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But it was not so with Milton. The angel forms in Scripture, indeed, are human; but they are still ethereal. They soar into the air, they pass through fire, they penetrate dungeons and are impervious to matter. Their homes, too, like themselves, must be impalpable to sense. How, then, describe the one or the other? As the Bible gave the poet his subject, so it gave him his manner of dealing with it. His angels take the human form—that form as we may imagine it in heaven or hell. His heaven gives us the earth again, but the earth rising to a loftier grandeur; and clothed in a more lustrous, manifold, and mysterious beauty. His hell brings together the dark and terrible shadows sometimes present to us in this material world—the darkness becoming still more dark, the terror still more terrific. Every vision and hint in the Scriptures on these subjects, is treasured and pondered, until it becomes suggestive, expands, and suffices as an outline to be filled up by the imagination. And wonderful is the creative power which fills up those voids. Those whom Milton has led into his paradise never forget that they have been there; those who have ascended with him into his regions of light never cease to be conscious of the sights which have there fascinated them; and those who have stood in the midst of his "darkness visible," and gazed on what was to be seen in that land where "the light is as darkness," have passed through experiences which have become a part of their being. It is common to speak of the sublimity of Milton as the highest attribute of his genius; but only the inspiration which stretched out the light and darkness of his upper and nether worlds, could have made us dream of the beauties of his Paradise as we now do.

Shakespeare transcends all other writers in the apparent ease with which his ideas seem to find birth and expression; and in the variety of characters which he places, as with the touch of an enchanter, upon his canvass. In what Milton does there is generally a perceptible effect. But some appearances of this nature were inseparable from a subject so lofty in its aim, and to the successful presentation of which a sustained elevation of an extraordinary description was indispensable. It is true Milton does sometimes tell you by his manner that he means to say great and eloquent things. But then he does not disappoint you-the things are said. Only a mind thus self-conscious could have achieved such success in relation to such a subject. With regard to variety of character, it becomes us to inquire what the variety proper to such a history really is, and then to ask whether the writer has realised, in this respect, the thing to have been expected from him "Paradise Lost" was not a stage on which to exhibit the ways of clowns and court fools: it has to do with beings who are in earnest, and awful in their goodness or in their ruin. Any attempt to admix the grave and the gay in such a narrative would have been monstrous. It would be easy to show that nothing could be more true to nature than the distinct traits with which the poet has adorned the manhood and womanhood of our first parents; and that among the good in heaven, and the bad in hell, the shades of difference in character are often well presented. Abdiel is not a duplicate of Gabriel, nor is Michael of Raphael; and wide is the space which separted between Moloch and Belial, Mammon and Beelzebub. These all have their own utterances; and Satan, by his higher intelligence, his pride of heart and strength of will, has his place apart from and above them all. So wonderful is he, that he throws a spell over the reader through the early stages of this poem. But it is soon broken. As the drama develops itself, the feeling of interest in his fate gives place to a feeling of aversion and execration. It may seem strange that a being so often baffled, humbled, prostrated, should persist in his course, and seem to be hopeful. But we know not the space allowed to the power of self-illusion in the case of such natures; and we know enough of moral agents in this world, to be aware that when " a deceived heart has turned them aside," to be doomed to "feed on ashes" is not to be reclaimed. The power to say, "Is there not a lie in my

right hand?" seems to pass from them.' It should be remembered, too, that Satanic agency is far from being wholly a failure. To an intelligence which moral evil has disturbed, nothing would be more natural than the persuasion, that the resistance which the Great Ruler does not at once suppress, is resistance beyond his power.

It is proper to say to the uninitiated reader, that he will find some of the later portions even of this poem descend to the didactic, and become comparatively prosaic. Some things in it, also, are open, we think, to critical exception. The introduction of the Divine persons in direct dialogue before the reader, will be generally felt as an instance of this nature. The same may be said, perhaps, of the allegorical beings Sin and Death, though from the revival of letters poets had been fond of such representations. To know what these appearances denote, is to fail to realise them as objects of the imagination. But Satan is a reality; and nearly everything beside in this sublime drama, gives us this impression. In mentioning these particulars, we merely say that the work is not-as no purely human work can be-wholly without fault. The general splendour so obscures these faint blemishes, that in thinking of Milton we hardly remember them.

Milton's blindness when the greater part of his poetry was written and published, must have been very unfavourable to strict accuracy. Errors may be traced in his historical, and even in his classical allusions, which we feel sure would not have had any place in his writings had be not been so much shut off from books, and dependent on memory. There are passages, too, in which words seem to have been misunderstood by his amanuensis, or by the printer. No one now thinks of retaining his profuse employment of capital letters or his orthography, while in regard to punctuation, he must have been especially dependent upon others. In this last respect, more effort has been made than will be generally understood, in the hope of rendering this Edition such as the poet must have desired.

^&lt;sup>1</sup> Isa. xliv. 20.