TALBOYS. In what posture did they lie? You have now given us a very forcible and truthful account of in what posture they now stand; but might you not have been NORTH. More circumstantial? I might, and shall be so now. I ought to have spoken of that first COLLOQUY on the fiery flood between Satan and Beelzebub. TALBOYS. That infernal colloquy sublime! You said well that the change has been produced by steps that our minds follow easily; that we have pursued with satisfaction to our understandings the progress of this wonderful revolution. Does the colloquy help it on? Do the myriads hear it? Or are they dumb and deaf? ་ NORTH. Dumb and deaf. But we are not; and the colloquy is for us. By-and-by the myriads will hear it; meanwhile we feel in it Satan's greatness and his power, and are enabled to believe in the cleaving and inflamed allegiance of the Myriads to their King. Recite the Colloquy. Myriads though bright!-if he, whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope He with his thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those, Nor what the potent Victor in his rage And high disdain, from sense of injured merit, That with the Mightiest raised me to contend; And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of spirits arm'd, That durst dislike his reign; and, me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power opposed In dubious battle on the plains of heaven, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, Who, from the terror of this arm, so late Doubted his empire; that were low indeed! That were an ignominy, and shame beneath This downfall! since, by Fate, the strength of gods And this empyreal substance cannot fail; Since, through experience of this great event,— In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, We may, with more successful hope, resolve To wage by force or guile eternal war, Irreconcilable to our grand foe, Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven. So spake the apostate angel, though in pain, Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair; And him thus answered soon his bold compeer. O Prince! O chief of many throned That led the embattled seraphim to war And put to proof his high supremacy, Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate; Too well I see, and rue the dire event, In horrible destruction laid thus low, state Here swallow'd up in endless misery." NORTH. How solemnly and majestically the first lines glorify Satan-by a scale set! Chief of Powers that led! a Leader of leaders-a Prince of princes-a Throne above thrones ! Think on the strange misprision of Bentley, who thinks that either Milton ungrammatically put "led" for "leddest"-ignorantly then too-for he would not have shunned "ledst," who said elsewhere Teptst!" TALBOYS. And what a locution he, Bentley, thus bestows on Milton-"Leddest under thy conduct!" NORTH. Or that if Milton means "led," Bentley thinks he has lowered Satan by attributing to the subordinate powers" endangered," "put to proof;" not discerning that all that all do under Satan becomes much more majestically and superbly and sublimely Satan's than if he did it personally. He is their Soul, and to him they owe that which they do. Note the grave, touching, and magnificent composition of the first and following verses:-"O Prince!" is a full address; but satisfies not Beelzebub, who proceeds to reproduce and expand his compellation. And first by translating "O Prince!" into "O Chief of many throned Powers!" But neither is that enough; and all that is hung in the following lines upon the Powers becomes only an immense explication and amplification of that first "O Prince!" For you must not, for the world, for an instant think of such a construction as "O Prince-of many throned Powers;" for that would go down at once from "Prince" to "Chief." But decidedly "O Prince" is insulated, entire, independent, self-sufficient; and all the rest is a second birth, unbosomed out of it. Observe, too, the instantaneous resumption by Beelzebub of his old relationship to Satan-as a follower, loyal, admiring, attached, justifying, only not having yet received from him the courage to hope on; there is not a word of displaying his own zeal, but in perfect simplicity, and as a mere follower, of course. There they are together, master and servant, or rather brother and brother, for it is a mixed relationship. What they were before, that they are after; the "horrid change" has in this made none. There is here a moral sublimity; and "Study of revenge, immortal hate!" like a seed cast into the soil of the future-like an end of thread put between the fingers of Destiny, which she shall spin on. There is, in three words, the fall of man spoken. And observe how slowly the reacquisition of will, fitting for corporal act, ensues. Lifting up a face, eyes cast round, the project of a flight so heavily proposed, under such a depression of all physical energy! Herein, and in the flight which follows, and is described with care, the impressive representation of a quasi-annihilation, from which they have to revive, the aggrandisement which all this annihilation of a physical kind acquires, that herein is expressed the hand of God weighing them down, as indeed throughout the whole Poem the finite teems with an inly-born infinitude. TALBOYS. Compeers! but Beelzebub, methinks, is beginning to quail. as ours) Have left us this our spirit and strength entire, Strongly to suffer and support our pains, That we may so suffice his vengeful ire; NORTH. "Whereto with speedy words the Archfiend replied." Good Dr Newton says, that what Beelzebub had last said hath startled Satan, and that he "thinks proper to make a speedy reply." "Fallen Cherub! to be weak is miserable, Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Satan"thought proper" to make this speedy reply. And Beelzebub is mute. Satan follows up his triumph; and seeing that the "angry Victor" bas recalled his ministers of vengeance and pursuit back to the gates of heaven, and ceased to "bellow through the vast and boundless deep," "thinks it proper" not to let slip the occasion, "Whether scorn, Or satiate fury, yield it from our foe." He must be up and doing. The seat of desolation, void of light, Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend If not-what resolution from despair. Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature! On each hand the flames, Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll'd In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale: Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, That felt unusual weight; till on dry land The opening of his speech very beautifully brings out Satan's mournful regret. You can see his angelical senses offended, wrung by the change. He, too, loved light, and beauty, and serenity! He had love! Whither has it gone, or going? The excess of "glory obscured," answers to a like change of mind! "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, What matter where, if I be still the same, We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built In part of the respect which we feel for Satan is our admiration of his understanding;—of its powers, at least, if not always of its conclusions. His greatness is twofold-first, the intellectual endowment is of the highest order, which was requisite in the Antagonist of Heaven, Author of Evil, Seducer of Man, Tempter of the Saviour. But we feel quite as much a moral grandeur in his intellect. Moral qualities must proceed, I suppose, from the will. There may be, and I suppose are, many unobvious ways of this proceeding from the will into the understanding in angel and in man-ways claiming the research of the Philosopher. But there is also one obvious way of this proceeding-namely, to face and understand your own evil condition. There, every one feels that the collecting your intellectual powers, and the strength exerted in using them, are from a will full of power; and perhaps most of all, that the voluntary rejection of all self-delusion, of all hiding from seeing, the simple determination to know the worst that is to be known-is heroic. By power of intelligence, and by intellectual courage, Satan calmly looks into, and takes on him the condition which he has made for himself. There is only one exception to be made to his clearness of understanding— that is, his moral perversion-his monomania-to which he gives concentrated expression— "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven !" As he afterwards admits the inevitable and self-condemning consequences in a word-Evil, be thon my Good!" which is the sublimest moral reductio ad absurdum; and yet you feel when he comes to it, not that he has found light, but that he has bound himself to darkness; only he shows that he thoroughly knows the darkness. He is a clear logician. The fixing of our admiration on Satan's intelligence began early, or at once-" as far as angels' ken he views!" His eyes are sublime visual organs. And you may know how far they can see, when Uriel sees, from the Sun, Satan's face on Niphates repeatedly change colour. He, the Leader, more than any other angel, takes penetrating and comprehensive views of his situation: "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,— Said then the lost Archangel,-this the seat SEWARD. Beelzebub, at first, and throughout, is a grand, a sublime angel; beyond all the others, even Moloch, furious king. Moloch is above Mammon, and Mammon above Belial. But Beelzebub is not further above them, than he is below Satan. He does not dare to call on the Legions; but implores Satan to speak, knowing that his voice will prevail. That consternation, he knows, has not broken the power of that name. "Astonished on the oblivious pool," they have still remembrance of his place in Heaven, "there sitting where they durst not war." In Bliss, or in revolt, or "in hideous ruin and combustion," equally the "Lord Paramount.” TALBOYS. Lucifer, Son of the Morning, of Heaven, is now Hesperus in the Night of Hell. And Hesperus, who yet still leads the starry host, shines brightest; and they yet believe that, following Him, they shall repossess their native seats. "Leader of those armies tright, Which but the Omnipotent none could have foil'd! If once they hear THAT VOICE," they will soon resume new courage and revive, though now they lie "Grovelling and prostrate in yon lake of fire! As we erewhile, astounded and amazed.” Satan will speak. But the Poet gives him time-not to prepare Him-for be has for nine days been thinking of his Address. Nay, he makes two Addresses, both equally suitable and appropriate; but the second being the Speech of the Evening. The Poet rejoices in the certainty of thunder and lightning" worthy of the occasion, and is absolutely averse to the cessation of that Colloquy. He himself uses three hundred lines in telling us the final result! Yes, from the imploration of Beelzebub till the close of Satan-three hundred lines of such Poetry! Beelzebub scarce had ceased," till the superior Fiend was moving "towards the shore. We have seen him-lying-rising-flying-now behold him walking—that is, “moving towards the shore." "His ponderous shield, Etherial temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast: the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders, like the moon whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views Here is, then, the whole sublime Figure detached and in motion; the most conspicuous piece of his warlike array singled out and presented under a first impression. The astronomer is placed in his observatory; his eye as if created anew by that wonderful organ of revelation which his hands have fabricated. He at least is for the moment "sublime with expectation." And still the sights, too, that he hopes for, are here inwrapped in an expectant music." "To deacry new lands, Rivers, or mountains." How faithfully to his calling and to his own being has the Poet of a sudden put life into the Moon, by the suggestion of running waters! No matter, though Lord Rosse may have little hope of descrying rivers in a planet without an atmosphere! Young observation might hope everything. "In her spotty globe!" Spotty! You here see how harmoniously, and with what an accession of composure to the momentary leave-taking, one word of this final musical clause resumes the whole various imagery of the next preceding one, lands, rivers, mountains! Gigantic Spottings, when science has interpreted them! And an Art in the Versifier mated to the genius of the Thinker. Ay, there is a capacity resident in verse to reflect the stupendous creations of genius-Dread Action, Dread Passion, Dread Cogitation. Eh? BULLER. TALBOYS. Beelzebub-and you and I are now standing beside Beelzebub- -sees Satan going from him;-were Satan coming towards him, where would be that Shield? That description of Satan's Shield? Nowhere in Milton. BULLER. TALBOYS. The Leader of the host now stands on the brink of that inflamed sea, and calls. "He called so loud that all the hollow deep Of Hell resounded." An expecting hemistich! Listen! Hell listens! and all her forlorn myriads, grovelling, weltering, and powerless of will, as they lie, and for nine days and nights have lain upon the tossing of the fiery surge-they listen to the hardly less than omnipotent call! The voice of the Archangel, in the pride of his call, twice reaches a resting-place. Once in the words-" To slumber here as in the vales of Heaven!" Observe here that repose is the very matter that is ironically presented; and observe that from this momentary repose break out, like lightnings and thunders which tear open the breast of some solid cloud, the fiercest scorn-shafts with which Satan will vex them up from their slumber as of annihilation! NORTH. But what follows the Shield, Talboys? TALBOYS. On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime "His spear, to equal which the tallest pine, NORTH. He makes two Addresses. The first, of which you have spoken well, did its business. "Princes, potentates, Warriors! the flower of heaven, once yours, now lost, If such astonishment as this can seize Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To adore the Conqueror? who now beholds Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts The Myriads are on wing-they heard, and were abashed, and up they spring "Upon the wing, "Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires." They were like leaves-now they are like locusts. |