August 7. 1832
Milton’s Disregard of Painting
It is very remarkable that in no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of the great painters of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art; whilst every other page breathes his love and taste for music. Yet it is curious that, in one passage in the Paradise Lost, Milton has certainly copied the fresco of the Creation in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. I mean those lines,—
——“now half appear’d
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane;—“&c.1
an image which the necessities of the painter justified, but which was wholly unworthy, in my judgment, of the enlarged powers of the poet. Adam bending over the sleeping Eve in the Paradise Lost2 and Dalilah approaching Samson, in the Agonistes[3] are the only two proper pictures I remember in Milton.
1 Par. Lost, book vii. ver. 463.
——“so much the more
His wonder was to find unwaken’d Eve
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest: he on his side
Leaning, half raised, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamour’d, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then, with voice
Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whisper’d thus: Awake,
My fairest,” &c.
Book V. Ver. 8.]
Notes
[Footnote 3:
“But who is this, what thing of sea or land?
Female of sex it seems,
That so bedeck’d, ornate, and gay,
Comes this way sailing
Like a stately ship
Of Tarsus, bound for the isles
Of Javan or Gadire,
With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
Sails fill’d, and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds that hold them play;
An amber-scent of odorous perfume
Her harbinger, a damsel train behind!”]