MILTON.
We have two ideas, which we are anxious to bring under public notice, with regard to Milton. The reader whom Providence shall send us will not measure the value of these ideas (we trust and hope) by their bulk. The reader indeed that—great idea!—is very often a more important person towards the fortune of an essay than the writer. Even "the prosperity of a jest," as Shakspeare tells us, lies less in its own merit than "in the ear of him that hears it." If he should happen to be unusually obtuse, the wittiest jest perishes—the most pointed is found blunt. So, with regard to books, should the reader on whom we build prove a sandy and treacherous foundation, the whole edifice, "temple and tower," must come to the ground. Should it happen, for instance, that the reader, inflicted upon ourselves for our sins, belongs to that class of people who listen to books in the ratio of their much speaking—find no eloquence in 32mo, and little force of argument except in such a folio as might knock him down upon occasion of his proving restive against its logic—in that case he will despise our present essay. Will despise it? He does despise it already: for already he sees that it is short. His contempt is a high à priori contempt: for he measures us by anticipation, and needs to wait for no experience in order to vindicate his sentence against us.
Yet, in one view, this brevity of an essayist does seem to warrant his reader in some little indignation. We, the writer, expect to bring over the reader to our opinion—else wherefore do we write? But, within so small a compass of ground, is it reasonable to look for such a result? "Bear witness to the presumption of this essay," we hear the reader complaining; "it measures about fourteen inches by two—twenty-eight square inches at the most—and is it within human belief that I, simply as I stand here, shall be converted in so narrow an area? Here am I in a state of nature, as you may say. An acre of sound argument might do something: but here is a man who flatters himself—that, before I am advanced seven inches further in my studies, he is to work a notable change in my creed. By Castor and Pollux! he must think very superbly of himself, or very meanly of me."
Too true, we reply, too true; but, perhaps, there are faults on both sides. The writer is too peremptory and exacting; the reader is too restive. The writer is too full of his office, which he fancies is that of a teacher or a professor speaking ex cathedrâ: the rebellious reader is oftentimes too determined that he will not learn. The one conceits himself booted and spurred, and mounted on his reader's back, with an express commission for riding him: the other is vicious, apt to bolt out of the course at every opening, and resolute in this point—that he will not be ridden.
There are some, meantime, who take a very different view of the relations existing between those well-known parties to a book—writer and reader. So far from regarding the writer as entitled to the homage of his reader, as if he were some feudal superior, they hold him little better than an actor bowing before the reader as his audience. The feudal relation of fealty [fidelitas] may subsist between them, but the places are inverted; the writer is the liegeman—the reader it is who claims to be the sovereign. Our owu opinion inclines this way. It is clear that the writer exists for the sake of the reader, not the reader for the sake of the writer. Besides, the writer bears all sorts of characters, whilst the reader universally has credit for the best possible. We have all heard of "the courteous reader," "the candid reader," "the enlightened reader." But which of us ever heard of "the discourteous reader," "the mulish reader," "the barbarous reader?" Doubtless there is no such person. The Goths and Vandals are all confined to the writers. "The reader"—that great character—is ever wise, ever learned, ever courteous. Even in the worst of times, this great man preserved his purity. Even in the tenth and eleventh centuries, which we usually account the very noontide of darkness, he shone like a mould candle amongst basest dips. And perhaps it is our duty to presume all other virtues and graces as no less essential to him
