BOOK II. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. IN tracing the progress of this poem by deliberate and minute steps, our wonder and admiration increase. The inexhaustible invention continues to grow upon us; each page, each line, is pregnant with something new, picturesque, and great: the condensity of the matter is without any parallel: the imagination often contained in a single passage is more than equal to all that secondary poets have produced: the fable of the voyage through Chaos is alone a sublime poem. Milton's descriptions of materiality have always touches of the spiritual, the lofty, and the empyreal. Milton has too much condensation to be fluent: a line or two often conveys a world of images and ideas: he expatiates over all time, all space, all possibilities: he unites earth with heaven, with hell, with all intermediate existences, animate and inanimate; and his illustrations are drawn from all learning, historical, natural, and speculative. In him, almost always, "more is meant than meets the ear." An image, an epithet, conveys a rich picture. What is the subject of observation may be told without genius; but the wonder and the greatness lie in invention, if the invention be noble, and according to the principles of possibility. Who could have conceived, or, if conceived, who could have expressed,--the voyage of Satan through Chaos, but Milton? Who could have invented so many distinct and grand obstacles in his way? and all picturesque, all poetical, and all the topics of intellectual meditation and reflection, or of spiritual sentiment? All the faculties of the mind are exercised, stretched, and elevated at once by every page of "Paradise Lost." Invention is the first and most indispensable essential of true poetry; but not the only one: the invention must have certain high, moral, sound, wise qualities; and, in addition to these, such as are picturesque or spiritual. It is easy to invent what is improbable or unnatural. Nothing will do which cannot command our belief. Inventions either of character, imagery, or sentiment, taken separately in small fragments, may still have force and merit: but when they form an integral and appropriate part of a long whole, how infinitely their power, depth, and bearings are increased! In poetry, we must consider both the original conceptions and the illustrations: each derives interest and strength from the other: a mere copy of an image drawn from nature may have some beauty; but the invention and the essential poetry lie in their complex use, when applied as an embodiment to something intellectual. Imagery is almost always so used by Milton; and so it was used by Homer and Virgil. This gives a new light to the mind of the reader, and creates combinations which perhaps did not before exist: the poet thus spiritualises matter, and materialises spirit. When what is presented is merely such scenery of nature as the painter can give by lines and colours, it falls far short of the poet's power and charm. Poetry, purely descriptive, is not of the first order. There are lines in the "Paradise Lost," which would seem to be mere abstract opinions; but they are not so; inset as they are into the course of a sublime, densewove narrative, they derive colour and character from the position which they occupy. So placed, their plainness is their strength and their spell: ornamented language would have weakened them. Of all styles, the uniformly florid is the most fatiguing. That Milton could bring so much learning, as well as so much imaginative invention, to bear on every part of his infinitely-extended, yet thick-compacted fable, is truly miraculous. Were the learning superficial and loosely applied, the wonder would not be great, or not nearly so great; but it is always profound, solid, conscientious; and in its combinations original. Bishop Atterbury has said, in opposition to the general opinion, that the allegory of Sin and Death is one of the finest inventions of the poem. I agree with him most sincerely. The portress of the gates of hell sits there in a character, and with a tremendous figure and attributes, which no imagination less gigantic than Milton's could have drawn. Is it to be objected that Sin and Death are imaginary persons, when all the persons of the poem, except Adam and Eve, are imaginary? Realities, in the strict sense, do not make the most essential parts of poetry. ARGUMENT. THE Consultation begun, Satan debates whether another battel be to be hazarded for the recovery of heaven: some advise it, others dissuade. A third proposal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan, to search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in heaven concerning another world, and another kind of creature, equal, or not much inferiour, to themselves, about this time to be created: their doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan their chief undertakes alone the voyage, is honoured and applauded. The council thus ended, the rest betake them several ways, and to several employments, as their inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to hell gates; finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them; by whom at length they are opened, and discover to him the great gulf between hell and heaven; with what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight of this new world which he sought. HIGH on a throne of royal state, which far To that bad eminence: and, from despair Vain war with heaven, and, by success untaught, Powers and Dominions, Deities of heaven, High on a throne. See Spenser, Faery Queen, 1. iv. 8: High above all a cloth of state was spred, b Or where the gorgeous east. See Spenser, Faery Queen, III. iv. 23 : STILLINGFLEET. It did passe The wealth of the East, and pomp of Persian kings.-NEWTON. Showers on her kings Barbaric pearl and gold. 5 10 It was the eastern ceremony, at the coronation of their kings, to powder them with gold-dust and seed-pearl. In the "Life of Timur-bec, or Tamerlane," written by a Persian contemporary author, are the following words, as translated by Mons. Petit de la Croix, in the account there given of his coronation, b. II. c. i. :—“Les princes du sang royal et les émirs répandirent à pleines mains," with liberal hand, sur sa tête quantité d'or et de pierreries selon la coutume."-WARBURTON. 66 See Virgil, Æn. ii. 504 :-- Barbarico postes auro spoliisque superbi. Immortal vigor, though oppress'd and fallen, More glorious and more dread than from no fall, Me though just right and the fix'd laws of heaven Yielded with full consent. The happier state Could have assured us and by what best way, We now debate. Who can advise, may speak. He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptred king, More unexpert, I boast not: them let those d None, whose portion. 15 200 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 The sense and syntax are plain enough. There is no one, whose portion of present pain is so small, that he will be ambitious to covet more. • By what best way. See Spenser, F. Q. vi. vi. 21.-TODD. Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling place O'er heaven's high towers to force resistless way, Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise Mix'd with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire, Fear to be worse destroy'd; what can be worse Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemn'd Where pain of unextinguishable fire f Calls us to penance? more destroy'd than thus, The torturing hour. Gray has borrowed these words at the opening of his "Hymn to Adversity." Though inaccessible, his fatal thrones: He ended frowning", and his look denounced To less than gods. On the other side up rose I should be much for open war, O Peers, Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. First, what revenge? the towers of heaven are fill'd Fatal throne. That is, upheld by fate, as he expresses it, b. i. 133.-NEWTON. h He ended frowning. 105 110 115 120 125 130 135 140 Nobody of any taste or understanding will deny the beauty of the following paragraph; in the whole of which there is not one metaphorical or figurative word. In what then does the beauty of it consist? In the justness of the thought, in the propriety of the expression, in the art of the composition, and in the variety of the versification. MONBODDO. And could make the worse appear. Word for word from the known profession of the ancient sophists, Tòv XóYOV TÒV ἥττω κρείττω ποεῖν.-BENTLEY. Sit unpolluted. 3 Would on his throne This is a reply to that part of Moloch's speech where he had threatened to mix the throne itself of God with infernal sulphur and strange fire.-NEWTON |