Milton and The Protestant Aesthetic: The Early Poems

.·, ,\_ MILTON AND .THE ~ROTESTANT AESTHETIC: THE EARLY POEMS1 - . ;MILTON is the last great Christian poet until Gerard ~anley H~?k.ins~- 1 Between these two there are poets of stat1Jre who are Chnst1anJ . 1 - but there. are no Christian poets of stature. It-wou'ld ,seem that Milton , failed to transmit his most deeply felt values. -This has been ge~erally ~·sumed. Such a view> however, is only superficially tr_ue. It fails to take proper accountof the untrad'itional nature of Milton's theology and of the aesthetic consequences of his highly individual relig]os;ty. For while Milton comes at the end of the universal Christian culture and preserves much from the medieval hed tage (as from the more recent orthodoxy of the ·- . Reforma.tion) it-is also true that Milton projects into the secular culture. which succeeds him~ values and techniques which already ]n his most_ characteristic. work contradict and ·repudiate significant aspects of the 1 traditional Christian aesthetic. - Milton comes not merely at the end of the g~eat Christian tradition. ' In a real sense he ends that traditio~. His role in the process of cui tural .· change must be recognized as active. He carries Christian poetry, an·d in _particular the poetic use of the Christiansyrnbol, to a limit beyond which it cannot ·go and remain Christian.· ·In its ultimate reaches~ Milton~s ~rt is· distinctively Protestant, but Protestant edging on th~ purely secular. For thi. s reason the abandonment by the poets of the next century of Milton's __.: awesome theological framework was by no means an abandonment of the· directio'n Milton had set for English poetry. I~deed, the heterodox nature of ·Milton's theology is already sign enough of the rapid djsintegration of the~logy. This process of disintegration merely continues after Milton-and it will not stop with rnortalism and Arianism. . My aim here is to isolate the specifically Protest~nt character of Milton's _ aesthetic in its shift fro~ tradition to innovation. I am aw~re that it is no easy matter to discuss an aesthetic problem touching on belief without betraying a bias. Wi.th Milton the task is doubly difficult. For ·1\1ilton scholarship is increasingly thin-skinned. The defenders -of Milton have' lately been very much on the defensive. Those who are n.ot entirely with' them must be entirely against them-and no quarter is given. The revival of Christian humanism in .contemp9rary critical thought seems to have coincided with the scholar] y defence of MiIton against his detractors. There has been, consequently, a tendency to refuse any distinction betwe.en faith in Milton and faith in Christ. The h~retical -ideas of Paradise Lost lThi.s article will form part of a chnpter of a book now in preparation on Christian symbolism in,Englisn poetry of the earlier sevcnt~enth century. Another section of .the book "George Herbert and the Humanist Tradition" appeared in the Univenily of Toronlo ~uartcrly, January, 1947. 346 . \·MILTON AND THE PROTESTANT AESTHETIC 347 are minimized until, in the view of Mr. C. S. Le~is, Milton emerges as more traditional and orthodox than Archbishop Laud. _ Formerly, the detracto.rs could be scattered by a parade of learning. Milton's thought was disinterred and laid in line like the splendid bones of the dinosaur. But it was, perhaps, not altogether eco'nomic to save the -man's skin by producing his skeleton. Certainlyj there is a great gain in , the fact that it now seems possible to locate in the consciousness of our time a core of sensibility hospitable to the assumptions of a· Christian' aesthetic. The Christian scholar is encouraged to abandon the an ~iseptic illusionof (/disinterested objectivity" and to say out loud that the doctrine of original sin is much more than arationalization of "dass guilt," and that· the Christian ·notion of the free will is not just a display of. aristocratic impudence. The Christian scholar may even admit agreement with Milton·Dn a point of faith without dread of having· committed an intellectuaJ indecency. .One would hope that as a result of thi·s particular liberation from the respectable academic conscience, ·the dichotomy in...