following him, unless a certain dominion over the imagination had been given him. We go along with him now, certainly not desiring his success, by which we are to suffer, but with eyes that are fixed upon him by curiosity, by pity, for so much good that remains in him of what he was, by admiration of what is in him of yet unextinguished greatness. Moreover, he has to be taken down, as he goes on, and the greatness at the beginning is not more than was needed for that purpose. However unresulting the pomp of array in the First and Second Books turns out, it was obliged. Warriors fallen, and recovering courage, must unavoidably put on the pomp of war. If this is reason enough, the Poem gains in its proportions: Hell has now a magnitude corresponding to Heaven and our Universe. But it is agreeable to the purpose of the whole Poem that the magnificent display and preparation of Devils shall turn to nought. Is there not such lesson designed to our Imagination? That it has to learn that it has too hastily let itself be dazzled by the false glory of those Two First Books! NORTH. I have said what all the world, except Talboys, knows, that— TALBOYS. I like, sir, occasionally to disagree with all the world except Talboys. NORTH. I have said, my dear Talboys, that the Action of the Poem takes the starting point of its majestically sweeping career from the consternation in which the rebellious angels are shown lying after their Fall. What more, sir? TALBOYS. NORTH. I wish to insist for a moment upon the Poet's picture of this consternation. And the rather because they who have but the inspiration of the Sister Art for the visual illustration of the Paradise Lost, do not seem to have possessed themselves of Milton's unquestionable meaning. A great mystery. I ask, in what posture did they lie? TALBOYS. You ask, in what posture did they lie? NORTH. The answer of the Poet, if you examine the relevant passages, is unequivocal. They lay, all the while "prone"-" prostrate"-" grovelling"-in the abject posture of "adoration." These are some of his words-in one then-flat on their faces as they fell! TALBOYS. That would never suit the Sister Art. NORTH. But what does the singular picture mean? Are they insensible? No. The Poet delivers you from that supposition, if you have entertained it— "Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel." They did perceive the evil plight in which they were-they did feel the fierce pains. They lay in keen anguish. In a word, the stupor in which the Poet represents them as lying is no stupor of the sensibility. The power that is inert, suspended, utterly useless in them, is the power of acting. They lie in utter stupor of the Will. TALBOYS. And what does this mean, sir? A great difference there, sir. NORTH. Think for a moment, my dear Talboys, of the introductory verses in which the Fall of the Angels has been rapidly touched! "Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong! flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition." You may readily believe that such a fall has withered in them for a season every faculty but that of agony. But the war and the fall that are here foreshadowed are in the Sixth Book fully told. There their defeat is pictured, when the Messiah, clothed in the terrors of omnipotence, goes forth to rout their battle; and they drop under his lightnings;-they flee;-to flee farther they throw themselves out of Heaven, and "Eternal wrath Burnt after them to the bottomless pit." Now, from that helpless, aghast, and thunder-ploughed battle-field, on which they lay, "Exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen!" till the Victor raised them to expel them-from that unimaginable nine days of "Heaven ruining from Heaven"-it is that they lie in this powerless consternation and stupefaction! TALBOYS. Reading the Poem over again, we read it, sir, with a more profound and exact intelligence. NORTH. This picture, of which whether all our good Painters have striven to transmit into their colours, the stern and appalling monotony, I know not-may serve as an instance to show how Milton, true to a great elementary function of the Poet, uses the visible-the act or the inaction-to signify, with overwhelming power, the invisible-the utterly vanquished mind. TALBOYS. That "rolling" is only the undulating and fluctuating of the bodies, as the flaming billows heave and roll under them. But Milton has not done. NORTH. Done!-only begun. The things told by a Poet must have probabilitythat is to say, they must have credibility, or verisimilitude of their own; or they must carry a persuasion of their truth and reality. But in the constitution of this Action, the first feature shocks and subverts all belief—all persuasion of truth and reality. A Finite Leader, and the host of his finite followers, contending against their Infinite Adversary! The first heavy task laid upon the genius of the Poet then is the duty of making this impossibility seem possible. He has done it, and you read on with an understanding unshocked by the contradiction-persuaded. He has for this purpose exalted the mind of Satan to the utmost that was consistent with Satan's dedication of himself to evil. TALBOYS. And especially the Poet has exalted him by that which lay next at hand, as being all along implied, his ascendancy over, and real superiority to his followers. NORTH. He is the first who recovers to thought and to bodily motion. The Archangel lifts up his head! That is all. His other parts besides are "prone on the flood "-he looks and knows! He rouses "The next in power and next in crime," who lies next him-Beelzebub. They converse-they leave the flood, and alight on the land. And now Satan will arouse the rest. His legionsangel-forms that lay in trance "Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Valombrosa." He approaches the shore "And called so loud that all the hollow deep Of hell resounded!" His words are short and few-words of bitter upbraiding-of worse-of insulting denunciation. And he bids them awake and rise," or be for ever fallen!" He bids them, and they have arisen. They heard and were abashed, and up they spring! TALBOYS. Prevailing Poet! Nine days which measure time to mortal men they have lain, spite of their agony-without the motion of a limb. One word of searching displeasure and imperious command from that well-known voice! and instantaneously, like a noonday cloud of locusts, the millions are on the wing in the air. NORTH. And the speaking of the Poet, which we must hear, is not the illimitable representation, to our senses; not the sign, but the thing signified, the revelation of an inward Power! The angels are in that horrible trance utterly powerless-will-less; they have not stirred-neither have they shrieked-nor yelled-nor groaned. One word was required to tell you this-and that one word is there. When Satan, self-armed and recollected, will answer Beelzebub, and to that intent addresses him, Milton ushers in those first words uttered in Hell by telling you that he speaks "Breaking the horrid silence." TALBOYS. You have this evening shown, sir, how with Milton the pomp and prodigality of Poetry serve the main business of the narrative Poet-the conduct of his Action; how poetry, properly and universally, uses things external or corporeal as the most affecting and effectual expression of things Internal, Spiritual; how uniting a spirit prevails in different parts of the Poem; with what power Milton creates the persons of his Epic; what is meant by the sublimity of imagination-understanding the faculty as we usually understand it-in Milton. Whatever resembles moral sublimity is no less to be attributed to him. How like a giant he grapples with his more than gigantic subject! NORTH. What was the condition of the fallen angels, when we first contemplated them? Stunned as if annihilated under the wrath of God! TALBOYS. Wrapped, as it seemed, in indissoluble chains. NORTH. Powerless with despair. TALBOYS. Prostrate on a lake of fire. NORTH. One word from their great Chieftain, infusing strength by shame-one other, imparting courage by hope-and Hell stands in armed and bannered array, Hurling defiance towards the vault of Heaven!" The fallen angels are here first presented to us in the only way in which they can win over our sympathy and affection. TALBOYS. Devils winning over our sympathy and affection! NORTH. Do they not? You know they do. They have sinned, and they suffer; hence two ways of access to our hearts. TALBOYS. Ay, my good sir, the offence is, after a measure, balanced; that is, the anger and the hate of our pure conscience is mitigated. In condemning, we pity. They are like ourselves. NORTH. TALBOYS. Accordingly, along with a sublimity of being which lifts them out of consanguinity, or fellowship with us, there is felt, in the speeches of the First Book-thorough Tragic Pathos, the true pathos of Melpomene. NORTH. We mourn, perforce, with mourners, in what manner soever calamity may have been brought upon the crushed head. TALBOYS. Moreover, we must go along, to a certain degree, even with Devils, seeking our own destruction, else the Poet loses his indispensable hold upon us. How could we go along, sustained by antipathy? Through two whole Books, where all the agents are engaged in a common interest-by antipathy? NORTH. Love is essentially, my dear Talboys, the creating spirit of Poetry-and we must-Heaven forgive us-love the Devils! TALBOYS. More or less-and so must the Poet; so, between us two, did Milton. Approving, at the bottom of our hearts, their proceedings, is toute une autre chose! We can go along with Revenge-pretty-very, very well. NORTH. Ay, Talboys, much better than with simple Disloyalty, Envy, wrongful Ambition, and Ingratitude. And we must go along with a flaming force of mind which not experience of thunder, nor immeasurable precipitation from heaven's brink, nor the boiling flood, which has "received them falling," nor the dungeon horrible, that on all sides round, as one great furnace flames, nor anguish possessing limb and soul, nor" despair" can quell or make to falter. TALBOYS. The powers of mind-the heroism, though misapplied-the magnanimity, though depraved, appear in quite a new light, and from more vivid and irresistible evidence, in the rebound from such a fall. "From this descent Celestial virtues rising will appear More glorious, and more dread than from no fall, What Satan here says of the Virtues, meaning the spirits themselves, we feel of the Virtue such as is left them-Virtue in its first sense unquestionably, and enough of it. Besides, my excellent Professor— NORTH. TALBOYS. Talboys. NORTH. They possess the field wholly to themselves. You are amongst the conspiracy, and you have a difficulty to disbelieve against the hopes and trust of a whole multitude. You are carried along. Not every one can be an Abdiel in understanding even. You have no other personages presented to divide your sympathy. You have none to divide your admiration-astonishment-awe-reverence! TALBOYS. They are the utmost of power shown you. They far overtop your imaginaios of powerful created beings. They dilate your imagination. Your ima gination carries no standard of greatness which it can apply, and find them scant measure. NORTH. But if they fill by their magnitude your outward and inward eyesightstretch it how are you prepared to set bounds to their enterprise, or its results? You have that sort of calling which suffices for carrying you on without distrust. TALBOYS. Compare our actual disposition towards the rebellious angels in Books V. and VI., where they have it not, as here, all their own ways! NORTH. An artistical reason, Talboys, is, that we thus begin with a character of Poetry from which the other kinds rise well: the mournful and terrible, the bitter and sad, the morally and physically disturbed and painful. I suppose, mon bon ami, that the fires of Hell reflect something in our own souls; wrath and smouldering hate and raging desire-inward, eating, unappeased. The load upon the eyelids of imagination laid by that darkness visible has the power of a moral element. So has that sullen, grim, shrouded glare of the lurid flames, and the stifling and the scorching. No doubt that we shall rejoice, as the Poet will, to escape. The rest is relief. It is like the daily natural apparition of the Universe. Day rises out of night-beauty out of horror. TALBOYS. Moreover, it is by far the strongest demand made by the Poet upon our capacity of sympathy, and of conceiving; and it is well to have it over-as it was well to take us fresh. NORTH. The disadvantage is that a great many readers get no farther. They like hell too well. TALBOYS. NORTH. But plainly, Talboys, the order of art is that the dark disturbance raised in your spirit be brightened and quieted, not the reverse. See the whole system of the composition. First, Hell or Heaven intermixed-then Earth, which is proportionate-a balance of tones, harmony. Heaven in its glory, Paradise in its heavenly beauty, lie between Hell on the one side, and on the other the now unstained Earth. TALBOYS. The rebel spirits are first presented to us, sir, beaten. That is quite an intelligible state-our understanding accepts it at once; and we have here no occasion of asking, Can they, by possibility, succeed? We remain undisquieted by any intellectual scruples that might have been raised on that account. NORTH. But there is a little more in this matter. That first warfare was one in which they were utterly to fail, as they must fail in contest of strength with Omnipotence. This is a war in which they will be permitted, after a manner, to succeed. One may ask, in Books V. and VI., how far the war of the angels is, for itself, better told, after you know that it has failed, or worse? In the First and Second Books, however, this is clear, that no conviction of utter insanity obtrudes itself to diminish your admiration of intellectual power, and of immeasurably sublime nature, in the angels. And yet, if any repentance lay open to them, there is insanity here too. They partially succeed against us; for themselves they end in utter failure. But that is beyond our beam of light and our horizon. TALBOYS. The pervading, unspeakable sorrow of the First Book is the-privation. NORTH. A third part of the Celestials have lost their goodness, their glory, their bliss, the love of the Creator and heaven. In the stead of all these, they have now the prize of their unhappy attempt-Hell. The First Book lavishes poetical power in VOL. LXXII.-NO. CCCCXLIII. 2 c |