Dies Boreales.

Camp at Cladich.Scene—The Pavilion.Time—Sunset.North—Talboys—Seward.

Camp at Cladich.

Scene—The Pavilion.Time—Sunset.

North—Talboys—Seward.

NORTH.

The great Epic Poets of Antiquity began with invoking superhuman aid to their human powers. They magnified their subject by such a confession, that their unassisted strength was unequal to worthily treating it; and it is perfectly natural for us to believe that they were sincere in these implorations. For their own belief was that Gods presided over, ruled, and directed, not only the motions of the Visible Universe, and the greater and outward events and destinies of nations and individuals, but that the Father of Gods and Men, and peculiar Deities under him, influenced, inspired, and sustained, gave and took away the powers of wisdom, virtue, and genius, in every kind of design and in every kind of action.

SEWARD.

They would call down the help, suggestion, and inspiration of heavenly guides, protectors, and monitors;—of Jupiter, to whom even their dim faith looked above themselves and beyond this apparent world, for the incomprehensible causes of things;—of Apollo, the God of Music and of Song;—of those divine Sisters, under whose especial charge that imaginative religion placed Poets and their works, the nine melodious Daughters of Memory;—of those three other gentle deities, of whom Pindar affirms, that if there be amongst men anything fair and admirable, to their gift it is owing, and whose name expresses the accomplishing excellence of Poesy, if all suffrages are to be united in praise: bright Sisters too, adored with altar and temple,—the Graces.

NORTH.

Milton, who had unremittingly studied the classical Art of Poetry, and who brought into the service of his great and solemn undertaking all the resources of poetical Art, which prior ages had placed at his disposal, whose learning, from the literature of the world, gathered spoils to hang up in the vast and glorious temple which he dedicated—He might, without offence to the devout purpose of his own soul, borrow from the devotion of those old pagan worshippers the hint, and partially the form, of those exordial supplications.

SEWARD.

He opens theParadise Lostwith Two Invocations. Both implore aid. But the aid asked in one and in the other is different in kind, as the Two Powers, of whom the aid is asked, are also wholly different. Let us look at these two Invocations in the order in which they stand.

“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruitOf that forbidden tree, whose mortal tasteBrought death into the world, and all our woe,With loss of Eden, till one greater ManRestore us, and regain the blissful seat,Sing, heavenly Muse, that, on the sacred topOf Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspireThat shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,In the beginning how the heavens and earthRose out of chaos: or, if Sion hillDelight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’dFast by the oracle of God; I thenceInvoke thy aid to my adventurous song,That with no middle flight intends to soarAbove the Aonian mount, while it pursuesThings unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost preferBefore all temples the upright heart and pure,Instruct me, for Thou know’st: Thou from the firstWast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,Dove-like, sat’st brooding on the vast abyss,And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark,Illumine: what is low, raise and support;That to the height of this great argumentI may assert eternal Providence,And justify the ways of God to men.”

“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

Sing, heavenly Muse, that, on the sacred top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,

In the beginning how the heavens and earth

Rose out of chaos: or, if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d

Fast by the oracle of God; I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples the upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for Thou know’st: Thou from the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,

Dove-like, sat’st brooding on the vast abyss,

And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark,

Illumine: what is low, raise and support;

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.”

The First is taken, hint and form both, from Homer. Homer, girding up his strength to sing the war of confederated Greece against Troy and her confederates, makes over his own overpowering theme to a Spirit able to support the burden—to the Muse.

Sing, Goddess, he begins, the Anger of Achilles.

NORTH.

Even so Milton. After proposing in a few words the great argument of his Poem—that fatal first act of disobedience to the Creator, by which our First Parents, along with His favour, forfeited Innocence, Bliss, Immortality, and Paradise, for themselves and their posterity, until the coming of the Saviour shall redeem the Sin and loss—he devolves his own task upon a Muse, whom he deems far higher than the Muse of his greatest predecessor, and whom he, to mark this superiority, addresses as theHeavenly Muse.

TALBOYS.

She is the Muse who inspired on the summit now of Horeb, now of Sinai; when for forty years in retreat from his own people, yet under their Egyptian yoke, he kept the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro—the actual Shepherd who, from communing with God and commissioned by God, came down into Egypt again to be the Shepherd of his people and to lead out the flock of Israel.

SEWARD.

She is the Muse who, when the Hebrew tribes were at length seated in the promised land—when Zion in the stead of Sinai was the chosen Mountain of God—inspired Psalmists and Prophets.

TALBOYS.

And the reason is manifest for the distinguishing of Moses. For all critics of the style of the inspired Writers distinguish that of Moses from all the others, as antique, austere, grave, sublime, as if there were in him who conversed personally with God greater sanctity of style, even as his face shone when he came down from the Mount; as the whole character and office of Moses was held by the Hebrews, and is held, perhaps, by us, as lifting him above all other prophetic leaders.

NORTH.

He was the founder of the Nation, and the type of the Saviour.

TALBOYS.

Milton desires for his work, all qualities of style, as the variable subject shall require them. Not only the high rank of Moses as the author of the Pentateuch required that he should be named, but this in particular, that Moses was the historian of the Creation and Fall.

NORTH.

One might for a moment be tempted to confound the inspiration here meant with that highest inspiration which was vouchsafed in those holy places, and which we distinguish by the unequivocal name of revelation. But on reflection we perceive it not possible that Milton should have ascribed such an office to an Impersonation—those awful Communications which distinguished those persons chosen by the Almighty to be the vessels of his Will to the Children of Men. His revelations, we are instructed to believe, are immediately from himself.

TALBOYS.

Somebody said to me once that Milton’s First Invocation to the Muse is oppressed with Mountains; that it is as if he had shaken out what he had got under the head Mountains, in his Common-Place Book; and—

NORTH.

Somebody had better have held his tongue. No. They occur by natural association. He wants aid of the Muse who inspired Moses—I suppose, who sustained—that is, gave his style—of the other writers in the Old Testament. To suppose her visiting Moses on either peak of the Sacred Hill where he had his divine communions, is obvious and inevitable, and, I hope, solemn and sublime too. To suppose her accompanying the migration of the Israelites, and as she had devoutly affected their Sacred Mountain of the Wilderness, also devoutly affecting their Holy Mountain at the foot of which they built their Metropolis, is a spontaneous and unavoidable process of thought. Sinai and Sion represent, as if they contain embodied, the religion and history blended of the race. And if the divine Muse has two divine Hills, how can Milton help thinking of the quasi-divine Hill on which were gathered the nine quasi-divine Sisters? Doubtless, three distinct Mountains in the first sixteen lines, if absolutely considered, may seem cumbrous and overwhelming. But accept them for what they are in the Invocation; the two first localisings of the one Muse, they are easy. Why should not her wing skim from peak to peak? and Parnassus looms in the distance on the horizon.

SEWARD.

A more urgent and trying question is,whatdoes he invoke? We have a sort of biographical information respecting the Address to the Spirit. Milton did believe himself under its especial influences, and the Address is a direct and proper Prayer. Butwhatis this Muse? To us the old Muses—whatever they may have been to the Greeks—are Impersonations, and nothing more, of powers in our own souls. If name attest nature, such is the muse of Milton—a power of his own soul—but one which dwelt also in the soul of the great Hebrew shepherd. Say, for the sake of a determining notion, the power of the austere and simple religious sublime. A human power, but moved by contact of the soul with divine subjects. Perhaps I say too bluntly that those old Muses were mostly but impersonations of human powers. An abstruse, difficult, and solemn part of our existence is touched, implicated. We find when we are deeply moved that powers which slept in us awake;—Powers which have before awaked, and fallen back in sleep;—Powers, too, that have never before awaked.

NORTH.

But what do we know of what is ultimate? If there is a contact of our spirits with the universal Spirit, if there are to us divine communions, influences, how do we know when they begin and end? Itseemsreverent and circumspect to view poetical inspiration as a human fact only, but we are not sure that it is not even more religious to believe that the unsuspected breath of Deity moves our souls in their higher and happier moments. Be they motions of our own souls, be there inferior influences mingled, those Muses were names for the powers upon this view—for the powers and mingled influences upon another. On the whole, I think that the distinction is here intended generally; and that the heavenly Muse represents the human soul exalted, or its powers ennobled by contact with illuminating and hidden influences—as the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, have each quite the style of their own humanity in writing under the governance of the Spirit.

SEWARD.

I consider the free daring with which all Poets of the modern world, at least, have, for the uses of their Art, converted Powers and Agencies into imaginary beings. I consider the respects in which the Poet has need of aid. He wants aid if he is to penetrate into regions inaccessible to mortal foot or eye—if he is to disclose transactions veiled since the foundations of the world; but this aid the Muse cannot afford to theChristianPoet, and we shall presently see that he applies for it to a higher Source. But the Poet who undertakes to sing of Heaven and Earth, of Chaos and of Hell, who comprehends within his unbounded Song all orders of Being, from the Highest and Greatest to the Lowest and Least—all that are Good and all that are Evil, and all that are mixed of Good and Evil—and all transactions from the date, if we may safely so speak, when Time issued from the bosom of Eternity to the still distant date, when Time shall again merge in that Eternity out of which it arose, and be no more:—That Poet, if any, needs implore for a voice equal to his theme, a power of wing measured to the flight which he intends to soar; he needs for the very manner of representation which he is to use—for the very words in which he is to couch stupendous thoughts—for the very music in which his pealing words shall roll—aid, if aid can be had for supplication.

NORTH.

Yes, Seward. We consider these things. We consider the laborious, learned, and solemn studies, by which we are told, by which Milton tells us, that he endeavoured to qualify himself for performing his great work, and I propose this account of this first Invocation, stripped of its Poetical garb. In the first place, that the subject of desire to the Poet—the thing asked—is high, grave, reverend, sublime, fitted Style or Expression. As for the addressing, and the power of the wish, you may remember that, as we hear, employing human means, he assiduously read, or caused to be read, the profane, and his native, and the Sacred Writers—drawing thence his manner of poetical speech.

TALBOYS.

“Heavenly” Muse is opposed to “Olympian” Muse; as if “Hebraic” to “Hellenic;” as if “Scriptural” to “Classical;” as if “Sacred” to “Profane;” as if Muse of Zion to Muse of Pindus. Therefore we must ask—What “Muse” ordinarily means? We know what it meant in the mouth of a believing Greek. It meant areal person—a divine being of a lower Order. But Milton is a Christian—for whom those deities are no more.Theyare, in his eye, mere imaginations—air.

“For Thou art heavenly!She(the Hellenic) anempty dream.”

And so already—

“The meaning, notthe name, I call.”

To wit, the Hellenic is to him a name—air.

SEWARD.

We must ask—What does, in ordinary Verse, not in sacred poetry, a Christian poet mean, when He names, and yet more when he invokes, the Muse—the Sacred Sisters nine? And we are thrown upon recognising the widely-spread literary fact—not unattractive or quite unimportant—that Christendom cherished this reminiscence of Heathendom; that, in fact, our poetry seems to rest for a part of its life upon this airy relic of a fled mythology—varied in all ways, Muse, Helicon, Hippocrene, &c. Greatest Poets, not poetasters, the inspired, not the imitative and servile—and at height of occasion.

Thus Shakspeare—

“O for a Muse of fire that would ascendThe highest heaven of invention!A kingdom for a stage!” &c.

“O for a Muse of fire that would ascend

The highest heaven of invention!

A kingdom for a stage!” &c.

Spenser—at entering upon his vast Poem—

“Me all too mean the Sacred Muse areeds.”

And the master of good plain sense in verse, Pope, acknowledges the ineradicably rooted expression—

“Drink deep, or taste not thePierian spring.”

I put these together, because I doubt not but that Milton inchoosingandguarding(just like Tasso) the word, looked this practice of Christian, or christened poets, full in the face; and spoke, founding upon it. Muse, to his mindinventinghis Invocation, had three senses. Imaginary Deity of a departed belief—An Authoritative Name, thence retained with affection and pride by Poets of the Christian world—Or, something new, which might be made for his own peculiar purpose, or which Tasso had begun to make, undertaking a Poem after a sort sacred.

TALBOYS.

I cannot believe that the word which has held such fond place in the minds of great poets, and all poets, can have been a dry and bald imitation of antiquity. Doubtless it had, and has, a living meaning; answers to, and is answered by, something in their bosoms—the Name to which Shakspeare and Spenser clung, and which Milton put by the side of the Holy Spirit and transplanted into Heaven.

NORTH.

Our attention is first reflectively directed upon recognised Impersonationsin Poetry. But we are very much accustomed to misunderstand the nature of Poetry; for we are much accustomed to look upon Poetry as an art of intellectual recreation, and nothing more. Only as a privileged Art—an Art privileged to think in a way of its own, and to entertain, for the sake of a delicate amusement and gratification, illusory thoughts which have never had belief belonging to them. And meeting with Impersonations in poetry, we set down Impersonations amongst the illusory thoughts thus imagined and entertained for intellectual pleasure, and which have never been believed. It is a mistake altogether. Poetry has its foundation in a transient belief. Impersonations have held very durable belief amongst men. When we reflect and take upon us to become cognisant of our own intellectual acts, we are bound to become cognisant of these illusions—to know that they must have temporary belief—that they must not have permanent belief.

SEWARD.

“Sing,HeavenlyMuse.” Milton redeems the boldness of adventurously transplanting from a Pagan Mythology into a Christian Poem, and thus imparts a consecration of his own to a Heathen word; but the primitive cast and colouring remain, satisfying us that we must here understand an Imaginary Being.

NORTH.

The Seventh Book again opens with an Invocation for aid, and again to the same person.

We find in the opening verses the personality attributed with increased distinctness, and with much increased boldness. A proper name is given, and a new imaginary person introduced, and a new and extraordinary joint action attributed to the Two.

“Descend from Heaven, Urania—by that nameIf rightly Thou art called—whose voice divineFollowing, above the Olympian hill I soar,Above the flight of Pegasean wing!The meaning, not the name, I call: for ThouNor of the Muses nine, nor on the topOf old Olympus dwell’st; but, heavenly born,Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse;—Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst playIn presence of the Almighty Father, pleasedWith thy celestial song.”

“Descend from Heaven, Urania—by that name

If rightly Thou art called—whose voice divine

Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,

Above the flight of Pegasean wing!

The meaning, not the name, I call: for Thou

Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top

Of old Olympus dwell’st; but, heavenly born,

Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,

Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse;—

Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play

In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased

With thy celestial song.”

She is now named—Urania. (The former title given her—“Heavenly Muse”—is equivalent.) But because one of the Nine Muses was named Urania, he distinguishes—

“Themeaning, notthe name, I call.”

She is described as conversing before the creation of this Universe, and playing with her Sister Wisdom, in the presence of God, who listens, pleased, to her song.

In this bold and tender twofold Impersonation, I seem to understand this.

Wisdomis the Thought of God respectively to the connection of Causes and Effects in his Creation, or to the Laws which constitute and uphold its Order: considered as Useful.

This Thought is boldly separated from God, and impersonated as One Sister.

Uraniais the Thought of God, relatively to the Order and Harmony of his Works:—considered as Beautiful.

When God sees that his Creation upon each day is “good,” (which expression Milton is careful to repeat upon each day,) we must understand that he regards it inbothrespects.

The Invocation is, therefore, placed with a perfect propriety at the beginning of the Book which is occupied in describing the Creation.

For the meaning here attributed to Uraniaplayingwith Wisdom before the pleased Father, compare the passage where the dance of the Angels has been compared to the motions of the stars, and the Speaker, the Archangel Raphael, adds:

“And in their motions harmony divineSo smooths her charming tones, that God’s own earListens delighted.”

“And in their motions harmony divine

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

Listens delighted.”

Where the audible harmony of the spheres and the song of Urania seem to be as nearly as possible one and the same thing—namely, Music—which is The Beautiful in one of its kinds, used, with extremely profound and bold imagination, for expressing The Beautiful in all its kinds.

Who is it that, in presence of the Everlasting Throne, converses with her sister, Eternal Wisdom; plays with her—singing, the while, so that the awful Ear of Omnipotence bends from the Throne, listening and pleased?

The majestical Invocation opens the Seventh Book of theParadise Lost; and the Seventh Book of theParadise Lostis occupied from beginning to end in amplifying, with wonderful plenitude, exactness, beauty, and magnificence of description, the First Chapter in the Book of Genesis. In other words the Seventh Book ofParadise Lostdescribes the Week of Creation—the six days of God’s working, and the seventh of His rest.

Milton moulds, at the height of poetical power, into poetical form thoughts that are universal to the Spirit of Man. What then, we must ask, are the two Thoughts that rise in the Spirit of Man, looking with its awakened and instructed faculties upon the Universe of God? Assuredly one is, wonder at the adaptation of Means to Ends—that fitness of which all human Science is nothing but the progressive, inexhaustible revelation. This is that Eternal Wisdom, whom the Poet daringly finds a distinct inhabitant of the Empyrean. The other thought, insuppressibly arising upon the same contemplation, is, wonder of the overwhelming beauty that overflows the visible creation. This is theHeavenly Muse, Urania. The purpose of the Divine Mind to create the Useful Order of Things is impersonated asEternal Wisdom. The purpose of the Divine Mind to create the Beauty of Things is impersonated under a name which the Poet boldly and reverently supplies. Milton’s description of the six days completely displays the two notions: it impresses the notion of Useful Order and Beauty.

SEWARD.

These verses, which introduce the Creation of Man on the sixth day, impress the two distinctly—

“Now Heaven in all her glory shone;”

—that is, for the Beautiful:

——“and roll’dHer motions, as the first great Mover’s handFirst wheel’d their course;”

——“and roll’d

Her motions, as the first great Mover’s hand

First wheel’d their course;”

—that is, for Useful Order.

“Earth in her rich attireConsummate lovely smiled;”

“Earth in her rich attire

Consummate lovely smiled;”

—that is, for Beauty.

“Air, water, earth,By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked,Frequent.”

“Air, water, earth,

By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked,

Frequent.”

Here is again the Adaptation, the Useful Order,

“Of all yet done;”—

namely, Man;—again Design, Order, Wisdom.

And when the whole work is finished, thetwo charactersare set side by side, as answering, in the Mind of the Creator, to His antecedent purpose.

“Here finished He, and all that he had madeView’d,—and behold all was intensely good;So even and morn accomplished the Sixth day:Yet not till the Creator, from his WorkDesisting, though unwearied, up returned,Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high abode,Thence to behold this new-created world,The addition of his empire,how it showedIn prospect from his Throne, howGOOD,howFAIR,Answering his great Idea.”

“Here finished He, and all that he had made

View’d,—and behold all was intensely good;

So even and morn accomplished the Sixth day:

Yet not till the Creator, from his Work

Desisting, though unwearied, up returned,

Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high abode,

Thence to behold this new-created world,

The addition of his empire,how it showed

In prospect from his Throne, howGOOD,howFAIR,

Answering his great Idea.”

Heregoodexpresses theUseful Order—fairtheBeauty.

TALBOYS.

The Heavenly Muse descended upon Earth is then the God-given Intelligence, in the Human bosom, of The Beautiful. It is the Faculty, as we are more accustomed to speak, of the Sublime and Beautiful;—a human ability, raised in the sacred writers by divine communions—Milton desires, but can hardly be thought in that first Invocation, or in this, (Book VII.) directly to pray, that the powers of his mortal genius may receive similar exaltation.

NORTH.

Speak boldly.

SEWARD.

I do.

TALBOYS.

The Heavenly Muse, in Heaven, is God’s thought of the Beauty which shall be in the Universe to be created. The heavenly Muse, upon Earth, is the Thought or the Faculty of Beauty, as originally given to the soul of man, as nourished by all human ways, and specifically and finally as attempered and exalted by expressly religious contemplations and communions—in Moses by converse with God face to face, as a man with his friend. You remember Jeremy Taylor, sir—

NORTH.

I do.

TALBOYS.

In Milton, by reading the Scriptures, by prayer and meditation, by the holiest consciousnesses, in which he seems to have apprehended even for himself some afflux vouchsafed of spiritual help, light, and support more than ordinarily has been understood in the Protestant Church, if less than enthusiasts have claimed. In a word, the Heavenly Muse upon Earth is the Human Sense of Beauty fashioned to the uttermost, hallowed by the nearest approaches to the Deity that are permitted to the individual human person who happens to be in question, but who must be understood as one living under the revelation of the true God. In strictness of speech, Heavenly Muse upon Earth is at last, as I said, Scriptural Muse opposed to Classical Muse.

NORTH.

Well said, my excellent Talboys.

TALBOYS.

Upon our thoughts, my dear sir, the distinctions, Heavenly Muse in Heaven, upon Earth, visiting Moses, visiting Milton, four different aspects of one thing force themselves. Are they all well comprehended under one Impersonation?

NORTH.

Yes—from the bold nature of Impersonation, which comprehends always avariablethought. For Imagination blends and comprehends rather than it severs and excludes. It delights in conceiving that as another manner of acting in some imaginary being which the analytical understanding would class as a distinct metaphysical faculty. It delights in unity of creation; and, having created, in bestowing power, and in accumulating power on its creature. I have heard people say that Collins, in speaking of Danger—

“Who throws himself on the ridgy steepOf some low-hanging rock to sleep”—

“Who throws himself on the ridgy steep

Of some low-hanging rock to sleep”—

confounds the Power, Danger, and the endangered Man. But I say he was right in such poetical confusion of one with the other.

TALBOYS.

Might one word, my dear sir, be dropped in, purporting or reminding, that the Beautiful, or Beauty, is here used, with its most capacious meaning, to comprehend many other qualities distinct from the Beautiful taken in its narrowest acceptation among critics. For example, the solemn, the sublime, and many other qualities are included, that are distinct from the Beautiful, taken in the mere sense that critics have attached to it; all such qualities agreeing in this, that they affect the mind suddenly, and without time given for reflection, and that they appear as a glory poured over objects as over the natural universe. The large sense of the term Beauty belongs to a perfectly legitimate use of language—a use at once high and popular; as every one feels that the beauty of creation includes whatever affects us with irreflective admiration—appears as a glory—stupendous forests—mountains—rivers—the solemn, boundless munificence of the starry firmament. Milton says there is terror in Beauty—and we may say there is a beauty in terror.

NORTH.

The holy Mind of the Poet has been represented from his life; the holy aspirations of his Genius have been shown from the record of his literary purposes; the holy meaning of theParadise Lostfrom the Two Invocations. You may go on to examining the Poem well prepared; for you now know in what Spirit of thought it was entered upon and composed, and in what Spirit of thought you must engage in, and carry through, the examination of the Poem. You can understand that Milton, sanctified in Will by a dedicated life—intellectually armed and accomplished by the highest mere human learning, as a Scholar, as a Thinker, as a Master of his own sublime and beautiful Art—enriched by more solemn studies, whether of God’s written word or of its devout and powerful expounders, with all the knowledge, especially claimed by his task, which a Mind, capacious, profound, retentive, indefatigable, could bring to the celebration of this most stupendous theme;—finally, led—as he, in all reverence, believed himself,—upheld, and enlightened by the Spirit of supernal grace, prayed for and vouchsafed;—that He, coming,—by nature and by nurture such and so fitted,—to relate anew and at large—and as if He, the Poet, were himself enfolded with the garb of a Prophet,—as if He were himself commissioned from on High, and charged with a second, a more explicit and copious, an ampler and more unbosoming revelation,—that History, full of creating Love and provoked Wrath,—full of zeal and loyal truth, in pure angelical creatures, and of hateful revolt—full, in the lower creature, Man, at first of gracious and ineffable glory and bliss, and native immortality, then of lamentable dishonour, sin and misery, and death—You can readily conceive that Milton approaching to begin this Work, to which alone the desires, to which alone the labours, to which alone the consecration of his genius looked—that he, indeed, felt in his now near, in his now reached undertaking, a burthen overwhelming to his mortal strength; and that his prayer, put up for support, rose indeed from his lips as men pray who are overtaken with some sharp fear and sore constraint.

TALBOYS.

Yet, sir, irreverence has been felt, and will be felt, by those who take low and narrow views, in the treating of sacred subjects, as themes of poetry.

NORTH.

Shall we stand back awed into silence, and leave the Scriptures alone, to speak of the things which the Scriptures declare? This is a restraint which the Human Spirit has never felt called upon to impose upon itself. On the contrary, the most religious Minds have always felt themselves required in duty to dedicate their best faculties of reason to the service of religion—by inquiring into, and expounding, the truths of religion. But Reason is not the sole intellectual power that God has given to Man, nor the sole faculty by the use of which he will be glorified. Another power native to the same spirit, granted to it now in more scant and now in overflowing measure, is the faculty of verse and of poetical creation; and it is no more conceivable that we are bound to withhold the efforts of this power from its highest avocations, than that we are under obligation to forbear from carrying our powers of rational investigation to the searching of the Scriptures.

SEWARD.

The sanctity of spirit in which Milton wrote hallows the work of Milton. He was driven back by no scruple from applying the best strength of his mind to the highest matters. Holding him justified for attempting the most elevated subjects in verse, we must bear in mind what is the nature of Poetry, and beware that we do not suffer ourselves to be unnecessarily alarmed or offended when we find the Poet, upon the highest occasions, fearlessly but reverently using the manner of representation inseparable from his Art.

NORTH.

What is this Manner of Representation?

TALBOYS.

It may be said in a word. Poetry represents the Inward and the Invisible by means of the Outward and the Visible.

The First great law of poetical Creation is this: that the Kingdom of Matter and of the bodily senses, transformed by the divine energy of genius, shadows forth and images out the Kingdom of the Mind and of Spirit.

NORTH.

Accordingly, in this great poem, the name Heaven continually meets us as designating the blissful abode where the Omnipresent God is imagined as from eternity locally dwelling in light uncreated—the unapproachable splendour of his own effulgence. There, the Assessor of his throne, the Divine Son, sits “in bliss embosomed.” And there, created inhabitants, are the innumerable host of happy Angels. At first, all—whilst all stand upright—and until the sin of Satan casts out one third part of the number. The Imagination of the poet supposes a resemblance to Earth; for beauty and delight—hills, rocks, vales, rivers and fountains, trees and Elysian flowers. Although he endeavours to dilate the fancy of his reader in speaking of Heaven with conceptions of immense extent, it is a limited, not a boundless, Heaven; for it is conceived as resting upon a base or firmament, and as being enclosed with crystalline walls. Palaces and towers, which the angels have built, are spoken of in Heaven.

The course of the Poem sometimes leads us intoChaos. We are to imagine an infinite abyss of darkness, in which the formless embryons and elements of things toss and war in everlasting uproar. A Ruler and other spirits of darkness will be found dwelling there. Here height, breadth, and time and place are lost. But the tremendous gulf is permeable to the wings of angels. A more important seat of the transaction to which we shall be introduced is, “the place of evil,” made, after the rebellion of the Angels, their habitation and place of punishment—“the house of wo and pain”—Hell. It is described as having various regions—fiery and frozen; hideous mountains, valleys, and caves. Five rivers, named and characterised from those that flow through the Hell of classical antiquity—and, in particular, a boiling Ocean, into which the rebel Angels are supposed to fall. Notwithstanding the flames, a heavy gloom prevails throughout. It is immensely extended, but has a solid ground—“a dungeon horrible,” walled and overvaulted. The whole of the Fallen Angels are at first imprisoned in Hell. But they escape. Hell has Gates kept by Sin and her Son Death. The Fallen Angels build in Hell a palace and city called Pandemonium. Hell is situated in the lowest depth of Chaos, out of which it has been taken.

This Visible Universeis represented as built subsequently to, and consequently upon, the Fall of the Angels. You are to imagine this Earth of ours, the Moon, the Sun, the planets, the fixed stars, and the Milky Way—all that sight can reach—as enclosed in a hollow sphere: that is, firmly compacted. Satan alights upon its outside, and walks about it: and it serves to defend this enclosed visible Universe from the inroads of Chaos and primeval darkness. On the Earth, created in all the variety that we behold in it, excepting that the climates are all happy, our Two first Parents live in the Garden of Paradise, planted by God. The unimaginably vast enclosing Sphere hangs by a golden chain from the battlements of Heaven.

SEWARD.

Yes, sir, Poetry represents:—

Things of the Mind by Things of the Body—the Spiritual Kingdom by the Kingdom of Matter, or of the Senses.

TALBOYS.

So the world ofmetaphors, which express the powers and acts of the mind by organs and actions of the body, or by images from nature.

So, expressly, Allegory.

NORTH.

So, here, Spirits are clothed in visible human form. They walk, they fly with wings. Their disagreeing becomes a War waged with violent weapons. High and Low in space have a moral meaning. Soocularlight and darkness. Even the omnipresent God appears as having a local divine residence, and speaks with a voice. The Eternal Eye sees, the Eternal Ear hears. He sits, invisible through brightness, on a Throne.

These modes of thinking, or of representing rather, follow our minds. We may, by a great effort of abstraction, throw them off. It is for a moment. They return, and hold habitual dominion in our thoughts.

TALBOYS.

Milton has boldly given such determinate Shape, as to constitute a seeming reality, without which he would be without power over us—whoknowby our senses,feelby our senses—i. e.habitually attach feelings moved by things inward to things outward; as our love, moved by a soul, to a face.

NORTH.

It is remarkable that Poetry, which above all human discourse calls out into our Consciousness the Divinity that stirs within us, at the same time casts itself with delight into the Corporeal Senses, as if the two Extremes met, or that either balanced the others. We see a reason in this. Passion cleaves to the perceptions of the Senses. Upon these impressions Imagination still feeds and lives.

SEWARD.

Moreover, Nature herself shows us Man, now half as the Child, now half as the victim, now half as the victor—of his place.

TALBOYS.

Therefore, great Poetry, that will most potentially represent Man’s innermost spirit, sets out, often, from his uttermost circumstances.

In the Philoctetes, and Œdipus at Colonus, what pains to delineate place!

What pains to make you present in the forest of Arden,—and in the Island!

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