5 Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook Of Erebus. She opened; but to shut Under spread ensigns marching, might pass through So wide they stood, and like a furnace mouth Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame. In Satan's voyage through the chaos there are several To imaginary persons described as residing in that immense. waste of matter. This may, perhaps, be conformable to the taste of those critics who are pleased with nothing in a poet which has not life and manners ascribed to it; but for my own part, I am pleased most with those 15 passages in this description which carry in them a greater measure of probability, and are such as might possibly have happened. Of this kind is his first mounting in the smoke that rises from the infernal pit, his falling into a cloud of nitre and the like combustible materials, that by their explosion still hurried him forward in his voyage; his springing upward like a pyramid of fire,' with his laborious passage through that confusion of elements which the poet calls 20 1 The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave. 25 The glimmering light which shot into the chaos from the utmost verge of the creation, with the distant discovery of the earth that hung close by the moon, are wonderfully beautiful and poetical. 1 2. 9IL HORACE nature and force of his genius. Milton seems to have known perfectly well wherein his strength lay, and has therefore chosen a subject entirely conformable to those talents of which he was master. As his genius was won- 5 derfully turned to the sublime, his subject is the noblest that could have entered into the thoughts of man. Every thing that is truly great and astonishing has a place in it. The whole system of the intellectual world; the chaos and the creation; heaven, earth, and hell, enter into the 10 constitution of his poem. Having in the First and Second Books represented the infernal world with all its horrors, the thread of his fable naturally leads him into the opposite regions of bliss and glory. 15 If Milton's majesty forsakes him anywhere, it is in those parts of his poem where the Divine Persons are introduced as speakers. One may, I think, observe that the author proceeds with a kind of fear and trembling whilst he describes the sentiments of the Almighty. He dares 20 not give his imagination its full play, but chooses to confine himself to such thoughts as are drawn from the books 1 Spectator, No. 315, March 1, 1712. of the most orthodox divines, and to such expressions as may be met with in Scripture. The beauties, therefore, which we are to look for in these speeches, are not of a poetical nature, nor so proper to fill the mind with senti5 ments of grandeur as with thoughts of devotion. The passions which they are designed to raise are a divine love and religious fear. The particular beauty of the speeches in the Third Book consists in that shortness and perspicuity of style in which the poet has couched the 10 greatest mysteries of Christianity, and drawn together, in a regular scheme, the whole dispensation of Providence with respect to man. He has represented all the abstruse doctrines of predestination, free-will, and grace, as also the great points of incarnation and redemption, which 15 naturally grow up in a poem that treats of the Fall of Man, with great energy of expression, and in a clearer and stronger light than I ever met with in any other writer. As these points are dry in themselves to the generality of readers, the concise and clear manner in which 20 he has treated them is very much to be admired, as is likewise that particular art which he has made use of in the interspersing of all those graces of poetry which the subject was capable of receiving. 25 The survey of the whole creation, and of everything that is transacted in it, is a prospect worthy of Omniscience; and as much above that in which Virgil has drawn his Jupiter, as the Christian idea of the Supreme Being is more rational and sublime than that of the heathens. The particular objects on which He is de30 scribed to have cast His eye are represented in the most beautiful and lively manner : 1 Now had the Almighty Father from above, 1 3. 56-79. High throned above all hight, bent down his eye, In blissful solitude. He then surveyed To stoop, with wearied wings and willing feet, Him God beholding from his prospect high, 5 10 15 20 Satan's approach to the confines of the creation is finely imaged in the beginning of the speech which immediately follows. The effects of this speech in the blessed spirits, 25 and in the Divine Person to whom it was addressed, cannot but fill the mind of the reader with a secret pleasure and complacency: 1 Thus while God spake ambrosial fragrance filled 30 35 Love without end, and without measure grace. 1 3. 136-143. ΙΟ I need not point out the beauty of that circumstance wherein the whole host of angels are represented as standing mute, nor show how proper the occasion was to produce such a silence in heaven. The close of this divine 5 colloquy, with the hymn of angels that follows upon it, are so wonderfully beautiful and poetical, that I should not forbear inserting the whole passage, if the bounds of my paper would give me leave : 15 1 No sooner had the Almighty ceased but — all Loud as from numbers without number, sweet The eternal regions, etc. etc. Satan's walk upon the outside of the universe, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but upon his nearer approach looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble; as his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation, between that mass of matter which was 20 wrought into a world and that shapeless, unformed heap of materials which still lay in chaos and confusion, strikes the imagination with something astonishingly great and wild. I have before spoken of the Limbo of Vanity, which the poet places upon this outermost surface of the 25 universe, and shall here explain myself more at large on that and other parts of the poem, which are of the same shadowy nature. 30 Aristotle observes that the fable of an epic poem should abound in circumstances that are both credible and astonishing; or, as the French critics choose to phrase it, the fable should be filled with the probable and the marvelous. This rule is as fine and just as any in Aristotle's whole Art of Poetry. 1 3. 344-349. |