les, and talked,
and laughed, and betted on the great question of acquittal and
condemnation. Nor is it difficult to understand why this should be so.
It seems to be a law of the imagination, at least in most men, that it
will not bear concentration. It is essentially a glancing faculty. It
goes and comes, and comes and goes, and we hardly know whence or why.
But we most of us know that when we try to fix it, in a moment it
passes away. Accordingly, the proper procedure of art is to let it go
in such a manner as to insure its coming back again. The force of
artistic contrasts effects exactly this result: skillfully disposed
opposites suggest the notion of each other. We realize more perfectly
and easily the great idea, the tragic conception, when we are
familiarized with its effects on the minds of little people, with the
petty consequences which it causes as well as with the enormous forces
from which it comes. The catastrophe of "Samson Agonistes" discloses
Milton's imperfect mastery of this element of effect. If ever there
was an occasion which admitted its perfect employment, it was this.
The kind of catastrophe is exactly that which is sure to strike, and
strike forcibly, the minds of common persons. If their observations on
the occasion were really given to us, we could scarcely avoid something
rather comic. The eccentricity, so to speak, of ordinary persons shows
itself peculiarly at such times, and they say the queerest things.
Shakespeare has exemplified this principle most skillfully on various
occasions: it is the sort of art which is just in his way. His
imagination always seems to be floating between the contrasts of
things; and if his mind had a resting-place that it liked, it was this
ordinary view of extraordinary events. Milton was under the great
[est] obligation to use this relieving principle of art in the
catastrophe of "Samson," because he has made every effort to heighten
the strictly tragic element, which requires that relief. His art,
always serious, was never more serious. His Samson is not the
incarnation of physical strength which the popular fancy embodies in
the character; nor is it the simple and romantic character of the Old
Testament. On the contrary, Samson has become a Puritan: the
observations he makes would have done much credit to a religious
pikeman in Cromwell's army. In consequence, his death requires some
lightening touches to make it a properly artistic event. T