John Milton: Curious Curiosity

John Milton

Unenamored of curiosity?

(Image from Wikipedia)

One of the immediate summer projects that I have before me is a report on "curiosity" that I have agreed to write for Warren Reich, who is researching and writing a history of "care," and because one of the scholars on the Milton List asked if the angel Raphael was right to rebuke Adam for his curiosity, I decided to look into this and see what Milton thinks of curiosity (and all passages are borrowed from Thomas H. Luxon, ed., The Milton Reading Room, July, 2008).

Milton doesn't actually use the term "curiosity" in Paradise Lost, but he does use it in Samson Agonistes 775, where Dalila (Delilah), the Philistine woman who betrayed Samson to his Philistine enemies, admits to curiosity as a weakness:

Samson Agonistes 773-777:

First granting, as I do, it was a weakness
In me, but incident to all our sex,
Curiosity, inquisitive, importune
Of secrets, then with like infirmity
To publish them, both common female faults:

We ought to note that Dalila is speaking here, not Milton, but the reader can hardly overlook the apparent allusion to Eve's curiosity in the Edenic temptation scene under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil . . . except that Milton never uses the word "curiosity" in Paradise Lost, let alone employ it to describe Eve's interest in the forbidden tree.

However, we do find Milton in Tetrachordon (Matthew Places) quoting St. Augustine to support his own opinion about those who ask "curious" questions:

Tetrachordon, Matthew Places:

This also may be thought not improbable, that Christ, stirr'd up in his spirit against these tempting Pharisees, answer'd them in a certain form of indignation usual among good authors; wherby the question, or the truth is not directly answer'd, but something which is fitter for them, who ask, to hear. So in the Ecclesiastical stories, one demanding how God imploy'd himself before the world was made? had answer, that he was making hell for curious questioners.

By "curious questioners," Milton in this instance means those who pose questions not out of a serious intent to discover the truth but as an attempt to mislead.

And elsewhere, in The Reason of Church Government, Book 2, Milton explains the motivation for all his writing, which he describes himself as having already been conscious as a young man on his European wanderings, and assures his readers that the motive was "not to make verbal curiosities" his aim:

These thoughts at once possest me, and these other. That if I were certain to write as men buy Leases, for three lives and downward, there ought no regard be sooner had, then to Gods glory by the honour and instruction of my country. For which cause, and not only for that I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latines, I apply'd my selfe to that resolution which Ariosto follow'd against the perswasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end, that were a toylsom vanity, but to be an interpreter & relater of the best and sagest things among mine own Citizens throughout this Iland in the mother dialect.

In this instance, Milton does not refer to curiosity in the sense of a misdirected search for knowledge but as an overwrought and artificial literary construction. Milton intends for us to know that his aim is serious, for he wishes to artfully adorn the "best and sagest things."

Use of the term "curious" to describe overwrought artifice occurs in Paradise Lost 4.242, where Milton contrasts the natural wonders of Eden, watered by a "Saphire Fount," to the artificial gardens of England:

PL 4.237-243

How from that Saphire Fount the crisped Brooks,
Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold,
With mazie error under pendant shades
Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flours worthy of Paradise which not nice Art
In Beds and curious Knots, but Nature boon
Powrd forth profuse on Hill and Dale and Plaine

Concerning "Beds and curious Knots," Thomas Luxon informs us that "Tudor formal gardens were often very intricate affairs, carefully planned and tended . . . [but that the] late 17th and 18th century began to prefer more natural looking landscapes and views (The Milton Reading Room).

In Paradise Regained 1.319, Satan, in the guise of an "aged man," is described as having a "curious eye," in the context meaning that he looked with curiosity, and some 14 lines further, in 1.333, Satan himself acknowledges being "curious" to hear what is new:

PR 1.314-334

But now an aged man in Rural weeds,
Following, as seem'd, the quest of some stray Ewe,
Or wither'd sticks to gather; which might serve
Against a Winters day when winds blow keen,
To warm him wet return'd from field at Eve,
He saw approach; who first with curious eye
Perus'd him, then with words thus utt'red spake.
Sir, what ill chance hath brought thee to this place
So far from path or road of men, who pass
In Troop or Caravan, for single none
Durst ever, who return'd, and dropt not here
His Carcass, pin'd with hunger and with droughth?
I ask the rather, and the more admire,
For that to me thou seem'st the man, whom late
Our new baptizing Prophet at the Ford
Of Jordan honour'd so, and call'd thee Son
Of God; I saw and heard, for we sometimes
Who dwell this wild, constrain'd by want, come forth
To Town or Village nigh (nighest is far)
Where ought we hear, and curious are to hear,
What happ'ns new; Fame also finds us out.

Given that the devil is portrayed as "curious," we can probably infer that Milton is using the term in a negative sense, which is also likely the case in Paradise Regained 4.42, where the context refers to a Satan tempting Jesus:

PR 4.25-43

He brought our Saviour to the western side
Of that high mountain, whence he might behold
Another plain, long but in bredth not wide;
Wash'd by the Southern Sea, and on the North
To equal length back'd with a ridge of hills
That screen'd the fruits of the earth and seats of men
From cold Septentrion blasts, thence in the midst
Divided by a river, of whose banks
On each side an Imperial City stood,
With Towers and Temples proudly elevate
On seven small Hills, with Palaces adorn'd,
Porches and Theatres, Baths, Aqueducts,
Statues and Trophees, and Triumphal Arcs,
Gardens and Groves presented to his eyes,
Above the highth of Mountains interpos'd:
By what strange Parallax or Optic skill
Of vision multiplyed through air, or glass
Of Telescope, were curious to enquire:
And now the Tempter thus his silence broke.

Here, the narrator uses "curious" to designate an activity of the mind that would be tangential to the issue at hand, a distraction from the central point.

I've already noted that in The Reason of Church Government, Milton uses "curiosities" to refer to overwrought artifice, and he does so twice more in the same text:

The Reason of Church Government, Book 1

But so exquisit and lively the description is in portraying the new state of the Church, and especially in those points where government seemes to be most active, that both Jewes and Gentiles might have good cause to be assur'd, that God when ever he meant to reforme his Church, never intended to leave the governement thereof delineated here in such curious architecture, to be patch't afterwards, and varnish't over with the devices and imbellishings of mans imagination.

The Reason of Church Government, Book 2

Next if I were wise only to mine own ends, I would certainly take such a subject as of it self might catch applause, whereas this hath all the disadvantages on the contrary, and such a subject as the publishing whereof might be delayd at pleasure, and time enough to pencill it over with all the curious touches of art, even to the perfection of a faultlesse picture, whenas in this argument the not deferring is of great moment to the good speeding, that if solidity have leisure to doe her office, art cannot have much.

Also, in Tetrachordon (Deuteronomy Places), Milton uses "curious" in a less negative sense to refer to the "care" displayed by the Law of Moses about washing vessels and vestures:

Tetrachordon, Deuteronomy Places:

What more unlike to God, what more like that God should hate, than that his Law should be so curious to wash vessels, and vestures, and so careless to leave unwash'd, unregarded, so foul a scab of Egypt in their Souls? what would we more? the Statutes of the Lord are all pure and just: and if all, then this of Divorce.

Here, Milton does not imply anything wrong with the Law, but does imply that to be "curious" about purifying ritual objects while neglecting the purifying of something far more important.

In short, Milton seems to share the traditional, negative view of curiosity held by so many in the Medieval Church. Nevertheless, he does not use the term to describe Eve's interest in the fruit of the forbidden tree . . . a point that I find curious.