chorus, and reconcile himself to their unnatural and chilling interruptions of the action and pathos of the scene: I am fully persuaded they came there upon motives of expediency only, and kept their post upon the plea of long possession, and the attractions of spectacle and musick: In short, nature was sacrificed to the display of art, and the heart gave up its feelings that the ear and eye might be gratified. When Milton therefore takes the Chorus into his dialogue, excluding from his drama the lyrick strophe and antistrophe, he rejects what I conceive to be its only recommendation, and which an elegant contemporary in his imitations of the Greek tragedy is more properly attentive to; at the same time it cannot be denied that Milton's Chorus subscribes more to the dialogues, and harmonizes better with the business of the scene, than that of Greek tragedy we can now refer to. any I would now proceed to the review of the performance itself, if it were not a discussion, which the author of The Rambler has very ably prevented me in; respect however to an authority so high in criticism must not prevent me from observing, that when he says-This is the tragedy which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded, he makes it meritorious in any future critick to attempt at following him over the ground he has trod, for the purpose of discovering what those blemishes are, which he has found out by superiour sagacity, and which others have so palpably overlooked, as to merit the disgraceful character of ignorance and bigotry. The principal, and in effect the only, objection, which he states, is that the poem wants a middle, since nothing passes between the first act and the last, that either hastens or delays the death of Samson. This demands examination: The death of Samson I need not describe: it is a sudden, momentary, event; what can hasten or delay it, but the will of the person, who by an exertion of miraculous strength was to bury himself under the ruins of a structure, in which his enemies were assembled? To determine that will, depends upon the impulse of his own spirit, or it may be upon the inspiration of Heaven: If there be any incidents in the body of the drama, which lead to this determination, and indicate an impulse, either natural or preternatural, such must be called leading incidents; and those leading incidents will con stitute a middle, or, in more diffuse terms, the middle business of the drama. Manoah in his interview with Samson, which the author of the Rambler denominates the second act of the tragedy, tells him "This day the Philistines a popular feast Here is information of a meeting of his enemies to celebrate their idolatrous triumphs; an incident of just provocation to the servant of the living God, an opportunity perhaps for vengeance, either human or divine; if it passes without notice from Samson, it is not to be styled an incident; if, on the contrary, he remarks upon it, it must be one-but Samson replies, Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive "Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him "Of all these boasted trophies won on me, "And with confusion blank his worshippers." Who will say the expectation is not here prepared for some catastrophe, we know not what, but awful it must be, for it is Samson which denounces the downfall of the idol, it is God who inspires the denunciation; the crisis is important, for it is that which shall decide whether God or Dagon is to triumph, it is in the strongest sense of the expression-dignus vindice nodus-and therefore we may boldly pronounce Deus intersit ! That this interpretation meets the sense of the author, is clear from the remark of Manoah, who is made to say that he receives these words as a prophecy. Prophetick they are, and were meant to be by the poet, who, in this use of the sacred prophecy, imitates the heathen oracles, on which several of their dramatick plots are constructed, as might be shown by obvious examples. The interview with Manoah then is conducive to the catastrophe, and the drama is not in this scene devoid of incident. Dalila next appears, and, if whatever tends to raise our interest in the leading character of the tragedy cannot rightly be called episodical, the introduction of this person ought not to be accounted such; for who but this person is the cause and origin of all the pathos and distress of the story? The dialogue of this scene is moral, affecting, and sublime; it is also strictly characteristick. The next scene exhibits the tremendous giant Harapha, and the contrast thereby produced is amongst the beauties of the poem, and may of itself be termed an important incident: That it leads to the catastrophe I think will not be disputed, and, if it is asked in what manner, the Chorus will supply us with an answer "He will directly to the lords I fear, "And with malicious counsel stir them up Here is another prediction connected with the plot, and verified by its catastrophe; for Samson is commanded to come to the festival and entertain the revellers with some feats of strength: These commands he resists, but obeys an impulse of his mind by going afterwards, and thereby fulfils the prophetick declaration he had made to his father in the second act. What incident can show more management and address in the poet, than this of Samson's refusing the summons of the idolaters and obeying the visitation of God's Spirit. And now I may confidently appeal to the judicious reader, whether the Samson Agonistes is so void of incident between the opening and conclusion as fairly to be pronounced to want a middle. Simple it is from first to last, simple perhaps to a degree of coldness in some of its parts; but to say that nothing passes between the first act and the last, which hastens or delays the death of Samson, is not correct, because the very incidents are to be found, which conduce to the catastrophe, and but for which it could not have come to pass. The author of the Rambler professes to examine the Samson Agonistes according to the rule laid down by Aristotle for the disposition and perfection of a tragedy, and this rule he informs us is, that it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And is this the mighty purpose for which the authority of Aristotle is appealed to? If it be thus the author of the Rambler has read The Poeticks, and this be the best rule he can collect from that treatise, I am afraid he will find it too short a measure for the poet he is examining, or the critick he is quoting. Aristotle had said that every whole hath not amplitude enough for the construction of a tragick fable; now by a whole (adds he in the way of illustration) I mean that, which hath beginning, middle, and end. This and no more is what he says upon beginning, middle, and end; and this, which the author of the Rambler conceives to be a rule for tragedy, turns out to be merely an explanation of the word whole, which is only one term amongst many employed by the critick in his professed and complete definition of tragedy. I should add that Aristotle gives a further explanation of the terms, beginning, middle, and end, which the author of the Rambler hath turned into English, but in so doing he hath inexcusably turned them out of their original sense as well as language; as any curious critick be convinced of, who compares with Aristotle's words in the eighth chapter of the Poeticks. may them Of the poetick diction of the Samson Agonistes I have already spoken in general; to particularize passages of striking beauty would draw me into too great a length: at the same time, not to pass over so pleasing a part of my undertaking in absolute silence, I will give the following reply of Samson to the Chorus: "Wherever fountain or fresh current flow'd "Thirst, and refresh'd; nor envied them the grape, "Whose heads that turbulent liquor fills with fumes." Of the character I may say in few words, that Samson possesses all the terrifick majesty of Prometheus chained, the mysterious distress of Edipus, and the pitiable wretchedness of Philoctetes. His properties, like those of the first, are something above human; his misfortunes, like those of the second, are derivable from the pleasure of Heaven, and involved in oracles; his condition, like that of the last, is the most abject, which human nature can be reduced to from a state of dignity and splendour. Of the catastrophe there remains only to remark, that it is of unparalleled majesty and terrour. CUMBERLAND. THE ARGUMENT. *Samson, made captive, blind, and now in the prison at Gaza, there to labour as in a common work-house, on a festival day, in the general cessation from labour, comes forth into the open air, to a place nigh, somewhat retired, there to sit a while and bemoan his condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certain friends and equals of his tribe, which make * Samson, made captive, blind, &c.] Mr. Upton is the first critick who has observed, what yet is obvious, that in this tragedy Samson "imprisoned and blind, and the captive state of Israel, livelily represent our blind poet with the republican party, after the Restoration, afflicted and persecuted." See his Crit. Observ. on Shakspeare, 1748, p. 144. I must add, that Milton, who artfully envelopes much of his own history and of the times in this drama, had long before used the character and situation of Samson for a temporary allegory in The Reason of Church Government, B. ii. Conclusion. He supposes Samson to be a king, who, being disciplined in temperance, grows perfect in strength, his illustrious and sunny locks being the Laws. While these are undiminished and unshorn, with the jaw-bone of an ass, that is, with the word of his meanest officer, he defeats thousands of his adversaries. But, reclining his head on the lap of flattering prelates, while he sleeps, they cut off those bright tresses of his Laws and Prerogatives, once his ornament and defence, delivering him over to violent and oppressive counsellors; who, like the Philistines, extinguish the eyes of his natural discernment, forcing him to grind in the prison-house of their insidious designs against his power. "Till he, knowing this prelatical rasor to have bereft him of his wonted might, nourish again his puissant hair, the golden beams of Law and Right; and they, sternly shook, thunder with ruin upon the heads of those his evil counsellors, but not without great affliction to himself." T. WARTON. The younger Richardson, in his manuscript observations on this tragedy, has noticed the allusions of the poet to the history of himself and of his own days. "The poem," he remarks, "was written when the Saints were oppressed, and in little appearance of ever seeing their own times again. Therefore THE CONCLUSION is with a view to comfort them, as well as himself, by so great an example of Providence, Aye watching o'er his Saints with eye unseene, as he writes on the glass window at Chalfont. This Milton loves to allude to in all his writings, and is the great moral of this tragedy; as Mr. Pope observed to me. And, considering this point further some days afterwards, I am persuaded Milton must have a view to himself in Samson." TODD. |