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She ended, and the heavenly Hierarchies
Burning in zeal, thickly imbranded were:
Like to an army that alarum cries,

And every one shakes his ydreaded spear,
And the Almighty's self, as he would tear

The earth, and her firm basis quite in sunder,

Flam'd all in just revenge, and mighty thunder, Heaven stole itself from earth by clouds that moisten'd under.

The awful grandeur of celestial indignation seems to lift itself up in the majesty of these lines. The sudden preparation of the heavenly warriors, the clangor of arms, and the uprising of the Deity himself, are splendid images, which are known to the reader of Paradise Lost not to have escaped the notice of Milton. The pause at the beginning of the stanza is a note of solemn preparation.

The re-appearance of Mercy in the midst of darkness and tumult is very picturesque; her face soon glimmers through, and paints the clouds with beauty

As when the cheerful sun, elamping wide,
Glads all the world with his uprising ray,
And woos the widow'd earth afresh to pride,
And paint her bosom with the flow'ry May,
His silent sister steals him quite away;

Wrapt in a sable cloud from mortal eyes
The hasty stars at noon begin to rise,
And headlong to his early roost the sparrow flies.

But soon as he again dishadow'd is,
Restoring the blind world his blemish'd sight,
As though another day were newly his,
The cozen'd birds busily take their flight,
And wonder at the shortness of the night:

So Mercy once again herself displays,

Out from her sister's cloud, and open lays.

Those sunshine looks, whose beams would dim a thousand days.

The poet then describes the charms of Mercy in verses sparkling as the "discoloured plumes" of the graces that attend upon her:

If any wander, thon dost call him back;
If any be not forward, thou incit'st him;
Thou dost expect, if any should grow slack;
If any seem but willing, thou invit❜st him;
Or if he do offend thee, thou acquitt'st him;

Thou find'st the lost, and follow'st him that flies,
Healing the sick, and quick'ning him that dies,

Thou art the lame man's friendly staff, the blind man's eyes.
So fair thou art, that all would thee behold;
But none can thee behold, thou art so fair;
Pardon, O pardon then, thy vassal bold,

That with poor shadows strives thee to compare,
And match the things which he knows matchless are ;
O thou vive mirror of celestial grace,

How can frail colours portraict out thy face,

Or paint in flesh thy beauty, in such semblance base ?

Her upper garment was a silken lawn,

With needlework richly embroidered,

Which she herself with her own hand had drawn,

And all the world therein had portrayed,

With threads so fresh and lively coloured

That seem'd the world she new created there,
And the mistaken eye would rashly swear

The silken trees did grow, and the beasts living were.
And here and there few men she scattered,
(That in their thought the world esteem but small,
And themselves great,) but she with one fine thread,
So short, and small, and slender, wove them all,
That like a sort of busy ants, that crawl

About some molehill, so they wandered;

And round about the waving sea was shed;
But, for the silver sands, small pearls were sprinkled.
So curiously the under work did creep,

And curling circlets so well shadow'd lay,
That afar off the waters seem'd to sleep;

But those that near the margin pearl did play,
Hoarsely enwaved were with hasty sway,

As though they meant to rock the gentle ear,
And hush the former that enslumber'd were;
And here a dang’rous rock the flying ships did fear.
High in the airy element there hung

Another cloudy sea, that did disdain

(As though his purer waves from heaven sprung)

To crawl on earth, as doth the sluggish main ;
But it the earth would water with his rain,

That ebb'd and flow'd, as wind and season would ;
And oft the sun would cleave the limber mould

To alabaster rocks, that in the liquid roll'd.

Beneath those sunny banks a darker cloud,
Dropping with thicker dew, did melt apace,
And bend itself into a hollow shrowd,
On which, if Mercy did but cast her face,
A thousand colours did the bow enchase,

That wonder was to see the silk distained

With the resplendence from her beauty gained,
And Iris paint her locks with beams, so lively feigned.

Over her hung a canopy of state,

Not of rich tissue, nor of spangled gold,
But of a substance, though not animate,
Yet of a heav'nly and spiritual mould,
That only eyes of Spirits might behold;

Such light as from main rocks of diamound,
Shooting their sparks at Phoebus, would rebound,

And little Angels, holding hands, danced all around.

The gentleness of Mercy is contrasted with the haggard wretchedness of Repentance :

Deeply, alas, impassioned she stood,

To see a flaming brand tossed up from hell,
Boiling her heart in her own lustful blood,
That oft for torment she would loudly yell;
Now she would sighing sit, and now she fell

Crouching upon the ground, in sackloth trust,
Early and late she prayed, and fast she must,
And all her hair hung full of ashes and of dust.

The reader may remember the picture of Remorse in the introduction to the Mirrour for Magistrates:

And first within the porch and jaws of hell,
Sat deep remorse of conscience, all besprent
With tears; and to herself oft would she tell
Her wretchedness

:

Fletcher wanted the energy of Sackville's iron pen. The impersonations of Dread, Revenge, Misery, and

Death, placed by that writer in the Porch of Hell, have never been surpassed. They stand out in a ghastly reality, and fill the mind with a solemn visionary terror.

When Mercy beheld the wretched form of Repentance sitting in "

a dark valley," she sent to comfort her one of her loveliest attendants, "smiling Eirene *,

That a garland wears

Of gilded olive on her fairer hairs;

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and in her sublime celebration of the glory of the Redeemer, she describes the worshipping of the shepherds :To see their King the kingly sophies come, And, them to guide unto their master's home, A star comes dancing up the orient,

That springs for joy over the starry tent.

This beautiful image is borrowed from Chaucer. The "mighty thunder" having dropped from the arm of God at the pleadings of Mercy, the angelic armies cast their broken weapons at her feet, and the canto concludes:

Bring, bring, ye Graces, all your silver flaskets.
Painted with every choicest flower that grows,
That I may soon unflower your fragrant baskets,
To strew the field with odours where he goes,
Let whatsoe'er he treads on be a rose.

So down she + let her eyelids fall, to shine
Upon the rivers of bright Palestine.

So beautifully does the poet strew with flowers the path of the infant Jesus.

The second canto, Christ's Victory on Earth, opens with the temptation of our Saviour in the wilderness. The fanciful prettiness of Fletcher contrasts unpleasingly with the calm and dignified narrative of Milton, who, without departing from the text of Scripture, where it is said, Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, has invested it with a poetical character. Fletcher's pic+ Mercy

* Peace.

ture of our Lord 66 upon a grassy hillock laid," with "woody primroses befreckled," does not impress us like Milton's description of Him, who the "better to converse with solitude," entered the

bordering desert wild,

And with dark shades and rocks environed round,

pursued "his holy meditations." The silence of the desert dwells around us!

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In the representation of our Saviour's personal appearance, Fletcher has manifested a still greater absence of judgment; it is principally formed from the Canticles, and in a style of fantastical colouring, peculiarly displeasing in a sacred poem. The author might, however, have pleaded the prevalent taste of the age in extenuation of his conduct. Two nights the Saviour has passed in "the silent wilderness," making "the ground his bed, and his moist pillow grass," when he sees afar off an old palmer, come footing slowly," who entreats him to bless his lowly roof with his presence. Milton concurred with Fletcher in concealing the Prince of Darkness under the form of an aged man. This similitude appears to have been generally adopted. In La Vita et Passione di Christo, published at Venice in 1518, a wooden cut is prefixed to the Temptation, in which Satan is represented as an old man with a long beard, offering bread to our Lord. In Vischer's cuts to the Bible, as noticed by Thyer, the tempter is an aged man, and Mr. Dunster has pointed out the same circumstance in the painting of the Temptation by Salvator Rosa *.

They wander along together until they arrive at a dismal abode, the Cave of Despair

Ere long they came near to a baleful bower,
Much like the mouth of that infernal cave,

That gaping stood, all comers to devour,

* See Todd's Works of Milton, v. 4, preliminary observations, p. 18.

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