Like God, the chief part is taken by the Receive thy new possessor; one who bring We shall be free; the Almighty hath no Here for his envy; will not drive us hence: To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: heaven." * This sombre heroism, this harsh obsti nacy, this biting irony, these proud stiff arms which clasp grief as a mis tress, this concentration of invincible courage which, cast on its own re sources, finds every thing in itself, this power of passion and sway over pas sion,— chained thunderbolts, and hail of iron globes," and won the second day's victory; he who in hell roused his dejected troops, and planned the ruin of man; he who, passing the guarded gates and the boundless chaos, amid so many dangers, and across so many obstacles, made man revolt against God, and gained for hell the whole posterity of the new-born. Though defeated, he prevails, since he has won from the monarch on high the third part of his angels, and almost all the sons of his Adam. Though wounded, he triumphs, for the thunder which smote his head left his heart invincible. Though feebler in force, he remains superior in nobility, since he prefers suffering independence to happy ser-❝A dungeon horrible on all sides round vility, and welcomes his defeat and his torments as a glory, a liberty, and a joy. These are the proud and sombre political passions of the constant though oppressed Puritans; Milton had felt them in the vicissitudes of war, and the emigrants who had taken refuge amongst the wild beasts and savages of America, found them strong and energetic in the depths of their hearts. "The unconquerable will, Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, For that celestial light? Be it so, since he, Whom reason has equal'd, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrours; hail, Infernal world! and thou, profoundest hell, Around the fallen angel, as within him, all is great. Dante's hell is but a hall of tortures, whose cells, one below another, descend to the deepest wells. Milton's hell is vast and vague. As one great furnace flamed, yet from those No light, but rather darkness visible Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm Thaw not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems The angels gather, innumerable legions: "As when heaven s fire Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands on the blasted heath." I Milton needs the grand and infinite he lavishes them. His eyes are only content in limitless space, and he produces colossal figures to fill it. Such is Satan wallowing on the surges of the livid sea: "In bulk as huge ... as... that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream: Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff, Deering some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays." * Spenser has discovered images just as fine, but he has not the tragic gravity which the idea of hell impresses on a Protestant. No poetic creation equals in horror and grandeur the spectacle that greeted Satan on leaving his dun geon: "At last appear Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock, A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb, And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd Within unseen... The other shape, If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none For each seem'd either: black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. The undaunted fiend what this might be admired, Admired, not fear'd." ↑ The heroic glow of the old soldier of the Civil Wars animates the infernal battle; and if any one were to ask why Milton creates things greater than other men, I should answer, because be has a greater heart. Paradise Lost, book i. 7. 196–208. ↑ Ibid. book ii. Į. 643–678, 305 Hence the sublimity of his scenery If I did not fear the paradox, I should say that this scenery was a school of virtue. Spenser is a smooth glass, which fills us with calm images. Shakspeare is a burning mirror, which overpowers us, repeatedly, with multiplied and dazzling visions. The one dis tracts, the other disturbs us. Milton raises our mind. The force of the ob jects which he describes passes into us; we become great by sympatry with their greatness. Such is the effect of his description of the Creation. The calm and creative command of the Messiah leaves its trace in the heart which listens to it, and we feel more vigor and moral health at the sight of this great work of wisdom and will: "On heavenly ground they stood; and from the shore They view'd the vast immeasurable abyss 'Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou deep, peace, Said then the omnific Word: 'your discord end!' Let there be light, said God; and forthwith light Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, Sprung from the deep; and from her native east To journey through the aery gloom began, Sphered in a radiant cloud. ... The earth was form'd; but in the womb as yet Of waters, embryon immature involved, Appear'd not over all the face of earth Main ocean flow'd, not idle, but, with warm Prolific humour softening all her globe, Fermented the great mother to conceive, Satiate with genial moisture, when God said, 'Be gather'd now, ye waters under heaven, Into one place, and let dry land appear.' Immediately the mountains huge appear Emergent, and their broad bare backs up heave Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky: Capacious bed of waters: thither they This is primitive scenery; immense bare seas and mountains, as Raphael Sanzio outlines them in the background of his biblical paintings. Milton em braces the general effects, and handles the whole as easily as his Jehovah. * Ibid., book vii. 7. 310-298. Arraying with reflected purple and gold tend: gray Now came still evening on, anc twilight nests, ment With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length, Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw." The changes of the light become here a religious procession of vague beings who fill the soul with veneration. So sanctified, the poet prays. Standing by the "inmost bower" of Adam and Eve, he says: "Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source Let us quit superhuman and fanciful | life as a combatant, as a poet, with spectacles. A simple sunset equals courageous deeds and splendid dreams them. Milton peoples it with solemn heroic and rude, chimerical and im al'egories and regal figures, and the passioned, generous and calm, like sublime is born in the poet, as just every self-contained reasoner, like before it was born from the subject:- every enthusiast, insensible to experi ence and enamored of the beautiful. "The sun, now fallen Thrown by the chance of a revolution into politics and theology, he demands for others the liberty which his power ful reason requires, and strikes at the public fetters which impede his personal energy. By the force of his in tellect, he is more capable than any one of accumulating science; by the force of his enthusiasm, he is more capable than any of experiencing hatred. controversy with all the clumsiness and Thus armed, he throws himself into barbarism of the time; but this proud logic displays its arguments with a marvellous breadth, and sustains its images with an unwonted majesty; this lofty imagination, after having spread over his prose an array of magnificent figures, carries him into a torrent of passion even to the height of the sublime or excited ode-a sort of archangel's song of adoration or vengeance. The chance of a throne preserved, then re-established, led him before the revolution took place, into pa. gan and moral poetry, after the revolution into Christian and moral verse. In both he aims at the sublime, and inspires admiration: because the sublime is the work of enthusiastic reason, and admiration is the enthusiasm of rea son. In both, he arrives at his point by the accumulation of splendors, by the sustained fulness of poetic song, by the greatness of his allegories, the lofti. ness of his sentiments, the description of infinite objects and heroic emotions. In the first, a lyrist and a philosopher, with a wider poetic freedom, and the creator of a stronger poetic illusion he produces almost perfect odes and choruses. In the second, an epic writer and a Protestant, enslaved by a strict theology, robbed of the style which makes the supernatural visible, deprived of the dramatic sensibility which creates varied and living souls, he accumulates cold dissertations, transforms man and God into exthodox and vulgar machines, and only regains his genius in endowing Satan with his Of human offspring, sole propriety He justifies it by the example of saints and patriarchs. He immolates before it "the bought smile" and "court-amours, mix'd dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, or serenate." | We are a thousand miles from Shakspeare; and in this Protestant eulogy of the family tie, of lawful love, of domestic sweets,' of orderly piety and of home, we perceive a new literature ind an altered time. A strange great man, and a strange spectacle! He was born with the instinct of noble things; and this instinct, strengthened in him by solitary meditation, by accumulated knowledge by stern logic, becomes changed into a body of maxims and beliefs which no temptation could dissolve, and no reverse shake. Thus fortified, he passes, Paradise Lost, book iv. l. 591-609 ↑ Ibid. 1. 780-737. republican soul, in multiplying grand | willingly pagan, often immoral; such landscapes and collossal apparitions, in consecrating his poetry to the praise of religion and duty. as it is exhibited by Ben Jonson, Beau mont, Fletcher, Shakspeare, Spenser, and the superb harvest of poets which covered the ground for a space of fifty years; the other fortified by a practi cal religion, void of metaphysical inven tion, altogether political worshipping rule, attached to measured, sensible, useful, narrow opinions, praising the virtues of the family, armed and stiffen. Placed, as it happened, between two ages, he participates in their two characters, as a stream which, flowing between two different soils, is tinged by both their hues. A poet and a Protestant, he receives from the closing age the free poetic afflatus, and from the opening age the severe political relig-ed by a rigid morality, driven into ion. He employed the one in the ser- prose, raised to the highest degree of vice of the other, and displayed the old power, wealth, and liberty. In this inspiration in new subjects. In his sense, this style and these ideas are works we recognize two Englands: one monuments of history; they concenimpassioned for the beautiful, devoted trate, recall, or anticipate the past and to the emotions of an unshackled sensi- the future; and in the limits of a single bility and the fancies of pure imagina- work are found the events and the feeltion, with no law but the natural feelings of several centuries and of a whole ings, and no religion but natural belief; nation. |