His edition, accordingly, has distinguished merits. The
introductions to the several poems are excellent and leave scarcely
anything to be desired. The general Introduction, on the other hand,
contains a great deal that might well have been omitted, and not a little
that is positively erroneous. Mr. Masson's discussions of Milton's
English seem often to be those of a Scotsman to whom English is in some
sort a foreign tongue. It is almost wholly inconclusive, because confined
to the Miltonic verse, while the basis of any altogether satisfactory
study should surely be the Miltonic prose; nay, should include all the
poetry and prose of his own age and of that immediately preceding it. The
uses to which Mr. Masson has put the concordance to Milton's poems tempt
one sometimes to class him with those whom the poet himself taxed with
being "the mousehunts and ferrets of an index." For example, what profits
a discussion of Milton's [Greek: hapax legomena], a matter in which
accident is far more influential than choice?[363] What sensible addition
is made to our stock of knowledge by learning that "the word _woman_ does
not occur in any form in Milton's poetry before 'Paradise Lost,'" and
that it is "exactly so with the word _female_"? Is it any way remarkable
that such words as _Adam, God, Heaven, Hell, Paradise, Sin, Satan_, and
_Serpent_ should occur "very frequently" in "Paradise Lost"? Would it not
rather have been surprising that they should not? Such trifles at best
come under the head of what old Warner would have called cumber-minds.
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