effect," Death his death's wound shall then receive." Again the Father speaking of the impenitent says: "But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more," and expressions similar to these, objectionable only as petty rhetorical tricks, are very numerous. But what shall we say of the use of epithets like these by the Father? In speaking of man's fall he says, "Whose: fault? whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me all he could have," &c.; and in speaking of Satan he says, that the revenge he seeks to take on man "shall redound upon his own rebellious head;" he says of the impenitent, that they shall "oft be warned their sinful state, and to appease betimes the incensed Deity." To feel the full effect of these epithets it is necessary to read them in their connection, and when thus read,. we believe they tend very much to increase the unpleasant. impressions these passages create. They would be entirely appropriate for an excitable man, not as objectionable if God were conversing with man; but spoken only before the "sanctities of Heaven," we consider them ill-timed and unbecoming. We have confined ourselves in the main to the Third Book, because we think the failure of the poet is most commonly felt in reading this scene in Heaven. Yet we are well aware that the same characteristics appear elsewhere in the representation of heavenly scenes and the character of the Deity.. Indeed, Raphael's description of Heaven in the Fifth Book seems to us almost deserving of the severe censure of the extract from Prof. Draper's History. The dance of the angels around the sacred hill, in whose motions

"Harmony divine

So smooths her charming tones, that God's own ear

Listens delighted."

The evening repast that follows, in which the tables are "piled with angels' food," and the "rubied nectar flows," while they with "fresh flowerets crowned," repose on flowers; and finally, the sleep which after the repast comes over all except God himself and his immediate attendants, and the plotting archangel who draws away a third of Heaven's sons to war against the Eternal under the cover of the darkness, though very beautiful as poetry, is so utterly opposed to all our ideas

of the sacred things of Heaven, that these pleasant images of earthly beauty and delight, in such connection, serve only to awaken displeasure and dislike. They too forcibly recall the Homeric Olympus, even to the sacred hill around which the angels dance, and the high mountain which is the seat of the Deity. The speech of the Father, and the Son's reply, which follow these passages, seem to us to approach nearer profanity than anything else we have found in Paradise Lost. The Father sees the assembling of the rebel hosts, and says to the Son

Nearly it now concerns us to be sure

Of our omnipotence, and with what arms
We mean to hold what anciently we claim
Of Deity or empire."

"Let us advise, and to this hazard draw

With speed what force is left, and all employ

In our defence, lest unawares we lose

This our high place, our sanctuary, our high hill."

Such ideas as these, spoken by the great Ruler of the Universe, seem to us little short of blasphemous. It is as though God trembled for the safety of his throne, and hurriedly collected all the remaining forces of Heaven to repel the threatening danger which might take Him unawares. We deem the boast which closes the reply of the Son exceedingly inappropriate; it reminds us of the address of one of the heroes of the Iliad before joining battle. He says it shall be matter of glory to him

"When they shall see all regal power
Given to quell their pride, and in event
Know whether I be dexterous to subdue

Thy rebels, or be found the worst in heaven."

We must be pardoned for referring briefly to one other passage. The battle of the angels seems to us filled with hopeless incongruities. We would not go so far as Dr. Johnson, and class it as a kind of child's wonder book; yet with all its learning and all its poetic beauties, it is eminently unsatisfactory. We can only speak our own experience; but we are forced to acknowledge that we have ever failed to rise

with the poet in the description of this conflict. It seems to us so far to exceed possibility, so hopelessly to blend and confuse together the incongruities of flesh and spirit, so to mix up Heaven with earth, and heavenly conflicts with earthly and carnal ones, that the mind shrinks back from it with displeasure, and fails to receive the inspiration and enthusiasm which the poet strives to impart. It is vast without being grand, terrible without being sublime. We regret also that in describing the arming of the Son for the final conflict, the poet has kept so steadily in view the gods of the Greeks, and given Him the chariot of Poseiden whose "rapid wheels" "shake heaven's basis," and the terrible thunder of Zeus. The bad effect of this, however, is afterwards almost entirely removed by the magnificent description of the chariot with all its gorgeous imagery, borrowed from the opening vision of Ezekiel's prophecies.

The results to which these considerations lead us may be briefly stated. We believe that the poet has fallen below his own ideal of the majesty of God, because, in the first place, mythological ideas have imperceptibly insinuated themselves into his representations; and secondly, because he sacrificed much to show the final victory of good over evil, and by the nature of his subject was forced to represent God as foretelling these future events and the reasons of them, and hence was led to exhibit him as defending himself from possible criminations, with somewhat of the astute logic of the schoolmen, and the rhetorical flourish of the sophists. These certainly have detracted seriously from the success of his attempt. Nor would we underestimate their influence. Surely, so far as it goes, it is an evil which cannot be too carefully guarded against. Yet before adopting Prof. Draper's opinion, we would suggest some manifest limitations. And first, that very few educated men read Paradise Lost as a text-book in ethics or theology, but simply as a poem, as they would read Homer or Virgil. The very mythological ideas we have pointed out, and the very striking likeness to the classics of Greece and Rome, would tend to put the poem upon the same ground as those heathen writings. It is a noble work of art, and they

admire it as they would a picture of the Madonna, not with reverence and crossings and prayers, but with an enthusiastic appreciation of its artistic merits. Milton's Heaven, like Homer's, is but the creation of a poet's brain. When thus considered, its influences are all indirect, and are greater than those of the Odyssey or the Eneid, solely because the foundation of the poem is, in the main, the Christian Scriptures.

Secondly, when we speak of these indirect influences we must consider also the counteracting ones in the same poem. The whole spirit of the poem is eminently religious. Underlying these faults we have examined, is the poet's lofty idea of the Almighty, derived from an attentive study of his revealed word, which is felt constantly by every appreciative reader, notwithstanding the difficulties besetting its delineation. We have designated the effect of the first part of the Third Book as unpleasant, and this, we think, describes the impression it leaves. And why? Simply because it falls below what we expected, and what we are forced to believe the poet designed. The reasons of this disappointment are only developed by a more careful study and analysis.

Lastly, we deny that there is any "materialization of the great and invisible God;" and that, in any proper sense of the word, Paradise Lost can be called a "Manichean composition." In no case do we have any representation of the Deity in bodily form, or any acts ascribed to Him which we conceive to be incompatible with pure spirit. The conquest of the Son over the hosts of the fallen forms the only apparent exception to this remark, and scriptural examples to justify this might easily be multiplied. The angels, and heaven itself, appear oftentimes earthly, but the poet has ever stopped short of applying such properties to the Deity. In making God to converse as man, he has ample justification in the example of Holy Writ; and if he has failed to impart to the discourses attributed to the Deity that dignity and majesty which is befitting them, he has very rarely departed so far from it as seriously to offend against our religious feelings. The very fact that Paradise Lost has been so long and so generally received as a Christian poem proves this, and that wherein

the poet has fallen short, is as much against the general spirit and design of his work, as it is against the feelings of his most devout and pions readers. We cannot conceive how the strife between good and evil angels, which is terminated by a most disastrous defeat of the legions of Satan the moment that the Deity interposes, can justify the charge of Manicheism, nor can we conceive how, with any propriety, such a charge can be founded upon one address of the Father, which is as much at variance with the rest of the poem as it is with the Christian idea of divine omnipotence; and, aside from these two instances, we know of nothing in the whole poem which can be called Manichean, unless the same epithet can be applied to the corresponding teachings of Scripture.

In conclusion, we will quote a short paragraph from Spalding's "History of English Literature," which happily expresses what we consider the right view of Paradise Lost: "If the poet has sometimes aimed at describing scenes over which should have been cast the veil of reverential silence, we shall remember that this occurs but rarely. If other scenes and figures of a supernatural kind are invested with a costume which seems to us unduly corporeal, even for the poetic inventor, we should pause to recollect that the task thus attempted is one in which perfect success is unattainable; and we shall ourselves, unless our fancy is cold indeed, be awed and dazzled, whether we will or not, by many of those very pictures."

Vol. xxviii. 42.