Milton’s Visual Imagination: An Answer to T. S. Eliot

MILTON'S VISUAL IMAGINATION: AN ANSWER TO T. S. ELIOT PHYLLis MAcKENZIE pROBABLY no major English poetry is further removed in point of technique from twentieth-century poetry than is John Milton's. It is not surprising, therefore, that Milton should be attacked by many modern poets and critics who convince themselves that he has not written great poetry because he has not written in the way -that they would have him write. Thus, in his "Note on the Verse of John Milton,"1 Mr. T. S. Eliot declares, "At no period is the visual imagination conspicuous in Milton's poetry," or again, "Milton may be said never to have seen anything"simply because Milton's descriptive technique, like his whole poetic design, is different from Eliot's own and from ·that of the poets he most admires. That such is the case is obvious from the two chief objections which Mr. Eliot raises to Milton's descriptions. First, he complains that Milton's imagery is general" unlike Shakespeare's, for instance, which "conveys the feeling of being at a particular place at a part,icular time." Secondly, he believes that Milton, again unlike Shakespeare, combines words ~n descriptive passages, but does not marry them; that is, according to Mr. Eliot, in combinat1on ·each of Milton's words stands al~of, not giving and receiving larger life from the others. · I wish to begin my defence of Milton's visual imagination at the spearhead of Mr. Eliot's attack-his comparison of passages from Shakespeare's Macbeth with various passages from Milton. The comparison is valuable in itself as a kind of ptocess of condensation by which the most distinctive aspects of Milton's v~sual imagination ~ay be precipitated. Mr. Eliot's conclusions from the comparison, however, are vitiated by_two false assumptions . First of all, he takes it for granted that short passages of Miltonic description may be quoted in isolation as adequate illustrations of the whole technique. In reality, it is difficult to study Milton's descriptive techn~que except in large units, for the snialler units become completely active only when read in the cumulative sequence of the whole. Secondly, Mr. Eliot's deductions from the comparison are made on the assumption that Milton was attempting to achieve the same effects in his descriptions as Shakespeare in his. Actually, of course, a comparison of the two descriptive techniques has significance only when studied in close·relation to the divergent purposes of the poet and the playwright. Aiming at the cumulative expression of a vast, interactive design in his major works, Milton was consciousLy guarding against abortive or disruptive particularization in description. His. purpose was not to create a series of 1See Essays and Studies by Members of the English AssociLltion, XXI, collected by Herbert Read. 17 18 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY self-contained pictures, each. assertively memorable in itseJf. Rather, he aimed at a progressive and composite visualization, in which all details should spring to ordered life within the continuously evolving pattern of the whole. Before beginning a more specific examination of Milton's distinctive aims and techniques in description, it may be well to look at an example of particularized description. Mr. Eliot, quite rightly, holds that Milton's imagery is, on the whole, general. However, it is significant that when the poet saw fit momentarily to arrest the movement .of the reader's mind in a specific, vividly sensuous picture, he was quite capable of doing so; take, for instance, fhe following lines f;om Comus~ millions of spinning Worms, That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired· silk..2 It would be difficult ·to find a more perfect example of the kind of Shakespearean description which, through the careful selectio-n and compression of particularized detail, "conveys the feeling of being at a particular place , at a particular time." ·That such was not lYiilton's usual method does not indicate any failure of his visual imagination, as Mr. Eliot would have us believe. It is the result rather of the most perfect adaptation of his descriptive technique to his total artistic purpose. Mr. Eliot's comparison of a speech of Banquo's...