so doing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetically in the right. This task, which almost any other writer would have found impracticable, was easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed of communicating his meaning circuitously, through a long succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he could not avoid.

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails. They have just enough in common with human nature to be intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions and veiled in mysterious gloom.

PARADISE LOST.

Or man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top

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1. As in the commencement of the Iliad, of the Odyssey, and of the Æneid, so here the subject of the poem is the first announcement that is made, and precedes the verb with which it stands connected, thus giving it due prominence. Besides the plainness and simplicity of the exordium, there is (as Newton has observed) a further beauty in the variety of the numbers, which of themselves charm every reader without any sublimity of thought or pomp of expression; and this variety of the numbers consists chiefly in the pause being so artfully varied that it falls upon a different syllable in almost every line. Thus, in the successive lines it occurs after the words disobedience, tree, world, Eden, us, Muse. In Milton's verse the pause is continually varied according to the sense through all the ten syllables of which it is composed; and to this peculiarity is to be ascribed the surpassing harmony of his numbers.

4. Eden: Here the whole is put for a part. It was the loss of Paradise only, the garden, the most beautiful part of Eden; for after the expulsion of our first parents from Paradise we read of their pursuing their solitary way in Eden, which was an extensive region.

5. Regain, &c.: Compare XII. 463, whence it appears that in the opinion of Milton, after the general conflagration, the whole earth would be formed into another, and more beautiful, Paradise than the one that was lost.

6. Muse: One of those nine imaginary heathen divinities, that were

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning, how the heav'ns and earth

Rose out of Chaos. Or if Sion hill

10

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

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thought to preside over certain arts and sciences, is here, in conformity to classical custom, addressed. Secret top: set apart, interdicted. The Israelites, during the delivery of the law, were not allowed to ascend that mountain.

7. Horeb and Sinai were the names of two contiguous eminences of the same chain of mountains. Compare Exod. iii. 1, with Acts vii. 30.

8. Shepherd: Moses. Exod. iii. 1.

12. Oracle: God's temple; so called from the divine communications which were there granted to men.

15. The Aonian Mount; or Mount Helicon, the fabled residence of the Muses, in Baotia, the earlier name of which was Aonia. Virgil's Eclog. vi. 65. Georg. iii. 11.

16. Things unattempted: There were but few circumstances upon which Milton could raise his poem, and in everything which he added out of his own invention he was obliged, from the nature of the subject, to proceed with the greatest caution; yet he has filled his story with a surprising number of incidents, which bear so close an analogy with what is delivered in holy writ that it is capable of pleasing the most delicate reader without giving offence to the most scrupulous.-A.

17. Chiefly Thou, O Spirit: Invoking the Muse is commonly a matter of mere form, wherein the (modern) poets neither mean, nor desire to be thought to mean, anything seriously. But the Holy Spirit, here invoked, is too solemn a name to be used insignificantly: and besides, our author, in the beginning of his next work, 'Paradise Regained,' scruples not to say to the same Divine Person"Inspire

As Thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute." This address therefore is no mere formality.-HEYLIN.

It is thought by Bp. Newton that the poet is liable to the charge of enthusiasm; having expected from the Divine Spirit a kind and degree of inspiration similar to that which the writers of the sacred scriptures enjoyed. The

Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dovelike sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,
And madest it pregnant: What in me is dark,
Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to Men.

Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view, Nor the deep tract of Hell; say first what cause

Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favor'd of Heav'n so highly, to fall off

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25

30

widow of Milton was accustomed to affirm that he considered himself as inspired; and this report is confirmed by a passage in his Second Book on Church Government, already quoted in our preliminary observations.

24. The height of the argument is precisely what distinguishes this poem of Milton from all others. In other works of imagination the difficulty lies in giving sufficient elevation to the subject; here it lies in raising the imagination up to the grandeur of the subject, in adequate conception of its mightiness, and in finding language of such majesty as will not degrade it. A genius less gigantic and less holy than Milton's would have shrunk from the attempt. Milton not only does not lower; but he illumines the bright, and enlarges the great: he expands his wings, and "sails with supreme dominion" up to the heavens, parts the clouds, and communes with angels and unembodied spirits.-E. B.

27. The poets attribute a kind of omniscience to the Muse, as it enables them to speak of things which could not otherwise be supposed to come to their knowledge. Thus Homer, Iliad ii. 485, and Virgil, Æn. vii. 645.

Milton's Muse, being the Holy Spirit, must of course be omniscient.-N. 30. Greatness, is an important requisite in the action or subject of an epic poem; and Milton here surpasses both Homer and Virgil. The anger of Achilles embroiled the kings of Greece, destroyed the heroes of Troy, and engaged all the gods in factions. Æneas' settlement in Italy produced the Cæsars and gave birth to the Roman empire. Milton's subject does not determine the fate merely of single persons, or of a nation, but of an entire species. The united powers of Hell are joined together for the destruction of mankind, which they effected in part and would have completed, had not Omnipotence itself interposed. The principal actors are man in his greatest perfection, and woman in her highest beauty. Their enemies are the fallen angels; the Messiah their friend, and the Almighty their Protector. In

From their Creator, and trangress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
Th' infernal Serpent: he it was whose guile,
Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride

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Had cast him out from Heav'n, with all his host

Of rebel Angels; by whose aid aspiring

To set himself in glory 'bove his peers,

He trusted to have equall'd the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heav'n, and battle proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,

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45

short, everything that is great in the whole circle of being, whether within the range of nature or beyond it, finds a place in this admirable poem.-A. "The sublimest of all subjects (says Cowper) was reserved for Milton; and, bringing to the contemplation of that subject, not only a genius equal to the best of the ancients, but a heart also deeply impregnated with the divine truths which lay before him, it is no wonder that he has produced a composition, on the whole, superior, to any that we have received from former ages. But he who addresses himself to the perusal of this work with a mind entirely unaccustomed to serious and spiritual contemplation, unacquainted with the word of God, or prejudiced against it, is ill qualified to appreciate the value of a poem built upon it, or to taste its beauties.

32. One restraint: one subject of restraint-the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

34. Serpent. Compare Gen. iii. 1 Tim. ii. 14. John viii. 44.

38. Aspiring: 1 Tim. iii. 6.

39. In glory a divine glory, such as God himself possessed. This charge is brought against him, V. 725; it is also asserted in line 40; again in VI. 88, VII. 140.

46. Ruin is derived from ruo, and includes the idea of falling with violence and precipitation: combustion is more than flaming in the foregoing line; it is burning in a dreadful manner.-N.

48. Chains. Compare with Epistle of Jude v. 8. Also, Eschylus Prometh. 6.