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THE
TUKXWOLD, GA., MARCH ‘28, 1865.
Milton.
BY VOLTAIKE.
We present the readers of The Countryman,
this week, with an article, by one of the great
est French authors, upon.one of the greatest of
Eugiish authors. It is an essay by Voltaire,
upon Milton. This essay will be novel, and in
teresting to most of our subscribers, to whom
French literature is a sealed book, on account
of the fact that Voltaire, Moliere, and Bossuei
used a different tongue from that of the Ameri
can vernacular.
As a general rule, French authors possess
more life, vivacity, aud genius, than English
authors. The latter belong to the phlegmatic
Teutonic race, while the former are convenors
of a more southern, and warm-hearted people.
We would recommend our southern friends to
cultivate an acquaintance with French litera
ture : and p. beginning to this end, we trans
late for them what v’oitnira u to say about
Milton : article of the great French
writer, -uprfi the only English
%'U-. pool, they 3r>d facts never before brought
to their attention. 1 Bur w„ j esd with the ar
ticle, as follows:
“ Milton, travelling in Italy, in the days of
his youth, saw represented, in Milan, a comedy
entitled, 'AJaai, .o’- Original Sin,’ written by
sonae were God the Father, the Devils, the
Angels, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, Death, and
the Seven Mortal Sine. This subject, worthy of
the absurd theatrical genius of that era, was
written in a manner commensurate-with its de-
sign.
The scene opens with a choir of angels, and
Michael thus speaks, in the name of bis con
federates :
* Let the rain-bow be the fiddle-bow of the
firmament; let the seven planets be the seven
notes of our music \ let time beat exactly his
measure ; and let the winds strike the organ,’
&c.
The whole piece is in this style. I whisper it
to the French people, only, who will laugh at
the statement, that our drama, at that time,
was but little better—that the Death of Saint
John the Baptist, and a hundred other pieces,
were written in the same style : though, real
ly, we had neither The Faithful Pastor, nor
Aminte. .
Milton, who attended the representation of
the comedy spoken of, saw, beneath the absur
dity of its execution, the hidden sublimity of
the subject. Often, in things that appear rid
iculous to the vulgar, there is a source of grau-
deur that is perceptible only to men of genius.
The Seven Mortal Sins, dancing with the Devil,
are certainly the height of extravagance, and
silliness: hut a universe, mads unhappy by
man’s frailty: the good deeds, and the ven
geance of the Creator! the source of our mis
fortunes, and our crimes : these are subjects
worthy of the boldest pencil. There is, above
all, in these subjects, an indefinable,dark horror,
a sombre and sad sublime, which does not at
all disagree with the English fancy. Milton
conceived the design of making a tragedy of
one Audreinojmd dedicated t-.< Marie de Medi-
The subject of,this com-
- Vi<: dramatis per
COUNTRYMAN.
the farce of Andreino. He even composed one
act, and a half, of the tragedy. I have been
assured of this fact by men of letters, who had
it from the daughter of Milton, who died while
I was in London.
The tragedy of Milton commenced with a
monologue of Satan, who is introduced into the
fourth book of the epic of the great Enedish
poet. It is when the Spirit of Revolt, escaping
from the depths of hell, discovers the sun, as
it goes out from the bands of its Creator.
‘Thou upon whom my Tyrautshowers his gifts,
Thou sun, a star of fire-light whom 1 hate !
Day that with pain my dazzled pupils burn,
Thou who appear’st the god of circling heavens!
Before whom brightness disappearing, flies—
Who mak'st the faces of the stars to pale J
Reflex of the Most High who rules thy course—
Alas! I once eclipsed thy dazzling light.
On heaven’s blue vault, thrice higher raised
than thou,
Thy toppling throne low bowed its head to me.
But I am fallen—pride has plunged me down *
During the time in which Milton worked at
this tragedy, the sphere of his ideas enlarged,
in proportion as he thought. His plan grew
immense, under his pen ! and, at last, in place
of a tragedy, which, after all, had been only
bizarre, and uninteresting, he conceived an ep
ic poem—a kind of work in which men have
often agreed to approve of the whimsical, under
the name of the marvelous.
The English civil wars, for a long time, de
prived Milton of the leisure necessary for the
execution of his great design. He was born
with an extreme passion for liberty : and this
sentiment always prevented his taking part
with any of the sects seized with the furor of
ruling in his country. He did not wish to bow
to the yoke of any human opinion, and there
was no church that could boast of counting
Milton one of its members. But he did not
preserve this neutrality in the civil wars, be
tween the king and parliament. He was one of
the most bitter enemies of the unfortunate king .
Charles I. He even entered, with avidity, into
the interest of Cromwell: and by a fatality,
but too common, this zealous republican be
came the partisan of a tyrant. Hqwas the sec
retary of Oliver Cromwell, of Richard Crom
well, and of the parliament that continued up
to the time of the restoration. The English
employed his pen to justify the killing of their
king, and to reply to the book which Charles 11.
had caused to be written, by Saumaise, upon
the subject of this tragic event. Never was
there a fine subject so badiy treated, on boih
hands. Saumaise defended, in a pedantic
style, the cause of the king who died upon the
scaffold—of a royal family wandering in Eu
rope—and even of all the European kings, in
terested in the quarrel. Milton sustains, with
bad declamation, the cause of a victorious peo
ple, who boasted of having tried their prince
according to their laws. The memory of this
strange revolution will never perish among
men, but the books of Saumaise, and Milton,
are already engulfed in oblivion. Milton,
whom the English, to-day, regard as a divine
poet, was a very poor writer in prose.
He was fifty-two years old, when the roy
al family was restored. He v/as embraced in
the amnesty which Charles II. gave to the ene
mies of his father, but was declared, by the act
of amnesty, disqualified for holding any office
iu the kingdom. It was then that he com
menced his epic poem, at an age at which Vir
gil had finished his. He had hardly put his
hand to this work, when he was deprived of
his sight. He found himself pcor, fersairen,
and blind, but was not discouraged. He was
engaged nine years iu composing his Paradise
Lost. He had then but very little reputation—
the wits of the court of Charles II. either not
knowing him, or holding him in low esteem.
It is not astonishing that an old secretary of
Cromwell, grown old in exile, blind, and with
out worldly goods, should be ignored, or de
spised at a court that had substituted for tho
austerity of the government of the Protector,
all the gallantry of the court of Louis XIV.,
and in which there was no taste for anything
but effeminate poesy—the effeminacy of Wall
er—the satires of Rochester—and the wit o!
Cowley,
Undoubted proof, that he had but little repu
tation, is found in the fact that he bad much
trouble in finding a publisher for his Paradise
Lost. It had a forbidding title, as everything
that bore any relation to religion was then out
of fashion. At last, Thompson gave him thirty
pistoles for a work that has been worth a hun
dred thousand crowns to the heirs of this
Thompson. This publisher was so much afraid
of finding a poor market for Milton’s epic, that
he stipulated that the half of these thirty pis
toles shduld not be paid, unless there was a sec
ond edition, which Milton never bad the con
solation of seeing. He remained poor, and with
out fame. His name adds auother to the list of
great geniuses persecuted by fortune.
Paradise Lost was thus slighted in London,
but Milton died, never doubting that he would,
one day, have a name, and fame. It was Lord
■Sommers, and Dr. Atterbury, afterwards Bish
op of Rochester, who finally willed that Eng
land should have an epic poem. They engaged
the heirs of Thompson to issue a beautiful edi
tion of Paradise Lost. Their influence carried
many with them. Then the celebrated Mr.
Addison wrote, in his usual style, to prove that
this poem equaled those of Virgil, and Homer.
The English began to persuade themselves that
this was so, and the reputation oi Milton waa
established.”
Mark the Traitors.
There are men at the south wbacounsel sub
mission—who advise to give up the negroes*
find return to the yaukee union, in order, Is;
they say, to save our land, stock, Ac. All such
men should be bung. You find them in every
town , village, and country neighborhood, in the
land. They should be watched, marked, and
the seal of condemnation set upon them, so
that they, and their posterity, may be dis
graced, for all comiug time, a6 was the case
with the tories of the first l evolution.
There are men, within our knowledge, who
little dream of it, against whose names we hare
drawn a long black mark, and whom we in
tend to expose, at a proper time. They may
have us marked for destruction, too, should the
yankecs, instead of the southerners, succeed.
Very well, traitors and tories! we are quit«
willing for you to mark us, and, if you succeed,
for you to bang us. But you will not succeed.
«« There is life in the old land, yet
and this old southern land is bound to come out
victorious. Already do we see, beaming from
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