Oldal 83 [83]
“DICTATES TO ME SLUMBRING” — DICTATION AND INSPIRATION IN PARADISE LOST
in either Shakespeare or Marlowe — both of whom refer to dictators, though).
A similarly great number of texts in the period mention dictation by God,
the Spirit, or even Satan — in these we can perhaps see the influence of the
then-burgeoning dictation theory in Protestant hermeneutics. A characteris¬
tic occurrence of the word from 1634 is the Mirrour of New Reformation, an
anti-protestant work, pointing out that Beza in his Creophagia “preferr’d to be
the Diuels scribe” and “without doubt he writ it against the Testament of the
Sonne of God, while the Diuel did dictate it unto him.” Another example for
the same use, but with the opposite value attached to dictation, could be taken
from Samuel Wesley’s Life of Christ (1693):
What passes here, what here we’ve done or said,
Shall be by after-Ages, wond’ring read.
Four Scribes will I to that great Task assign,
Whilst the blest Spirit shall dictate every Line. (7.363-366)
Or we could consider the following couplet from the front matter of Chapman’s
Odyssey (actually a translation of a Greek epigram):
The great Mzeonides doth onely write;
And to him dictates, the great God of Light.
The above examples are just a sample of the many occurrences of the concept
of dictation in early modern literature, and are thus far from representative.
However, even from this limited selection of quotes it becomes clear that dic¬
tation functions as a thing indifferent: it is always through the qualities and
intentions attributed to the persons participating in the dictation process that
it becomes part of any critical argument. Milton’s use of the word and its cog¬
nates throughout his oeuvre seems to follow suit: in answer to Salmasius’s
Defence of the King, for example, he refers to his adversary in the Angli pro
populo Anglicano Defensio as a “vile, mercenary foreigner” who is perfugarum
dictata exscribentus that is, a “transcriber of what some fugitives dictate.”!f In
Areopagitica we even find two different types of dictation implicitly contrasted.
Expatiating on the pointless and harmful activity of licencing, Milton exclaims:
16 MILTON, John, Defensio Pro Populo Anglicano, Londini, Du Guardianis, 1651, 185; WASHING¬
TON, Joseph (trans.), A Defence of the People of England, London, Nathaniel Rolls, 1695, 188.
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