Dean of St. Paul’s. Born, in London, 10 Feb. 1791. At school at Greenwich and Eton. Matric. Brasenose Coll., Oxford, 25 May, 1810; Newdigate Prize Poem, 1812; Chancellor’s Latin Verse Prize, 1813; B.A., 1814; Fellow of B.N.C., 1814–19; M.A., 1816; Chancellor’s English Essay Prize, 1816; Chancellor’s Latin Essay Prize, 1816. Ordained Deacon, 1816; Priest, 1816. Vicar of St. Mary’s, Reading, 1817–35. Play “Fazio” (originally produced at Surrey Theatre under title of “The Italian Wife”) performed at Covent Garden, 5 Feb. 1818. Frequent contributor to “Quarterly Rev.” Prof. of Poetry, Oxford, 1821–31. Married Mary Ann Cockell, 11 March 1824. Bampton Lecturer, 1827. Canon of Westminister and Rector of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, 1835–49. Dean of St. Paul’s, 1849. B.D. and D.D., Oxford, 1849. Died, near Ascot, 24 Sept. 1868. Buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Works: “The Belvidere Apollo,” 1812; “Alexander tumulum Achillis invisens,” 1813; “Fazio,” 1815; “A Comparative Estimate of Sculpture and Painting” (priv. ptd.), 1816; “In historia scribenda quænam præcipua inter auctores veteres et novos sit differentia?” (priv. ptd.), 1816; “Samor,” 1818 (2nd edn. same year); “The Fall of Jerusalem,” 1820 (2nd edn. same year); “The Martyr of Antioch,” 1822; “Belshazzar,” 1822; “Anne Boleyn,” 1826; “The Character and Conduct of the Apostles” (Bampton Lectures), 1827; “History of the Jews” (anon.), 1829; “Life of Edward Gibbon,” 1839; “Poetical Works,” 1839; “History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire” (3 vols.), 1840; “History of Latin Christianity … to the Pontificate of Pope Nicholas V.” (6 vols.), 1855; “A Memoir of Lord Macaulay,” 1862 (2nd edn. same year); “Hebrew Prophecy,” 1865. Posthumous: “Annals of St. Paul’s Cathedral,” ed. by A. Milman, 1868; “Savonarola, Erasmus, and other essays,” ed. by A. Milman, 1870. He translated: “Nala and Damayanti” (with H. H. Wilson), 1835; Horace’s “Works,” 1849; Sophocles’ “Agamemnon,” 1865; Euripides’ “Bacchæ,” 1865; and edited: Gibbons’ “Hist. of Decline and Fall of Roman Empire,” 1838–39.
Personal
I was agreeably disappointed in his appearance. He had been described to me as very much more bent, stooping to the ground; so he is, but the bend is so circular at his back that it has the appearance of a hump; while the face, with the coal-black eyes and raven eyebrows, surmounted by snow-white hair, is really in a true plumb-line from his feet, and he appears to stand erect like a benignant Anthropophagus, with his head beneath his shoulders, at a height of three feet from the ground. He is a good deal more deaf, so that one must change the whole pitch of one’s voice. But he is full of life, interested in all things political, scientific, literary; full of work and of plans. She [Mrs. Milman] is as sweet, stately, genial, and gentle as she always was—as silvery voiced; and also her sable hair has turned out its silver lining very completely upon the night. In the main I found them singularly unchanged, and as you know them so well, that is their best eulogy. It is most delightful to see that Time, which has been so effective upon his backbone and his tympanum, has had no effect on his splendid intellect and his genial disposition.
You know how I loved the dear old Dean, and how much I valued his long, unvarying kindness. It has been a great pleasure to me that I saw him so lately; as always, with the sense that it might be for the last time; as always, with the hope that the extraordinary vitality which he showed might still battle with the advance of age, and keep him yet awhile amongst us. Bitterly, deeply as I mourn for his loss, publicly and privately, I cannot but feel that so to depart, with his eye not dimmed nor his natural force abated, was a blessing such as one always in prospect and retrospect rejoices to think of for those we love. How very far back that closed chapter takes us! What a host of famous memories! What a defense and bulwark of all that was just and right! Dear, sacred old sage of other days—sacred with our own dearest recollections—there is no like of him left.
There is one writer whom I must especially mention, for his name occurs continually in the following pages; and his memory has been more frequently and in these later months more sadly, present to my mind than any other. Brilliant and numerous as are the works of the late Dean Milman, it was those only who had the great privilege of his friendship who could fully realise the amazing extent and variety of his knowledge; the calm, luminous, and delicate judgment which he carried into so many spheres; the inimitable grace and tact of his conversation, coruscating with the happiest anecdotes and the brightest and yet the gentlest humour; and perhaps what was more remarkable than any single faculty, the admirable harmony and symmetry of his mind and character, so free from all the disproportion and eccentricity and exaggeration that sometimes make even genius assume the form of a splendid disease. They can never forget those yet higher attributes which rendered him so unspeakably reverent to all who knew him well,—his fervent love of truth; his wide tolerance; his large, generous, and masculine judgments of men and things; his almost instinctive perception of the good that is latent in each opposing party, his disdain for the noisy triumph and the flitting popularity of mere sectarian strife; the fond and touching affection with which he dwelt upon the images of the past, combining, even in extreme old age, with the keenest and most hopeful insight into the progressive movements of his time, and with a rare power of winning the confidence and reading the thoughts of the youngest about him.
In the full exercise of all his brilliant mental activities, in the midst of the peaceful country sights and sounds to which he was so sensitively alive, actually engaged in conversation with friends for whom he had the highest regard, the summons came. On the 29th day of August he was attacked by an illness, a paralytic stroke, which on the 24th of the following month had its fatal termination. Scholar, poet, critic, historian, but above and beyond all these a perfect Christian gentleman, the death of Dean Milman left a void which could not easily be filled. The concurrent testimony of all those who were numbered among his friends or bound by closer ties of nearer love bore witness to the charm and beauty, the kindliness and simplicity, of his character and disposition. He was absolutely guileless, a man of most transparent honesty, of undaunted moral courage. Bishop Stanley, of Norwich, used to say that “Milman, of all men whom he had known, had the greatest moral courage.”
History of the Jews, 1829
It was during his pastoral life at Reading that he published his “History of the Jews.” Many are the waters of controversy, as the French say, that have rolled under the bridge since that time; many have been the storms which have rent the theological heavens. In our days the vehemence of conflict has been intensified by the increased rapidity of communication, by the multiplication of “religious journals,” by the more compact organization of “religious parties.” It may be doubted whether any subsequent tumult or obloquy has been more passionate than that which beset the first appearance of the “History of the Jews.” It was the decisive inroad of German theology into England; the first palpable indication that the Bible “could be studied like another book;” that the characters and events of the sacred history could be treated at once critically and reverently. Those who were but children at the time can remember the horror created in remote rural districts by the rumour that a book had appeared in which Abraham was described as a “sheykh.” In Oxford the book was denounced from the University pulpit.
If we pass from Egypt to Palestine, we have for the general reader the well-known and the well-written “History of the Jews,” by the eloquent and scholarly H. H. Milman. This work is not as frequently and faithfully read as it deserves to be. It is written with the critical spirit of a thorough scholar, with the candor of an enlightened Biblical student, with the imagination of a poet, and the faith of a believing Christian.
A popular presentation, making no pretence to equality with the great work of Ewald, but striving to bring together into readable form the results reached by the best scholarship of the day. It is written in the author’s well-known style, which is remarkable for the smooth-flowing stream of its continuous narrative. The work is a civil and military, rather than a theological, history of the Jews. The author subjects Jewish history to the same canons of criticism as those to which all other histories should be subject. He plants himself on Paley’s ground, and does not accept what is commonly known as plenary inspiration of the Old Testament. Beyond “the things necessary to salvation,” he conceives that “all, not only in science, but also in history, is an open field.” This position awakened much opposition among Milman’s fellow-churchmen; but it was a position which, to the author’s credit, he never abandoned.
In truth, however, Milman, in the light of such Old Testament criticism as we are now familiar with, must be pronounced a highly conservative historian. Our modern schools would, I fear, judge him “unscientific.” He repudiated in good faith any anti-supernatural bias, and deliberately separated himself from the extreme school of modern criticism. Its spirit of endless analysis and love of turning everything upside down was thoroughly uncongenial to his mind. He had too much imagination, as well as faith and sobriety of temper, for such work; and he remained to the end what he was plainly from the first, an historical genius who, while urged by his critical powers to sift everything to the bottom and to take nothing for granted merely because it was connected with traditional theology, was yet no less urged by his poetic and concrete tastes to paint a picture rather than give a mere tableau of critical processes.
In point of composition and research, the “History of the Jews,” which appeared in 1828, was quite worthy of the high reputation already achieved by the author; but we can hardly be surprised that it created alarm. There was an evident tendency to reduce everything in the history of the chosen people that could be so reduced to the level of reason, and to explain away, when it was at all possible to do so, the supernatural element in it. Men were shocked to find Abraham treated as an ordinary Arab sheik, and the appearance of the manna and the quails attributed to natural causes. The book came out as one of a series called “The Family Library,” and caused such dismay that the series was stopped. The learned writer was probably a little misunderstood. In the interests of truth and reality, it was desirable for some one to bring out the human side of the history of the most remarkable people the world has ever seen; and Dr. Milman’s later career, which was even more brilliant from a literary point of view than his earlier, seems to indicate that he had really no desire to depreciate the Bible. He lived quite long enough to regain his character for orthodoxy, and perhaps also to show men that his “History of the Jews” was not quite what people thought it. But taking the work simply by itself, there is certainly some reason for regarding it as a precursor of a class of works with which in our day we are very familiar, but which were then unknown—that is, works in derogation of revelation from the Christian side.
In this work came a further evolution of the truths and methods suggested by Bentley, Wolf, and Niebuhr, and their application to sacred history was made strikingly evident. Milman, though a clergyman, treated the history of the chosen people in the light of modern knowledge of Oriental and especially of Semitic peoples. He exhibited sundry great biblical personages of the wandering days of Israel as sheiks or emirs or Bedouin chieftains; and the tribes of Israel as obedient then to the same general laws, customs, and ideas governing wandering tribes in the same region now. He dealt with conflicting sources somewhat in the spirit of Bentley, and with the mythical, legendary, and miraculous somewhat in the spirit of Niebuhr. This treatment of the history of the Jews, simply as the development of an Oriental tribe, raised great opposition. Such champions of orthodoxy as Bishop Mant and Dr. Faussett straightway took the field, and with such effect that the Family Library, a very valuable series in which Milman’s history appeared, was put under the ban and its further publication stopped. For years Milman, though a man of exquisite literary and lofty historical gifts, as well as of most honourable character, was debarred from preferment and outstripped by ecclesiastics vastly inferior to him in everything save worldly wisdom; for years he was passed in the race for honours by divines who were content either to hold briefs for all the contemporary unreason which happened to be popular or to keep their mouths shut altogether. This opposition to him extended to his works. For many years they were sneered at, decried, and kept from the public as far as possible.
History of Christianity, 1840
The “History of Christianity” which Mr. Milman has lately given to the world, is a work of very considerable ability, and bears upon it tokens of much thought and varied research. No one could doubt that such would be the character of any publication of the author’s and the expectation raised by his name has been increased by the length of time during which reports have been current of his having a work on Christianity in hand…. It is indeed most painful, independently of all personal feelings which a scholar and poet so early distinguished as Mr. Milman must excite in the minds of his brethren, that a work so elaborate and so important should be composed upon principles which are calculated to turn all kindly feeling into mere antipathy and disgust. Indeed there is so much to shock people, that there is comparatively little to injure. To one set of persons only is he likely to do much mischief, those who just at this moment are so ready to use his main principle for the demolition of Catholic views, without seeing that it applies to the New Testament history and teaching just as well. He will assist such persons in carrying out their principle. We observe that a publication, prominent in this warfare, cautions its readers against Mr. Milman’s most dangerous and insidious work. We beg to join this publication and all other similar ones in its sage and seasonable warning. Let all who carp at the fathers and deny tradition, who argue against sacramental influence, who refer celibacy to gnosticism, and episcopal power to Judaism, who declaim against mysticism, and scoff at the miracles of the Church, while at the same time they uphold what is called orthodox Protestantism, steadily abstain from Mr. Milman’s volumes. On their controversial principles his reasonings and conclusions are irresistible.
Our high-churchmen are shocked at so free and fearless a book from a dignitary, and judiciously enough, instead of abusing, they try to smother it. Their Reviews do not choose to have heard of the work. It shows immense reading and a store-house of curious and interesting facts; but I cannot say that it makes upon my mind any single, strong, definite impression; nor perhaps could one well expect this from what may be called a civil history of the religion from its origin to the suppression of paganism in the Roman empire.
I had postponed the reading of Milman’s “History of Christianity,” as I do of many good books, but your favorable mention of it determined me to take it in hand; and as soon as I began to convalesce after my late illness, I applied myself to the pleasant task. Sometimes, indeed, my weak head was strained to take in his long, complicated sentences, and I wished that he had added the charm of a simple style to his other merits, but I was too much interested to be discouraged. I have been truly delighted as well as instructed by the work. What amazes me is, that it should have come from the hands of an Episcopalian clergyman. Am I wrong in seeing in it true moral courage? Are there many in that church to sympathize with such large, liberal views?
Though it is written with an almost infidel coolness, it is the only English work that gives the distilled essence of the Germanic researches into out-of-the-way antiquities of our early mother church.
History of Latin Christianity, 1855
Last night I finished your sixth volume. What can I say, except that you have written the finest historical work in the English language? The interest grows from, perhaps commences with, the four last volumes. The first two, covering a vast period comparatively little known, are less distinct, and fail so powerfully to hold the attention. But what a labour of intellect to have shifted so often your point of vision—to have looked at every event, at every character, on all sides, before you set yourself to draw it! Calmness, impartiality, a belief, fixed as the creed, that the history of man, judged as a whole, is the history of his better nature struggling against his lower, and struggling not altogether unsuccessfully; that in a divinely governed world no system of faith or policy have taken effective and enduring hold upon mankind unless the truth in them has been greater than the falsehood,—these are the essentials of a great writer; and these, more than any one who as yet has taken such subjects in hand, you possess. The “History of Christianity” did not prepare me for the “History of Latin Christianity.” In the first I seemed to see chiefly the philosopher, in the second the man.
One of the remarkable works of the present age, in which the author reviews, with curious erudition, and in a profoundly philosophical spirit, the various changes that have taken place in the Roman hierarchy; and while he fully exposes the manifold errors and corruptions of the system, he shows throughout that enlightened charity which is the most precious of Christian graces, as unhappily it is the rarest.
I began Milman’s “Latin Christianity,” and was more impressed than ever by the contrast between the substance and the style. The substance is excellent. The style very much otherwise.
“The History of Christianity under the Empire,” with its gorgeous style, its wide learning, its lucid argument, filled a gap which had been hitherto only supplied by the meagre narratives of Mosheim and Milner, or by the ill-adapted translations of Neander and Gieseler.
Milman’s “History of Latin Christianity” is of the highest value, and is universally accepted as one of our best standard histories.
Dean Milman’s great and rare qualities were even perhaps more suited for the later history of the Church than for the earlier; and though we should be sorry to be without much of what he has done for the Middle Ages, we are not sure that we would not exchange it for the same amount of work on the time from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The English “History of the Reformation” has yet to be written…. Dean Milman’s imagination and insight, his fearless courage, and his unusual combination of the strongest feelings about right and wrong with the largest equity, would have enabled him to handle this perplexed and difficult history in a manner in which no English writer has yet treated it. We do not say that he could be expected to be entirely successful. He wanted—what many of our most eminent teachers of the present day want—a due appreciation of the reality and depth of those eternal problems of religious thought and feeling which have made theology.
The “History of Latin Christianity” is the work on which Milman’s fame rests. It does not display equal mastery of language with the “Decline and Fall;” nor was the author gifted with the same philosophical penetration, nor with equal power of combining complicated details into one harmonious and picturesque narrative, with the writer of that immortal work. But he had what Gibbon wanted, a sincere feeling of the vast importance of the subject; a resolute candour which made him desirous to do justice to all whose views and differences of opinion his narrative led him to notice; and he added to these qualities a rich store of varied learning, which qualified him to form, and which gave weight to, the judgments which he calmly but resolutely expressed. The great merit of the work was promptly and universally acknowledged and is sufficiently attested by the fact that its bulk (it consists of six large volumes) did not prevent its rapidly going through four editions in a very few years.
The public did not sustain his claims to the name of poet, and he has fallen into the limbo of poetical writers, like those who “senza speme vivono in disio.” His more important work, however, held a different place, and the man who is recognised as the historian of Latin Christianity does not need to break his heart over the failure of poetic fame.
To the student of the Middle Ages this work is second in importance only to that of Gibbon. It covers substantially the same period, and, although its plan is much more limited, it is in its way scarcely less satisfactory.
Just misses, it may be, being one of “the great books of history”—but will long hold its own as an almost necessary complement to Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall.” It was avowedly designed as its counterpart, its rival, and in one sense its antidote. And we cannot deny that this aim has been, to a great extent attained. It covers almost exactly the same epoch; it tells the same story; its chief characters are the same as in the work of Gibbon. But they are all viewed from another point of view and are judged by a different standard. Although the period is the same, the personages the same, and even the incidents are usually common to both histories, the subject is different, and the plot of the drama is abruptly contrasted. Gibbon recounts the dissolution of a vast system; Milman recounts the development of another vast system; first, the victim, then the rival, and ultimately the successor of the first. Gibbon tells us of the decline and fall of the Roman empire: Milman narrates the rise and constitution of the Catholic church—the religious and ecclesiastical, the moral and intellectual movements which sprang into full maturity as the political empire of Rome passed through its long transformation of a thousand years. The scheme and ground-plan of Milman are almost perfect. Had he the prodigious learning, the super-human accuracy of Gibbon, that infallible good sense, that perennial humour, that sense of artistic proportion, the dean might have rivalled the portly ex-captain of yeomanry, the erudite recluse in his Swiss retreat. He may not be quite strong enough for his giant’s task. But no one else has even essayed to bend the bow which Ulysses of Lausanne hung up on one memorable night in June, 1787, in his garden study; none has attempted to recount the marvellous tale of the consolidation of the Christianity of Rome over the whole face of western Europe during a clear period of a thousand years.
He lived to see his main ideas accepted, and his “History of Latin Christianity” received as certainly one of the most valuable and no less certainly the most attractive of all church histories ever written.
The “History of Latin Christianity” is a work of epic proportions, and, save in its style, approaches epic dignity. A subject hardly less majestic than that of Gibbon, it was less susceptible of historic treatment in the grand style because it lacked an inherent unity. Without Gibbon’s marked distinction of manner, Milman possesses many of the virtues of a good writer, and sustains with fluent ease the weight of his great narrative. A notable man, one may say of him, in the best company, the company in which the highest names are those of Hooker, of Taylor, and of Berkeley; at his best comparable, if not superior, to any English historian after Gibbon, and one who in every page of his writing stands revealed as above all else a Christian, a scholar, and a gentleman.
Is a great book, and will probably live. For Milman here really knew; he had (like most poets who write prose with fair practice) an excellent style; and he was able—as many men who have had knowledge have not been able, and as many who have had style have not tried or have failed to do—to rise to the height of a really great argument, and treat it with the grasp and ease which are the soul of history. That he owed much to Gibbon himself is certain; that he did not fail to use his pupilage to that greatest of historians so as to rank among the best of his followers is not less certain, and is high enough praise for any man.
Though errors have been detected in it, the tone and spirit are good, the method sound and the scholarship admirable.
The “History of Latin Christianity” has taken rank as one of the standard works of English literature; and I do not think that any one who is acquainted with the historical and ecclesiastical writings of the last forty years can fail to see the influence that it has exercised upon them, nor the vast mine of information which it has been to labourers in portions of the same field. In the schools of the Universities it is a recognized text-book; in the United States, among a kindred people, it has an equally established position.
Poems
I have just finished Henry Milman’s poem, a work of great power. But the story is ill-constructed, and the style has a vice analogous to that which prevailed in prose about one hundred and seventy years ago…. With less poetry “Samor” would have been a better poem…. If Milman can perceive or be persuaded of his fault, he has powers enough for any thing; but it is a seductive manner…. He is a fine young man, and his powers are very great. They are, however, better fitted for the drama than for narration; the drama admits his favorite strain of composition, and is easier in its structure. Indeed, it is as much easier to plan a play than a poem of such magnitude as “Samor” as it is to build a gentleman’s house than a cathedral.
“Fazio,” the new tragedy, is in parts very fine and in others as bad. It is written by a young Mr. Milman, son to the physician. It is well worth sending for. Some people think it beautiful. Lord Lansdowne brought it to Saltram and said it was one of the finest things he had ever read, so do get it. The woman’s character is very interesting.
The poem [“Samor”] opens with an eulogy on the author’s country, and in the very first sentence we meet with that indistinctness which, from bad arrangement of words and the very worst punctuation we have ever met with, in almost every page, compels us to read some sentences two or three times in order to understand it. In the structure of the verse, there is a close imitation of Milton; it is, however, more involved, and crowded with vague epithets…. We are not willing to take this poem as a specimen of Mr. Milman’s powers. The want of interest, arising from the unskilful direction of talent rather than from the want of it, is the great fault of “Samor.” The subject does not admit of the exercise of those powers which Mr. Milman can exercise to most advantage. A humbler theme would suit him better. The description of natural scenery and domestic character would tame his soaring spirit and bring him to meet us on equal ground. He must meet us, for he has not the all-powerful energy of genius to transport us from the world of our own thoughts and feelings to one of his creation.
He has now produced a poem [“Fall of Jerusalem”] in which the peculiar merits of his earlier efforts are heightened, and their besetting faults, even beyond expectation, corrected; a poem to which, without extravagant encomium, it is not unsafe to promise whatever immortality the English language can bestow, and which may, of itself, entitle its author to a conspicuous and honourable place in our poetical pantheon, among those who have drunk deep at the fountain-head of intellect and enriched themselves with the spoils without encumbering themselves with the trammels of antiquity.
I cannot conclude without expressing, however inadequately, the delight with which I have just risen from the perusal of the “Martyr of Antioch.” It has added another noble proof to those you had already given the world of the power and dignity which genius derives from its consecration to high and sacred purposes. Never were the “gay religions full of pomp and gold” so beautifully contrasted with the deep and internal sublimity of Christianity. I could dwell upon many parts which have made a lasting impression upon my mind, did I not fear that it would appear almost presumptuous to offer a tribute of praise so insignificant as mine to that which must have already received the suffrage of all who are entitled to judge of excellence.
| Here’s Milman, the Idol of Square-caps at Oxford, | |
| Though his verses will scarce ever travel to Foxford; | |
| His Pegasus broken, no longer is skittish, | |
| Though he’s puff’d in the Quarterly, puff’d in the British. |
“The Fall of Jerusalem” … quickly caught the public attention, and was crowned with the most general applause. The subject had strong hold upon our sympathies…. Mr. Milman has treated it with complete success.
We are always impressed with a conviction of his learning, his ability, and his cultivated taste, but are haunted at the same time with an unsatisfactory feeling, that his poetry is rather a clever recasting of fine things already familiar to us, than strikingly fresh and original…. With less leaning to authorities and greater reliance on his own powers and impressions, there can be no doubt that Milman would have written far finer poetry, and secured a more extended acceptability; for his more simple strains are, after all, those best remembered and he could be at times alike natural and pathetic.
May be taken as representing a class of writers in whom the poetic fire is ever on the point, and only on the point, of breaking into a flame. His composition is admirable—refined, scholarly, sometimes rich and even gorgeous in expression—yet lacking that radiance of the unutterable to which the loftiest words owe their grandest power. Perhaps the best representative of his style is the hymn on the Incarnation, in his dramatic poem, “The Fall of Jerusalem.”
First came his brilliant poetical career. If some of its early splendour be overcast—if few of this generation turn with the same devouring eagerness as did their predecessors to the “Fall of Jerusalem” and the “Martyr of Antioch”—yet there are passages in that stage of his mental development which give no indication of losing their ground. The English visitor to the Apollo Belvedere will long recall the most perfect of all Oxford prize poems, every line of which catches some characteristic of the matchless statue—
| “Too fair to worship—too divine to love.” |
Although his poetry has failed to live, save in a few hymns, it remains an interesting monument of the early glow and splendor of his genius. “The Fall of Jerusalem” and “The Martyr of Antioch” contain passages of great power and beauty; but, like the poetic efforts of a great female genius of our times, they are lacking in creative art and movement. They are poetical essays, rather than poems springing spontaneously and irresistibly out of the heart and imagination of the writer.
The “Latin Christianity” is still a valued book of reference, and gives its author a more lasting title to fame than many “Martyrs of Antioch” could do, even with the addition of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s music.
Milman’s poetical works were received with enthusiasm, but they cannot be said to have retained a moiety of the interest they excited upon their appearance. Though he so frequently adopted the dramatic form he lacked dramatic instinct, and was wanting in passion and imagination. There are fine passages in all his works, passages in which elevated thought is clothed in ornate language, and adorned with picturesque imagery…. Some of his hymns, “Ride on, Ride on in Majesty,” “When Our Heads are Bowed with Woe,” and others are still in use, but his longer poems have ceased to attract attention or are only read in selections.
General
He was the unquestioned patriarch of English literature. He was the last of that brilliant galaxy which ushered in the beginning of this century—the intimate friend of some of them, the companion of all. In him the traditions of Byron and Scott, of Coleridge and Wordsworth, of Hallam and Macaulay, of Rogers and Sydney Smith, lived on into a younger generation. It was truly said of him that he belonged more to the English nation than to the English Church. His severe taste, his nicely-balanced judgment, his abundant knowledge, his keen appreciation of the varied forms of literary excellence, enabled him to keep always above, and at the same time almost always in sympathy with, the intellectual movements of the age.
A sort of measure of Dean Milman’s qualifications for dealing with religious history is given in these “Essays.” He writes of Savonarola, of Erasmus, and then of the Popes, from those of the Riario and Borgia type to those of the Lambertini and Ganganelli order. They are all vigorous and brilliant studies, full of knowledge, full of historical grasp and intelligence, full of noble sympathy and noble scorn, full of regulated humour of all the shades from amused and compassionate playfulness to indignant sarcasm; kindling, as Dean Milman’s wont was, from a style of often careless roughness into passages of powerful and finished eloquence. But he had to deal in them with subjects which were in unequal degrees congenial to him, and for which he was, and probably felt himself, unequally adapted. Savonarola was a subject which, if the character was to be treated with sympathy at all, needed, it seems to us, a subtler and more delicate power of entering into the mysterious conditions and experiences of the spiritual side of human life than the historian ever gave evidence of possessing…. Turn from Savonarola to Erasmus, and there we find at once that the writer is far more at home. Dean Milman has given perhaps the best and truest portrait that has ever been presented of a man who was even a more important person in the history of his time than Savonarola.
The qualities of Dean Milman’s mind, intellectual and moral, were such as to engage the affections of his friends even more than their admiration. Without noting his other and various works, the “History of Latin Christianity” would alone give him high and merited rank in English literature. As a writer he ever clung with masculine fidelity to what he believed to be truth.
The name of Milman does not pale beside that of Thirlwall. There are those, indeed, who esteem it a still more brilliant name in sacred literature. So far both were alike. They never acquired the sort of popular distinction that waits on the leaders of great ecclesiastical parties—men of the stamp of the late Dr. Wilberforce or Dr. Pusey…. Milman is probably less known than even Thirlwall. I have met with people of education, and some degree of culture, who were, if not ignorant of his name, ignorant of all he has done. They were astonished to hear him spoken of as a great historian. They had never read a word of his “History of Latin Christianity,” nor even of his “History of the Jews.” They had never heard of him as one of the greatest names that the Church of England has ever produced. In combination of pure genius with learning, of sweep of thought with picturesque and powerful variety of literary culture and expression, he has always seemed to me by far the first of modern English churchmen.
Without question one of the most accomplished men of letters of the present century, a distinguished editor and translator from the classics and from the Sanscrit, a poet of considerable imaginative range and lyrical sweetness, a far-sighted critic, an historian of ample learning and power, he seems to have his place on that border-line where rare and brilliant talent melts into genius. Test him by some searching touchstone of genius, and he may indeed fall short; measure him by any rule of talent, and he satisfies but transcends it with much to spare.
Yet the “Halbheit” which characterizes Milman throughout his work prevented him from giving these fruitful ideas full scope; and in spite of his fine sympathetic insight, accomplished scholarship, and wide and deep learning, he belongs to the class, so frequent in the history of English culture, of those who but half apprehend the meaning and tendency of their own work.
