Milton and Old English
Hong Shen
I have to admit at the very beginning that my topic today, "Milton and Old English," is a
highly controversial and, to some extent, an obsolete one. It is controversial, because after
debating for nearly three centuries, scholars fail to reach any definitive conclusions. It is obsolete
in the sense that so much has already been written or said on this subject that nowadays nobody
seems to care, or dare, to reopen the case again. If you look into the MLA bibliography, you are
not likely to find anything written upon this subject since the 1960's. Yet questions still remain. So
long as people read Paradise Lost and the Old English Genesis, they will continue to hear echoes
between the lines of these two literary works, and the question of a possible connection will still
be brought up from time to time. It is a far more positive attitude for us to face and try to solve this
long-overdue problem.
The controversy can be traced back as early as the beginning of the 18th century. In a letter
dated August 20, 1706, Bishop Nicholson, the former Oxford Saxonist, wrote to Humphrey
Wanley, the first bibliographer of Beowulf and other Old English poems (Item 7 in the handouts):
I hope your translator will oblige us with the reasons of his opinion, if he still continues in it,
that a good part of Milton's Paradise was borrowed from Caedmon's. I can hardly think these
two poets under the direction of the same spirit: and I never could find, I think his
introduction to our English history rather evinces the contrary, that Oliver's secretary was so
great a master of the Saxon language, as to be able to make Caedmon's paraphrase his own.1
The above quotation touches upon the two major issues of the controversy: Milton's knowledge of
Old English, and his knowledge of Old English Genesis, which was first published as one of the
Caedmonian poems by the Dutch scholar, Francis Junius, in 1655.
Sharon Turner quoted Nicholson's letter in 18402 to support his earlier argument that Milton
1
2
Quoted by Sharon Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons. 3rd ed., vol. III, 1840, p.186.
Sharon Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons. 3rd ed. Vol. 3. Paris: Baudry's European Library, 1840, p.186.
might have modeled his Paradise Lost on the Old English Genesis. He believes that Milton and
Junius were acquainted, and that Junius was likely to have explained a large part of the poem to
Milton and thus made a deep impression on the poet's mind.
Two years later, however, Turner's friend Issac Disraeli published a lengthy article in
Amenities of Literature (1842), disputing Turner's viewpoints. According to Disraeli, Francis
Junius was too stingy and self-centered to either lend the precious Caedmonian manuscript or
spend a lot of time to translate or explain the Old English poems to Milton. And he dismissed the
notion about Milton's knowledge of Old English as absurd: "We have every reason to believe that
Milton did not read Saxon. At that day, who did?"3
David Masson, Milton's biographer, also noticed some striking coincidences between the
notions and phrases in Satan's soliloquy in the Caedmonian poems and those of Satan's in Milton's
Paradise Lost, but he doubted Milton's knowledge of this Old English Genesis, for by the time it
was published in 1655, Milton had been totally blind for three years, and
... there is some difficulty in understanding how he could have found a reader fit to spell
out to him the small quarto of 106 pages, containing the fragments, printed as they were in
the old Anglo-Saxon characters, running on painfully in prose fashion without metrical
break, and without comment or translation of any kind.4
A year after Masson's Life was published, R.P. Wuelcker, a German scholar, wrote an article in
Anglia (IV, 1881) concerning the same question. He compared the text of Milton's The History of
Britain with Wheelock's version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and drew the conclusion that
Milton's knowledge of Old English had been most rudimentary. Because an elementary mistake in
the Latin translation had been faithfully reproduced by Milton, and the poetical account of the
battle of Brunanburg5 had been dismissed as "quite outside the scope of being understood."
3
Issac Disraeli. Amenities of Literature. Vol. I. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1864, p.58.
4
David Masson, The Life of John Milton. Vol VI. Rptd. Gloucester, MA:Peter Smith, 1965, p.557, note.
5.
The poem is contained in the annals for 937, describing the battle fought between the armies of Wessex and
Mercia led by Athelstan (grandson of King Alfred) against an alliance of Norsemen, Britons from Strathclyde, and
Scots.
Therefore there was little possibility for Milton to have read the Old English Genesis, even if he
could have found someone to read it out for him.
Despite this damaging piece of evidence, the argument in favor of Milton's knowledge of the
Junius Manuscripts still prevailed during the early 20th century. We can list a string of
well-known scholars and critics who did not hesitate to support this argument: Benjamin Thorpe,
William Conybear, Henry Morley, Hippolyte Taine, S.H.W. Gurteen, Robert Watson, etc.
Stephanie von Gajsek even devoted a monograph on that subject. In Milton und Caedmon6, she
first set out to prove that Milton and Junius were indeed close acquaintances by quoting a letter
from Junius' nephew Issac Vossius to his friend Nicholas Heinsius (Item 8 in the handouts). Then
she lists all the parallel passages from the Junius Manuscript and Paradise Lost in an effort to
show that this close resemblance is by no means a coincidence.
Nevertheless, many people still remain unconvinced about this alleged relationship between
Milton and the Old English poem. Studies on Milton's History of Britain cast further questions on
the poet's knowledge of Old English. Harry Glicksman pointed out several places in the book
where Milton had blindly repeated the mistakes in Wheelock's Latin translation of the Saxon
Chronicle, without checking the original Old English text.7 French Fogle, editor of Milton's
History of Britain for the Yale edition of Milton's prose works, made similar remarks in his notes8
J.W. Lever, however, made a tactful explanation to the above problems by tacitly evading the
issue of Milton's knowledge of Old English. After making a careful examination of the
correspondence between Issac Vossius and Nicholas Heinsius, as well as Masson's materials in the
Life, he asserted that since Milton and Junius had been close acquaintance in London during the
first half of 1651, and since they shared a common interest in the Caedmonian poems, the poet
therefore must have known the content of Junius's new discovery, very probably from Junius's
6
Stephanie von Gajsek. Milton und Caedmon (Wiener Beitrage zur Englischen Philologie, Vol. 35). Wien und
Leipzig: Wilhelm Braumuller, 1911.
7
Harry Glicksman. "The Sources of Milton's History of Britain," Studies by Members of the Department of
English (University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature). Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1920.
8
French Fogle, ed. Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Vol. V, Part I (History of Britain). New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1971.
own mouth. Lever further pointed out that one possible consequence of this specific knowledge
had been Milton's drastic change of his major work from a five-act tragedy of Adams Unparadised
into a full-scale religious epic, Paradise Lost. Comparing the drafts of the proposed drama with the
present poem, it is not difficult to see their difference in spirit and style. The enlarged parts stand
unmistakably close to the Old English Genesis B.9
Here the argument seems to have entered a blind alley: for lack of physical evidence, Lever's
view can easily be dismissed as baseless speculation. B.J. Timmer, for instance, called Lever's
theory "mere assumption"10 in his introduction to the Old English Genesis. He considered that
the parallels in detail between Paradise Lost and the Old English Genesis are not striking enough
to prove the influence of Caedmon on Milton; and Milton's poor knowledge of Old English
eliminated any chance for him to know the content of the Caedmonian poems. This harsh view
seems to have dominated the current critical opinion on that particular subject. Professor Carl
Berkhout has summed up the situation in his posting for the thread of "Milton and Old English" on
Ansaxnet, the internet Old English forum, on August 18, 1994:
We can be reasonably certain that Milton and Junius were in touch with each other in
the mid-1640s, but there is no evidence that they were in touch during the very brief
period (perhaps only a few months in 1651) that Junius had the manuscript in his
clutches in England. One can only speculate---and then speculate again on what they
talked about.
He claims that " Milton despised Old English. Or at least he despised the very little that he knew
of it."11 In the concluding remarks for the same thread (August 30, 1994), Professor Berkhouse
again wrote:
Nowhere in all the volumes that Milton left us is there a single peep about the usefulness of
Old English, and nowhere is there any indication that he knew the language or care to know it.
9
J.W. Lever. "Paradise Lost and the Anglo-Saxon Tradition," The Review of English Studies. Vol. 23, 1947,
pp.99-106.
10
B.J. Timmer, ed. The Later Genesis. Oxford: The Scrivener Press, 1948, p.65.
11
Carl Berkhouse's posting to the Ansaxnet Discussion Forum on August 14, 1994.
Unless someone come up with a relevant Milton text that hasn't been booted around countless
times already, the matter cannot usefully be carried any further.
While I generally agree that the speculation about the relationship between Milton and Junius
is not fruitful, I definitely am not convinced by the argument that Milton, who spent a lifetime in
search of the Anglo-Saxon past, did not care to know or even "despised" Old English. Since the
term "Old English" was not coined until the 19th century, we cannot expect to find it "in all the
volumes that Milton left us." Yet from the quotations in Item 4 of our handouts, we see that
Milton regarded the Anglo-Saxon language indiscriminately as "English" or his "native tongue."
There are abundant allusions and comments in Milton's prose and poetic works to show that the
poet cared for the origin of his native language.
One English outburst amid his college Latin orations expresses Milton's deep affection
towards the gift of his mother tongue (Item 1 in the handouts):
Hail native language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips,
Half unpronounc'd slide through my infant lips,
Driving dumb silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sat two years before:
...
I pray thee then deny me not thy aid
For this same small neglect that I have made:
But haste thee straight to do me once a Pleasure,
And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure ...
(“At a Vacation Exercise” 1-18)
Milton's petition to his "native language" is not an empty statement. Since his childhood,
Milton had been reading avidly and had become familiar with a great deal of English literature,
from Chaucer, Langland to Spenser and Shakespeare. But that did not prevent his aspiration for
taking more treasures from the "wardrobe" of his native language. His single ambition in his youth
was to write a national epic, with a historical setting before the Norman Conquest, and more
importantly, in English..
As it happened, there was a tradition at St Paul's School before and during Milton's time that
placed special emphasis on the reading of English books. Richard Mulcaster, head master of St.
Paul's School between 1596 and 1608, was one of the foremost Renaissance English humanists
who advocated the national significance of the English language and literature, and was certainly
the best known schoolmaster in all Britain at his time. Alexander Gill, Mulcaster's immediate
successor, was also a fervent advocator of the native tongue, and was much interested in the
current study of Old English. In Lognomia Anglica (1619), a Latin study of the English language,
he cited several lines of Aelfric's letter to Sigeferth in the original Old English, and provided with
interlinear translation which, in H.F. Fletcher's opinion, was from Gill's own hand. 12 Gill's
admiration for the older forms of English assumed an extreme manner, for he criticized Chaucer
harshly for his adoption of too many French and Latin words.
There is some controversy as to whether Gill used his treatise as a textbook in his school or
not.13 Milton, too, has made no mention of either the elder Gill or St. Paul's School, although they
were neighbors in St. Botolph's parish in 1641 and 164214. But one thing is clear: Milton attended
the school (c. 1620-25) while Alexander Gill was still its head master. Our poet was trained by
Gill's peculiar method of parallel translation while laid great emphasis on English. One can be
reasonably sure that Gill's attitude towards the native tongue might have affected Milton's decision
in favor of English in his poetic creation, as recorded in Milton's Vacation Exercise, "Mansus,"
and The Reason of Church Government.15
One specific influence on Milton is Gill's system of English spelling, as it is demonstrated in
12.
H.F. Fletcher, The Intellectual Development of John Milton, , 1961, p.185. Gill printed Aelfric's letter in
Roman type, not in the so-called Saxon letter introduced by John Day, the printer. The Saxon letter had already
been used in A Testimonie of Antiquitie (1567). Because Gill's translation of these lines differ slightly from the
translation in the Testimonie, Fletcher considered it to be Gill's own translation, and he further speculated Gill's
interest in the study of Old English with this and other scraps of evidence.
13.
H.F. Fletcher inclined to believe that Gill used his book as a textbook, but D.L. Clark and others disagreed.
14
William Riley Parker. Milton: A Biography. Vol.II, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, p.884, n.65.
15.
In Vacation Exercise (1628), Milton states his ambition to employ English in "some grave subject" comparable
to the Iliad and Odysses. In "Mansus," he announces the legendary history of Britain as the theme of his future
national epic. In The Reason of Church Government, he again maintains that a great epic should be written in the
language of one's own country.
the Logonomia Anglica. Gill was very particular about the purity of English words. In the
"Praefatio ad Lectorum" ("Preface to the Reader"), he made this impassioned call to preserve the
Saxon-English tongue of Britain:
[ O ye Englishmen, on you, I say, I call, in whose veins that blood flows, retain, retain
what yet remains of our native speech, and whatever vestiges of our forefathers are yet to
be seen, on these plant your footsteps.]16
Milton certainly tried to follow the teachings of his school master. Besides his English speech in
the Academic Exercise ("Hail native language ..."), Milton professed again in the preface to "The
Second Book" of The Reason of Church Government (1642) that he had taken painstaking efforts
towards that direction (Item 2 in the handouts):
... I applied myself ... to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my
native tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end, that were a toilsome vanity, but to be
an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout
this island in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome,
or modern Italy, and those Hebrew of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this
over and above of being a Christian, might do for mine; ...
(Hughes 668)
Although he regarded it "a toilsome vanity" "to make verbal curiosity the end," Milton did draw as
much as he could from the native literary tradition. In this respect he has been much
misunderstood. His English was often accused of being too Latinate17, and critics found many
16
Alexander Gill, Logonomia Anglica. Ed. Otto L. Jiriczek. Strassburg: Karl J. Trubner, 1903, p.10: "O vos
Anglos! vos (inqua) appello quibas sanguis ille patrius palpitat in venis; retainete, retinete quae adhuc supersunt
reliquiae sermonis natiui; & quae mariorum vestigia apparent illis insistite." The English translation was made by
H.F. Fletcher.
17
. An early commentator on the Latinity of Milton's style in Paradise Lost was the 18th-century critic, Jonathan
Richardson. In his biography of the poet, he pointed out:"Milton's language is English, but 'tis Milton's English; 'tis
Latin, 'tis Greek English; not only the Words, the Phraseology, the Transposition, but the Ancient idiom is seen in
All he Writes, So that a Learned Foreigner will think Milton the Easiest to be understood of All the English
Writers" (Darbishire, p.313). This comment has since been much exaggerated. The first sentence of P.L. ("Of man's
first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree ...") is often quoted as a classical example of the Latinate
syntax. Nevertheless, these so-called "Latinism" is perfect natural in Old English poetry, where we can easily find
examples of such long and involved verse paragraphs, e.g. the Old English poems "Wanderer" (17-29; 37-44) and
"Seafarer" (8-19; 33-43). F.T. Prince's The Italian Element in Milton's Verse (Oxford, 1954) isolates many of the
Italian features of Milton's English, e.g. the device of adjective + noun + and + adjective, as in "sad task and hard"
features of Greek, Hebrew, and Italian as well. Considering the huge amount of study Milton had
devoted in these languages, it is only natural that his English writing should contain so many
foreign elements. But Milton is first of all an English poet -- "Ioannis Miltoni Angli" ("John
Milton the Englishman"), the overwhelming majority of his vocabulary and poetic devices are still
English and not of other languages. In "Some Notes on the Native Elements in the Diction of
Paradise Lost,"18 J.R. Brow picked out many words and usages from Milton's epic that are
specially English in origin. Helen Darbishire also noticed that Alexander Gill's spelling system
bears much resemblance to Milton's in the manuscript of Paradise Lost.19 To illustrate how much
Milton is indebted for the simplicity of his verse to his Saxon predecessors, James Ingram, the
third Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxons at Oxford, translated the first 15 lines of Milton's epic
into Old English: surprisingly, only ten loan-words need to be replaced, while the syntax remains
virtually untouched.20 (Item 11 in the handouts)
The only existing evidence of Milton's direct involvement in the study of Old English is the
curious Old English spelling of the word "nest" in his annotated copy of Gildas's De exido et
Conquestu Britanniae (Item 3 in the handouts), yet his interest in Anglo-Saxon studies was
evidently deep-rooted. In preparing for his proposed national epic and The History of Britain,
Milton eagerly sought out whatever materials he could find relating to the history of the
Anglo-Saxons, and frequently quoted from Bede, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and those antiquaries as
William Camden, John Selden, William Lambarde, and Henry Spelman. In the tractate, "Of
Education" (1644), he did not forget to mention "the Saxon and common laws of England, and the
statutes,"21 (Item 6 in the handouts) along with other classical works necessary for an all-round
(P.L., V 564). Again, this transposition of epithets is a typical Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, e.g. "
t hi n fre r swa
cl ne gold, ne swa read ne gesawon"; Bruce Mitchell labels this separation of adjectives governing the same noun as
"the splitting of heavy groups" (A Guide to Old English, p.67).
18
Notes & Queries, No. 196, 1951, pp.424-28.
19.
Helen Darbishire, The Manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost. 1931, p.xxxiii ff.
20
James Ingram, An Inaugural Lecture on the Utility of Anglo-Saxon Literature. Oxford: The University Press,
1907, pp.47-48.
21.
M.Y. Hughes, ed. John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, 1985, p.636.
education. This again implies his intimate knowledge of the publications of Parker, Lambarde, and
Spelman.
Milton's annotated copy of Gildas is still kept in Houghton Library. As J. Milton French
pointed out, Milton imitated "the Anglo-Saxon charaters then in vogue." This is yet another
example of Milton's interest to know Old English. The peculiar shapes of "s" and "t" in the word
"nest" are faithfully copied from the first Anglo-Saxon fount cut by John Day, the foremost
Elizabethan printer in 1565 or 1566. Matthew Parker ordered and paid for the fount in order to
print an Easter homily by Aelfric, the 10th-century abbot of Eynsham, compiled by his Latin
secretary, John Joscelyn. Other books printed with this Anglo-Saxon fount include William
Lambarde's Archaionomia (1568), a compendium of Anglo-Saxon laws (there is a copy in
Harvard Law School Library); John Caius's treatise on the antiquity of Cambridge University (De
antiquitate Cantabrigiensis Academiae libri duo, 1568); John Foxes's Acts and Monuments (or the
Book of Martyrs, 1569), Henry Spelman's Concilia, decreta, leges, constitiones (1639)and Asser's
Life of King Alfred (Aelfredi regis res gestae (1574), all of which contain Old English texts and
all of which were consulted and quoted by Milton in the writing of his History of Britain.
It was a remarkable feat for Milton to finish in his blindness and old age The History of
Britain, which is exclusively devoted to period of the Anglo-Saxons. It should also be pointed
out that this reliable and comprehensive account of early English history was the first of its kind
ever written in English. Early witers on that subject, such as Gildas, Bede, Nennins and the
medieval chroniclers had only provided the raw materials for this history. Other antiquaries and
historians, like William Camden, Francis Bacon, John Hayward, John Speed, and Raphael
Holinshed,
had failed to produce the continuous narrative that was needed for a proper
Anglo-Saxon history. They were too preoccupied with either minute details or particular
characters to achieve an overview of of larger patterns that would reveal the meaning of English
history. Milton assimilated the scholarship of his contemporary antiquaries and Saxonists, and
accomplished this difficult task single-handedly.
According to French Fogle, editor of The History of Britain for the Yale edition, there were
three books which Milton used extensively and relied heavily upon as his main sources. The most
important one is Abraham Wheelock's edition of Bede's Church History (1643) which also
containes the first edition of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, both the Old English text and its Latin
translation, supplemented by William Lambarde's Archaionomia in a 1644 printing. The other two
books are the first volume of Henry Spelman's Concilia (1639) and James Ussher's De Premordiis
(or Britanniarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, 1639), the former containing Old English materials
and both dealing exclusively with the Anglo-Saxon period.22 The frequent usage of these books
confirms the argument that Milton's exposure to Old English was extensive.
The two quotations from Book V of The History of Britain (Item 10) are indeed very
problematic: On the one hand, they do clearly show that Milton had difficulties in reading some
passages in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but that is quite normal, for even experts like Abraham
Wheelock and William Nicholson would have the same problems. On the other hand, these two
quotations provide textual evidence that Milton did try to work from the Old English text, contrary
to the claims of several critics that Milton never seemed to cast his eyes on the Old English text
when reading Wheelock's book.23 Moreover, in the first quotation, Milton's frustration seems to
dwell on the ambiguity of the narrative, rather than the language problem. As Fogle points out in
his note, later scholars with expert knowledge of Old English, were also puzzled by the same
passages.24 In the second quotation, Milton actually tells us that up to this point, the Old English
text has been "sober and succint," a positive indication that he could at least read some simpler
Old English texts. Another twelve long years would have to pass before the publication of
Paradise Lost,25 why must we dismiss the possibility that Milton might have improved his
22
Complete Prose Works of Milton, Vol. V, Part I (The History of Britain). New Haven: Yale University Press,
1971, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii.
23
James W. Earl, for instance, claims in a posting to the Ansaxnet on August 23, 1994:"He [Milton] used
Wheloc's Bede ... I see no evidence at all that he ever turned his eyes--much less his ear--to the OE side of the
page."
24
Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Vol. V, Part I (The History of Britain). New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1971, p. 289, n. 71.
25
Milton began the writing of The History of Britain during the period from 1645 to 1647. By March 1649, when
he was called to Latin Secretaryship, he had already finished the first four books. There was an approximately
6-year break, in which he was too fully occupied with public business and personal problems to work on the project.
According to Edward Phillips, Milton resumed his work on The History of Britain in 1655. The first edition of
Paradise Lost was published in 1667.
knowledge of Old English during this period?
After becoming Latin Secretary of the Commonwealth Government, especially after the
publication of Pro Popula Anglicano Defensio in February 1651, Milton enjoyed the international
reputation of a learned scholar, and he was at that time a celebrity in Lodon's scholarly circle
where those Saxonists and Antiquaries frequented. Masson noted the extraordinary eagerness of
scholarly foreigners visiting London in order to meet Milton, or to be introduced to him, in the
year of 1651.26 Among the numerous visitors was one German named Christopher Arnold,
afterwards Professor of History at Nuremberg, who recorded such an interview in a personal letter
dated London, 7 August 1651.27 Here are some excerpts from the letter:
In London I enjoy a familiar acquaintance with the great Selden, who, admitting me readily
into his own well-furnished library, takes me also sometimes to certain gardens on the
Thames, where there are rare Greek and Roman inscriptions, stones, marbles: the reading of
which is actually like viewing Greece and Italy at once within the bounds of Great Britain.
From the Cottonian library, of which he has charge, he has several times let me have a sight
of important Anglo-Saxon manuscripts; and he spontaneously offered me letters of
recommendation to the Oxford Librarian, John Rouse, a man of the truest politeness. I have
besides formed a peculiar intimate acquaintance with the Arch-bishop of Armagh, James
Ussher, Primate of all Ireland ... John Durie has become my closest companion near
Westminster, a man, as you know, who is affability itself, and who is appointed keeper of
what was formerly the King's Library in St. James's Palace ... I have very frequent
conversation with him about the state of the new Republic. The strenuous Defender of the
same, Milton, entered readily into talk: his style is pure and his writing most terse: Of the old
English Theologians and their commentaries on the Books of Holy Scripture, the erudition
of which I can attest, he seemed to me altogether to entertain a too harsh, if not an unjust,
opinion ... Francis Junius,28 the relative of Gerhard John Vossius, and a most cultured man,
26.
David Masson, The Life of John Milton, IV, 1965, p.350.
27.
Cf. W.R. Parker, Milton: A Biography, I, 389. Parker tells us that the letter was sent to Arnold's friend, Dr.
George Richter, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Altorf. He puts the date as 16 July 1651.
28.
Francis Junius (1589-1677), philologist and antiquity, was born at Heidelberg in 1589. He studied philology
under G.J. Vossius, who in 1607 had married his sister, Elizabeth. In 1621, Junius came to England, where he
entered the house of Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, the celebrated collector, as librarian, and tutor to his son.
Since then, Junius devoted himself to the study of Old English and paid many visits to the Bodleian Library at
Oxford. His principal publications include "De Pictura Veterum libri tres" (1637, "The Printing of the Ancients"),
Camden (1655), and Quatuor D.N. Jesu Christi Evangeliorum (1665). He returned to Netherlands in 1651, but in
1674 he came to England again and in October 1676 retired to Oxford. Junius left all his Anglo-Saxon manuscripts
and valuable philological collections to the Bodleian Library. E.N. Adams regarded him as "the greatest Old
is now preparing for the press a Grammar of the Anglosaxon tongue and an Anglosaxon
Dictionary, and has told me all about his doings in the kindest manner ...29
From this letter, we can get a general picture of the scholarly circle in London around 1651. Most
significantly, it provides the valuable information about Milton's acquaintance with other scholars,
especially Francis Junius. This acquaintance was confirmed by the correspondence between
Junius's nephew and his friend Heinsius.
The significance of Milton's acquaintance with Junius lies in the fact that the Dutch scholar
discovered in 1651 the Old English manuscripts of Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, Christ and Satan,
which were instantly acclaimed as the Caedmonian poems. They were found in the library of
Archbishop Ussher,30 who subsequently gave the manuscripts (thenceforth known as the Junius
MS) to Junius as a gift. Junius printed the manuscripts under the title of Caedmon in Amsterdam
in 1655. Of these poems, Genesis31 bears a striking resemblance to Milton's great epic, Paradise
Lost. Hence the tantalizing question whether Milton had been acquainted with this Old English
religious epic.
I had the privilege of reading the facsimile edition of the Junius MS, The Caedmon
Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry (Oxford 1927) in the Bodleian Library. What
impressed me most was the fifteen artistically drawn illuminations in the manuscript. Most of
these drawings match Milton's description in Paradise Lost: the fall of the rebel angels was
represented on page three of the original manuscript, with the illumination divided into four
English scholar in the seventeenth century" (Old English Scholarship in England, 1970, p.70).
29.
30.
Cited by David Masson in The Life of John Milton, IV, 1965, pp.350-51.
See Christopher Arnold's introduction of Archbishop Ussher. The Archbishop was a well-known antiquary in
the seventeenth century, and he kept a large collection of Old English manuscripts. Ussher has written extensively
on the ecclesiastical history of England. Milton was heavily indebted to Ussher's De Primordiis (Dublin, 1639)
when he was writing Books II and III of The Hostory of Britain.
31.
The Old English Genesis actually consists of two poems, both of which are fragments. Lines 1-234, 852-2935
are known as Genesis A (c.700); lines 235-851 were interpolated into the manuscript form the so-called Genesis B,
which was a 10th-century translation of a 9th-century Old Saxon poem. The German professor Edward Siever
differentiated these two parts in Der Heliand und die Angelsachsische Genesis (1875), in view of certain
characteristics of vocabulary, meter, and style. It has been hailed as a triumph of Old English scholarship.
different parts. Lucifer appears in the first part as the Archangel on the steps leading to an ornate
palace, holding a scepter in his left hand; while other angels pay homage to him, four of them
standing below him hold crowns in their hands in a symbolic gesture of Lucifer's ambition. A little
below, Christ is seen banishing the rebel angels, with three spears in hand. Down at the bottom,
Satan has fallen into the jaw of Hell, which was significantly represented as Leviathan in a lake of
fire -- "In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire" (P.L. I 48); his angelic army, on the other hand,
tumble down after him from heaven,
Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Sky
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition ...
(P. L. 45-47)
The image of rebel angels falling "headlong" into the jaw of Leviathan recurs on page sixteen of
the manuscript. Another striking detail of resemblance is represented in the illumination on page
nine of the original manuscript. Here we see a ladder reaching down from heaven to paradise, the
door of heaven is opened, showing St. Michael within as chief of good angels, and the angelic host
on the right and left.32 This is exactly what Milton's Satan has seen on his way to Paradise:
... far distant he descries
Ascending by degree magnificent
Up to the wall of Heaven a Structure high,
At top whereof, but far more rich appera'd
The work as of a Kingly Palace Gate
With Frontispiece of Diamond and Gold
Imbellisht; ...
The Stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw
Angels ascending and descending, bands
Of Guardians bright ...
The Stairs were then let down, whether to dare
The fiend be easy ascent, or aggravate
His sad exclusion from the doors of Bliss.
32.
(P.L. III 501-25)
The biblical allusion here is Jacob's dream at Bethel, just after he had cheated Esau out of his father's
blessing:"He dreamt that he saw a stairway reaching from earth to heaven, with angels going up and coming down
on it" (Genesis, 20: 12)
Although the "stairway reaching from earth to heaven" is a familiar biblical allusion, it occurs
rather late in the sequence of the Genesis stories in Old Testament. Milton followed the Old
English Genesis B in anticipating this episode -- this very act is suggestive of Lever's assertion
that Milton must have known the content of Junius's new discovery. Very probably, Junius had
shown the manuscript to Milton before he left for Holland. After all, the discovery of the
Caedmonian poems was a big event in the 17th-century Old English scholarship, since it was the
"first purely literary interest in Old English," and was achieved by "the greatest of Old English
scholars."33 Even if Milton knew nothing about Old English, these illuminations with brief Latin
descriptions and, more important, with Junius's explanation, would have left a graphic picture in
the deep layer of Milton's mind.
All of the above-mentioned arguments are based on the assumption that Francis Junius and
his Caedmonian Manuscripts are the only sources from which Milton could learn anything about
the Old English Genesis. But that is apparently not the case.
Sir Israel Gollancz, the editor of the Junius Manuscripts facsimile edition, pointed out in
1927 that there was a transcript copy of the Junius Manuscript made by William Somner, kept in
the library of Canterbury Cathedral. At the head of the manuscript, there were two Latin notes in
Somner's handwriting (Item 9 in the handouts): The first note tells us that the transcript was made
from a manuscript deposited in D'Ewes' library, with the title "Genesis in English" or "Genesis in
the Saxon language." The second note indicates that the manuscript later went to Archbishop
Ussher's hand.34 The two conflicting notes led Gollancz to speculate that either Ussher, having
secured the manuscript, lent it to D'Ewes, and D'Ewes did not tell Somner the fact that the
manuscript was a loan from the archbishop; or the manuscript originally belonged to D'ewes, and
by some arrangement passed from D'wes to Ussher before D'Ewes' death in 1650.
B.J Timmer, in his introduction to the Junius Manuscripts, further revealed in 1948 that the
Dutch scholar Johannes de Laet (1582-1649), Symondes D'Ewes, and William Somner all quoted
33.
E.N. Adams, Old English Scholarship in England from 1566-1800, Archon Books, 1970, p.70.
34
Sir Israel Gollancz. The Caedmon Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1927, pp. xiv-xv. The English translations of the two notes are mine.
from this Old English poems liberally in their unpublished or published Anglo-Saxon dictionaries.
Laet is known to have stayed for a short period of time between January 1 and January 9, 1637 at
the home of his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Powell, Master of Requests, who lived in Dean's yard,
Westminster. D'Ewes obviously had the manuscript in his own library. And Somner, in the preface
to Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum (1659), acknowledged both Archbishop Ussher and
Francis Junius for their generous helps in lending him the Caedmonian and other manuscripts,
including Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica.35
So besides Francis Junius, the Dutch scholar with the manuscript of the Caedmonian poems
in his hand, we have at least three other people, Laet, D'Ewes and Somner, who knew the
existence of this manuscripts, and who were capable of reading the Old English poems. Not to
mention the former owner of the manuscript, Archbishop Ussher and their Saxonist mutual friends
like John Selden and William Dugdale. Taking these factors into consideration, Milton had a
pretty good chance to learn the content of the Caedmonian poems from one of his friends in the
scholarly circle during the period between mid-1640's and late 1650's.
Moreover, as Bishop Nicholas implied in his letter to Wanley in 1706, there might have been
some unsatisfactory or inaccurate Latin translations of the Old English Genesis existing in
Milton's life time. In the same letter we also learn that most of the Caedmonian poems had already
been translated in piece-meal into Latin by Francis Junius himself in the quotations of his
Anglo-Saxon dictionary,36 as is the case with the dictionaries of Laet, D'Ewes, and Somner.
I am not prepared to solve all these mysteries in this paper, but I do want to argue here that
Old English literature has exerted significant influence on Milton, either directly or indirectly,
through so-called literary tradition. In a famous critical essay, "Tradition and the Individual
Talent", T.S. Eliot placed great emphasis on the ubiquitous significance of literary tradition:
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his
appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot
35
36
B.J. Timmer. The Later Genesis. Oxford: The Scrivener Press, 1948, pp.8-10.
Sharon Turner. History of the Anglo-Saxons. 3rd ed., vol.III, 1840, p.986.
value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. .37
This is especially true of Milton, a learned scholar whose imagination derived mainly from his
reading.
In the widest sense, tradition denotes any established patterns of thought, action, or behavior
which is available for the writer to study and learn from. By the English literary tradition, we
actually mean the literary forms, motifs, devices, and various other conventions that are typical of
English poets writing in the native language before or during Milton's time. These conventional
touches are numerous in Milton's poetic creation.
The complexity of literary influence can be illustrated by the internal evidence from a sample
of Milton's great epic. In a striking scene in Book one of Paradise Lost, Satan, newly awaken
form his stupor after the fall, is surveying the fearful scene of his defeated army floating on the
Lake of Fire:
... on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and call'd
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intrans't
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarch't imbow'r; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce Winds Orion armed
Hath vent the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carcasses
And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood,
Under amazement of thir hideous change.
(P.L. I 299-313)
The horrible picture is made vivid by the biblical allusion of the Pharaoh's army perishing in "the
Red-Sea" and other classical images such as "Angel Forms" lay "Thick as Autumnal Leaves," and
37.
Hazard Adams ed. Critical Theory Since Plato, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971, p. 784.
"with fierce Wind Orion armed"38, etc., all these allusions and images helping to construct a
military context which emphasizes essentially the sorry plight of Satan's fallen legions after the
decisive battle in heaven---the "floating Carcasses," "broken Chariot Wheels," and "Cherub and
Seraph rowling in the Flood / With scatter'd Arms and Ensigns" (P.L. I 324-25).
Though plainly a biblical allusion, such vivid details are nowhere to be seen in the Old
Testament39, whereas a parallel description is found in the Old English poem Exodus, where the
poet's graphic account of the same event reminds us of the Miltonic scene:
Randbyrig wæron rofene, Rodor swipode
meredeaða mæst, modige swulton,
cyningas on corðre, cyre swiðrode
sæs æt ende. Wigbord scion
heah ofer hæleðum, Mægen wæs on cwealme
fæste gefeterod, forðganges weg
searwum æsæled, sand basnodon,
witodre fyrde, hwonre waðema stream,
sincalda sæ, sealtum yðum
æflastum gewuna ece staðulas,
nacud nydboda, neosan come,
fah feðegast, se ðe feondum geneop.
(Junius 11: Exodus 464-76)
[The shielding ramparts were rent apart. The mightiest death-dealing sea lashed the
sky--bold men perished, kings in their pomp--the sea's recession finally failed. High
above the men the shield gleamed; the ocean rampart, the moody swirl of the sea,
towered aloft: their might was trapped fast in death. Sands caused the swamping of the
passage ahead, entangled with accoutrements, and of the army's route of attack when
the swirling of the waters, the sea ever chill with its salty waves, came from its
deviant ways seeking its wonted state, its eternal foundations--a naked portended of
distress, a hostile vagrant thing, which stranded the aggressors.] (S.A.J. Bradley's
translation)
It is not absolutely important whether Milton might have or have not read the Junius MS of the
38.
In Inferno, III 112-14, Dante compared the numberless spirits in Hell as autumn leaves, and according to C.M.
Bowra (From Virgil to Milton, 240-41), Homer, Virgil and Tasso all employed this image in their poems.
39.
Cf. Exodus:"The water returned and covered the chariots, the drivers, and all the Egyptian army that had
followed the Israelites into the sea: not one of them was left" (28); " ... the Israelites saw them lying dead on the
seashore" (30).
poem40, for anything traditional, once established, will often be tried and is constantly returned to.
The chilling scene of "floating carcasses" upon angry waves, with shields gleaming over the dead
bodies duly recurred in Layamon's Brut, another long English poem composed at the beginning of
the 13th century. In one of the most well-known passages in this work, King Arthur imagines his
defeated enemy, Baldulf (not unlike Milton's Satan!), looking down at his warriors lying dead
upon the river Avon:
Nu he stant on hulle ond Avene bihaldeth,
Hu ligeth i than straeme stelene fisces
Mid sweorde bi-georede. Heore sund is awemmed;
Heore scalen wleoteth swulc gold-fage sceldes,
Ther fleoteth heore spiten swulc hit spaeren weoren.
(Caligula MS: Brut, 10639-43)
[Now he stands on a hill and looks into the Avon, seeing how steel fishes lie in that stream,
girt with sword. Their swimming is spoiled; their scales gleam like gold-plated
shields, their
fish-spines float there as if they were spears.]41
The powerful metaphor of the steel fishes in these remarkable lines raise an echo to the gleaming
shields in the Old English Exodus and the "floating carcasses" in Milton's Paradise Lost.
The whale is another conventional image of Satan's "devilish art". When Milton first presents
Satan in this long poem, he depicts the Devil with an image of Leviathan, with its huge body like
an island, enticing the weary seamen:
... or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th' ocean stream:
Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
40.
J.W. Lever suggested in "Paradise Lost and the Anglo-Saxon Tradition" (RES, XXIII, 1947, 97-106) that
Milton might have learnt from Junius about his discovery of this manuscript when they were close acquaintances in
London in 1651. I shall return to this question later in this chapter.
41
1982.
Quoted and translated by J.A. Burrow in Medieval Writers and Their Work. Oxford: The University Press,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lea, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays...
(P.L. I 200-08)42
This image of Leviathan is often misinterpreted by critics as representing Satan's greatness, yet
both the image and the language here are directly parallel to the allegorical Old English poem ,
Physiologus, which is meant to be a warning against the delusiveness of Satan and the danger of
trusting his false appearance of greatness. J.H. Pitman first pointed to Milton's indebtedness to the
Old English Physiologus. After comparing the particular expressions in both poems, he concluded
that the "strong resemblance in handling and in poetic tone" make a real probability that Milton
had seen the OE version.43 Nevertheless, if Milton had no access to the Old English poem, the
poet could still model on The Bestiary, a Middle English version of the Physiologus.
The ambivalent martial image of Satan in Paradise Lost has given rise to more
misunderstandings. With his majestic appearance and enormous weapons, Satan poses as a
classical epic hero. It is often believed that the "unconquerable Will" (I, 106) of Satan and his
rebel angels has something to do with the spirit of the Puritan revolutionaries. In Milton and the
Martial Muse (1980), J.A. Freeman still holds the notion that the military behavior of the rebel
angels is by all standards exemplary and it might well be applied to Oliver Cromwell and his New
Model Army.44 Yet he is certainly wrong to claim that Milton's treatment of the rebel angels as
"warriors" is "innovative," and there was "no significant predecessor."45
By representing Satan and his followers as pagan warriors, Milton has actually invoked a
42.
In Book Seven of P.L., when Raphael tells Adam about the creation of the world, the description of the
whale is repeated:
...there Leviathan
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep
Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land...
(VII 412--15)
43.
J.H. Pitman, "Milton and the Physiologus," Modern Language Notes, Vol. 40, 1925.
44
J.A. Freeman, Milton and the Martial Muse. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980, pp.208-209.
45
Ibid. pp.69, 63.
unique convention in earlier English literature. Spenser's Sans brothers are all giants "armed to the
point" with mighty weapons; Langland's Satan is also represented as a "knight"(C, II, 108), who
jousts against Christ in Hirusalem by the deputy of a pagan knight named Longinus (C, XXII); the
OE religious epic Andreas repeatedly addresses the pagan followers of the Devil as "heroes"
(haeleth, 50), "warriors" (duguth, 1270), and "thanes" (pegnas, 43); and in the OE Genesis B, the
poet describes Satan's deputy preparing to set off for the temptation of man as if he is on a military
expedition:
Anhan hine þa gyrwan
godes andsaca,
fus on frætwun,
(hæfde fæcne hyge),
hæle helm on heafod asett and
þone full heard geband,
spenn mid spangum ... (Genesis B, 442-45)
[Then God's enemy began to arm, to put on his war gear. He had a wily heart. He placed on
his head the helmet of darkness, fastened the buckles, and bound it firm.]
All of these satanic figures are fierce warriors and are physically strong, assuming a mock heroic
stance. With this in perspective, it is not at all surprising that Satan should appear in Paradise Lost
as a warrior figure.
In comparison, the martial skill of the good angels and saintly figures like Milton's St.
Michael and Abdiel, are at best equal to that of the demonic forces. They prevail over their enemy,
not so much relying upon their strength and weapons as upon their unwavered faith to God.
Andreas, for instance, is hailed in the Old English poem as one of the "twelve renowned warriors...
/ Lord's thanes" (2-3), but the "battle-hardened warrior" is destined not to fight literally, but to
pray, to exercise his patience and suffer the cruel atrocity of the Mermedonians in a dignified
manner, just as the young warriors, Jesus Christ, does in The Dream of the Rood. With his mighty
sword, Guthlac is no less a heroic figure, but we are clearly told that he, too, is applying passive
contemplation. Being a miles spiriti, Guthlac remains as "a warrior, fighting for God in his heart"
(swa sceal orette a in his mod / gode campian," 344-345). The heroic pattern here is distinctively
different from the one in either classical epic or medieval romance. It embraces both the active
and passive modes of fortitude, recognizing martial potency while giving primal emphasis to the
patience of suffering and obedience to God. This provides a clue to the heroic pattern in Paradise
Lost, which is neither a celebration of physical strength nor a pompous display of lethal arms.
The moral of this "better fortitude" is reflected in Adam's speech near the end of Milton's
long epic:
Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God , to walk
As in his presence, ever to observe
His providence, and on him sole depend,
Merciful over all his works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplish great things, by things deem'd weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek...
(P.L., XII 561--69)
Despite his destructive martial potency, Satan remains in essence impotent. It is God's
power that is truly omnipotent. Paradoxically,the moral reality behind Satan's habitual display of
might is nothing but frailty.
In the very act of rebelling against God, Satan has actually
dissociated his strength from its proper source, thus reducing himself to weakness and infirmity.
Raphael is certainly right when he points out:
For strength from Truth divided and from Just,
Inlaudable, naught merits but dispraise
And ignominie, yet to glorie aspires
Vainglorious...
(P.L. VI 381--84)
Milton himself in Paradise Regained ridicules Satan's "vain" ostentation of "fleshly arm, and
fragile arms" (P.R. III 387).
Thus, by comparing the heroic theme in Paradise Lost with the Old English religious
poems, we arrive at the conclusion that Satan's ponderous shield and mighty spear are not symbols
of his heroism, but merely the "cumbersome Luggage of war" which presents an "argument of ...
human weakness rather than of strength" (P.R., III 401--02).
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