7. Literary Tendencies in the Second Half of the Eighteenth

Century.

8. The Bibliography of English Fiction 1660-1800.

9. Aims and Plans in the Study of Contemporary Literature.

GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

The German Section has recommended the following topics: 1. A survey of the material available in American libraries for investigations in the field of Germanic languages and litera

tures.

2. A study of German-American lyric poetry; the collection and publication of material.

3. The preparation of a list of contributions by American scholars to the study of modern languages and literatures.

Other topics that have been suggested are:

4. German Literary Criticism.

5. The Romantic Movement.

6. Young Germany.

7. The Drama of the Nineteenth Century.

8. Heinrich von Kleist.

ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

1. French Linguistics.

2.

French Medieval Literature.

3. The Renaissance in Western Europe.

4. XVII and XVIII Century French Literature.

5. XIX Century French Literature.

6. Old Spanish Language and Literature.

7. Spanish Literature since the Renaissance. 8. Italian.

Each member who expects or hopes to attend the meeting of the Association is urged to inform the Chairman of the committee of the two or three topics in which he is most interested and to state what part he is willing to take in the work of these groups. The topics need not be among those suggested by the Committee. Groups will be organized for the discussion of any topic asked for by five or more members.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.

JOHN M. MANLY, Chairman.

1

The original objection urged against the conclusion of Paradise Lost was its failure to conform strictly to the neo-classic requirement that "an Heroick Poem . . . ought to end happily, and leave the mind of the reader, after having conducted it through many doubts and fears, sorrows and disquietudes, in a state of tranquility and satisfaction." Milton's subject, according to Dryden, “is not that of an heroick poem, properly so called. His design is the losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous, like that of all other epic works."2 Addison concurred in this opinion; but he considered that the poet's exquisite judgment" in raising Adam to a state of great happiness through the vision of future events had virtually overcome "the natural defect in his subject." 3 The author, he says, " leaves the Adversary of Mankind . . . under the lowest state of mortification and disappointment. We see him chewing ashes, grovelling in the dust, and

1

1 Spectator 369. 'Op. cit.

'Original and Progress of Satire.

loaden with supernumerary pains and torments. On the contrary, our two first parents are comforted by dreams and visions, cheared with promises of salvation, and, in a manner, raised to a greater happiness than that which they had forfeited. In short, Satan is represented miserable in the height of his triumphs, and Adam triumphant in the height of misery." With one detail of the conclusion, however, Addison found fault. It would have been better, he declared, to omit entirely the last two lines of the poem (misquoted):

They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

"These two verses," he says, ". . . renew in the mind of the reader that anguish which was pretty well laid by that consideration

The World was all before them, where to chuse

Their place of rest, and Providence their Guide."

It was this criticism that emboldened Bentley, in his edition of Milton (1732), to propose what Verity calls the crown to his emendatory toils." For the melancholy lines at the close of Paradise Lost, he substituted "a distich, as close as may be to the author's words, and entirely agreeable to his scheme "

Then hand in hand with social steps their way
Through Eden took, with heavn'ly comfort chear'd.

Thus Bentleyized, the dismissal of Adam and Eve was cheerful enough to comply with the canon of the epic. A similar, but less violent, device was employed eight years later by Peck. He suggested, in his Memoirs of Milton,* that the order of the five concluding verses should be changed to read as follows:

4 Francis Peck, New Memoirs of .

Mr. John Milton, 1740, p. 201.

Some natural tears they dropt, but wip'd them soon;
Then, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

The world was all before them where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

If no other benefit arose from this formal criticism, which was so preoccupied with petty details of technique that it was impervious to many of the fine moral and spiritual issues of Paradise Lost, it at least served to concentrate critical opinion on the actual merits of Milton's conclusion. It should be said also to the credit of eighteenthcentury appreciation that the reaction was immediate. Champions arose at once to remark upon the fine sensibility displayed by the poet in combining with flawless skill man's sorrow for the loss of innocence and his hope in future redemption. Defenses of the kind brought together in Todd's edition of Paradise Lost illustrate the completeness with which the neo-classic protest against Milton's conclusion had been repudiated in the course of one century. In the century and more that has intervened since Todd's edition, critical judgment of Milton has fluctuated greatly with the varying points of view occasioned by changes in literary, social, and political interests; but, on the whole, there has been a remarkable stability of opinion in regard to the conclusion of the poem. We have come to accept approval of this as one of the finalities of criticism.

Recently, however, Milton's apologists have been confronted by a new objection. The judicial critics deplored the tinge of melancholy in the concluding lines; a critic of today holds, on the contrary, that if Milton had been consistent as a theologian Adam and Eve would have departed

'H. J. Todd, The Poetical Works of John Milton, 2d. ed., 1809, vol. IV, pp. 351 ff. See also J. W. Good, Studies in the Milton Tradition, 1915, ch. VI.