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and obtained for him the honour of knighthood, which was subsequently raised to a baronetcy by the favour of Prince Albert, who highly appreciated his society. The share which he had in the classification of the Tertiary rocks constitutes, in our opinion, his principal claim to be remembered by posterity.

It remains for us now to sum up briefly our estimate of these four men. Murchison may be defined as the practical, shrewd, successful man. The noble Sedgwick had the Divine gift of genius. Phillips was essentially the politic man; and of Lyell it may be affirmed, that his chief characteristics were those of a retiring student. Each worked at the great problems offered by geology in his own way, and to their combined labours is mainly due the wonderful history of the changes which the earth has undergone.-The Edinburgh Review.

men.

SAMSON AGONISTES:

AN ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE.*

I BEGIN with a word of friendly counsel to fairly intelligent young Do not fritter away your spare time in desultory and aimless reading, especially the reading of frivolous and ephemeral literature. Let me urge you rather to set apart a portion of your daily leisure, however small, for the close, consecutive study of one or more really valuable works, in biography, or poetry, or history, or science. If half a dozen of you were, simultaneously, to engage in the minute examination of the same book, and were afterwards to compare notes, and communicate to one another the fruit of your laborious research, a mighty benefit would accrue to all, and the one immediate benefit would be such an acquaintance with the author and the subject as cannot be otherwise obtained.

The criticism to which I would thus invite you is not of the strictly scientific sort-not carried on according to the rules of the art as practised by professionals, and not based on the principles out of which some would fain construct a science-" the gay science," but altogether a plainer and homelier thing. For, just as you can study the natural sciences, and make astonishing progress in botany, zoology, or geology, without a fine and expensive apparatus, and while greatly ignorant of the nomenclature of the learned, so you can get at the scope and contents of any literary production which it is worth while to study, without much critical skill, and simply by dint of applying to the subject a moderately sharp intellect and a fair share of common sense. It being well understood that an author puts himself into his book, transfuses his own being (so to speak) into his work; that an essay or poem is not simply the fruit of so much continuous thought, but the aggregate result of a vast variety of influences, which have contributed to form the writer's mind, and to give cast and direction to his thoughts-your object is to get acquainted with him-the man himself; his mental habitudes and modes of thought, as well as thoroughly to master, and honestly to judge, what has come from his pen. Of course, in order to do this satisfactorily and well, you require, to begin with, the elements of a tolerable educaOriginally delivered as a lecture in connection with a Young Men's Christian Association.

tion; but, thus equipped, you need not be afraid to grapple with a tragedy of Shakespeare or with the Paradise Lost. It is scarcely necessary to say, that you must be prepared to devote your concentrated attention to either. There is no royal road to learning, and if you find the fatigue of thinking insupportable, you had better not begin at all. I can only assure you, that the time spent on newspapers, periodicals, and light reading, would be much more profitably bestowed on one of the great master-pieces of English literature. And here, let me say, the value of spade-husbandry appears. "Non multa, sed multum," not many things, but much.

But what I wish to urge upon you very specially is this,—that in order to make a book your own, you must minutely analyse it. As you can gather from what I have already said, it is not at all my purpose to furnish you with rules of treatment, or to state the principles on which you must proceed. I would simply suggest that there is an analogy between chemical analysis and critical analysis--so broadly marked as to indicate the main lines of investigation and study in literary things. When an analytical chemist engages in the examination of a compound substance submitted to him, he sets himself to find an answer to these two questions,-What are the constituent parts? How much is there of each ? In other words, there is qualitative analysis, and there is quantitative analysis. And in like manner, when you sit down to the patient study of any literary product, let the one great line of inquiry be as to the qualities of mind and heart, the excellences and defects, the characteristics of thought and style, and other kindred things which appear in the book, and let the other be, as to the subject matter, the course of thought, what the author means to say. The quality and the quantity: under those two heads you may arrange all that it is of consequence to gather and to retain.

And now, as the best way of illustrating the sort of analysis which I would recommend and enforce, let me give you my own non-scientific and simple critique on the Samson Agonistes of our great epic poet.

In common perhaps with others of his minor productions, this dramatic poem of Milton has scarcely received the amount of critical attention which it deserves. For what Mr. St. John says, in reference to the long-continued comparative neglect of his prose writings, may be said in reference to this: "Like him who climbs a lofty mountain, and is so eager to reach the summit, that he neglects or despises the many magnificent prospects which, did he pause a moment, he might enjoy by the way, they (readers of Milton) hurry forward to the Paradise Lost, trampling, in their indecent haste, on his Apology for his early life and writings; his Areopagitica, his Eikonoklastes; his Defence of the People of England -though, viewed separately, each of these be a work whereon an author might build rational hopes of immortality." One might almost say as much as this of the Samson Agonistes, and yet I am not aware that it has, to more than a very inconsiderable extent, been made the subject of critical inquiry or remark; at least I have not been able to find almost anything available for my purpose. So far as I can understand, there is no exhaustive monograph on the Samson Agonistes. The only really valuable thing that I know of is to be found in the Introduction and

Notes of Professor Masson, of the University of Edinburgh. But as I have not had the opportunity of consulting these, I beg you to believe that this Paper contains the plain, unvarnished impressions of a noncritical admirer of our noble bard. One of Jane Taylor's charming Papers (it is to be found in her "Contributions of Q. Q.") is thus entitled: "How it strikes a Stranger." In what follows you will perceive how the Samson Agonistes strikes one who is a comparative stranger to the region of poetic thought and high literary culture, but whose acquaintance with Scripture possibly forms some slight qualification for at least judging whether Milton's conception of the great Hebrew Judge possesses the characteristics of verisimilitude and power.

It would have been interesting to know from his own positive testimony—what we can (and that by no means vaguely) gather from the study of the poem itself—that Milton was drawn to the subject by the influence of strong personal sympathy. The hero of Israel—a sightless captive, toiling in the prison-house of Gaza, was especially attractive to the blind bard; for you are to understand, that, like Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, the Samson Agonistes was the production of his later years, and long after he had been deprived of sight. "A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind." The great-souled politician and poet; the man whose intellectual powers enabled him to hold high converse with the greatest minds of his own or any former age; the man whose literary efforts on behalf of English liberty (especially his overthrow of Salmasius on the arena of political debate) mark him out as a foremost champion of freedom and truth: it is by no means matter of surprise that such a man, compound of physical helplessness and mental power, should find in the closing scene of the life of the deliverer of Israel, a congenial theme for his dramatic muse. And, as the events of recent English history came rushing over him, the final glorious achievement of Samson must have been irresistibly suggested to his mind. Saddened by the declension and profligacy which now prevailed, Milton must have sought refuge in thoughts of the arduous struggle in which he had himself taken a prominent part. And as the Poet, in his double solitude, fought his battles o'er again, how, think you, did the Civil War and its immediate issues appear to him? What was the Royalist cause-with the King, fanatical in his assertion of arbitrary power; the Courtiers who found the breath of their nostrils in his smile; the obsequious High Church Clergy, preaching up "the divine right of kings to govern wrong; attempts to govern without Parliamentary control; oppression of human consciences, and the like-what was all that, in Milton's view, but a great Dagon's temple of idolatry and tyrant force which behoved to be overthrown? And how did the manly efforts of the Puritan party (the Hampdens, Pyms, Marvells, Eliots) with the great Agonistes himself at their head-how did the struggle for freedom now appear? Was it not as if England, in the person of Cromwell, the representative man, had been tugging at the pillars of the mighty fabric of superstition and tyranny, until at last, by God's blessing, it tumbled down-burying the king and not a few of his devoted adherents under its ruins? Is it strange that Milton, while engaged in a retrospect of those stormy times, should have thought of Samson and the overthrow of Dagon's house?

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or that, being drawn to the subject by the strongest sympathies, he should have found it a congenial theme? And indeed he has thrown his whole soul into it. Entering into Samson's case; realising the former greatness of the man in contrast with his deep depression in the prison-house of Gaza; and living over in his own soul the fluctuations of faith and feeling which Samson must have experienced, Milton has portrayed the closing scene with wonderful power. Thus engaged, he was indeed the old man eloquent, and "in his ashes lived their wonted fires."

The structure of the drama is exceedingly simple. The scene is Gaza, and the time is the last day of Samson's eventful life. First, the great captive comes before us as released from labour on a Philistian holiday, and being guided by his attendant to a grassy bank, where, when opportunity offers, he delights to sit and enjoy "the breath of heaven, fresh blowing, pure and sweet, with dayspring born." He soliloquizes on his sad estate, and what has brought him hither. Then comes the chorus (the old Greek chorus, the introduction of which was inevitable in the case of one whose style had been formed on classic models)—a company of Danites, friends and neighbours of the captive, who engage him in conversation, and whose presence serves to cheer him in his loneliness and gloom. Next, Manoah comes upon the scene, while those friends remain-serving as a sort of body guard to Samson, and a background of interlocutor to relieve the formality of the talk. The poor old father has his own way of putting the case, and after exchanging thoughts with Samson, whom he evidently regards with a strange mixture of love and respect, he hastens away, to endeavour by treaty with the lords to procure his son's release. Meanwhile, Delilah appears, and the interview between the traitress and the man whom she betrayed is one of the most powerful passages of the book. She utterly fails to mitigate his stern displeasure, and moves away-not, however, crestfallen, but glorying in her shame. Then up comes the boasting Harapha, the Philistian champion, to look on the stately proportions of the Hebrew warrior, that he may get some explanation of the superhuman feats of which he has heard so much. The colloquy which ensues is thoroughly characteristic: Samson defiant and daring-Harapha haughty and arrogant, hardly to be restrained from attempting personal violence, and at last flinging off in a rage. And now the plot thickens. The Gazites and Philistines from all the country round have assembled in the spacious 'amphitheatre attached to Dagon's temple, and the lords have determined that Samson shall display his recovered strength for the amusement of the people. Accordingly, an officer comes to Samson, with the command to appear. This mandate he at first resolves to set at naught, but afterwards, under an impulse from above-a secret whisper of the Spirit, he complies. He then disappears from the stage, and you hear of him, but never see him again. The friends who constitute the Chorus remaining on the spot, Manoah joins them-aware that his son has gone to make sport before the lords, but anticipating no disastrous result, and sanguine of success for his affectionate scheme. While they converse together, their ears are greeted, first with a distant shout, which they rightly conjecture to be the cry of the people welcoming the great athlete, and then the hideous noise which accompanied the downfal of the temple. While they are

musing on what this may mean, a messenger arrives, in headlong haste, and breathless with horror, who, after a little, details to the awestruck listeners the fearful tragedy which he had witnessed; and the poem ends with the touching noble grief of the bereaved father, and the sage reflections of the Chorus on the mysterious operations of the Providence of God. Such is the structure of the drama. It is now time to inquire as to Milton's conception of his hero. It would hardly be fair to allege that he has failed to apprehend the typical element in Samson's experience; (possibly the dramatic form of composition did not admit of the development of this;) but I suspect that the Arianism of the great poet must have disqualified him for fully entering into this feature of the case. We know how it really was. Coming events cast their shadows before. As one of the deliverers of Israel, Samson was a type of the greatest Deliverer of all; and who can contemplate the strong man stooping to conquer, sacrificing his own life in order to accomplish the destruction of his country's foes, without regarding the event as a vivid portraiture, in type and symbol, of what took place on Calvary, when the strong Son of God, in yielding Himself as a surety to the endurance of the curse, grasped the pillars of the kingdom of darkness, and hurled it into hopeless ruin. But let this pass. On another point Milton seems to have somewhat misconceived the case. He supposes Samson to have been from the very beginning alive to the fact, that his matrimonial connection would give occasion for attempts against the Philistines, and on behalf of his country's freedom; nay, that he was distinctly guided by the Spirit to seek the woman of Timnath for that very end.

"The first I saw at Timna, and she pleased
Me-not my parents-that I sought to wed
The daughter of an infidel: they knew not
That what I motion'd was of God; I knew
From intimate impulse, and therefore urged
The marriage on; that by occasion hence
I might begin Israel's deliverance,

The work to which I was Divinely called."

In keeping with which are Manoah's words :

"I cannot praise thy marriage-choices, son,

Rather approved them not; but thou didst plead
Divine impulsion, prompting how thou might'st
Find some occasion to infest our foes."

But is not this going too far? Samson, as a public man, certainly was (I mean, of course, apart from the workings of grace) under heavenly guidance; but was it not rather in the way of over-ruling his own selfwilled procedure,—the Lord having included the sins of His servant in His glorious plan of providential ordering, and making even departures from the right and the true subservient to His own wise and holy ends? It cannot be denied that Samson had a growing apprehension of his important mission; but it seems to me that our poet overrates his consciousness of this, and that the true conception of the deliverer of Israel is that of one whose sensual proclivities served greatly to choke the germ of grace within him, although affliction was blessed to his recovery

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