentator seems to have done this. A verse-translator, by the nature of
the task, has to. Perhaps one will rise to the challenge, and recover for us
all the heady Pindaric swirl Milton heard in to head, on 23 January 1647.
The first line is iambic trimeter, that is, twelve syllables, three metra, in
rising rhythm. This makes a firm, declarative opening apostrophe. The
second line, a parenthesis, loosens and quickens the sound, into dactyls,
in fact into the front half of Latin's highest metre, the hexameter; if
anything, the tone rises (just as 'gemelle', diminutive, receives new
weight from the changed suffix at this line-end, as 'gemina'). The third
line continues the dactylic, whilst refusing the option of full hexameter in
favour of

_ ww_ „ „_ M_ w (Munditieque nitens non operosa)

then
_ w w_ w x (Qu am manus attulit)
then
x
~ ~- ~- (Iuvenilis olim) . . .
The free frisking is felt in the fact that no two lines repeat a rhythmic
pattern exactly.
In English the opening lines might mimic the Latin's iambic firmness,
and following weight then frolic, like this:
My twin-born book, rejoicing in the single home
Of your bilingual pages,
Shining in glory of your unlaboured fineness
Given you once by a hand
That was youthful then . . .
'Bilingual' is inexact for 'gemina', but (apart from the fact that rhythm
drove me to it) its prefix and idea do aim the idea of twinning at the
languages, as theme alike of the strophe and my study. In the last two
lines I have robbed Peter to pay Paul: line 4 has an extra unstressed
syllable, line 5 lacks a final one (the weak anceps, or allowed variable stress
in the quantitative scheme of Latin metre following Greek). Such
206 Appendix
liberties may surely be taken in Englishing an ode which has already
taken outrageous liberties with Latin.
One modern translator who does offer verse is Robert Hodge.3
This book is a twin, that delights in its simple elegance
but sprouts a double leaf
shining with casual polish
which a youthful hand
once brought it . . .
Hodge captures the dactylic bounce of some lines of the original, and
makes that his own staple. So doing, he omits the eclectic variety, for
example the opening in iambics, and thus sacrifices the feeling that
Milton (like irregular Pindarics in contemporary English) is making the
rhythm up as he goes along. Similarly with the sense, 'elegance' is good
for 'cultu', and Hodge opens with a bounce; and yet he unaccountably
omits the vocative, the author's address to his book.
In this ode, Milton is not on his dignity. Elsewhere in his Latin poems,
however, dignity is often the point. English versions should strive for the
weighty dignity of hexameter in the Latin poems which adopt this metre.
Three of them close Milton's Sylvae in a rising series: cAd Patrem'
(thanking his father); Mansus (a poem of guest-friendship, thanking his
host in Naples; and the Epitaphium Damonis, the due grave-gift to his
oldest friend. All express pietas, and seekgravitas, by the natural rhythmic
means. Here, then, no metrical liberty would be appropriate. Instead,
why not try hexameter in English, after the method of Clough in The
Bothie or Longfellow in Evangeline? Hodge, again, comes close to mimicry
of rhythm, with dactylic line-openings, but veers after the caesura into
something indeterminate. Very typical is this:
Tu quoque in his, nee me fallit spes lubrica Damon4
(_ w w«_ _ i_ ,i_ i_ _ •_ w w i_ _ j nt h e quantity-based hexameter)

becomes
You too, my Damon - no specious hopes deceive me
(l I I I X / / I I X I X I X^

I would rather he had gone the whole hog

('You live in these, Damon: hope's fallacy can't disappoint me')
I X . X I I I / / I I X X I X X I X

To conclude, there is a reason why Milton's Latin attracts no good

poet-translators, no verse-translators. The reason is not merely the
 Translating Milton's Latin Poems into English 207
dearth of such, but the torpid amplitude of many of the poems
themselves. 'The extreme allusiveness and amplification, the flamboyant
rhetoric of neo-Latin do not translate easily into modern prose.55 Yet that
reason hardly justifies boring Milton readers by leaden prose. A new and
different effort is needed, building on Hodge's verve but going further,
towards accuracy and authentic rhythm alike. The poems in Latin not
only cover a wide range of themes and tones and genres, they show a
more playful and confiding Milton than is met in his English poems of
the same period.
 Notes

INTRODUCTION: MILTON S LANGUAGES IN THE CONTEXT OF

RENAISSANCE MULTILINGUALISM

1 Tom MeArthur (ed.), The Oxford Companion to the English Language, (Oxford
University Press, 1992), p. 673.
2 Given upper-case /to distinguish the Roman idea from Aristotle's mimesis on
the one side and from Plato's derogatory sense, 'imitativeness', on the other.
3 Reason of Church-Government, Book 2, as printed in Merritt Y. Hughes (ed.)
Milton. Complete Poems andMajor Prose (NewYork: Macmillan, 1957), p. 668: n.
161, ibid., cites Giovanni Pigna's life of Ariosto. This text of Milton is used
wherever possible, hereafter 'Hughes'.
4 The material summarized in this paragraph comes from Graham Castor
and Terence Cave (eds.), Neo-Latin and the Vernacular in Renaissance France,
(Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. xii and xv-xvi; hereafter 'Castor and
Cave, Neo-Latin and the Vernacular*. See also R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage
and Its Beneficiaries (Cambridge University Press, 1954), pp. 323-6; hereafter
'Bolgar, Classical Heritage'.
5 Jozef IJsewijn, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies (New York and Oxford: North-
Holland Publishing Co., 1977), p. 43.
6 J. W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England; The Latin
Writings of the Age (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1990); hereafter 'Binns, Intellectual
Culture*. This study gives massively convincing evidence of the vigour and
importance of English Latin culture, well into the seventeenth century. Its
detailed prosopography shows what intellectuals actually published and
read in Milton's world: a body of work ignored now, but for Milton and his
peers an equiponderant culture with that of English.
7 Epitaphium Damonis, (171-2), Hughes, p. 137. 'Damon' is Diodati. Coming
from a Protestant Italian family originating in Lucca, Diodati had relatives
in Europe, and went there to study. He spoke or wrote in several languages,
and their letters show them playing with languages to each other. (Milton
corrected a mistake of Diodati's in his letter in Greek! See also chapter 5.)
8 See Bolgar, Classical Heritage, ch. 8, esp. p. 303.
9 Aramaic was also known as 'Chaldee'. It was probably also the language of

208
 Notes to pages j—13 209
Jesus: see Angel Saenz-Badillos, A History of the Hebrew Language, tr. John
Elwolde (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 167-71, esp. p. 170.
10 Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew, records that Milton taught him Syriac as
well as Aramaic, along with Hebrew. See Gordon Campbell and Sebastian
Brock, 'Milton's Syriac', Milton Quarterly 27. 2 (1993), 74-7.
11 Vouched for by the locus classicus, 'Ad Patrem5, 78-85, Hughes, pp. 84-5,
along with Latin, Greek and Italian.
12 See the Testimonia to Poems, 1645, Francini's Ode, line 60: not printed in
Hughes, but see Gordon Campbell (ed.), John Milton. The Complete Poems
(London: Everyman, 1980), p. 106; hereafter 'Campbell'. See also Camp-
bell's essay, 'Milton's Spanish', forthcoming in Milton Quarterly.
13 See Nicholas von Maltzahn, Milton's History ofBritain. Republican Historiogra-
phy in the English Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 195-6. The
clue is that Milton makes heavy weather of awkward passages in a Latin
translation, of lucid Old English originals. 'His response to these passages
shows no hint of understanding the reasons for this odd Latin' (p. 195). I
labour the point because the possibility of Milton knowing OE, and thus the
Genesis 'B', is raised perennially - for example in 1994 on the Old English
e-mail talk-group.
14 See for example William Riley Parker, Milton. A Biography, 2 vols., (Oxford
University Press, 1968), vol. 1, p. 1008; hereafter 'Parker'.
15 See Binns, Intellectual Culture, p. in; and on Weston generally, pp. xiii,
110-14, 487 nn. 1-7.
16 For this paragraph and the next see Leonard Forster, The Poet's Tongues.
Multilingualism in Literature (Cambridge University Press with Otago Univer-
sity Press, 1970), pp. 38-42; hereafter 'Forster, Poet's Tongues'.
17 See discussion of 'Ros' ('Dew') in H. M. Margoliouth (ed.), The Poems &
Letters of Andrew Marvell, 2 vols., (Oxford University Press, 1962), vol. 1, p. 219.
Margoliouth quotes H. J. C. Grierson for the idea that the Latin was written
first, and served as a guide for the English poem. Margoliouth himself thinks
'the poems are experiments on the same themes, made at about the same
time, in Latin and English'.
18 See Harris F. Fletcher, Milton's Intellectual Development, 2 vols., (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1956-61); and Donald L. Clark, John Milton at St
Paul's School, A Study of Ancient Rhetoric in English Renaissance Education (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1948).
19 The point was memorably made by Leo Miller in his paper to the Third
International Milton Symposium, Florence (1988), and is documented
throughout his subsequent book John Milton's Writings in the Anglo-Dutch
Negotiations 1651-4 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1992).
20 Castor and Cave, Neo-Latin and the Vernacular, p. xvi.
21 Vida's Christiad is the most complete and distinguished example.
22 Possibilities include Jephthes for Samson, polemical/political works for the
Defensio Prima, historical work for the History of Britain, the satirical
Franciscanus for his epic satire on the Gunpowder Plot, In Quintum Novembris.
210 Notes to pages 16-22
23 'Being in Two Minds: the Bilingual Factor in Renaissance Writing', a paper
heard at the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies symposium in
Copenhagen (1991) and now published in Ann Moss et al. (eds.), Acta
Conventus Neo-Latini Hajhiensis (Binghamton: MRTS, 1994), 61-74.
24 Hughes, p. 30.

I THE MULTILINGUAL SELF PRESENTED IN MILTON S

POEMS, 1645
1 The text of Dante here and throughout comes from Dante Alighieri, The
Divine Comedy, Translated with a Commentary by Charles S. Singleton, Bollingen
Series 80 (Princeton University Press, 1970-5). The reference here is to vol.
1., Inferno, pp. 2-3. Translations from Dante come from Singleton unless
otherwise stated. His edition is referred to hereafter as 'Singleton (ed.), Divine
Comedy'. Longfellow's poem is Mezzo Cammin, Updike's is Mid-Point.
2 'I. M.' would cover a considerable number of names of authors, since Mis a
common first letter in English surnames, and / back then covered given
names beginning both /and J ('Jacob', 'James', John', Joseph', and so on).
3 This line of thought is typified by Parker, pp. 287-8.
4 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1959). A fuller consideration of the issues of Milton's self-
presentation is to be found in my essay, 'Milton's Self-Presentation in Poems
. . . 164$ in Milton Quarterly 25. 2 (1991), 38-48.
5 For instance, Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr., Visionary Poetics: Milton's
Tradition and His Legacy (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1979). Two works
which do examine the Poems, whole and on their own terms, are Louis L.
Martz, Poet of Exile: A Study of Milton's Poetry (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1980) and C. W. R. D. Moseley, The Poetic Birth: Milton's Poems of1645
(Menston: Scolar, 1991). Martz's book is referred to hereafter as 'Martz, Poet
of Exile', and Moseley's as 'Moseley, Poetic Birth'.
6 For Aristotle, see Nicomachean Ethics, vi. 7-8, and W. D. Ross, Aristotle
(London: Methuen, 1923), pp. 217-18. Aristotle is cited from Classical Literary
Criticism. Aristotle On the Art of Poetry, Horace On the Art of Poetry, Longinus On the
Sublime, tr. T. S. Dorsch (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), referred to
subsequently as 'Classical Literary Criticism'. The polarity of otium/negotium is
often on Cicero's lips in the dialogues. It is pursued with superb fullness into
the Renaissance by Brian Vickers, in 'Leisure and Idleness in the Renais-
sance: the Ambivalence of Otium\ in Renaissance Studies, 4. 1 (1990), 1-37 and
4. 2 (1990) 107-54.
7 'Gemelle cultu simplici gaudens liber, / Fronde licet gemina' ('Twin-
membered book rejoicing in a single cover, yet with a double leaf), Hughes,
p. 146. The translations here and elsewhere are Hughes's unless otherwise
stated. How best to translate Milton's Latin verse into English for modern
readers is discussed in the Appendix.
8 See Martz, Poet of Exile, p. 42.
 Motes to pages 22-30 211
9 Hughes, p. 55; my own translation.
10 When the sonnets move from English into Italian they go from roman to
italic print, a visual pun. Since such things were in general the province of
the printer, I would not insist that Milton thought up the pun, but it adds to
the impression of liveliness.
11 See John B. Dillon, 'Surdeo, Saumaise, and the Lexica: An Aspect of Milton's
Latin Diction', in Humanistica Lovaniensia 27 (1987), 238-52; hereafter 'Dillon,
"Surdeo"'.
12 Hughes, p. 142; my own translation.
13 The deciding is discussed in detail in chapter 3.
14 See Martz, Poet of Exile, ch. 3; my translation.
15 Thus Elegiae II—V and VII receive a statement ;Anno Aetatis 16' or the like,
whereas Elegiae I and VI do not.
16 Epistolae Familiares (Familiar Letters) x, 21 April 1645, to Carlo Dati, hereafter
'Ep. Fam.'; my own translations unless stated otherwise. For Latin text see
The Works of John Milton: The Columbia Edition, General editor Frank Allen
Patterson, 18 vols., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931-8), xii. 49.
This work is abbreviated hereafter to 'ColWorks', and its subsequent
2-volume index (1940) to 'Collndex*.
17 He makes a revealing remark in the covering letter, Ep. Fam. X again, that
he uses a Protestant way of talking about the Pope, to be taken with a pinch
of salt. I say 'revealing', because it shows him aware of what roles require -
offensive vigour when he was attacking the Gunpowder Plot, emollience
now towards Catholic friends.
18 I incline to this view of J. W. Saunders, The Profession of English Letters
(London: Routledge, 1964).

2 THE DEVELOPMENT AND QUALITY OF MILTON S

MULTILINGUAL VERSE
1 23 January 1647; Hughes, p. 146.
2 See John Milton, Poems upon Several Occasions, ed. Thomas Warton, 2nd (rev.)
edn, (London: G. G. J. andj. Robinson, 1791).
3 See Philip J. Ford, George Buchanan. Prince of Poets (Aberdeen University Press,
1982), ch. 2, hereafter Tord, Buchanan'; and my own essay, 'The Pre-
Criticism of Milton's Latin Verse, Illustrated from the Ode "Ad Ioannem
Rousium",' in OfPoetry and Politics: New Essays on Milton and His World, ed. P.
G. Stanwood (Binghamton: MRTS, 1995), 17-34-
4 Hughes, p. 26 ('dearer than was the great Stagirite to his magnanimous
pupil').
5 Making a quick comparison with Marvell's cRos' I noticed the same
tendency, in 'fastigia sphaerae' (5) and 'mollia strata pede' (10).
6 The idea of any language having 'completed' its development may be found
tendentious, a misapplied teleology. The idea is implicit in the idea of
'renaissance', however, and in turn implies a canon, governing usage as well
212 Notes to pages 31-7
as themes. It helps explain why the bolder stylists often chose the mother
tongue in which to practice emulation: a harder midwifery is needed for
such 'rebirth'.
7 See, for example, Odes in. 30. 10-12.
8 Rouse had upheld this principle rather valiantly, in refusing to issue a book
to Charles I, on the grounds that the Bodleian was not a lending library and
its librarian was bound by oath to keep all its statutes. Later, his successor did
the same in the same circumstances to Cromwell as Lord Protector. And
both would-be borrowers acquiesced, oaths being held sacred.
9 For 'playing' as a model of influence, see my essay, 'Milton Playing with
Ovid' in Milton Studies 25 (1989), 3-19.
10 Hughes, p. 6; his translation, modified.
11 'The fable of the peasant and the landlord', Hughes, p. 7.
12 Hughes, pp. 12 and 21.
13 Elegia 11. 3-4, Hughes, p. 12; my translation.
14 Elegia in. 68, Hughes, p. 23; Ovid, Amoves, 1. v. 26.
15 The Faerie Queene, II. vii. 33.
16 See The Two Gentlemen of Verona I. ii, early and comic, but also Othello 1. iii.
158-66.
17 Hughes, p. 8.
18 Gordon Williams, The Nature of Roman Poetry (Oxford University Press, 1970),
p. 62, referred to henceforth as 'Williams, Roman Poetry'. I discuss this
principle of'amalgam' in 'Artistry and Originality in Milton's Latin Poems',
Milton Quarterly 27. 4 (1993), 138-49.
19 Hughes, p. 58.
20 Hughes, p. 37.
21 Hughes, p. 50. Elegia VI is latest of the series, chronologically, so it is
discussed here last in the account of Milton's developing experimentation
with Ovid. In 1645, though, he placed VII last, to gain the farewell to Ovid
by means of the palinode, doing double duty by closing not only that
ultra-Ovidian poem but the whole Ovidian experimentation.
22 Such is the view ofjohn Carey in 'The Date of Milton's Italian Poems', RES
n. s. 14 (1963), 383-6. For a contrary view, see Leo Miller, 'Milton's Patriis
Cicutis\ in NQ226 (1981), 41-2. I side with Carey because the alternative
reading of Elegia vi. 87-90 is too flat and repetitive for an ending. The poem
would end up, 'The Nativity Ode is my Christmas present to Christ, and
you're going to get it too, and it's in English, so be its judge': the thought goes
in a dull circle compared with 'The Ode is my Christmas present to Christ;
and you'll get a present too, my attempts in your ancestral language, Italian.
So be their judge'. I discuss the matter further in my essay, 'The Audiences
of Milton's Italian Verses' in Renaissance Studies 8. 1 (1994), 76-88, hereafter
cited as 'Hale, "Audiences'".
23 I refrain from calling them 'elegies', because their mood is seldom (as
English uses the word) 'elegiac' - only in the short Elegia II, where 'Elegeia'
appears at the end, personified. The name refers to metre, which because of
 Notes to pages 38-42 213
Rome's elegists (Propertius and Tibullus as well as Ovid) connoted erotic.
24 Greek has a larger vocabulary than Latin, and its articles and particles give
its verse a fluidity which Latin lacks: all the more, then, are Horace's (and by
extension Milton's) Alcaics a tour de force.
25 Hughes, pp. 11-12: 'Among the blest in Elysium may you walk for ever'
(Hughes' words, but transposed to secure a more striding rhythm for this
Vice-Chancellor's pacing through heaven).
26 Hughes, pp. 15-21.
27 For example, lines 80-5 (Hughes, p. 17). The influence of Buchanan was first
noted by Warton. It is discussed by John Carey, in The Poems of John Milton,
ed. John Carey and Alistair Fowler (London: Longman, 1968), pp. 39-40.
This edition, for which Fowler edited PL and Carey all the rest, is henceforth
abbreviated to 'Carey and Fowler'. Buchanan's poem is discussed in its own
terms by Ford, Buchanan, pp. 55-9.
28 I discuss these neologisms in 'Notes on Milton's Latin Word-Formation in
the Poemata of 1645, m Humanistica Lovaniensia 43 (1994), 405-10.
29 'Born of Mars' (53, the citadel of Rome); 'Wearer of the triple crown' (55, the
Pope) ; 'made of bread' (56, a sneer at the Mass): all three are found at
Hughes, p. 16.
30 Hughes, p. 17. Respectively, 'and the vast procession of mendicant brothers'
and '[followers of Bacchus] when they chant their orgies on Theban
Aracynthus'. In the second example, Milton employs primitive names for
primitive rites, to scorn papal Rome as antediluvian: -ynthus words are
primeval in Greek, just as Echion was far back in Theban history (and
Thebes itself was scorned as backward by Athens).
31 See Philip Hardie, 'The Presence of Lucretius in Paradise Lost, Milton
Quarterly 29. 1 (1995), 13-24.
32 So says John Aubrey, in his 'Brief Life' of Milton: see The Early Lives of Milton,
ed. Helen Darbishire (London: Constable, 1932), p. 6; hereafter 'Darbishire
(ed.), Early Lives'. Cf. Lycidas 124, where the slightly older Milton waxes
satirical: 'Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw' (Hughes, p. 123).
33 Hughes, p. 33.
34 Further proofs include the powerful close, where he manages to fuse
Lucretius with his own orthodoxy, in that the idea of a final bonfire comes in
the New Testament as well as the Roman Epicurean.
35 The sequence was not taken rigidly: Spenser never wrote a 'Georgics'
between his pastoral and epic, nor for that matter was it believed that the
Eclogues were Virgil's first work of all.
36 E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Willard R. Trask
(New York: Harper, 1953), pp. 231-2 with 201, n. 35.
37 Details are readily available in commentaries, such as that of Walter
MacKellar (ed.), The Latin Poems of John Milton, Cornell Studies in English 15
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), pp. 332-53; hereafter 'MacKellar
(ed.), Latin\
38 I discuss the punctuation of the early editions of Milton's Latin verse in 'The
214 Notes to pages 42-52
Punctuation of Milton's Latin Verse: Some Prolegomena', Milton Quarterly
23. 1 (1989), 7-19.
39 I discuss accentual symmetry in 'Sion's Bacchanalia: An Inquiry into
Milton's Latin in the Epitaphium Damonis\ Milton Studies 16 (1982), 115-30.
The basic research was done for Virgil and Roman poets by W. F.Jackson
Knight, Accentual Symmetry in Virgil (Oxford: Blackwell, 1950).
40 Entropaden, in Psalm 114, line 5 is found only in Hesychius, the grammarian
of the fifth century AD (Hughes, p. 114). As the adverb meaning 'headlong' in
Homer is '/wotropaden', metrically similar, I conjecture Milton did not have
his lexicon handy or did not check it, staying elevated above such mundane
checking by furor poeticus - as indeed, his letter to Gil indicates.
41 Ep. Fam. 5, to Alexander Gil, Jr; ColWorks xn. 16-17.
42 The risk of special pleading is felt. I risk it all the same because (a) little has
ever been published on these verses, (b) much of that little is by Landor at his
most liverish, and (c) my own essay 'Milton's Poems in Greek' (in The
Interpretative Power. Essays Presented to Professor MargaretDalziel, ed. C. A. Gibson
(Dunedin: Department of English, University of Otago, 1982) is not readily
available.
43 Hughes, p. 115; 'O King, if you make an end of me, an observer of the laws
and a doer of absolutely no harm to any man . . .'
44 Hughes, p. 116. This time I adapt his translation, to restore the echo in the
last word, 'olessas', of 'oleses' in the first line: both are about 'making an
end'.
45 Hughes, pp. 114-15; lines 8 and 15.
46 line 8, Hughes, p. 3.
47 For fuller treatment of this topic, see Hale, 'Audiences'.
48 Hughes, p. 54, Sonnet II, lines 1-2: 'Donna leggiadra, il cui bel nome onora
/ L'erbosa val di Reno, e il nobil varco' ('Gentle and beautiful lady, whose
fair name honours the verdant valley of Reno and the glorious ford').
49 Hughes, pp. 55-6.
50 The phrasing of Guido di Pino is as cited in the introduction to Helen
Darbishire, ed. The Poetical Works of John Milton, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1952), vol. 11, p. 319; hereafter 'Darbishire (ed.), PoeticaP.
51 See Hale, 'Audiences', pp. 84-5.
52 Hughes, p. 53; my translation.

3 THE ITALIAN JOURNEY (i 6 3 8 - 9 ) AND LANGUAGE-CHOICE

1 Forster, The Poefs Tongues, pp. 54-5.

2 The date of'Ad Patrem' remains disputed. I myself accept arguments for a
dating early in the 1630s, because it seems most natural to take 'abductum'
(line 75, 'withdrawn from the din of the city') to mean the withdrawal from
London to Horton. Yet I would not also insist that the poem precedes the
Italian sonnets: it is simply for convenience that my exposition considers
these next after it. 'Psalm 114' is dated to November 1634 by the letter
concerning it to Alexander Gil (see n. 12, below).
 Notes to pages 52-60 215

3 Hughes, p. 82.
4 Translations for this chapter, unless otherwise stated, are John Carey's in
Carey and Fowler; pp. 91-6 for the Italian poems.
5 Carey translates 'maiora' absolutely, as 'more considerable things' (p. 154). I
would rather supply 'officia' ('kindnesses') from the line before.
6 As in the incessant epithet 'phis' for Aeneas. It is by 'pietas' that Aeneas can
take his father out of Troy, and found the new Troy through his own son.
7 Forster, The Poet's Tongues, p. 47, and notes on the line in Sergio Baldi's
edition of Milton's Italian poems: 'Poesie italiane di Milton', in Studi
Secenteschiy (1966), 103-30. Carey's translations are at Carey and Fowler, pp.
91-6.
8 See also Ray Fleming, 'Sublime and Pure Thoughts, "Without Transgress-
ion": The Dantean Influence in Milton's "Donna Leggiadra"', in Milton
Quarterly 20 (1986), 38-44. A further echo from Dante's Francesca may be
present in rv. 4, 'Gia caddi' ('I have now fallen': cf. 'E caddi come corpo
morto cade' (Inferno v. 142, 'And I fell as a body falls dead'); Singleton (ed.),
Divine Comedy, p. 56.
9 Hughes, p. 55.
10 In the Apology for Smectymnuus (1642), Hughes, pp. 693-4.
11 Text from Hughes, pp. 114-15; translation from Carey and Fowler, p. 229,
except that in some particulars I have made corrections: a full discussion of
points at issue is found in my essay, 'Milton as a Translator of Poetry',
Renaissance Studies 1 (1987), 252, n. 19.
12 The letter is Ep. Fam. 5, quoted from ColWorks, xn, 16-17. Although it is not
certain that this letter to Gil refers to Psalm 114, the remarks fit it, and no
other extant poem by Milton fits.
13 See Second Defence (1654), Hughes, p. 829.
14 Hughes, p. 30.
15 Hughes, p. 130. The translation is from Carey and Fowler, pp. 264-5.
16 As argued by Roberta F. Brinkley, Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century,
Johns Hopkins Monographs in Literary History, 3 (repr. London: Frank
Cass, 1967); hereafter 'Brinkley, Arthurian Legend?.
17 Hughes, pp. 132-9 for text; Carey and Fowler, pp. 281-2, for translation.
18 Latin letters of Milton to Diodati are Nos. 6 and 7 in Ep. Fam. Two of his
Latin Elegiae (I and VI) are verse-letters to Diodati.
19 The ode 'Ad Ioannem Roiisium' (1647) is his only later substantial Latin
poem. It is in completely different vein, metre, genre and tone from any
previous Latin poem of Milton: more than most, it is occasional.
20 'Haec' at 180 and 181, 'these thoughts', referring to poetic plans and
Manso's 'cups' brought back together from Italy, shows that the imagined
conversation with Damon proceeds throughout the Arthur-passage.
21 Made a paragraph, a distinct unit of the thought, by the refrain line (161).
22 Jerram, Masson and others are summarized by Douglas Bush in A Variorum
Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 315-17; hereafter 'Variorum*.
216 Notes to pages 60-4
23 Virgil is quoted from P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. F. A. Hirtzel (Oxford
University Press, 1900), the translation being my own.
24 The similar if-clause in 'Mansus', 'O modo spiritus adsit', is a different worry
- about talent, not life. The similarity marks change, and growth.
25 Reason of Church Government, Hughes, p. 668.
26 Brinkley, Arthurian Legend, p. 261.
27 The lists are dated 1639-41 by Masson and others since: see David Masson,
The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical and
Literary History of His Time, 7 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1881-94), vol. n.
112-15; referred to hereafter as 'Masson, Life'. Of the non-biblical items only
Venutius (AD 51) is British, and his story is in the Roman historian Tacitus.
28 Darbishire (ed.), Early Lives, p. 13.
29 Darbishire (ed.), Early Lives, pp. 72-73. The text and pointing of Satan's
address to the sun are also taken from Phillips in Darbishire. Although
Phillips may be merely mangling the published text, he may instead be
recalling an earlier state of that text, and I quote him in case that is so. If it is,
we have the passage built around the figure 'Glory . . . Glorious . . .
Glorious', stepping upwards from the Sun's glory to Satan's to the Father's.
And in that case, we could ask why Milton should think the concluding
'Glorious' inferior to eventual 'matchless'? Does the latter create a better
clash with Satan's 'warring' against such a God (a self-contradictory
enterprise), and introduce a more jagged, Anglo-Saxon finish?
30 Recent scholarship doubts the play is by Aeschylus, but this is immaterial for
our purposes. Milton's allusions to Prometheus (see Collndex, s.v. 'Prometh-
eus') are ambivalent. He is both innovator and thief, the champion of
humanity and bringer of ills to us. See for instance the opening of the epigram
'In Inventorem Bombardae', Hughes, p. 14: 'Iapetionidem laudavit caeca
vetustas' (my emphasis), 'In their blindness the ancients praised Iapetus' son'.
31 All come from the same triliteral root, where of course the writing down of
solely the three consonants makes the three parts of speech look the same.
The meaning of the name was common knowledge through expositors, yet
Milton would also have read passages of Hebrew where all three parts of
speech occur.
32 See F. T. Prince, The Italian Element in Milton's Verse (Oxford University Press,
1954), esp. ch. 7; hereafter 'Prince, Italian Element\ Prince (p. 121) says that in
Milton and the Italians 'a quite direct, simple, or "logical" order of words is
avoided in order to provide one in which the completion of the statement is
either postponed or anticipated'. A notable instance in our passage would be
'to thee I call / But with no friendly voice' because the main line of discourse
is at once turned aside into a grudging qualifier. Although Prince's chapter is
impressionistic, and Italian is not the only possible origin of the effects being
considered, he still most usefully draws attention to intersectings of
languages in Milton's syntactical artifice.
33 John 3. 20, and cf. 5. 19.
34 Hippolytus 555.
 Notes to pages 65-74 217
35 As at Lycidas 77, Hughes, p. 122, 'Phoebus replied and touched my trembling
ears' echoes Eclogue vi. 3-4, 'Cynthius aurem / vellit et admonuit',
'Phoebus plucked at my ear and warned me'.
36 In chapter 6.

4 MILTON S ARTS OF LANGUAGE: TRANSLATING AND PHILOLOGY

1 See Dryden's preface to his translation of Ovid's Epistles (1680). I discuss

Milton's verse-translating more fully in 'Milton As a Translator of Poetry',
in Renaissance Studies 1. 2 (1987), 238-56; hereafter 'Hale, "Milton as
Translator"'. This includes a check-list of his verse-translating, gathering
up information generally left scattered round the contents-pages of editions
and consequently ignored.
2 Hughes, pp. 3-5 for the Psalms, and 10 for the ode.
3 See Arnold Williams, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, General editor
Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953-82), vol. 11.,
pp. 418-20 and 808-18; hereafter TPW.
4 TPW, 11. 478, from Milton's Postscript.
5 Hughes, pp. 139-40. Carey and Fowler, p. 283, give the Italian originals.
6 Hughes, p. 716. On p. 717 Hughes gives the Greek, reproducing the whole
title-page. I discuss the translation points more technically in Hale,
'Areopagitica's Euripidean Motto', Milton Quarterly 25. 1 (1991), 25-7; hereafter
cited as 'Hale, "Areopagitica" \
7 Hughes, p. 141; Horace, Satires 1. xvi. 40.
8 Hughes, p. 143.
9 Hughes, p. 10.1 give reasons for dating this after 1645 in Hale, 'Milton As
Translator', 243.
10 Hughes, p. 149; the versions are pp. 149-59.
11 I am summarizing here the fuller discussion in my essay, 'Why Did Milton
Translate Psalms 80-88 in April 1648?', in Literature and History, 3rd series
3/2 (1994), special issue ed. John N. King, The English Renaissance and
Reformation: Literature, Politics and Religion, 55-62.
12 William W. E. Slights, 'The Edifying Margins of Renaissance English
Books', Renaissance Quarteiiy 42. 4 (1989), 682-716.
13 The over-copious or over-scrupulous opponent is said to 'Blur the margent'
[margin] with tedious marginal notes; to be lost without the 'crutches of his
margent'. The notes are there to help a poor case: the 'margent feeds the
drought of his text'. See Apology for Smectymnuus (ColWorks, m, pp. 316, 323).
Similarly in Colasterion and Hirelings. See also Parker, 1, p. 222.
14 Leo Miller, 'Some Inferences from Milton's Hebrew', in Milton Quarterly 18.2
(1984), 41-6; hereafter 'Miller, "Hebrew"'. The asterisk and dagger signs
are those of Milton's 1673 edition.
15 Campbell, p. 505: 'The phrase Prae concussione is not a clarification of the
Hebrew (it merely translates Milton's English phrase), but rather an
assertion of Milton's preference for the meaning "shaking". The Hebrew
218 Notes to pages 74-9
word means "youth" . . . but Milton has enlisted an homonymous root that
means "to shake" to help him understand a difficult line.'
16 Milton's notes on Greek verse are far the most rewarding. Those on Latin
texts are few and insecurely attributed. Those on Italian texts hardly go
beyond correcting typos; and similarly with Greek prose texts.
17 See Lawrence Lipking, 'The Marginal Gloss', in Critical Inquiry 3 (1977),
609—55; H.J.Jackson, 'Writing in Books and Other Marginal Activities', in
University of Toronto Quarterly 62. 2 (1993), 217-31; and Robin Alston, 'On the
Margin', Bulletin of The Society for Renaissance Studies 11. 1 (1993), 6-13.
18 I studied the three in close succession during December 1993, along with
minor marginalia.
19 Milton's edition of Lycophron's Alexandra is that of Stephanus (Geneva,
1601), bought by Milton in 1634. His marginalia are cited from the
posthumously published commentary of Harris F. Fletcher, John Milton's
copy of Lycophron's Alexandra in the Library of the University of Illinois', as
prepared by John T. Shawcross for Milton Quarterly 23. 4 (1989), 129-58;
hereafter 'Fletcher, "Lycophron"'.
20 line 34 is found on p. 10 of Milton's copy, and discussed on p. 142 of
Fletcher, 'Lycophron'.
21 P. 46 of Milton's copy, Fletcher, 'Lycophron' p. 145.
22 The translation is by the Dutch scholar Wilhelm Canter (1542-75). This
excellent scholar is best known for his work on Greek tragedians, and so
figures in Milton's marginalia to his Euripides (see below).
23 P. 74, Fletcher, 'Lycophron', p. 150.
24 In his copy of Aratus' Phaenomena and Diosemeia, now in the British Library.
25 Kelley, Maurice and Samuel D. Atkins, 'Milton's Annotations of Aratus',
PMLA 70 (1955), 1090-1106, and 'Milton's Annotations of Euripides', JEGP
60 (1961), 680-7; hereafter 'Kelley, "Aratus"', and 'Kelley, "Euripides"',
respectively. I have found the old discussion and copious facsimiles by S. L.
Sotheby, Ramblings in the Elucidation of Milton's Hand (London, 1861) very
illuminating, when not able to view the actual marginalia in the British
Library and Bodleian.
26 Details in Kelley, 'Euripides'. I have illustrated the significance of Milton's
methods and resultant emendations in Hale, 'Milton's Euripides Mar-
ginalia: Their Significance for Milton Studies', in Milton Studies 27 (1991),
23-35-
27 The two volumes are: the Tragoediae of Euripides, pub. Stephanus (Geneva,
1602), now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
28 The marks * and * appear in the printed text at the place which Milton is
annotating. A second * or x begins his correlative marginal annotation.
29 As argued by David Davies and Paul Dowling in ' "Shrewd Books, with
Dangerous Frontispieces": Areopagitica's Motto', in Milton Quarterly 20. 2
(1986), 33-7. But see my caution regarding their reasoning about the
title-page of Areopagitica in Hale, 'Areopagitica\ 25-7.
30 See for example D. R. Shackle ton Bailey, Profile of Horace (London:
 Notes to pages 80-3 219
Duckworth, 1982), pp. 104-20, on the principles involved and how they
make Bentley and Housman (despite errors) outstanding as textual critics.
Remember, too, the veneration accorded till recently within high culture to
such critics, so that in the time of Pope and Bentley 'critic' meant textual
critic.
31 No one can say where, if at all, Littleton (1719) or Ainsworth (1736) used
Milton's Thesaurus for their dictionaries. See Parker, Milton, 1, p. 657 and 11,
p. 1167. Even if their tide-page-claims to use Milton are only a puff, it is
notable that they promote their own dictionaries by linking them to that of
Milton as a major Latin writer and 'correct' Latin stylist.
32 A matter still sub judice, having been raised by William. B. Hunter. I have
found it hard to harness Leo Miller's lexicographical methods, so successful
in working on State Papers, to De Doctrina. The problems include lack of
obvious control texts and lack of lexicographical resources for neo-Latin
prose. A group of us are trying to harness stylometric and other statistical
techniques.
33 I discuss these matters further in 'Milton's Accents', forthcoming in
Renaissance and Reformation (1996). They are summarized in Appendix B of
JohnT. Shawcross, John Milton. The Selfand the World (Lexington: University
of Kentucky Press, 1993), pp. 285-8; hereafter 'Shawcross, Self. This
language-preference accords with the number of Italian commonplaces,
Milton's debt to Italian poets, his preference for Italian pronunciation of
Latin, and indeed the seminal role of the Italian journey in his personal
development. Otherwise, why go to Italy at all, and why stay there so long
compared with the other European countries?
34 Cicero's credo had been 'otium cum dignitate'. In certain crises of 1642-60
Milton must have felt impelled to give up otium for negotium; perhaps, after
1660, he setded for Cicero's kind of prodigiously productive otium.
35 See for example G. K. Hunter, John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier (London:
Routledge, 1962), for the career of John Lyly. Discontented because
unemployed humanists are a feature of Jacobean tragedy, e.g. Bosola in
Webster's Duchess ofMalfi.

5 MILTON'S LATIN PROSE

1 See especially Thomas N. Corns, The Development of Milton's Prose Style
(Oxford University Press, 1982), hereafter 'Corns, Prose1] the same author's
Milton's Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), hereafter 'Corns, Language'; and
Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross (eds.), Achievements of the Left Hand:
Essays on the Prose of John Milton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1974)-
2 Cited from ColWorks, xn. 288-91. The date of the Prolusion is unknown, but
Parker, 1, p. 18, is surely right in linking it with the verses on the same theme,
found with it; perhaps from when Milton was 14, in 1623. The theme ('Leave
your bed early') comes from Lyly's Latin Grammar, another sign of school
origin.
220 Notes to pages 83-g
3 'It is a well-worn proverb which says "To rise at daybreak is the healthiest
thing", yet no less true for being ancient; for if I try to reckon up in order one
by one the benefits of this practice I shall seem to incur an arduous task: just
get up, therefore, get up, you sluggard, and don't let bed keep you for ever! -
you don't know the delights which dawn offers you. Do you want to delight
your eyes? Just look at the sun rising full of red, look at the clear sky, etc' (my
translation).
4 Subordinate clauses respectively before and after the main clause. One
which bisects the main clause is 'embedded'. The terms are adapted from
Corns, Prose and Language.
5 There are clear echoes in this phrasing of the immature elegiac verses found
in the same box, 'Surge, age surge . . .', as discussed in chapter 2.
6 'That sometimes sportive exercises are not prejudicial to philosophic
studies' (ColWorks, xn. 205, tr. Bromley Smith). The prolusion is pp. 204-47
there, and quoted thence.
7 Still irresistible to adolescent wit. The quoted phrase means, 'lest his riddles
be babbled out, not by his Sphinx but from his sphincter'.
8 ColWorks, 240. 11-16. He nicely points out that manhood is not reasonably
equated with being a champion drinker (pancratice haurire: 'all-in' competitive
drinking).
9 Possibly a favourite verb for Milton, as he uses it as the climax of his
introduction to the commendations which herald the Poemata section of
1645.
10 See J. McG. Bottkol, 'The Holograph of Milton's Letter to Holstenius',
PMLA 68 (1953), 617-27. See also Parker, Milton, p. 829, n. 49. The date of
the original being one day earlier than the date on the letter as published,
Milton's second thoughts might have begun as soon as he sent it off. If so, it is
a human touch; but Bottkol is probably correct to assign most of the toning
down to the 1670s.
11 'By this work of yours, Benedetto Bonmattei, the compilation of new
institutes of your native tongue, now so far advanced that you are about to
give it thefinishingtouch, you are entering on a path...' {ColWorks m\. 30-1,
but it misses the metaphor of building, for which see next note).
12 The metaphor is set going by 'Institutions': instituere is to 'erect', 'establish'.
13 That the word has some special attachment to Etruscan and Roman towns
is suggested by The Oxford Latin Dictionary (hereafter 'OxLD'). If so, here is the
flattering presupposition that Florentine Italian has a special relationship
with Rome; that Florence keeps up the speech of Rome, and does it best
among the forms of Italian (and romance languages).
14 ColWorks, XII. 44, Letter 10: 'With how great and what new pleasure I was
filled, my Charles, on the unexpected arrival of your letter . ..' The locution,
'my Charles', is normal as between friends in Latin. But notice the
difference, of distance and warmth and whole relationship from the opening
address of the letters to Holstenius, to Bonmattei, and even the two to
Diodati (a closer friend, but apparently a less assiduous correspondent).
 Notes to pages go-8 221
15 ColWorks, XII. 51. The Columbia translation is clumsy through overpunctu-
ation. But 'our peculiar way5 is clever: it means 'our own' way and yes, it is
also 'peculiar' = odd: 'nostro more' has the same concessive / dismissive
tone. Note the tense and mood and aspect of the final verb, 'loquendum
erit': 'whenever I shall have to be writing', future and continuous and
binding, all in the one idiom. Milton looks forward to continuing this
correspondence, now resumed.
16 Relatively unguarded. The fair copy (printed facing ColWorks, xn. 50) is in
Milton's mature hand, a fine firm specimen. The letter remains especially
personal, for example in its reference to Milton's sending a copy of his
Epitaphium Damonis (the anonymously published tribute of 1640), to Dati so
that Dati but also the other Florentines named therein might write back
(48-9).
17 Hughes, p. 132. I use the translation from Campbell, p. 540, because it
achieves the plain style in English of this Latin (as opposed to the examples
seen so far of the other Latin prose genres). This prose understates, moves
briskly, practises economy in the service of self-effacement- 'to learn more',
it implies, 'read the poem itself.
18 The neat antithesis is between prepositions, 'de' versus 'supra', in lines 2-3.
The text and version (again excellent) are from Campbell, pp. 104 and 505.
19 Milton seems again worried about envy. He quotes Virgil on the title-page
of Poems, 1645 to the same, apotropaic effect.
20 See n. 4 above. By way of further illustration, my own sentence in the text
itself briefly embeds, then branches left, then right.
21 The text is that of ColWorks, vol. vn.
22 '... that I myself may be judged to have avoided' my opponent's silliness and
verbosity. Notice the latter emphasis on stylistic fault in Salmasius. The firm
clausula, a triple cretic ( - - - - - ), helps establish the control, and
the claim to be stylish.
23 The use of the orthodox, judicial idiom connotes a justness in the judgement
itself.
24 God 'useth to cast down proud unbridled kings, puffed up above the
measure of mankind' {ColWorks trn., n. 7) The odd ending, 'useth', may be
the translator's way of alerting readers to an allusion. He does it again on p.
33, to translate (Horace). The archaisms turn out (vn. 564) to be fossils of the
1692 translation by Joseph Washington, retained for no stated reason: 'The
present translation, then, though retaining some of the phrases of the old,
was made directly from Milton's Latin'.
25 Venditare has exactly this sense twice in Plautus. Milton is beginning the
casting of his opponents as comic buffoons which he will soon expand.
26 As nowadays with 'academic', used to mean 'so-called expert', 'impractical
theorist'.
27 See J. M. French (ed.), The Life Records of John Milton (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1949-58), 5 vols., v. 44-5; hereafter 'French, Life
Records'. See also Parker, 1, p. 622.
222 Notes to pages 99-102
CONCLUSION TO PART ONE MULTILINGUALISM IN MILTON'S
LATIN PROSE

1 ColWorks VII. 307-11, where he taxes Salmasius with quoting speeches out of
context: 'we must not regard the poet's words as necessarily his own, but
notice which character says what within the poet's text' (Columbia transla-
tion, modified to bring out the contrast - cnon quid poeta, sed quis apud
poetam quidque dicat'). In closing, Milton points out how insecure an
interpretation is when drawn from words wrenched out of context, and how
needful it is to know the full context.
2 ColWorks VII. 89, TPWw. 349. See Miller, 'Hebrew'.
3 'Gaudete scombri...', Carey and Fowler, p. 409; not in Hughes. The lines
tell the mackerel ('scombri') to rejoice, as now that Samasius has unwisely
gone into print there will be plenty of waste paper to wrap them in.
4 ColWorks, VII. 324-31.
5 A remarkable feat. He does it by adducing Roman norms to humanists who
accept Rome as normative, for example as to their law ('reception
countries', like the Dutch).
6 An odd choice, on which he insists in two letters (23, 26). Sallust's laconic
style is part of the reason. And style is the man, for ancients and humanists.
But above all, Sallust outshines the more obvious Roman choice, Tacitus,
because he preceded and 'taught' Tacitus (who wrote in aemulatio): Sallust
takes Milton back once again to origins, the causes of the downfall of the
Republic.
7 And wrote a poem of self-praise about it, including the notoriously awful
jingle: 'O fortunatam natam me consule Romam!' ('O Rome most
fortunate, born in my consulate').
8 In 'Forty Source Notes to Milton's pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Primd, Milton
Quarterly 29. 2 (1995), 48-52, Michelle Valerie Ronnick presents 14 further
allusions to Cicero (Sallust 3, Plautus 5, Terence 4). This gives an idea of
Cicero's pervasive influence. A wide range of Cicero's works are evidenced,
which illustrates Milton's humanist choosing of the apt exemplar. They
include works attacking Verres and Antonius, both especially apt to
Milton's attack on Salmasius, in the name of the res publica. Her Sallust
allusions are to the 'war' against Catiline, apt again as an enemy of the state
in Cicero's eyes.
9 ColWorks VII. 6.
10 ColWorks VII. 554-5,
11 Louis Martz commented on this in his plenary addess to the Fourth
International Milton Symposium (Vancouver, 1991). I am grateful for the
insight.
12 Quoted from Parker, p. 622. The terms of the contest are the shared
humanist ones. Bouhereau's comments are in French, Life Records, v. 44-5,
49-
13 In the 1659 ending the example of Cicero is made more explicit: 'Consul ille
Romanus', and 'illius consulis' {ColWorks VII. 556, TPWw. i. 536-7). 'Ille'
 Notes to pages 104-8 223
and 'illius' have the force of 'that well-known, pre-eminent instance of the
class of "consul"', like 'that forbidden tree'. The tone here is calmer and
more self-assured, which has interest because in 1659 some of Milton's
output had a quite different tone (see the end of the Ready and Easy Way, for
instance).

INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO

1 George Steiner, What Is Comparative Literature? (Oxford University Press,

!995)> PP- 15-16.
2 In the sense given by Gedric C. Brown, 'Horatian Signatures: Milton and
Civilized Comunity', in Mario Di Cesare (ed.), Milton in Italy. Contexts, Images,
Contradictions (Binghamton: MRTS, 1991) pp. 329-44; hereafter 'Di Cesare,
Milton in Italy\
3 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (Oxford University Press, 1973).

6 LATIN AND MILTON'S OTHER LANGUAGES IN THE STYLE OF

PARADISE LOST

1 Carey and Fowler, p. 433. See also Corns, Language, p. 95.

2 But 'duped' is too severe. The first 200-odd years of editing had no access to
the OED, nor to a good dictionary of English on James Murray's
all-important historical principles. After the OED was finished, too, the
Variorum or snowball principle would be influential until noticed and
arrested. We find Fowler and Corns themselves, when not contesting the
principle, suggesting new instances of Latinism; and naturally and rightly
too, for readers to assess and choose.
3 Christopher Ricks, Milton's Grand Style (Oxford University Press, 1963);
hereafter 'Ricks, Grand Style'.
4 FQ11. xii. 63. Spenser is cited from Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A.
C. Hamilton, Annotated English Poets series (London: Longman, 1977), p.
293-
5 Elegia vn. 90, Hughes, p. 61. This coinage was criticized by Salmasius, but
Milton retained it in his 1673 Poems. Milton is upheld by Dillon, cSurdeo\
6 See Elegia vi, 10 and 85, Hughes, pp. 50 and 53. Salmasius again ridiculed
'stellipar', as unclassical usage or as too miraculous. Again Milton ignored
him in 1673.1 discuss these and other Latin verse neologisms in 'Notes on
Milton's Latin Word-formation in the Poemata of 1645', Humanistica Lovanien-
JWI 43 (1994), 404-10; esp. 405, 408.
7 Epitaphium Damonis 61 (Hughes, p. 134). Hughes renders it, 'the restless
twilight of the windswept trees'; Carey and Fowler, p. 280, 'the restless
twilight of the windswept wood'; Campbell, p. 541, 'the restless twilight of
the trembling forest', so illustrating how translators build on each others'
efforts. 'Restless' is onomatopoeic in English, but none of these renderings
allows the verb-force into English: 'to-and-jro-driven darknesses of the shattered
trees'; a stronger pathetic fallacy, because it recognizes that high winds
224 Notes to pages iog-18
uproot old trees and break offbranches. So, if you are out there, darkness is
not still but dangerously mobilized by uncontrollable unseen windpower -
like the speaker's contextual emotions. See also Appendix, below.
8 Hughes, p. 398. Henceforth, I give references to the major English poems
simply by book- and line-number, rather than footnoting the pages in
Hughes every time.
9 The best discussion is still that ofJ. H. Finley, 'Milton and Horace: A Study
of Milton's Sonnets', in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 48 (1937), 29-73.
10 'I would love to live with you, gladly die with you' [Odes in. ix. 24, well
discussed in Carey and Fowler, p. 905.
11 As Hippolyte Taine remarked, Milton 'has celebrated God the way most
people pray to him, "suivant une formule apprise, non par un tressaillement
spontane" ' ('following a learnt formula, not through a spontaneous thrill or
shudder'): see Harry F. Redman, Jr., Major French Milton Critics ofthe Nineteenth
Century (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1994), p. 247. Milton's
'formula' is not the usual one, but one sort of theologian's, a biblical
pastiche.
12 See the discussion in Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition. Greek and Roman
Influences on Western Literature (Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 160 and n.
70; hereafter 'Highet, Classical Tradition'.
13 Campbell, p. 569.
14 Perhaps another frigidity through Latinism is x. 95-6, '. . . when he from
wrath more cool / Came the mild judge ...' Whether 'from' yields the sense
'because of (an icy anger) or 'so far from' or 'changing away from',
excessive meaning is being placed on the preposition merely because in
Latin 'from' can mean all these.
15 Reason of Church-Government, Hughes, p. 668.
16 Corns, Milton's Language, p. 89.
17 See also Corns, Milton's Language, p. 90.
18 Small wonder that Wordsworth in the Prelude, tracing himself as 'inmate of
this active universe' (his italics), seeks to revive Milton's Latinate participles.
19 And (again) Wordsworth's many imitations, for instance the spirit that 'rolls'
through all things in 'Tintern Abbey'.
20 Binns, Intellectual Culture, p. xvi.
21 The origin of'Paradise' in a Persian then Greek word for 'garden' remained
operative in usage for a very long time.
22 One would expect him to use the Junius-Tremellius Latin version of the
Bible, being echt-Protestant, but in the only copy of that version available to
me the Hebrew names look as if spelt for pronunciation by German native
speakers. Vulgates, too, spell according to country of publication and that
country's pronunciation, in other words for liturgical use. Milton's prefer-
ences seem to me also aural, yet not automatically based on English ways
with Hebrew.
23 Hughes, p. 34: 'But the almighty Father, by founding the stars more
strongly, has taken thought for the universe'.
 Notes to pages ng-24 225
24 Another instance of self-quotation may be his 'labouring moon' {PL n. 665),
from the 'faticosa luna' of Sonnet 4; but Juvenal (vi. 442) has 'luna laborans'
for moon undergoing eclipse, which comes closer.
25 Similarly with 'know to know no more' at rv. 775. Carey and Fowler, p. 660
cite OED, s.v. 'know', sense iv. 12 to insist that the usage ('to be able') with
bare infinitive is seventeenth-century English. The English usage of 'know
how3 is commoner: to my way of thinking, Milton may well have meant the
Greek usage (LSJ*eido, B. 2), which usefully embraces 'know how to' and 'be
able to', though certainly the main point was to opt for the more compressed
form. A similar instance is iv. 835-7, 'Think not, revolted spirit, thy shape
the same, / Or undiminished brightness, to be known / As when thou
stood'st...' Three different constructions follow the verb 'Think' - for
compression and to express the forcefulness of the speaker (Gabriel). But an
ad sensum fluidity is typical of Plato's Greek. Contextually, at this point of
Book IV, Homer and Greek are being especially felt.
26 'Expert / When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway / Of battle, open
when, and when to close / The ridges of grim war'. 'Ridges' and 'bridges'
are equally hard to visualize, and to understand; but 'bridges' would at least
sound Homeric. Charles Martindale, John Milton and the Transformation of
Ancient Epic (London: Croom Helm, 1986), p. 79, urges that 'ridges' are
'dykes', 'open spaces on the battlefield'. The latter meaning is given by
commentators on Iliad iv. 371 to explain Homer's 'bridges' too. The
intriguing point is whether Milton would imitate Homer without a clear,
visual sense of how the ridges, or bridges, would be 'opened' and 'closed'. In
context, he is saying the angels fought expertly, each one like a commander:
how could 'each warrior single', even angelic,fillup or clear the 'open spaces' in
battle? Either this is bombast, or Milton means salients, or his meaning
eludes us still.
27 Although LSJ lists the word as 'meteoros', short e long 0, Homer has it closer
to Milton's sound, long e short 0. It means 'in mid-air' (rneta + aeiro, raise, with
a glance at aer, air?)
28 The example of'expanse', discussed above, is revealing because Milton gets
the Hebrew 'wrong' where he could have got it 'right'.
29 Respectively, an epitomizing genitive (like 'sons of iniquity', the 'spitting
image' of it); and a personification of'voice sent from heaven' (as angels, too,
are 'voices' of God in a religion where divine utterance is radically
performative, and God is heard more than seen).
30 Satan quotes Isaiah 14. 13-14, the prophecy of his own downfall.
31 The Hebrew prophets especially like the clash of two forms of the same
triliteral root, which in written (that is, consonantal) form stands out even
more.
32 'Gabri-eP = 'strength of God', and many more.
33 His Hebrew name presumably resembled the other archangelic names,
taking the form -el, after the name of some quality of God. Candidates
include 'Satanail' from the Slavonic Book of Enoch, ch. 31, 'SatomaiP and
226 Notes to pages 124-34
'Sothanel' (J. Martin Evans, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition, (Oxford
University Press, 1968), ch. 2.
34 Luke 1. 35, 'the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee\ God creates by
'filling' at Genesis 1. 22, Exodus 28. 3. 'Infinitude' is rarer than 'infinity' in
the seventeenth century, but closer to classical Latin.
35 See, for example, for the cold Hell Inferno Cantos XXXII-XXXXIV, in
Singleton (ed.), Divine Comedy, pp. 338-68; or Dantean pain at v. 120
(Francesca da Rimini, herself extending Virgil).
36 See Prince, The Italian Element
37 It is curious that in his Commonplace Book Milton summarizes Italian
passages in Italian of his own, but not in French when summarizing French:
see Shawcross, Self, Appendix A.
38 The word's history links with Latin carmen and derivatives, but kept its
Anglo-Saxon link with birdsong, either as charm or chirm. Since birds sang
long before humans did, I find it 'charming' that Eve, here, uses the native
word for aboriginal song.
39 J- Weingreen, A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew, 2nd edn (Oxford
University Press, 1959), p. 136; hereafter 'Weingreen, Grammarfor Hebrew'.
40 The context begins and ends biblically, from 'Messiah' (881) through the
saints as a cloud of witnesses (883) to the reminders of Palm Sunday (885).
To enrich this theophany, however, the narrative draws in more from
Greek and Latin as it proceeds: what 'jubilee' begins 'triumph' follows up,
and we note the line's zeugma (the 'joining' figure: 'Sung triumph and him
. . .', a swift move from direct to indirect speech). 'He celebrated rode /
Triumphant' keeps up the multilingual paean - as if making a convergent
testimony.

7 MILTON'S LANGUAGES AND THE VOICES OF PARADISE LOST

1 Poetics, chs. 3, 5, 24; Classical Literary Criticism, pp. 34, 37-8 and 66-8.
2 R. O. A. M. Lyne, Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford University Press,
1987); hereafter 'Lyne, Further Voices'.
3 Using William Ingram and Kathleen Swaim, A Concordance to Milton's English
Poetry (Oxford University Press, 1972).
4 Leo Spitzer, Linguistics and Literary History. Essays in Statistics (New York:
Russell and Russell, 1962), esp. pp. 1-40.
5 The figures are: I (3 occurrences), II (4), III (4), IV (3), V (4), VI (3), VII (7),
VIII (3), DC (6), X (9), XI (1) and XII (2).
6 Cf. German gehorchen.
7 Exodus 15. 26, where the AV's 'diligently hearken' renders Hebrew's
iterated 'Hear', shamodtishmd:the infinitive absolute expresses emphasis in
this usage (Weingreen, Grammarfor Hebrew, p.79), and Israel is told, 'Really
listen!', that is, totally obey.
8 Related words like 'talk', 'speak' and their derivatives are less frequent.
However, it is noticeable that Book VIII shows a surge in the use of'speak',
and Book IX in the use of 'talk' and 'speak' (also the first recorded use of
 Notes to pages 135-g 227
'speakable' in the active sense, 'able to speak5). VIII dwells on the power of
speech in humans, for example to name, while once again the serpent's
power of speech amazes Eve, for it contradicts the clear tenor of VIII.
9 David Daiches felt the presence of merachepheth: see The Opening of PL, in
The Living Milton: Essays by Various Hands, ed. Frank Kermode (New York:
Macmillan, 1971), pp. 55-69. At Deuteronomy 32. 11, however, it means a
parent bird hovering above its young, fluttering or hovering anxiously; this
seems a little distant from the blunt English about a dove on the nest,
hatching.
10 The last book of the Bible is called 'Apocalypsis' in the Vulgate, though
'Revelation' in the AV. Both names had long standing in English, but Latin
favoured 'Apocalypse'.
11 See ch. 3: Hebrew satan means 'opposition', 'enmity', at its root.
12 A tacit incentive to build Paradise Regained around some unfinished business
of speech-duel, Satan at length speaking with God as well as Man in
Messiah?
13 Aeneid n. 274-5, 'Alas, to think how he once looked, how changed from that
Hector who returned victorious, clad in the arms of Achilles!' This passage
had been Milton's source for the climax of Epitaphium Damonis, 'O ego
quantus eram' (129, Hughes, p. 136).
14 Highet, Classical Tradition, p. 157.
15 Carey and Fowler, p. 467; Capaneus at Inferno xrv. 63-6.
16 Odyssey 1. 32-5, 'But they themselves [mortals] also by their own reckless sins
have sufferings beyond their measure' tr. W. B. Stanford (ed.), The Odyssey of
Homer, 2 vols. (London; Macmillan, 1947). The Odyssey begins, like the Aeneid
and PL I and III, with theodicy.
17 The Psalm is main source of the first part of the opening speech of the
Father. Milton affects the letter r there, in Latinisms ('rage / Transports our
adversary'), but the trick occurs also in the Hebrew.
18 Carey and Fowler, pp. 774-5.
19 William B. Hunter, The Descent of Urania. Studies in Milton, ig46-ig88
(Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1989), p. 23, argues that Eve is
understating here; not God's express command, but some inferior, less
authoritative mode of speaking. 'Sole', however, does not read like
understatement or excuse. I prefer the sense of epitome or absolute: that
'voice' is feminized, by Eve, is a glance at the topic of this chapter.
20 Genesis 3. 8, 'mithhalek' (hithpael participle, reflexive-iterative usage,
'walking oneself about' like 'se promener' in French). See Ronald J.
Williams, Hebrew Syntax. An Outline, 2nd edn (University of Toronto Press,
l
91§\ PP- 28-9.
21 Matthew 25. 21 and 1 Timothy 6. 12.
22 See William M. Porter, Reading the Classics and Paradise Lost (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1993).
23 John Peter Rumrich, Matter of Glory (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1987); hereafter 'Rumrich, Matter of Glory*.
228 Notes to pages 140-52
24 Soon Milton hymns 'wedded love5 similarly, in Christian terms with Roman
help: 'saints' and 'patriarchs' consort with a personified, winged 'Love',
whose 'golden shafts' come from Ovid (rv. 763). The immanence of God in
marriage is expressed and emphasized by the multilingual lushness.
25 The angel host are 'saints' at vi. 47, but because of'Messiah' and 'palms' the
talk of Apocalypse draws in humans too.
26 Ovid, Metamorphoses, in. 402-36.
27 'And her immortal hair breathed from her head a perfume that was divine.'
The leading word ambrosiae comes out of Greek, am-brotos = 'immortal'. The
other key word is divinum, placed so as to go both with the smell and its
originator.
28 'Vehement' is 'usually regarded' as parallel with Latin vaecors, 'senseless',
although OxLD disagrees with OED on this. (Similarly, when Eve proposes a
suicide pact (x. 1007), 'She ended here, or vehement despair / Broke off the
rest'. She follows Adam into vehemence, mindlessness.)
29 Translation by Lyne, Further Voices, p. 125; see also his discussion.
30 Ricks, Grand Style, p. no.
31 Aeneidi. 11, 'tantaene animis caelestibus irae?', PL vi. 788: 'In heav'nly Spirits
could such perverseness dwell?'

8 MULTILINGUALISM AND EPIC

1 From the Psalms, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani' ('My God, My God, why hast
thou forsaken me?', Matthew 27.46); from Aramaic, 'Talitha cumi' ('damsel,
arise', Mark 5. 41).
2 'Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison'. The preservation, and the
A-B-Aform, answer to some need- aural, historical, emotional, musical, all
four?
3 'Hosanna', 'Alleluia', 'Amen'.
4 This is the Bible's own method, to include etymological or aetiological
glosses. The process can be seen clearly where it is not very plausible, as at
Exodus 2.10 ('and she called his name Moses, and she said, Because I drew
him out of the water'): it is less likely that 'Moses' comes from mashah, 'draw
out' than that the name means 'born from' in Egyptian, as in 'Tut Moses',
'born from Thoth'.
5 In ' "PZ, A Poem in Twelve Books" or Ten?', Philological Quarterly 74 (1995),
131-491 argue that Milton's changes from the 1667 to the 1674 edition of PL
are guided by a recognition of its Virgilian aims and standing.
6 R. D. Williams (ed.), The Aeneid of Virgil, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1972), 1,
p. 157; hereafter 'Williams (ed.), Aendd.
7 If Milton's 'man' represents homo (human) not vir ('male'), it may be because
he is echoing the homo of Ennius behind Virgil's masculine suffix ('-us').
8 Williams (ed.), Aendd, 11, pp. 413-14.
9 Williams (ed.), Aendd, 11. pp 485-6.
10 'As massive as Mount Athos or Mount Eryx or Father Appenninus . . .'
 Notes to pages 154-65 229
11 See Singleton (ed.), Divine Comedy, 1. 1, p. 618, apropos of Inferno xxxm. 80:
'del bel paese la dove '1 si suona', 'of the fair land where the si is heard'.
12 Singleton (ed.), Divine Comedy, 11. 2, p. 234. The line goes on to refer to Paris
by the early, more Latinate form of the name, Parisi not Parigi: 'quell' arte /
ch' alluminar chiamata e in Parisi'.
13 'Orribile' 10 times in Inferno, 3 in Purgatorio. 'Ruinare' 4 times, 'rovinare' once
in the poem. Similar figures for 'livido'.
14 Verses appropriated in due time, in another way and for other purposes, by
the other great English multilingual poet, T. S. Eliot: 'Ara vos prec... / Poi
s'ascose nel foco che li affina' (see The Waste Land, 427, and Eliot's note
there.)
15 See Singleton (ed.), Divine Comedy, 1. 2, p. 476. Virgil has just been speaking in
his native dialect: 'parlavi mo lombardo' ('just now spoke Lombard').
16 The horse 'bursts out, either to go and bathe in the river where before
capture he loved to bathe . . . with neck uplifted high he shakes himself,
gamboling in all the pride of his strength' (my translation). 'Luxurians' used
of an animal can mean simply 'frisk', 'act skittishly'; I have imputed a more
human, moral emotion in the vehicle because of the tenor (Turnus charging
into battle).
17 'Quis . . . posset lacrimis aequare labores?' ('Who could match our toils with
tears?').
18 The last of many comes in the poem's antepenultimate line: 'ma gia volgeva
il mio disio e il velle3, 'but already my desire and my will were revolved...'
(Parodiso, xxxm. 143: Singleton (ed.), Divine Comedy, in. 1. 380).
19 The error may be scribal, either in Dante or his source (Jerome). Or,
whereas the plural of mamlekah requires doubled m, a form from meleketh
would do.
20 'As the leaves fall away in autumn, one after another, till the bough sees all
its spoils upon the ground, so there the evil seed of Adam [souls waiting to be
ferried by Charon across the river Acheron]: one by one they cast
themselves from that shore at signals, like a bird at its call'.
21 And like the parent image, Virgil Aeneid vi. 309-12; but in the points I
mention Dante extends or changes, and Milton follows him in this.
22 Anecdotes talk of people in the streets seeing Dante and observing the marks
of the fires of Hell on his grim face, 'for he has been there'.

9 MULTILINGUALISM AND THE STYLE OF TEMPERANCE IN

PARADISE REGAINED

1 The three synoptic gospels for the story line, John as well for the idiom and
personality of his Son of God.
2 The views of, respectively, Barbara K. Lewalski, Milton's Brief Epic (Provi-
dence: Brown University Press, 1966) and Louis L. Martz, Poet of Exile, ch.
15. We do not know enough about 'brief epic' to say what its decorum or
idiom might be. Didactic does impinge, moving the action far towards
demonstration; yet PR is nothing like any other didactic, certainly being no
230 Notes to pages i66-y2
'Georgic'. Frye's opinion is cited from Walter MacKellar (ed.), A Variorum
Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, vol. iv, PR, (London: Routledge, 1975),
p. 10; hereafter 'MacKellar (ed.), PR.
The work of Milton's own which it most resembles as 'brief epic' is the
early In Quintum Novembris (Hughes, pp. 15-21). But although this shares the
demonstrative tone, and a Satan who flies around and disguises to make
mischief, the decorum is totally different. Its Latin is rich not temperate,
indeed most of the excitement and passion reside in the violent juxtaposing
of Virgilian dignitas with Juvenalian caustic. It is a satirical epic, using high
and low registers together. It is only by contrast that this early experiment
could explain the middle course followed in Milton's late one.
3 Though the line is not by Virgil it had been traditionally thought his. See
Williams (ed.), Aeneid, vol. 1., pp. 156-7. His translation is given above. Virgil
means, 'after composing Eclogues I wrote Georgics; but now I move to epic'.
4 I take it as read that the foremost allusion goes back to the start of PL ('Of
man}sfirstdisobedience .. . till one greater man ...') My point is that in thus
alluding to himself Milton also clarifies the Virgilian signature.
5 'Vanished into the thin breeze', Aeneid rv. 278.
6 Aeneid win. 369.
7 'tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento / (hae tibi erunt artes),
pacisque imponere morem, / parcere subiectis et debellare superbos'.
8 See Corns, Language, pp. 65-9.
9 The value-loaded terms are traditional; after Golden (Cicero, Virgil,
Horace) comes Silver (Seneca, Tacitus, Lucan).
10 Corns, Language, p. 62.
11 'New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large' (Sonnet: 'On the New Forcers of
Conscience', Hughes, p. 145) had already foregrounded etymology in order
to denounce. Satan, here, impugns himself by choosing such discreditable
company.
12 We might recall the 'surge' by which some of his verse translations moved,
late on, from literalness to appropriation.
13 The connection is tenuous. Carey cites a sermon of John Donne's to the
effect that Hebrew 'Miriam3 is related to marom, 'height', 'high ground',
hence 'exaltation'. 'Exaltation' more straightforwardly alludes to the
Magnificat.
14 Horace, Odes iv. i. 30 and 1. v. 9. Lucretius De Rerum Natura iv. 580-1.
15 The gorgeous images of futility of 'the kingdoms of this world' make up the
second half of FQ11. vii, the 'delve' of Mammon. Like Spenser, Milton relies
on speech and image. Unlike Spenser, he moves back and forth between
them.
16 As editors note: see for instance Carey and Fowler, p. 1118 on 111. 47-51.
17 'Glory' and derived forms occur some 32 times in PR III, oustripping other
books of PR, or those of PL.
18 No one, then or now, knows what they were or how they worked except that
it was by divination on a binary principle, like heads-or-tails: see Roland De
 Notes to pages 173-80 231
Vaux, Ancient Israel, tr. John McHugh (Darton: Longman & Todd, 1961). A
further significance of the words as a pair was that, beginning respectively
with the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph and tau, they
express God's comprehensiveness, like 'alpha and omega'. Milton ignores
all such nuances here.
19 Using the same pun as Jonson's, see Carey and Fowler, p. 1131.
20 Milton's pronunciation of Israel' shifts among * /, /* and * * / (see
Concordance). If the last, anapaestic, may be heard here, that revives the
true Hebrew pronunciation, echoing the idea of authenticity in 'true King'.
The same idea is felt in the spondees on either side, and in 'so spake' ('thus
saith the Lord').
21 For a cognate climactic effect, triple similes are placed in PL (1. 284-99),
early, but late in Samson (1692-1707), the companion piece to PR.
22 Iliad, 2. 469, 16. 641 and 17. 570; Orlando Furioso 14. 109; FQ11. ix. 51.
23 Iliad 15. 618, Aeneid vn. 586.
24 As Aristotle had said, after much emphasis on virtue as a 'mean' or 'middle
state' with respect to its objects. It is not half-heartedness or compromise or
bargaining, but an absolute with respect to itself.
25 Found in Roman historians, see MacKellar (ed.), PR, p. 178.
26 Aristophanes said Pericles, like a Zeus, 'thundered and confounded Greece'
(Acharnians, 530). The same author may be the source of humanist
knowledge about Socrates' 'low-roofed tenement'.
27 'But those frequent songs throughout the law and prophets beyond all these
[Greek odists], not in their divine argument alone, but in the very critical art
of composition, may be easily made appear over all the kinds of lyric poesy
to be incomparable' (Reason of Church Government, Hughes, p. 669).
28 'For there [in Babylon] they that carried us away captive required of us a
song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the
songs of Zion' (Psalms 137. 3).

1 0 HEBREW MEETS GREEK IN SAMSON AGONISTES

1 Reasons for thinking the date of composition close to the date of publication,
1671, rather than in the 1640s somewhere, include the following, (i) Samson
was published with PR, as a diptych. They share the theme of temperance,
go well together, and if Samson were the earlier work, why publish it as the
back half of the diptych? (ii) If it were a much earlier work, when exactly was
it written? Further disagreements, and speculations, break out, for example
over the dating of Milton's total blindness, (iii) I dislike the linkage of
composition with biographical factors, not because 'the author is dead', but
because to link them without firm evidence produces confusion. If the work
reflects the blindness, then it cannot reflect the defeat of the Good Old
Cause. (The two speculations cancel each other.) (iv) As will emerge here,
the interlingual side of Samson shows Milton experimenting in a way which
accords well with a development from PL through PR to this dazzling finale.
232 Notes to pages 180-6
2 R. C. Jebb, 'Samson Agonistes and the Hellenic Drama', in PBA 3 (1907-8),
341-8. W. R. Parker, Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes (New
York: Barnes and Noble, 1937).
3 The Trinity MS is quoted from John Milton. Poems, Reproduced in Facsimile from
the Manuscript in Trinity College, Cambridge, with a Transcript (Menston: Scolar,
I
97o)> PP- 34-9-
4 'Hubristes' points to an Aeschylean or at least Sophoclean conception:
hubris is central and abominable to the former, and problematized by the
latter, but Euripides displaces it, to become an optional moral ingredient,
not a religious centrality.
5 2 Kings 1. 9, 'he sat on the top of a hill' and brought down fire and death on
the soldiers sent against him.
6 Similarly, the MS has Saul's suicide in the active epithet,
'Autodaictes' = 'self-slaying', whereas LSJgives the passive form, autodaictos,
'self-slain'. Milton inventedthis active, doing form, whose force is emphasized
by the fact that suicide can be viewed either way, as done or suffered, being
inherently both.
7 See F. M. Krouse, Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1949), whose 'lovely semantic excursion' is
summarized by Hughes, p. 541. 'Agonize', the verb, occurs in Edward
Phillips' New World of Words (1658 and 1663). More searching is the
examination by P. R. Sellin, 'Milton's Epithet Agonistes', in SEL 4 (1964),
137-62, an essay which excellently tracks the blending of Hebrew with
Greek in the Samson story, not least its languages.
8 Still more subtleties are suggested by Sellin, ibid., 144-50.
9 This small speculation is as far as I would go with the reasoning of F. M.
Krouse that Samson is a Christ-figure. To go any further would mar the
aptness of Samson for tragic hero of the Greek sort, Aristotle's person like
ourselves or slightly above.
10 Milton's languages may have further contributed: 'Like whom' = 'Like he
whom', whose condensation resembles Latin's 'quern' for 'is quern'; and the
accusative + infinitive construction in 'whom . . . feign to bear'.
11 Louis Martz, for example, explains the passage by reasoning that it is meant
to seem lame; a contrast is being 'enforced' by the verse between Samson's
'grandeur of despair' and 'the commonplace musing of the chorus' {Poet of
Exile, p. 280, and cf. p. 284 on lines 1025-60).
12 The closing words of King Lear aim at a similar distinction.
13 Martz, Poet of Exile, pp. 284-5, thinks the verse deliberately weak: the 'loss of
dignity' is a 'drastic lowering' of the tone and manner, 'to relieve the violent
tension of the previous scene [Dalila with Samson] by a touch of satirical
humor'.
14 The oikiai, royal houses or 'families'; 'nowadays the best tragedies are
written about a [mere] handful of families', Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 13, see
Classical Literary Criticism, p. 48.
15 See Carey and Fowler, p. 335:'... the ending is indeed morally disgusting'.
 Notes to pages 186-92 233
Noam Flinker argued similarly in a paper to the Fourth International
Milton Symposium, Vancouver (1991).
16 Hughes, p. 549; my translation.
17 One cannot be certain. Italian commentators on the Poetics had also used
lusfratio to translate catharsis, not to mention purificatio and expiatio. See B. R.
Rees, 'Aristotle's Theory and Milton's Practice: Samson Agonistes\ Inaugural
Lecture Delivered in the University of Birmingham, 1971, p. 8. The fact
remains that purgatio was available and normal, and that Milton, despite
being a stickler for accuracy in many contexts, chose the less narrowly
medical rendering here. In the preface as a whole he seems keen to heap up
and mingle metaphors for catharsis. It is such a difficult question, and
indeed tragedy itself is so varied, that an eclecticism like Milton's seems
almost a duty.
18 Greek medicine was religious anyway, in therapies of the temple cults: see E.
R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1963), ch. 4.1 have discussed the mixed metaphors of Milton's preface
in 'Milton's Preface to Samson Agonistes\ in The Explicator, 52. 2 (1994), pp.
73"5-
19 'Event' here includes the Latin sense, 'outcome'. On thought and feeling in
this chorus I am extending a hint from Campbell, p. 604, note on line 657.
20 Hughes, p. 550.
21 Ars Poetica, 189, see Classical Literary Criticism, p. 85. Horace says a play 'should
not be either shorter or longer than five acts'.
22 And then add that all three tragic exemplars mould all three aspects.
23 Reason of Church Government (1642), Hughes, p. 669.
24 Milton takes care about this, using a distinction from Greek philosophy: his
Argument says, 'what Samson had done to the Philistins, and by accident to
himself, where 'by accident'= per accidens, 'incidentally' but not as
intention or main thing.
25 Odes 3. 24. 6 and 3. 24. 8; see Carey and Fowler, p. 399.
26 This is hard to be sure of. The phrases and lines can be balanced in several
ways, not all of them resembling the explicit paired two- or three-word
groups of a verse of a Psalm. At any rate, a binarism is noticeable, which is at
least compatible with psalmody, and further with Greek danced chorus
measure.
27 This idea was developed by Michael Lieb in a paper to the Fifth
International Milton Symposium in Bangor, 1995.
28 'Whom a god wishes to destroy, he first makes mad'. The Latin tag
translates a fragment of Euripides.
29 Pindar's odes stay on the heights throughout, unlike Milton's. Cf. the Rouse
ode, discussed in chapter 2. Milton likes his odes to rise and rise, starting
them off more quietly (like raga) so that the rise is felt throughout.
30 Coinage from Latin or Italian here, as a minor multilingualflourishnear the
climax.
31 Manoa's 'valiant youth' (1738) and 'the Virgins also' (1741) keep up the
234 Notes to pages 192-g
Horatian tone: 'Virginibus puerisque canto', 'I sing for virgins and boys'
{Odes 3. 1. 4).
32 Repeating the idea from Williams, Roman Poetry, pp. 61-2, as used in ch. 2.
33 Mysteriously omitting Manoa, however. If it is acceptable to infer Milton's
feelings about Parliament and Restoration from passages in Samson, or
scrutinize the poem's references to blindness, or to women, or hair-length,
should one not equally note how Manoa harps on Samson's marriage, and
infer that Milton senior so harped on Milton's? All such digressions seem
needless.
34 Brian Vickers, Towards Greek Tragedy: Drama, Myth, Society (London: Long-
man, 1973). A similar approach had been taken towards Oedipus by E. R.
Dodds, in The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other essays on Greek Literature and
Belief (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).
35 'Passion' in the older sense of 'extended suffering', as in the Tassion' of
Christ.
36 It may be worth adding that when Milton says the work was not intended for
the stage, that entails no diminution in its tragic standing; for yet again he is
following Aristotle, to whom reading a tragedy was valid equally with
viewing it {Poetics, ch. 26). It is in the same spirit that Milton talks of the book
of Revelation as 'the majestic image of a high and stately tragedy' (Hughes,
p. 669).

I I THE IMPACT OF MILTON'S LANGUAGES UPON HIS MATURE

ENGLISH VERSE STYLES
1 Not far away is the New Testament thought of the 'talents' God gives, which
must be rightly used: see Milton's Sonnets 7 and 20.
2 See Corns, Language, p. 59.
3 The first element 'du-' may have suggested duo, two, to give the usual
romance-languages sense of'duelling', the ritualized and often representa-
tive fighting of one against one.
4 Other possible Latinisms include 'in fine' (702); the triple-adjective group at
827 ('Impartial, self-severe, inexorable'); 'inexpiable' (839), in fact a cluster-
ing in Samson's speeches to Dalila; 'aggravate' (1000).
5 Rumrich, Matter of Glory. It is one of the study's great merits that its theme
illuminates much more than Rumrich explicitly undertakes.
6 For which see also Neil Forsyth,' "Of Man's First Dis"', in Di Cesare (ed.),
Milton in Italy, pp. 345-69.
7 Phinehas' widow thus names his posthumous son because 'the ark of God is
taken' in battle. Her husband has died there, and his father Eli has died of
grief having 'judged Israel forty years' (1 Samuel 4. 18). Most of these
elements belong also in Milton's story of Samson's 'judging', though
rearranged, because they are a recurrent drama in the biblical history of
Israel. 'Glory' is turned to 'grief, in a peripeteia of battle.
8 Milton wants the continuity of pentameter as well as iambic, even despite
exemplars: Virgil's half-lines, imitated for special effect by Spenser.
 Notes to pages 203-j 235
APPENDIX: TRANSLATING MILTON'S LATIN POEMS INTO ENGLISH

1 The likes of Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Day Lewis, Ciardi.

2 Hughes, p. 146, for text and translation; Carey and Fowler, p. 303.;
Campbell, p. 545.
3 Robert Hodge (ed.), John Milton. Samson Agonistes, Sonnets, &c [sic], in The
Cambridge Milton for Schools and Colleges, General Editor J. B. Broadbent
(Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 97.
4 Epitaphium Damonis, lines 198-200; Hodge, pp. 122-3.
5 Moseley, Poetic Birth, p. 221. Moseley does not translate the ode, as it is not
in Poems, 1645. His stated policy is to make his (prose) translations 'as literal as
is reasonably comfortable' (ibid.).
 Bibliography

PRIMARY TEXTS

Aristotle, Poetics, ed. D. W. Lucas, Oxford University Press, 1968.

Classical Literary Criticism [for Aristotle, Horace and Longinus], ed. T. S. Dorsch,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
Dante, The Divine Comedy, ed. and tr. Charles S. Singleton, 3 vols., Bollingen
Series LXXX, Princeton University Press, 1970-5.
Dryden, John, 'Preface' to his translation of Ovid's Epistles, 1680.
Euripides, Tragoediae, 2 vols., Geneva: Stephanus, 1602.
Homer, The Odyssey, ed. W. B. Stanford, 2 vols., London: Macmillan, 1947-8.
Marvell, Andrew, The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth,
2 vols., Oxford University Press, 1962. Vol. 1, Poems.

Milton
Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don. M. Wolfe et al., 8 vols., New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1953-82.
The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire, London: Constable, 1932.
The Latin Poems of John Milton, ed. Walter MacKellar, Cornell Studies in English
15, New Haven: Yale University Press for Cornell University, 1930.
The Life Records of John Milton, ed. J. Milton French, 5 vols., New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1949-58.
John Milton. The Complete Poems, ed. Gordon Campbell, London: Dent, 1980.
John Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt. Y. Hughes, New York:
Macmillan, 1957.
John Milton, Poems upon Several Occasions, ed. Thomas Warton, second (revised)
edition, London: G. G. J. andj. Robinson, 1791.
John Milton. Samson Agonistes, Sonnets &c, ed. Robert Hodge, in The Cambridge
Milton for Schools and Colleges, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
The Poems of John Milton, ed. John Carey and Alastair Fowler, Annotated English
Poets series, London: Longman, 1968.
Toesie italiane di Milton', ed. Sergio Baldi, in Studi Secenteschi 7 (1966), 103-30.
The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire, 2 vols., Oxford University
Press, 1952.

236
 Bibliography 237
[The Trinity Manuscript]: John Milton. Poems, Reproduced in Facsimilefromthe
Manuscript in Trinity College, Cambridge, with a Transcript, Menston: Scolar
Press, 1970.
A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, vol. 1, ed. Douglas Bush, New
York: Columbia University Press, 1970.
A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton, vol. iv, Paradise Regained, ed.
Walter MacKellar, New York: Columbia University Press, 1975.
The Works of John Milton, General Editor Frank Allen Patterson, The Columbia
Edition, 18 vols., New York: Columbia University Press, 1931-8. Index (2
vols.) 1940.

Shakespeare, William, The Complete Works, ed. Peter Alexander, The Tudor
Shakespeare, London and Glasgow: Collins, 1951.
Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, Annotated English
Poets series, London: Longman, 1977.
Virgil, The Aeneid, ed. R. D. Williams, 2 vols., London: Macmillan, 1972-3.
P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. F. A. Hirtzel, Oxford University Press, 1900.

SECONDARY AND REFERENCE WORKS

Alston, Robin, 'On the Margin', Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies 11. 1
(i993)> 6 ~ I 3-
Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Profile of Horace, London: Duckworth, 1982.
Binns, J. W., Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England; The Latin
Writings of the Age, Leeds: Francis Cairns, 1990.
Bloom, Harold, The Anxiety of Influence, Oxford University Press, 1973.
Bolgar, R. R., The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries, Cambridge University
Press, 1954.
Bottkol, J. McG., T h e Holograph of Milton's Letter to Holstenius', in PMLA
68 (1953), 617-27.
Brinkley, Roberta F., Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century, Johns Hopkins
Monographs in Literary History 3, repr. London: Frank Cass, 1967.
Campbell, Gordon and Sebastian Brock, 'Milton's Syriac', in Milton Quarterly 27.
2 (i993)? 74-7-
Carey, John, 'The Date of Milton's Italian Poems', in RESn.s. 14 (1963), 383-6.
Castor, Graham and Terence Cave (eds.), Mo-Latin and the Vernacular in
Renaissance France, Oxford University Press, 1984.
Clark, Donald h.,John Milton at St Paul's School, A Study of Ancient Rhetoric in English
Renaissance Education, New York: Columbia University Press, 1948.
Corns, Thomas N., The Development of Milton's Prose Style, Oxford University
Press, 1982.
Milton's Language, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Willard R. Trask,
New York: Harper, 1953.
Daiches, David, 'The Opening of Paradise Lost3, in The Living Milton: Essays by
238 Bibliography
Various Hands, ed. Frank Kermode, New York: Macmillan, 1971, 55-69.
Davies, David, and Paul Dowling, ' "Shrewd Books, with Dangerous Frontis-
pieces": Areopagitica's Motto', in Milton Quarterly 20. 2 (1986), 33-7.
De Jong, Irene J. F., Narrators and Focalizers. The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad,
Amsterdam: B. R. Griiner, 1987.
De Vaux, Roland, Ancient Israel, tr. John McHugh, Darton: Longman and
Todd, 1961.
Di Cesare, Mario A., Milton in Italy. Contexts, Images, Contradictions, Binghamton:
MRTS, 1991.
Dillon, John B., 'Surdeo, Saumaise, and the Lexica: An Aspect of Milton's Latin
Diction', in Humanistica Lovaniensia 27 (1987), 238-52.
Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational, Sather Classical Lectures 26, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1963.
The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief, Oxford
University Press, 1973. ,
Evans, J. Martin, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition, Oxford University Press,
1968.
Finley, J. H., 'Milton and Horace: A Study in Milton's Sonnets', in Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology 48 (1937), 29-73.
Fleming, Ray, 'Sublime and Pure Thoughts "Without Transgression": The
Dantean Influence in Milton's "Donna Leggiadra"', in Milton Quarterly 20
(1986), 38-44.
Fletcher, Harris F., Milton's Intellectual Development, 2 vols., Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1956-61.
John Milton's copy of \jycophxon^ Alexandra in the Library of the University
of Illinois', as prepared by John T. Shawcross for Milton Quarterly 23. 4
(1989), 129-58.
Ford, Philip J., George Buchanan. Prince ofPoets, Aberdeen University Press, 1982.
Forster, Leonard, The Poet's Tongues: Multilingualism in Literature, Cambridge and
Dunedin: Cambridge University Press and Otago University Press re-
spectively, 1970.
Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1959.
Hale, John K., 'Sion's Bacchanalia: An Inquiry into Milton's Latin in the
Epitaphium Damonis\ Milton Studies 16 (1982), 115-30.
'Milton's Poems in Greek', in The Interpretative Power. Essays Presented to Professor
Margaret Dalziel, ed. C. A. Gibson, Dunedin: University of Otago English
Department, 1982.
'Milton as a Translator of Poetry', Renaissance Studies 1 (1987), 238-56.
'Milton Playing with Ovid', in Milton Studies 25 (1989), 3-19.
'The Punctuation of Milton's Latin Verse: Some Prolegomena', Milton
Quarterly 23. 1 (1989), 7-19.
'Milton's Self-Presentation in Poems . . . 164^, in Milton Quarterly 25. 2 (1991),
38-48.
'Areopagitica's Euripidean Motto', in Milton Quarterly 25. 1 (1991), 25-27.
 Bibliography 239
'Milton's Euripides Marginalia: Their Significance for Milton Studies', in
Milton Studies 27 (1991), 23-35.
'Artistry and Originality in Milton's Latin Poems', in Milton Quarterly 27. 4
(i993)5 I38-49-
'Milton's Latin Coinages', in Humanistica Lovaniensia 43 (1994), 405-10.
'Milton's Preface to Samson Agonistes\ in The Explicator 52. 2 (1994), 73-5.
'The Audiences of Milton's Italian Verses', in Renaissance Studies 8. 1 (1994),
76-88.
'Why Did Milton Translate Psalms 80-88 in April 1648?', in The English
Renaissance and Reformation: Literature, Politics and Religion, ed. John N. King,
special issue of Literature and History, 3rd series 3/2 (1994), 55-62.
'The Pre-Criticism of Milton's Latin Verse, Illustrated from the Ode "Ad
Ioannem Rousium"', in Of Poetry and Politics: New Essays on Milton and His
World, ed. P. G. Stanwood (Binghamton: MRTS, 1995), pp. 17-34.
'Paradise Lost A Poem in Twelve Books, or Ten?', Philological Quarterly 74
(J995)> i3I~49-
Hardie, Philip, 'The Presence of Lucretius in Paradise Lost\ in Milton Quarterly 29.
1
(i995)? I3-24-
Highet, Gilbert, The Classical Tradition. Greek and Roman Influences on Western
Literature, Oxford University Press, 1949.
Hunter, G. K., John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier, London: Routledge, 1962.
Hunter, William B., The Descent of Urania. Studies in Milton, iQ46-ig88, Lewisburg:
Bucknell University Press and Associated University Presses, 1989.
Ingram, William, and Kathleen Swaim, A Concordance to Milton's English Poetry,
Oxford University Press, 1972.
IJsewijn, Jozef, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, New York and Oxford: North-
Holland Publishing Co., 1977.
Jackson, Heather, 'Writing in Books and Other Marginal Activities', in
University of Toronto Quarterly (92-93), 217-31.
Jebb, R. C , 'Samson Agonistes and the Hellenic Drama', in PEA 3 (1907-08),
341-8.
Kelley, Maurice and S. D. Atkins, 'Milton's Annotations of Aratus', in PMLA 70
(!955)> 1090-1106.
'Milton's Annotations of Euripides', in JEGP 60 (1961), 680-7.
Knight, W. F. Jackson, Accentual Symmetry in Virgil, Oxford: Blackwell, 1950.
Krouse, F. M., Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition, Princeton University
Press, 1949.
Lewalski, Barbara K., Milton's Brief Epic, Providence: Brown University Press,
1966.
Liddell, Henry George and Robert Scott (eds.), A Greek-English Lexicon, revised
by Henry Stuart Jones and others, with a supplement, Oxford University
Press, 1968.
Lieb, Michael, and John T. Shawcross (eds.), Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays
on the Prose of John Milton, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974.
Lipking, Lawrence, 'The Marginal Gloss', in Critical Inquiry 3 (1977), 609-55.
240 Bibliography
Lyne, R. O. A. M., Further Voices in Vergil'sAeneid, Oxford University Press, 1987.
Martindale, Charles, John Milton and the Transformation ofAncient Epic, London:
Croom Helm, 1986.
Martz, Louis L., Poet of Exile: A study of Milton's Poetry>, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1980.
Masson, David, The Life ofJohn Milton: Narrated in Connection with the Political,
Ecclesiastical and Literary History of His Time, 7 vols., London: Macmillan,
1881-94.
Miller, Leo, 'Milton's Patriis Cicutis\ in JVQ,226 (1981), 41-2.
'Some Inferences from Milton's Hebrew', in Milton Quarterly 18.2 (1984), 41-6.
John Milton's Writings in the Anglo-Dutch Negotiations 1651-4, Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1992.
Moseley, C. W. R. D., The Poetic Birth: Milton's Poems of 1645, Menston: Scolar,

Moss, Ann, 'Being in Two Minds: the Bilingual Factor in Renaissance Writing',
in Ada Conventus Neo-Latini Hafniensis, Binghamton: MRTS, 1994, ed. Ann
Moss et al., 61-74.
OED: The Compact Edition ofthe Oxford English Dictionary, 2 vols. Oxford University
Press, 1971.
The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. N. G. L. and H. H. Scullard, second edition,
Oxford University Press, 1982.
The Oxford Companion to the English Language, ed. Tom McArthur, Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare, Oxford University Press, 1982.
Parker, William Riley, Milton's Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes, New York:
Barnes and Noble, 1937.
Milton. A Biography, 2 vols., Oxford University Press, 1968.
Porter, William M., Reading the Classics and Paradise Lost, Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1993.
Prince, F. T., The Italian Element in Milton's Verse, Oxford University Press, 1954.
Redman, Harry F., Jr., Major French Milton Critics of the Nineteenth Century,
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1994.
Rees, B. K., Aristotle's Theory and Milton's Practice, University of Birmingham, 1971.
Ricks, Christopher, Milton's Grand Style, Oxford University Press, 1963.
Ronnick, Michelle Valerie, 'Forty Source Notes to Milton's Pro Populo Anglicano
Defensio Primd, Milton Quarterly 29. 2 (1995), 48-52.
Ross, W. D., Aristotle, London: Methuen, 1923.
Rumrich, John Peter, Matter of Glory, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987.
Saenz-Badillos, Angel, A History of the Hebrew Language, tr. John Elwolde,
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Saunders, J. W., The Profession of English Letters, London: Routledge, 1964.
Sellin, P. R., 'Milton's Epithet "Agonistes"', in Studies in English Literature 4
(1964). I37-62-
Shawcross, John T.,John Milton. The Selfand the World, Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press, 1993.
 Bibliography 241
Slights, William W. E., 'The Edifying Margins of Renaissance English Books',
Renaissance Quarterly 42. 4 (1989), 682-716.
Spitzer, Leo, Linguistics and Linguistic History: Essays in Statistics, New York: Russell
and Russell, 1962.
Steiner, George, What Is Comparative Literature?, Oxford University Press, 1995.
Vickers, Brian, Towards Greek Tragedy: Drama, Myth, Society, London: Longman,
\973-
'Leisure and Idleness in the Renaissance: The Ambivalence of otium\ in
Renaissance Studies 4. 1 (1990), 1-37 and 4. 2 (1990), 107-54.
Von Maltzahn, Nicholas, Milton's History ofBritain. Republican Historiography in the
English Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1991.
Weingreen, J., A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew, second edition, Oxford
University Press, 1959.
Williams, Gordon, The Nature of Roman Poetry, Oxford University Press, 1970.
Williams, Ronald J., Hebrew Syntax. An Outline, second edition, University of
Toronto Press, 1976.
Wittreich, Joseph Anthony, Jr., Visionary Poetics: Milton's Tradition and His Legacy,
San Marino: Huntington Library, 1979.
 General index

Subjects mentioned too often to be usefully indexed include: Adam and names of all
characters from poems; English (language); Greek; Hebrew; Italian; Language(s); Latin;
Milton; Multilingualism.

Aeschylus, 63, 99, 188, 216 n.30 campanilismo, 11

agon (agonistes etc.), 181-2, 232 nn.7 and 8 Castor, Graham, and Cave, Terence, 4, 11
amplificatio, 12, 27-8, 83, 85 catharsis, 186-8, 189, 192
Apollonius Rhodius, 29, 149, 150 Catullus, 31
Aramaic (language), 7, 148 Christ's College, Cambridge University, 4-5,
Aratus, 76-8 85
Ariosto, 2, 61, 69 Cicero, 86, 87, 100, 101, 102, 222 n.8, 223
Aristophanes, 177, 202, 231 n.26 n.13
.Aristotle, 20, 30, 41, 81, 84, 85, 131, 132, 185, civilitas, 31
186, 188-9, J 93J 2
3 J n-24, 233 nn.14 and copia, 12, 27-8, 42
17, 234 n.36 Corns, T. N., 82, 93, 105, 115, 167, 168, 230
Arthur (King), 56, 57, 62 n.8, 231 n.io
Aubrey, John, 40, 62-3, 66, 213 n.32
Dante, 2-3, 7, 15, 19, 25, 48, 49, 53, 54, 69,
Bentley, Dr Richard, 44, 75, 202, 219 n.30 104, 138, 153-7, 200, 215 n.8
Bible translations: on volgare, 2-3
Junius-Tremellius, xii, 225 n.22 Dati, Carlo, 89-91, 92
King James Version (Authorized Version), Delia Casa, 7, 64
xii, 45, 148 Diodati, Charles, 4, 5, 25, 35, 37, 47, 48, 49,
Septuagint, 7 54, 58, 87, 91-3, 208 n.7
Vulgate, xii, 6-7, 154, 225 n.22 doctus poeta, 114, 115, 201
Bible, books of: Dryden, John, 68, 97, 113
Job, 166, 168-9 Du Bellay, Joachim, 3, 13
Proverbs, 114 Dutch (language), 7, 8
Psalms, 23, 43, 44-6, 70, 72-4, 138, 183,
232 n.28, 234 n.26 Early Middle English: see Old English
bilingualism, 13-14 Eikon Basilike, 93, 95
Binns, J. W., 4, 117, 208 n.6, 225 n.20 Ennius, 151, 158
Bloom, Harold, 14, 104 Euripides, 6, 69, 75, 77, 78-80, 86, 99, 186,
Bodleian Library, 31 188, 196, 198, 234 n.28
see also Oxford University
Bonmattei, Benedetto, 87-8 Ford, Philip J., 29, 213 n.27
Bouhereau, Elie, 98, 102 Forster, Leonard, 8, 51, 56
Buchanan, George, 3, 12, 29, 39 Fowler, Alastair, 105-7, IQ8> I09> I 2 9
French (language), 3-4, 7, 81, 226 n.37
Cambridge University, 4-5
see also Christ's College German (language), 4, 7

242
 General index 243
Gil, Alexander, 4, 21 Phillips, Edward, 62
Goffinan, Erving, 19, 83 Philologie, 26, 67
Pindar, and Pindaric, 31, 178, 189, 190, 191,
Holstenius, Lucas, 88-9 198, 206, 234 n.29
Homer, 43-6, 55-6, 70-1, 138, 139, 149, 152, Pleiade, The, 3-4
190, 198, 225 n.26 polemic, 10, 93, 94-6, 97
Hooft, P. C. 8 precriticism, 28-32, 44, 192
Horace, 10, 11, 29, 31, 32, 38, 39, 69, 71-2,
98, 109, 170, 233 n.21, 234 n.31 Questione delta Lingua, 1, 2-6, 13-16, 49, 147,
humanism, 1, 6, 202 200
Huygens, Constantijn, 8, 51 Quintilian, 84

Imitatio, 1, 10-13, 28, 35-6, 39-40 Ricks, Christopher, 106

intertextuality, 1-2, 10-13 Ronsard, Pierre de, 3
Italian journey, Milton's, 5, 24-5, 56-61
Sallust, 101, 222 n.6
Jackson, Heather, 75 Salmasius, 81, 93-8, 99, 224 n.6
Justa Edovardo King (1638), 21 serio ludere, 25-6
Slights, W , 73, 74
Lucretius, 40, 77, 118-19, 213 n.34 Sophocles, 184, 185, 186, 188
Lycophron, 75-6 Spanish (language), 7, 209 n.12
Lyne, R. O. A. M., 132 Spenser, Edmund, 41, 107-8, 171-2,
231 n.15
Marshall, William, 22 Spitzer, Leo, 133
Martial, 96, 99 Statius, 23-4, 25
Marvell, Andrew, 4, 209 n.17 Syriac (language), 7
Miller, Leo, 80, 209 n.19, 218 n.14, 219 n.32
Montaigne, Michel de, 13-14 Tacitus, 96, 167, 201, 222 n.6
Moseley, Humprey, 20-1 Tasso, Torquato, 7, 48, 108, i n
Moss, Ann, 13 translating, xii, 10, 28, 67-74, 2O3~7> 2 2 4 n-7
see also Bible translations
negotium, 20, 81
Virgil, 23, 25, 41-3, 60-1, 114, 137-8, 143,
OED, 106, 109, 209 n.13, 223 n.2, 226 n.38 150, 150-3, 155, 158-9, 166-7, W i73>
Old English (and Early Middle English), 7, 203
70 the Virgilian rota, 41
otium, 20, 81
Ovid, 33-7, 97, 118-19 Warton, Thomas, 28
Oxford University and Bodleian Library, 31, Weckherlin, Georg Rudolph, 8, 51
32 Weston, Elizabeth, 8
Williams, Gordon, 36
Petrarch, 23, 48, 54 Williams, R. D., 150, 151, 152
philaletheia, 26, 75 Wordsworth, William, 51, 225 nn.18 and 19
 Index ofpassages from Milton

Ad Patrem, 22, 42, 52-3 Lycidas, 59, 65

Ad Rousium, 20-1, 28-9, 30-1, 203-6
Areopagitica, 69 Mane Citus Lectum Fuge, 8 3 - 4
At a Vacation Exercise, 4 - 5 , 16, 56, 84 Mansus, 57
Marginalia (in Milton's copies of Lycophron,
Canzone: see Sonnets and Canzone (in Aratus and Euripides), 73-4, 74-80, 85,
Italian) 86
Carmina Elegiaca, 34
Commonplace Book, 81, 85, 226 n.37 Naturam JVon Pati Senium, 118

De Doctrina Christiana, 80, 82, 219 n.32 Of Education, 80

Defences: On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 37, 56
general, 82
Defensio Prirna, 93-8, 99-102 Paradise Lost:
general, 66, 108, 198-202
Elegiae: (Book 1.1-6) 158; (1.12-13) 135; (1.20-2) 135;
general, 38 (1.84-7) 137; (1.141) 116; (1.202) 122;
Elegia I, 35 (1.300-4) 163; (1.451) 122
Elegia II, 34 (Book 11.113-14) 144; (11.151-3) m ; (n-4<>5)
Elegia III, 34-5 123; (11.435) I255 (n.6oo) 126; (n.827) 126;
Elegia IV, 30, 36-7 (11.905) 116; (11.1049) n 6
Elegia V, 37 (Book in. 3) 121; (111.7) 121, 127; (in. 84) 116;
Elegia VI, 37 (in. 200) 124;
Elegia VII, 37 (111.208) 116; (m. 352-3) 122; (111.380) 162;
Epigrams (Latin), 38 (in. 564) 127
Epistolarum Familianum Liber: (Book iv.1-12) 135-6; (iv. 32-41) 63-4, 136;
general, 86-7 (iv. 132) 118; (rv. 168) 124; (iv. 239-40)
Letter VII, 87 144; (iv.246) 125; (iv.257) 125; (iv. 301)
Letter VIII, 87-8 122; (iv. 347) 123; (iv. 462-4) 142; (iv.506)
Letter IX, 88-9 125; (iv. 642) 126; (rv. 651) 126;
Letter X, 89-91 (iv. 705-19) 140, 141; (iv. 994-1004) 127
Epitaphium Damonis, 5, 19, 42, 57-61, 91-3 (Book v. 34) 142; (v.56-7) 142; (v. 623) 116;
(v.766) 124; (v.86o) 121; (v. 890) 116
History of Britain, T h e , 6, 7, 70 (Book vi. 25-8) 139; (vi.27) 125; (vi. 29) 124;
(vi. 163) 121; (vi. 236) 122; (vi. 328) 116,
In Ejfigiei Eius Sculptorem, 11, 46 117; (vi. 355) 122; (vi.365) 124; (vi. 547)
In Obitum Procancellani Medici, 3 8 - 9 121; (vl.587) 125; (vl.620) 117; (VI.623)
In Quintum Novembris, 39, 42, 108, 230 n.2 117; (vi. 669-77) 118-19; ( VL 77^) n 6 ;
(vi.785) 116; (vi. 882-6) 141; (vi. 884) 128;
Judgement of Martin Bucer, The, 68, 69 (vi. 888-9) I 2 8

244
 Index ofpassages from Milton 245
(Book VII. 91) 124; (VII. 141-3) no; (vn. 162) (Book TV) 125, 174-8
112-13; (VII. 168) 124; (VII. 168-9) I245 Philosophus ad Regem, 44
(VII. 216-17) 115; (VII. 263-70) 119-20; Poems . . . 1645, 20, 28-9, 43-4
(VII. 325) 116; (VII. 438-40) 113; (VII. 462) Prolusion VI, 84-5
122; (VII. 482) 114; (VII. 619) 122; Psalm 114 (in Greek), 43, 55-6, 70-1
(Book VIII. 132) 128; (vm.157) 122; (vm.263)
143; (vm. 420) 116; (vm. 431) 116;
Samson Agonistes:
(VIII. 525-6) 142-3; (vm. 533-4) 143;
general, 46, 180-2, 198-202
(VIII.576) I25; (VIII.577-8) III-I2, I44
(line 31) 195; (65-7) 197; (147) 182-3; (J54)
(Book ix. 187) 121; (ix.510-30) 145;
(ix. 532-3) 144; (ix. 547) 144; (ix. 644) 124; 195; (J79) 197; (200) 197; (291) 196-7;
(ix. 653) 124, 138-9; (ix. 701) 144; (312) 196; (318) 195; (334) 197; (354-5)
(ix. 729-30) 144-5; (ix. 792) 121; (ix. 795) 196; (437-9) 197; (453-5) 196; (442) 197;
127; (ix. 832-3) 109; (ix. 845-9) 109-10; (533-8) 196; (667-70) 183; (702) 235 n.4;
(lx.901) 116, 116-17, 143 (827) 235 n.4; (839) 235 n.4; (855-6) 197;
(Book x.97-8) 139; (x.210) 116; (x.294) 115; (1000) 235 n.4; (1010-17) 184; (1018-22)
(X. 313-I4) II5; (X. 54O-1) 121 182; (1091) 196; (1097) 197; (1102) 197;
(Book xi.305-7) 121; (xi.487) 122; (xi.541) (1140) 196; (1150) 196; (1176) 196; (1354)
J
116; (xi.562) 116; (xi.563) 125; (xi. 660) 95; to^-G) 195; (1619) 198-9; (1628)
122 199; (1638) 199; (1647-8) 199; (1660-1707)
(Book XII. 83) 143; (xii.205) 116; (xn.310) 189-92; (1673) I255 (J745-58) l 8 7
Sonnets and Canzone (in Italian), 22, 46-9,
124; (xn. 628-32) 162; (XII. 629) 123, 161;
(xn. 633) (XII. 635) 116; (XII. 643) 161 53-5
Sonnets (in English), 235 n.i
Paradise Regained:
general, 80, 198, 201-2
(Book I) 166-9 Thesaurus (Latin), 80, 219 n.31
(Book II) 169-71 Trinity Manuscript, 62, i n , 180, 181, 185, 216
(Book III) 171-3 n.27