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or figuratively, as in Psalm 77. 20. where it is said that, God led his chosen through the wilderness like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

LINE 26.

And justify the ways of God to men.

Justify them by evincing, that when Man by transgression incurred the forfeiture of his blessings, and the displeasure of God, himself only was to blame. God created him for happiness, made him completely happy, furnished him with sufficient means of security, and gave him explicit notice of his only danger. What could he more, unless he had compelled his obedience, which would have been at once to reduce him from the glorious condition of a free agent to that of an animal.

There is a solemnity of sentiment, as well as majesty of numbers, in the exordium of this noble Poem, which in the works of the ancients has no example.

The sublimest of all subjects was reserved for Milton, and bringing to the contemplation of that subject not only a genius equal to the best of theirs, 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. Milton is the Poet of Christians: an Infidel may have an ear for the

harmony of his numbers, may be aware of the dignity of his expression, and in some degree of the sublimity of his conceptions, but the unaffected, and masculine piety, which was his true inspirer, and is the very soul of his poem, he will either not perceive, or it will offend him.

We cannot read this exordium without perceiving that the author possesses more fire than he shows. There is suppressed force in it, the effect of judgment. His judgment controuls his genius, and his genius reminds us (to use his own beautiful similitude) of

"A proud steed rein'd Champing his iron curb."

he addresses himself to the performance of great things, but makes no great exertion in doing it; a sure symptom of uncommon vigor.

LINE 27. Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view.

This enquiry is not only poetically beautiful like Homer's Iliad 2. 485, in which he addresses the Muses with a similar plea

Υμείς γας

εστε, πάρεςι Τε, έςε τε παντα or like that of Virgil, who pleads with them in the same manner, En, 7. 645.

Et meministis, enim, Divæ, et memorare potestis.

but it has the additional recommendation of the most consummate propriety, and is in fact a prayer for information to the only Inspirer able to grant it. Of the manner of Man's creation, of his happy condition while

innocent, and of the occasion and circumstances of his fall, we could have known nothing but from the intelligence communicated by the Holy Spirit.

LINE 39. To set himself in glory above his peers:

Dr. Pearce needed not perhaps to have gone so far as he did in his note on this line for a key to the true meaning of it. A single word in the next verse but one seems sufficiently to explain it the word ambitious. It imports plainly an opposition not of mere enmity, but of enmity that aspired to superiority over the person opposed. Satan's aim, therefore, was in Milton's view of it, to supplant the Most High, and to usurp the supremacy of Heaven; and by Peers are intended, not only those, who aided him in his purpose, but all the Angels, as well the faithful as the rebellious.

the

This line affording the first instance, that occurs in poem of a y cut from the end of a word that precedes a vowel, it affords also the fittest opportunity to observe, that though elisions of this kind, and many others frequent in Milton's practice, have fallen into disuse, their discontinuance is no advantage. In the ear of a person accustomed to meet them in the Greek and Latin Classics, where they abound, they have often an agreeable and sometimes a very fine effect. But it is admitted, that discretion and a good taste are requisite to the proper use of them, and that too frequently employed, or unskilfully, they may prove indeed deformities.

LINE 50. Nine times the space, that measures day

and night.

It is observable, that between all the members, of which this long period consists, the same pause or nearly the same, obtains, till it terminates at line seventy-four. Thus the voice, and the ear, are held in a sort of terrible suspence, while the poet proceeds enumerating, as he would never cease, the horrors of the scene, deepening them still more and more as he goes, till at last he closes all with that circumstance of most emphatic misery, the immeasurable distance, to which these apostate spirits had fallen from God, and the light of Heaven. There is a doleful music in the whole passage, that fitly accompanies such a subject.

LINE 75. Oh how unlike the place, from whence they

fell.

Of all the articles, of which the dreadful scenery of Milton's Hell consists, Scripture furnished him only with a Lake of Fire and Brimstone. Yet, thus slenderly assisted, what a world of woe has he constructed by the force of an imagination proved in this single instance the most creative, that ever poet owned !

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That were an ignominy, &c.

To invent speeches for these Infernals so well adapted to their character, speeches burning with rage against God, and with disdain and contempt of his power, and to avoid in them all the extreme danger of revolting and

shocking the reader past all sufferance, was indeed, as Horace says-Ire per extentum funem, and evidences the most exquisite address in the author.

LINE 143. But what if He our conqu'ror

There is a fine discrimination observable in the respective speeches of Satan and Beelzebub. In those of the former we find that unbroken hardiness of spirit, which suits well the character of the Arch-fiend, and seducer of all the others; while Beelzebub so speaks as to seem somewhat less obdurate, less a devil than his leader; he is dejected, he desponds, he forecasts the worst, and is in a degree impressed with a suitable sense of his condition.

LINE 177. To bellow through the vast aud boundless

deep.

In this line we seem to hear a thunder suited both to the scene and the occasion, incomparably more awful than any ever heard on earth, and the thunder wing'd with light'ning is highly poetical. It may be observed here, that the thunder of Milton is not hurled from the hand like Homer's, but discharged like an arrow. Thus in book 6, line 712, the Father, ordering forth the Son for the destruction of the rebel Angels, says―

Bring forth all my war

My bow, and thunder.

as if, jealous for the honor of the true God, the poet disdained to arm him like the God of the Heathen.So in Psalm 7. v. 12. it is said-If he turn not he will

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