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• Introduction
• A Note On the Text
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations Used In the Notes
• An Historical View of the English Government
• Advertisement
• To the Right Honourable Charles James Fox. 1
• Introduction
• Book I: Of the English Government, From the Settlement of the Saxons In Britain to the Reign of William the Conqueror.
• Chapter I: Preliminary Account of the State of Britain Under the Dominion of the Romans.
• Chapter II: Character and Manners of the Saxons.
• Chapter III: Settlement of the Saxons In Britain.
• Chapter IV: Similarity In the Situation of the Anglo-saxons, and of the Other Barbarians Who Settled In the Provinces of the Western Empire.—how Far the State of All Those Nations Differed From That of Every Other People, Ancient Or Modern.
• Chapter V: The State of Property, and the Different Ranks and Orders of Men, Produced By the Settlement of the Saxons In Britain.
• Section I: Of the Chief Regulations Attending the Establishment of Christianity In the Roman Empire, and In the Modern Kingdoms of Europe.
• Section II: The Establishment of Christianity In Britain, Under the Roman Dominion, and In the Early Government of the Anglo-saxons.
• Chapter VI: Institution of Tythings, Hundreds, and Counties.
• Chapter VII: Of the Wittenagemote.
• Chapter VIII: State of the Sovereign In the Primitive Anglo-saxon Government.
• Chapter IX: Of the Principal Events From the Reign of Egbert to the Norman Conquest.
• Chapter X: Variations In the State of Tythings, Hundreds, and Shires. 1
• Chapter XI: Changes Produced In the Condition of the Vassals, and of the Peasants.
• Chapter XII: The Influence of These Changes Upon the Jurisdiction and Authority of the Feudal Lords.
• Chapter XIII: Of Ecclesiastical Courts.
• Chapter XIV: Alterations In the State of the Wittenagemote.
• Book II: Of the English Government From the Reign of William the Conqueror, to the Accession of the House of Stewart.
• Chapter I: The Norman Conquest.—progress of the Feudal System.—view of the Several Reigns Before That of Edward I.—THE Great Charter, and Charter of the Forest.
• Chapter II: In What Manner the Changes Produced In the Reign of William the Conqueror Affected the State of the National Council.
• Chapter III: Of the Ordinary Courts of Justice After the Norman Conquest.
• Chapter IV: Progress of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Authority.
• Chapter V: General View of the Kingly Power, From the Reign of Edward I. To That of Henry VII.
• Chapter VI: History of the Parliament In the Same Period.
• Section I: The Introduction of the Representatives of Counties and Boroughs Into Parliament.
• Section II: The Division of Parliament Into Two Houses, and the Peculiar Privileges Acquired By Each House.
• Section III: Concerning the Manner of Electing the National Representatives, and the Forms of Procedure In Parliament.
• Chapter VII: Alterations In the State of the Ordinary Courts of Justice.
• Section I: Establishment of the Courts of Common Law, At Westminster.
• Section II: Of the Petty Jury—and the Grand Jury.
• Section III: Circumstances Which Prevented the Civil Law From Being So Much Incorporated In the System of English Jurisprudence, As In That of Other European Countries.
• Section IV: The Rise of the Court of Chancery.
• Chapter VIII: Of the Circumstances Which Promoted Commerce, Manufactures, and the Arts, In Modern Europe, and Particularly In England.
• Chapter IX: Of Henry the Seventh.—circumstances Which, In His Reign, Contributed to the Exaltation of the Crown.—review of the Government of This Period.
• Chapter X: Of Henry the Eighth.—the Reformation.—its Causes.—the Effects of It Upon the Influence of the Crown.
• Chapter XI: Of Edward the Sixth—mary—and Elizabeth.—general Review of the Government.—conclusion of the Period From the Norman Conquest to the Accession of the House of Stewart.
• Conclusion of the Period, From the Norman Conquest.
• Volume Iii
• Introduction
• Book I: Of the English Government, From the Accession of James the First, to the Reign of William the Third.
• Chapter I: Review of the Government of Scotland.
• Section I: Of the Government of Scotland, From the Time When Britain Was Abandoned By the Romans, to the Reign of Malcolm the Second.
• Section II: Of the Government of Scotland, From the Reign of Malcolm the Second, to the Union of Its Crown With That of England.
• Section III: Of the Government of Scotland, From the Union of the Scottish and English Crowns, to That of the Two Kingdoms.
• Chapter II: Changes In the Political State of England From the Accession of the House of Stuart—the Advancement of Commerce and Manufactures—institutions For National Defence—different Effect of These In Britain, and Upon the Neighbouring Continent.
• Chapter III: In What Manner the Political System Was Affected By the State of Religious Opinions.
• Chapter IV: Progress of the Disputes Between the King and Parliament, During the Reigns of James the First, and of Charles the First.
• Section I: The Reign of James the First; and That of Charles the First, From His Accession to the Meeting of the Long Parliament.
• Section II: Of the Reign of Charles the First, From the Meeting of the Long Parliament to the Commencement of the Civil War.
• Section III: Of the Reign of Charles the First, From the Commencement of the Civil War to His Death.
• Chapter V: Of Oliver Cromwell, and the Protectorate.
• Chapter VI: Of the Reigns of Charles the Second, and James the Second.
• Chapter VII: Of the Revolution-settlement; and the Reign of William and Mary.
• Book II: Of the English Government From the Reign of William the Third to the Present Time.
• Chapter I: Review of the Government of Ireland.
• Chapter II: Political Consequences of the Revolution—subsequent Changes In the State of the Nation—influence of the Crown.
• Chapter III: The Advancement of Manufactures, Commerce, and the Arts, Since the Reign of William III.; And the Tendency of This Advancement to Diffuse a Spirit of Liberty and Independence.
• Chapter IV: How Far the Advancement of Commerce and Manufactures Has Contributed to the Extension and Diffusion of Knowledge and Literature.
• Chapter V: The Separation of the Different Branches of Knowledge; and the Division of the Liberal Arts and of the Sciences.
• Chapter VI: The Effects of Commerce and Manufactures, and of Opulence and Civilization, Upon the Morals of a People.
• Section I: Of Courage and Fortitude.
• Section II: Of Sobriety and Temperance.
• Section III: Of Justice and Generosity.
• Chapter VII: The Progress of Science Relative to Law and Government.
• Chapter VIII: The Gradual Advancement of the Fine Arts—their Influence Upon Government.
• Section I: Of Poetry; Or Those Compositions Which Are Primarily Calculated For Mere Entertainment.
• Part I: Of Epic Poetry; Or What Is Related By the Poet In His Own Person.
• Part II: Of Dramatic Poetry.
• Appendix 1: Authorities Cited In the Text and In Millar’s Notes
• Appendix 2: Main Historiographical Sources For Millar’s Narrative to 1688

PART I

Of Epic Poetry; or what is related by the Poet in his own Person.

Though the imagery arising from views of external nature, is unavoidably blended with that which springs from the representation of human sentiment, they have given rise to two different forms of poetical composition, more peculiarly adapted to the one or the other, the epic and the dramatic. The former in which the incidents are constantly related by the poet himself, and are thus thrown into a sort of shade and distance, favourable to the exaggerating emotions of admiration, wonder, and surprise, is peculiarly suited to the description of external nature. The latter, in which events are not supposed to be communicated by the intervention of the poet, but to pass in the immediate presence of the spectator, is better calculated to produce that vivacity of colouring, and that visionary conception of<320> reality, without which it is impossible to awaken our sympathetic affections.2

The sublime genius of epic poetry is peculiarly favoured by the manners of that rude and barbarous period which precedes the cultivation of the common arts of life. In proportion as men are ignorant and destitute of civilization, they are the more liable to be impressed with admiration, wonder, and surprise; and the more likely, though without skill or management, to communicate those feelings in their genuine simplicity and force. They are in a world where almost every thing is new and unaccountable, and where their observation is confined to a small number of objects. The great scenes of nature are spread before them, and successively recur in all the various forms which they assume in different seasons and situations. These, dwelling upon the imagination of the uninstructed beholder, and surveyed in a variety of aspects, present new and striking images of grandeur and terror, of contrast, and of resemblance, of unknown causes, magnified and misconceived by fear,<321> or of strange and unexpected events, misrepresented by delusive prepossession. At the approaching light of knowledge, these wonders disappear; the gigantic vanishes; and the multiplied pursuits of society render mankind acquainted with the new, familiar with the great, and conversant in the minute parts of nature. Their poetic imagery of course changes its character, and losing its enthusiastic ardour, sinks gradually into the temper of cool thought and reflection.

In the oriental poetry of a remote period, which is handed down to us, we discover evident proofs of that peculiar style and manner, by which the poetry of a rude people appears to be distinguished. Great force of conception, with little taste or judgment in the distribution of parts: a few features, boldly delineated, without skill or perseverance to finish the picture: grand and sublime images, loosely combined, and often ill asserted: comparisons far-fetched, but lofty and magnificent; with strong, but harsh metaphors, frequently broken and inconsistent; and with language highly figurative rather from a penury of<322> appropriated expression, than from exuberance of fancy, and therefore, in many cases, hyperbolical and uncouth.

The same character of sublimity may be recognised in those relicts of Celtic poetry, ascribed to Ossian; which no credulity can believe to be an entire forgery of the publisher; but from which we may easily suppose that he has removed a great part of their original imperfections.3

That the sublime genius of Homer was greatly indebted to the character of the age in which he lived, will readily be admitted; but the difficulty lies in conceiving, by what means, in so rude an age, he could acquire that correctness of taste and judgment for which he is so conspicuous. What an astonishing phenomenon is the Iliad, if we survey the extensive and regular plan upon which it is composed, the skill and experience with which it is executed, together with the purity of expression, and the harmony of numbers, which every where prevail in that immortal work; and if, at the same time, we consider that the author must have lived before the return of the Heraclidae into Peloponesus<323> otherwise he would undoubtedly have made some allusion to that event of so much importance to all Greece;4 that is, he must have lived within eighty years of the Trojan war,5 when the art of writing was hardly known to the Greeks, and more than three hundred years before their oldest prose-writer, of whom we have any accounts! How much more advanced was the state of arts and sciences in England during the life of Spenser6 than in Greece, during the period when Homer is understood to have lived; but how obsolete is the language of the former compared with that of the latter? If we consider the chronology of Homer’s life to be sufficiently established, one would be tempted to believe that his rhapsodies, as they were called, have not only been arranged and digested in a subsequent period, as has been asserted upon good authority, but have even undergone something similar to the refacciamento, by Berni, of Bogardo’s Orlando.7

The improvement of poetry as an art, so far as it depends upon culture and experience, is naturally progressive; but when this art has attained a certain degree of perfec-<324>tion, like all others derived from the mere exercise of imagination, it is rendered stationary; after which it begins to decline, and hastens to its final extinction, while the impressions of the poet are weakened by the progress of knowledge, and by a familiar acquaintance with the objects of nature, his powers are, doubtless, in another view, increased by storing his mind with a greater number of ideas, by collecting and combining a greater diversity of images and events, and by the capacity he acquires of arranging and disposing them to the best advantage. The poetry of rude nations consists of separate lineaments, and of unconnected incidents; but from the natural advancement of the art, in a civilized and refined age, these disjointed members are united in a regular system, and produce a finished performance. The volume of nature is expanded; the range of imagination is enlarged; the discrimination of what is interesting and agreeable is improved; and by the union and co-operation of many beautiful parts, the mind is detained in a labyrinth of pleasing emotions. But in pro-<325>portion to the degree of excellence that has been attained, the standard of perfection is exalted; and the readers of poetry, tired with the repetition of similar objects and exhibitions, become severe and fastidious critics, quick and expert in discovering and censuring blemishes. Conscious, therefore, of what is expected, every succeeding candidate for fame must endeavour to surpass his predecessors by new images or combinations; by adorning each part with a greater accumulation of beauties, and by enriching the whole with a greater variety of parts. But there is a certain point beyond which the progress of embellishment ceases to be agreeable, and more is lost by deviation from simplicity than is gained by additional decoration. By crowding together a number, even of beautiful objects, the impression of each is diminished, the attention is dissipated in a multiplicity of particulars, and the general effect is proportionably impaired. By excessive ornament, the figures appear loaded with artificial trappings; and the piece becomes gaudy and inelegant. The more interesting and genuine appearances<326> of nature are, at the same time exhausted; and it becomes necessary to substitute others of inferior value. The grand and the sublime are deserted in the pursuit of mere novelty and variety; and a corrupted taste becomes more habituated to factitious and sophisticated embellishments. Despairing to rival the models of a former period, the followers of the muses are at length induced to abandon the higher flights of imagination, and steering, without hazard, in a level and equable course, are content with the humbler attainments of smooth versification, and pointed expression; with figurative language, coined and carefully collected from every quarter; in a word, with prosaic tameness and languor, arrayed according to the fashion of the times, in a pompous artificial diction. In this declining state of poetry, it becomes a natural improvement, to throw aside the mechanism of verse, and in more natural and easy expression, to exhibit such pictures of life and manners as are calculated to please the understanding, and to interest the passions. Compositions of this nature, which, considering that their<327> chief object is mere entertainment, may be called poetical, are capable of being extended and diversified without end; and they seem peculiarly adapted to that combined exercise of the imagination and judgment which is agreeable to a refined and philosophical age.

These observations are confirmed by the history of all those nations who have made progress in the arts, and in polite literature. The sublimity of the poetical genius among the early Greeks, not only in what is commonly called epic poetry, but in the serious compositions intended for the accompaniment of music, has been universally acknowledged; and its decline in the later periods, after it had risen to a high degree of eminence, is not less conspicuous.

When the poetical talent, from despair of equalling the models already exhibited, and from the corruption of taste produced by the incessant study of novelty and variety, has been extinguished in one country, it is not likely, ever after, to revive among the same people; but it may easily be introduced into another country, where the<328> same natural beauties, not yet faded by time, are still fresh and agreeable; and where those images and descriptions, which had become tiresome by repetition, assume, when imitated in a different language, a new and interesting appearance, and may even acquire, in some degree, an air of originality.8 Thus the Roman poets, towards the end of the commonwealth, and about the beginning of the despotism, rose to high reputation by a judicious imitation of the Greek writers; though, in the latter period, the career of Roman poetry was very similar to that of the Grecian; with this difference, that, as the Roman government lasted longer, it afforded more time to mark the steps of descending genius, and those affectations which the growing corruption of taste had a tendency to produce.

When the nations of modern Europe, after a long interval of desolation and disorder, had begun to enjoy peace and tranquillity, and acquired some degree of opulence, they applied themselves to the arts of entertainment, and imitated with success the poetical compositions of the<329> Greeks and Romans. Their attempts of this nature were, however, peculiarly modified by two circumstances.

In imitating the Greek and Roman writers, they at first preferred the affected brilliancy, and tinsel ornaments of a later age, to the simple and genuine beauties of the preceding period. Though, in the infancy of the fine arts, mankind, as has been remarked by Mr. Hume, when left without direction or instruction, will commonly follow the dictates of nature and truth; and, in their compositions, will endeavour to express their thoughts with plainness and simplicity, yet they are easily misled by false guides, and have too little experience and taste to reject the gaudy and affected embellishments of a vitiated style. From this injudicious imitation of ancient models, the first poetical compositions of modern Italy, and of other European countries, exhibited all those defects which are usual in a declining state of the fine arts. The tendency, however, of subsequent improvements, was not only to produce that correctness which is derived from observa-<330>tion, and from rules of criticism, but to restore that simplicity which is commonly the peculiar character of early compositions.

The Gothic manners, on the other hand, by introducing such romantic love, and such exalted notions of military honour, as were unknown to the Greeks and Romans, afforded a new and rich field for the display of heroic sentiments, and of striking adventures. The admiration and gallantry of which, in the age of chivalry, the ladies were uniformly the objects, and the humanity and generosity, with which all those gentlemen, who had acquired distinction in arms, thought it incumbent on them to behave towards one another, furnish a remarkable contrast with the spirit and behaviour of the principal personages in the Iliad; where a country is praised, in the same breath, for producing fine horses and beautiful women; and where Hector,9 who first runs away from Achilles, is afterwards dragged at the chariot wheels of that brutal conqueror. The advantages, however, derived from this modern refinement, were so counteracted by the false taste which pre-<331>vailed, as to render the poetical compositions, which appeared upon the revival of letters, a set of motley performances, not less disgraced by childish and extravagant conceits, than they were often distinguished by uncommon strength of imagery and wildness of imagination. The Italian poets, who set the example to all Europe, were most remarkable both for the beauties and the defects which have been mentioned;10 though, in the course of near two centuries, when they continued to flourish, they seem to have availed themselves more and more of an acquaintance with the purer classics of Greece and Rome. The French, who, after the states of Italy, came next into the situation of a polished people, appear to have turned their chief attention to supply the defect which was most wanting in the Italian poets, by substituting order, method, and regularity; and, as every new attempt is commonly pushed into extremities, the exuberance of imagination in the latter gave rise, in the former, to excessive restraints, to a rigid observance of critical rules, and to feeble and languid compositions. In<332> England, the progress of civilization was much later than in France; and as the people, for this reason, advanced more slowly in their ideas of correctness, the poets did not abandon the Italian models until, by the force of custom, and by the practice of several eminent writers, the national taste was invariably fixed and determined. The irregularity and bold imagery of Spenser, and the sublime genius of Milton, not to mention our great writer in the dramatic walk,11 who has no pretensions to correctness, have given a peculiar bias to the poetical taste of Englishmen, and directed their admiration almost exclusively to the powers of invention and fancy.

In all these European countries however, it should seem, that the poetic spirit has greatly declined, and that in two of them it is almost extinct. In Italy, the Gierusalemmé Liberata12 may be accounted the last great exertion of the epic muse. In France, the Henriade of Voltaire,13 which is, in that country, the most considerable poem of the same class, appears, notwithstanding the<333> celebrity of its author, to have sunk into the shade.

That in England too, epic poetry is already long past its summit, and has been declining for more than half a century, will, from the slightest examination, appear abundantly evident. The late adventurers in this field discover, indeed, few marks of a corrupted taste; but they seem greatly inferior to their predecessors, in original genius, in fertility of invention, and in richness of imagery. They are a sort of minor poets, destitute of that creative power which enlivens every object, and without effort converts all nature to their purposes; but straining to be sublime, tiring their fancy by endless and rapid excursions to the most remote and opposite corners of the universe, painfully collecting and skilfully appropriating the labours of preceding authors, and after all producing, at best, a few fragments of beautiful passages.

In reality, considering the state of society at present, both in France and England, it may be doubted, whether an epic poem, of great length, and highly finished in all its<334> parts, embellished with the harmony of versification, and the splendour of diction, and enriched with metaphors and figures of all sorts, be an entertainment suited to the general taste of the people. It should seem, that a short composition of this nature may give a delightful exercise to the imagination; but that a long work becomes tedious, and demands from the reader an alertness, and intensity of application, which few persons are capable of maintaining. We find, accordingly, that the modern novels, which, in a plainer style, comprehend a wider field of adventures, have now, in great measure, superseded the ancient modes of epic poetry, and become the chief amusement of almost all those individuals who are exempted from bodily labour. The multiplication of these compositions, which were scarcely known to the Greeks and Romans, and their endless diversity of shapes, whether serious or comic, in which they have appeared, may be regarded as one of the great varieties in the history of polite literature.<335>

[2. ]Millar’s discussion of “vivacity of colouring” and its ability to produce “sympathetic affections” echoes Kames’s doctrine of “ideal presence” in his Elements of Criticism (1762).

[3. ]Millar’s continued desire to believe in the fundamental authenticity of Macpherson’s Ossianic publications no doubt owed something to his interest in the poem as a portrait of early manners.

[4. ]The myth of the return of the descendants of Heracles to the Peloponnese functioned as a charter myth for the division of the Peloponnese between different Dorian states. According to the myth, Zeus granted Sparta to the Heraclidae who had left the Dorian heartland of northern Greece.

[5. ]The assumed date of the Trojan War falls in the thirteenth century , toward the end of the Mycenean Age, thus leaving a gap of some four and a half centuries between the date of composition of the Iliad and the legendary past in which it is set.

[6. ]Edmund Spenser (1552?–99): Elizabethan poet, author of The Faerie Queen, begun ca. 1579 and published 1590–96.

[7. ]Matteo Maria Boiardo (Bojardo) (1440?–94): Italian humanist, poet, and aristocrat, best known for his Orlando innamorato (Roland in Love), a chivalric romance. After its initial appearance in the late fifteenth century, it was reworked by the Florentine poet Francesco Berni (1497?–1535) in an attempt to bring it up to the (Tuscan) purity of Lodovico Ariosto’s (1474–1533) Orlando furioso, a more celebrated continuation which first appeared in 1516.

[8. ]As Millar indicates more clearly below, he has in mind the modern novel as the successor of the epic.

[9. ]In Greek myth, the son of Priam, king of Troy, and the greatest of the Trojan warriors described in the Iliad. He is killed by Achilles in vengeance for the slaying of Patroclus.

[10. ]Millar presumably has in mind the excesses of European Petrarchism, with its taste for extravagant oxymorons and far-fetched love imagery.

[11. ]William Shakespeare (1564–1616): the contrast between the “incorrectness” of Shakespeare and the rule-bound classicism of the great French dramatic poets (especially Jean Racine, 1639–99) was a frequent theme of eighteenth-century criticism.

[12. ]Torquato Tasso (1544–95) published Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) in 1581.

[13. ]The Henriade, an epic poem on Henry IV, was begun in 1717 and published 1726–29.