the violet, or the aspect of a lichen-veined seat at the root of a tree,--might not there be a compensation in the superior vividness with which certain other sensations of sight, and in particular all luminous effects, all contrasts of light and darkness, were remembered? If a blind man, that had once enjoyed sight, retained a more vivid recollection of some objects than of others, and a keener faculty in calling up their images, might they not be such objects as a lamp, the mouth of a furnace, the sun, the moon, a ball of red-hot iron, the ground covered with snow, the nocturnal sky studded with stars? Might not one that had become blind even excel a person not so afflicted in all that kind of physical description which consists in contrasts of light and darkness, blaze and blackness, or can be effected poetically through the metaphor of luminousness?

Apply this to Paradise Lost. In the first place, the very physical scheme and conception of the poem as a whole seems a kind of revenge against blindness. It is a compulsion of the very conditions of blindness to aid in the formation of a visual phantasmagory of transcendent' vastness and yet perfect exactness. That roof of a boundless Empyrean above all, beaming with indwelling light; that Chaos underneath this, of immeasurable opaque blackness; hung into this blackness by a touch from the Empyrean, our created Universe, conceived as a sphere of soft blue ether brilliant with luminaries; separated thence by an intervening belt of Chaos, and marked as a kind of antarctic zone of universal space, a lurid or dull-red Hell in all this what else have we than the poet making districts in the infinitude of darkness in which he himself moved, and, while suffering some of the districts to remain in their native opaque, rescuing others into various contrasts of light? But not only in the total conception or diagram of the poem may this influence of blindness be traced. In the filling-up, in the imagination of what goes on within any one of the districts into which space is so marked out, or by way of the intercourse of the districts with each other, we may trace the same influence. Much of the action and incident consists of the congregation of angelic beings in bands beyond our universe, or in their motions singly towards our universe, descrying it from afar, or in their wingings to and fro within our universe from luminary to luminary. Now, in all those portions of the

poem, the mere contrast of darkness with light, the mere imagery of lucency, of light in masses, streaks, gleams, particles, or discs, goes very far. When Satan, already halfway through Chaos in his quest of the New Universe, ceases his temporary halt at the pavilion of Night, and, having received direction there, rises with fresh alacrity for his further ascent, how is the recommencement of his motion indicated? He (II. 1013-14)

"Springs upward like a pyramid of fire

Into the wild expanse.

And, when, having attained to the New Universe and found the opening into it, he flings himself down and alights first on the Sun, how is his alighting on the body of the Sun described (111. 588-590)?

"There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps
Astronomer in the Sun's lucent orb

Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw."

But, even if we follow Milton into the passages of purely terrestrial description in his Paradise Lost, his descriptions of Eden and what went on there, we shall trace, if I do not mistake, some subtle action of the same influence from his blindness. These portions of the poem amount to about a fifth or sixth of the whole, and they are surpassingly beautiful. The poet revels there in a wealth of verdure and luxuriant detail, reminding us of the rich pastoral poems of his youth, when he delighted in landscape and vegetation. Take, as a minute specimen, the description of the nuptial bower of Eve (IV. 692-703) :

"The roof

Of thickest covert was inwoven shade,
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side

Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub

Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower,

Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine,

Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought

Mosaic; underfoot the violet,

Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay

Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone

Of costliest emblem."

But, though such passages abound, showing how, after years of blindness, the poet could still walk in imagination over the variegated earth and recall its delights of form and colour for his use, it will be found that even in these passages, and much more in others, there is here and there a subtle cunning peculiar to blindness. What I mean is that descriptive effects are attained with an unusual degree of frequency through the use of the metaphor of luminousness or radiance. When, for example, Ithuriel and Zephon, searching through Paradise at night, discover Satan squat like a toad at the ear of the sleeping Eve, and when Ithuriel touches him with his spear, how is the effect described (IV. 814-820)?

"As, when a spark

Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid
Fit for the tun some magazine to store
Against a rumoured war, the smutty grain,
With sudden blaze diffused inflames the air;
So started up in his own shape the Fiend."

In the sequel, Ithuriel and Zephon, leading Satan as their prisoner, bring him to the western end of the Garden, where the two subdivisions of guardian angels that have been going their rounds have just met and formed company under Gabriel's command. There Gabriel upbraids the captive Fiend, who in his turn defies Gabriel, and waxes insolent. One of his speeches is so insolent that the whole band of Gabriel's angels instinctively begin to close round him to And how is this described (IV. 977-979)?

attack him.

"While thus he spake, the Angelic squadron bright
Turned fiery-red, sharpening in mooned horns
Their phalanx, and began to hem him round."

i.e. the appearance of the angelic band, advancing in the dark to encircle Satan, was like that of the crescent moon. Throughout the poem many similar instances will be found, in which the metaphor of luminousness is made to accomplish effects that we should hardly have expected from it. We see the fond familiarity of the blind poet with the element of light in contrast with darkness, and an endless inventiveness of mode, degree, and circumstance in his fancies of this

element. In Paradise Lost, brilliance is, to a considerable extent, Milton's favourite synonym for beauty.1

1 To prevent mistake, I may state that I have already, in various places, and sometimes anonymously, expressed some of the speculations given in the text as to the influence of Milton's blindness on his later poetry.