attained the whole extension of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all the varieties of metrical modulation'.

Bossu is of opinion that the poet's first work is to find a moral, 209 which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. This seems to have been the process only of Milton: the moral of other poems is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential and intrinsick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous: 'to vindicate the ways of God to man3'; to shew the reasonableness of religion, and the necessity of obedience to the Divine Law".

To convey this moral there must be a fable, a narration 210 artfully constructed so as to excite curiosity and surprise expectation. In this part of his work Milton must be confessed to have equalled every other poet. He has involved in his account of the Fall of Man the events which preceded, and those that were to follow it: he has interwoven the whole system of theology with such propriety that every part appears to be necessary, and scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the sake of quickening the progress of the main action.

The subject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great 211 importance. That of Milton is not the destruction of a city,

In Rasselas, ch. x, Imlac enumerates the qualities needed in a poet. Rasselas exclaims:-'Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a poet.'

2

La première chose par où l'on doit commencer pour faire une Fable, est de choisir l'instruction et le point de Morale qui lui doit servir de fond, selon le dessein et la fin que l'on se propose.' LE BOSSU, Traité du Poëme Epique, l. 1. ch. 7.

Dryden adopts Le Bossu's rule. Works, xvii. 303. Addison rejects it. The Spectator, No. 369. Voltaire attacks 'cette règle bizarre que le père Lebossu a prétendu établir, c'est de choisir son sujet avant les personnages, et de disposer toutes les actions qui se passent dans le poëme avant de savoir à qui on les attribuera.' Œuvres, viii. 371. ‘Son Traité sur le Poëme épique a beaucoup de réputation, mais il ne fera jamais de

poètes.' 1b. xvii. 117. See post, Smith,

10.

3 'I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to

men.' Paradise Lost, i. 25. Johnson, in his Dictionary, misquoting these lines, gives them under Vindicate. He was misled by Pope's line

'But vindicate the ways of God to
man.' Essay on Man, i. 16.

4 In the Paradise Lost—indeed in every one of his poems-it is Milton himself whom you see; his Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost his Eve, are all John Milton; and it is a sense of this intense egotism that gives me the greatest pleasure in reading Milton's works. The egotism of such a man is a revelation of spirit.' COLERIDGE, Table Talk, 1884, p. 231.

Johnson here borrows something from Addison's Spectator, No. 267.

212

213

the conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against the Supreme King raised by the highest order of created beings; the overthrow of their host and the punishment of their crime; the creation of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to hope and peace'.

Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem all other greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the highest and noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whose actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude or deviation of will depended the state of terrestrial nature and the condition of all the future inhabitants of the globe 2.

Of the other agents in the poem the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions3. The rest were lower powers;

'of which the least could wield

Those elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions*';

powers which only the controul of Omnipotence restrains from laying creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus superiour, so far as human reason can examine them or human imagination represent them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.

214 In the examination of epick poems much speculation is commonly employed upon the characters. The characters in the

'When Milton conceived the glorious plan of an English epic, he soon saw the most striking subjects had been taken from him; that Homer had taken all morality for his province, and Virgil exhausted the subject of politics.' GIBBON, Misc. Works, iv. 150.

2 The moral which reigns in Milton is the most universal and most useful that can be imagined; it is in short this, that obedience to the will of God makes men happy, and

that disobedience makes them miserable.' ADDISON, The Spectator, No. 369.

3 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.' ADDISON, ib. No. 267.

4

'the least of whom could wield These elements,' &c.

Paradise Lost, vi. 221.

Paradise Lost which admit of examination are those of angels and of man; of angels good and evil, of man in his innocent and sinful state.

Among the angels the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of 215 easy condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and lofty, and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature. Abdiel and Gabriel appear occasionally, and act as every incident requires; the solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very amiably painted 2.

Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified. To 216 Satan, as Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit 'the most exalted and most depraved being". Milton has been censured by Clarke for the impiety which sometimes breaks from Satan's mouth. For there are thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass, however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader's imagination, was indeed one of the great difficulties in Milton's undertaking, and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with great happiness 5. There is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain to a pious ear. The language of rebellion cannot be the same with that of obedience. The malignity of Satan foams in haughtiness and obstinacy; but his expressions are commonly general, and no otherwise offensive than as they are wicked.

The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously 217 discriminated in the first and second books; and the ferocious character of Moloch appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact consistency 7.

218 To Adam and to Eve are given during their innocence such sentiments as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and mutual veneration; their repasts are without luxury and their diligence without toil. Their addresses to their Maker have little more than the voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask, and Innocence left them nothing to fear'.

219

220

221

But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and stubborn self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and dread their Creator as the avenger of their transgression. At last they seek shelter in his mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in supplication. Both before and after the Fall the superiority of Adam is diligently sustained.

Of the probable and the marvellous, two parts of a vulgar epick poem which immerge the critick in deep consideration, the Paradise Lost requires little to be said. It contains the history of a miracle, of Creation and Redemption; it displays the power and the mercy of the Supreme Being: the probable therefore is marvellous, and the marvellous is probable. The substance of the narrative is truth; and as truth allows no choice, it is, like necessity, superior to rule. To the accidental or adventitious parts, as to every thing human, some slight exceptions may be made. But the main fabrick is immovably supported.

It is justly remarked by Addison that this poem has, by the nature of its subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and perpetually interesting 3. All mankind will,

''En effet, il est à remarquer que dans tous les autres poëmes l'amour est regardé comme une faiblesse ; dans Milton seul il est une vertu. Le poète a su lever d'une main chaste le voile qui couvre ailleurs les plaisirs de cette passion; il transporte le lecteur dans le jardin de délices; il semble lui faire goûter les voluptés pures dont Adam et Ève sont remplis; il ne s'élève pas au-dessus de Îa nature humaine, mais au-dessus de la nature corrompue.' VOLTAIRE, Euvres, viii. 421.

2' Aristotle observes that the fable in 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 marvellous.'
Spectator, No. 315.

ADDISON, The

'Le Poëme Héroïque doit avoir des Fictions pour être une Poésie; et les Fictions, pour être reçues et agréées par le jugement, doivent être vraisemblables.' DESMARÊTS, Défense du Poëme Héroïque, p. 87, quoted in Euvres de Boileau, ii. 98 n. 3 The Spectator, No. 273.

'Paradise Lost is losing its hold over our imagination. . . . It would have been a thing incredible to Milton that the hold of the Jewish Scriptures over the imagination of English men and women could ever be weakened. This process, however, has already commenced.' Pattison's Milton, p. 199.

through all ages, bear the same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that good and evil which extend to themselves.

Of the machinery, so called from eòs àñò μnxarms 2, by which 222 is meant the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another fertile topic of critical remarks, here is no room to speak, because every thing is done under the immediate and visible direction of Heaven; but the rule is so far observed that no part of the action could have been accomplished by any other means. Of episodes I think there are only two, contained in Raphael's 223 relation of the war in heaven 3 and Michael's prophetick account of the changes to happen in this world*. Both are closely connected with the great action; one was necessary to Adam as a warning, the other as a consolation.

To the compleatness or integrity of the design nothing can be 224 objected; it has distinctly and clearly what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is perhaps no poem of the same length from which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation. Here are no funeral games, nor is there any long description of a shield'. The short digressions at the beginning of the third, seventh, and ninth books might doubtless be spared; but superfluities so beautiful who would take away? or who does not wish that the author of the Iliad had gratified succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself? Perhaps no passages are more frequently or more attentively read than those extrinsick paragraphs; and, since the end of poetry is pleasure, that cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased.

The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly one, 225 whether the poem can be properly termed heroick, and who is

Pope, in his Dedication of The Rape of the Lock, says:- -'The machinery is a term invented by the critics to signify that part which the deities, angels, or demons are made to act in a poem.' In a note on Iliad, xxiv. 141, he writes:—' It may be thought that so many interpositions of the Gods, such messages from heaven to earth, and down to the seas, are needless machines.' See also post, DRYDEN, 207 n.; POPE, 55, 59; and Boswell's Johnson, iv. 17. 2 See Aristotle's Poetics, xv. 10. 3 Paradise Lost, v. 577-vi. end.

4. Ib. xi. 334-xii. end.

Addison reckons the creation of the world as part of the first episode. The Spectator, No. 267.

5 Aristotle's Poetics, vii. 3; The Spectator, No. 267; post, DRYDEN, 363.

Iliad, xxiii. 257; Aeneid, v. 104. 1 Iliad, xviii. 478.

8 'There is nothing in nature more irksome than general discourses, especially when they turn chiefly upon words. For this reason I shall waive the discussion of that point which was started some years since,