poets-in Caliban "Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments" &c. In Theocritus, Polyphemus-and Homer's Hymn to Pan where Mercury is represented as taking his "homely fac'd" to Heaven. There are numerous other instances in Milton-where Satan's progeny is called his "daughter dear," and where this same Sin, a female, and with a feminine instinct for the showy and martial, is in pain lest death should sully his bright arms, "nor vainly hope to be invulnerable in those bright arms.” Another instance is "Pensive I sat alone." We need not mention " Tears such as Angels weep."

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!

So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell

1 This is a reminiscence of the quaint but vigorous translation of Chapman. As the Hymn to Pan is not one of the happiest examples of Chapman's manner it will probably be sufficiently unfamiliar to make the following extract serviceable :

For soft love entering him
Conform'd his state to his conceited trim,
And made him long, in an extreme degree,
T'enjoy the fair-hair'd virgin Dryope.

Which ere he could, she made him consummate
The flourishing rite of Hymen's honour'd state;
And brought him such a piece of progeny,
As show'd, at first sight, monstrous to the eye ;...
Yet the most useful Mercury embraced,
And took into his arms, his homely-faced;
Beyond all measure joyful with his sight :
And up to heaven with him made instant flight,
Wrapt in the warm skin of a mountain hare ;
Set him by Jove; and made most merry fare
To all the Deities else with his son's sight;
Which most of all fill'd Bacchus with delight;...

Of things invisible to mortal sight.

Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure Empyrean where He sits

High throned above all highth, bent down his eye,
His own works and their works at once to view.
BOOK III, lines I and 51-9.

The management of this Poem is Apollonian. Satan first "throws round his baleful eyes", the[n] awakes his legions, he consults, he sets forward on his voyage—and just as he is getting to the end of it we see the Great God and our first parent, and that same Satan all brought in one's vision-we have the invocation to light before we mount to heaven-we breathe more freely-we feel the great author's consolations coming thick upon him at a time when he complains most-we are getting ripe for diversity-the immediate topic of the Poem opens with a grand Perspective of all concerned.

Thus while God spake ambrosial fragrance filled
All Heaven, and in the blessed Spirits elect

Sense of new joy ineffable diffused.

Hell is finer than this.

BOOK III, lines 135-7.

A violent cross wind from either coast

Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry,

Into the devious air.

BOOK III, lines 487-9.

This part in its sound is unaccountably expressive of the description.

What wonder then if fields and regions here
Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run
Potable gold, when, with one virtuous touch,
The arch-chemic Sun, so far from us remote,
Produces, with terrestrial humour mixed,
Here in the dark so many precious things

Of colour glorious and effects so rare?
Here matter new to gaze the Devil met
Undazzled. Far and wide his eye commands;
For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade,
But all sunshine, as when his beams at noon
Culminate from the equator,...

A Spirit's eye.

BOOK III, lines 606-17.

O for that warning voice, which he who saw
The Apocalypse heard cry in Heaven aloud,
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,
Came furious down to be revenged on men,
"Woe to the Inhabitants on Earth!"

BOOK IV, lines 1-5.

A friend of mine says this Book has the finest opening of any. The point of time is gigantically critical-the wax is melted, the seal is about to be applied-and Milton breaks out, "O for that warning voice," &c. There is moreover an opportunity for a Grandeur of Tenderness. The opportunity is not lost. Nothing can be higher-nothing so more than Delphic.

Not that fair field

Of Enna where Proserpin gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis

Was gathered-which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world-

BOOK IV, lines 268-72.

There are two specimens of a very extraordinary beauty in the Paradise Lost; they are of a nature as far as I have read, unexampled elsewhere-they are entirely distinct from the brief pathos of Dante-and they are not to be found even in Shakespeare-these are according to the great prerogative of poetry better described in themselves than by a volume. The one is in the fol[lowing" which cost Ceres all that pain "-the other is that

ending "Nor could the Muse defend her son"-they appear exclusively Miltonic without the shadow of another mind ancient or modern.1

reluctant flames, the sign

Of wrath awaked ;...

BOOK VI, lines 58-9.

"Reluctant" with its original and modern meaning combined and woven together, with all its shades of signification has a powerful effect.

but feathered soon and fledge

They summed their pens, and, soaring the air sublime
With clang despised the ground, under a cloud

In prospect.

BOOK VII, lines 420-3.

Milton in every instance pursues his imagination to the utmost he is "sagacious of his Quarry," he sees Beauty on the wing, pounces upon it and gorges it to the producing his essential verse. "So from the root springs lighter the green stalk." &c. sort of perseverance more exemplified, than in what may be called his stationing or statuary. He is not content

But in no instance is this

'The second passage, Book VII, lines 32-8, is entirely underlined in Keats's copy; but there is no further note upon it than that in Book IV given above. The lines are

But drive far off the barbarous dissonance

Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race

Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned

Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son.

2 Paradise Lost, Book V, lines 479-80.

with simple description, he must station,--thus here we not only see how the Birds "with clang despised the ground," but we see them "under a cloud in prospect." So we see Adam" Fair indeed, and tall-under a plantane" -and so we see Satan "disfigured-on the Assyrian Mount." This last with all its accompaniments, and keeping in mind the Theory of Spirits' eyes and the simile of Galileo, has a dramatic vastness and solemnity fit and worthy to hold one amazed in the midst of this Paradise Lost.

Me, of these

Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing
Depressed; and much they may if all be mine
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.

Had not Shakespeare liv'd?

BOOK IX, lines 41-7.

So saying, through each thicket, dank or dry,
Like a black mist low-creeping, he held on
His midnight search, where soonest he might find
The Serpent. Him fast sleeping soon he found,
In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled,
His head the midst, well stored with subtle wiles:
Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den,
Nor nocent yet, but on the grassy herb,
Fearless, unfeared, he slept. In at his mouth
The Devil entered, and his brutal sense,
In heart or head, possessing soon inspired
With act intelligential; but his sleep

Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn.
BOOK IX, lines 179-91.

Satan having entered the Serpent, and inform'd his brutal sense-might seem sufficient-but Milton goes on "but his sleep disturb'd not." Whose spirit does not ache