The Eclectic Review, Vol. 1: January to June, 1859 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Eclectic Review, Vol. 1: January to June, 1859

If these considerations do not entirely reconcile the critics to the hybrid sort of composition - half biography, half history which Mr. Masson has ado ted, we are afraid that in the end they will be very much in t e condition of the French dragoons who so successqy cut up the squares of Highlanders at Quatre Bras. Don't you see that you are beaten you ought to yield, was the c of the French assailants in that fierce struggle, as the ranks of e Highlanders were tram led under foot and broken like the corn amid which they foug t. Not so, deemed the Hi blanders: they had other ideas of victory; if they were beaten y rule, they would conquer in defiance of rule; for them, indeed, there was no test of defeat, except the ultimate one of destruction. They remained masters of the field; and in like manner Mr. M asson, spite of our cavilling, may take his stand 11 n his work, and, anomalous though it be, challenge the w ole world to stultify it. The life of Milton which we here introduce to our readers is a great work, - a little wanting in form, as we have suggested, analytical sometimes in the mode of narra tion where one could wish to see a living synthesis, digressive, too, according to the very idea of the subject where we look for rapidity of treatment - yet, notwithstanding these defects, which belong to the plan rather than to the author, a noble biography; a biography that will live; a biography that shows a prodigious expenditure of labour, to be fully appreciated only by those who are accustomed to such researches; a biography that is full of fine feeling, acute criticism, and manly eloquence. Under one.

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