NORTH. Satan now feels that the time is come for another kind of eloquence. "Then straight commands that at the warlike sound Of trumpets loud and clarions be upreared His MIGHTY STANDARD." BULLER. "At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond, TALBOYS. "All in a moment through the gloom were seen With orient colours waving with them rose SEWARD. "And now, Advanced in view, they stand; a horrid front Of dreadful length, and dazzling arms, in guise Of warriors old with order'd spear and shield; Awaiting what command their mighty chief Had to impose. He through the armed files Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse "He, above the rest The whole battalion views-their order dueTheir visages and stature as of gods Their number last he sums. And now his heart Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength Glories. NORTH. For ever now to have their lot in pain: With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared To speak whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half enclose him round With all his peers: attention held them mute. Thrice he essay'd, and thrice, in spite of SEWARD. NORTH. "O myriads of immortal spirits! O powers Matchless, but with the Almighty! and that strife Was not inglorious, though the event was dire, As this place testifies, and this dire change How such united force of gods,-how such This is the law, and privilege, and glory of Poetry, that it hides the mechanism while it displays the power. It hides the mechanism by which the angels who in defeat in Heaven dropped their weapons, have in Hell each his own sword in sheath. You must read with Faith-in all poetry. The Poet says that such or such a thing happened. You must believe that it did, although you cannot tell how. Perhaps he could not tell you how. He knows that it did. The Muse has told him, or some spirit. You do not know, and had better not ask him how he knows. SEWARD. Raphael conveyed to Adam and Eve the war of the Angels. Milton conveys the war of the Angels to us. Raphael conversed with Adam in a language which they understood. Milton reports their conversation to us in a language which we understand. Whilst we read we identify ourselves with Adam and Eve. We lend to each our intelligence of the things related and discoursed; and as long as the power of the Song is upon us, herein no mistrust creeps in. Coldly, afterwards, we may inquire, How could they understand? But then coldly we may answer, the Poet does not mean that these were literally the words used, but that this was the substance and effect of the words used. This was the meaning in one way or in another conveyed. TALBOYS. The belief that these were the words, belongs to the fervour of the hearing; but the same fervour of the hearing gives the simultaneous and universal belief that the words were understood. BULLER. Keep the hour of Hearing and the "torturing hour" of Criticism separate, each in its own integrity. NORTH. Milton, a little humorous, meets, plays with, and baffles, or provides for the Criticism. The hardest part, the Cannon and Gunpowder, are described by Satan to the Angels. SEWARD. Milton, in different places, gives hints of previous angelical visits and communications. Eve, relating her dream, says "One shaped and winged like one of those from Heaven." How do we know what they had heard, or Paradise seen, of angelic weapons? Armed angels guard Paradise. BULLER. Grant that the War had passed as Milton has described it, and that Raphael comes commissioned to make it known, do we for an instant doubt that He has power to make it known? Or, if the War had passed quite otherwise, viz. spiritually, mentally, morally, or in ways to us in themselves incomprehensible, but that Raphael will virtually declare it by shadows of human war, he must then use human war, and he could, and he did, make it intelligible. NORTH. It looks like ignotum per ignotius. It is a little circuitous and cumbrous to suppose the ignotius first made clear. It is better to ignore the bill. Milton gives us the example. He will not say, and Raphael will not, how far he speaks reality-how far symbols! It is better to throw ourselves upon the amplitude unknown to us of the angelical and then-human faculties of language. NORTH. His sanctity of purpose, his sincerity, assures us that it will save Milton from falling into any impiety in giving utterance to the Evil Ones. Should any such sentiment affect us, we are not only entitled, but bound, to believe that the fault lies in ourselves-in our own weakness to lie under the thraldom of association with mere words which have their character solely from the spirit with which they breathe or burn. And all the Two Great Books will bear the severest examination on this point. BULLER. Yet many excellent people think otherwise, sir. SEWARD. Startling as in many places the speeches necessarily are, as each speaker ceases we are made to feel that it is a speech of the Wicked. We never for a moment suspect, or fear, or believe, or imagine, that Milton has been dallying, in pride of his own genius, with evil thoughts, or sentiments, or suggestions; or, while so dallying, enjoying too the imagined perplexity, astonishment, or horror of his own fellow-creatures who may read. NORTH. Much less do we ever, for a moment, feel that he awakens and starts doubts for the sceptic to muse over, or embrace. SEWARD. Or that he himself is a sceptic, embodying difficulties for the reason to conflict with in vain; so that they may remain for ever to deaden the life of faith. BULLER. And make religion full of bugbears and "chimeras dire." TALBOYS. Neither does any profound and enduring melancholy hang over our hearts on account of those Evil Ones. Pity and terror is theirs-their doom is tragic; but only because in our human hearts such emotions must always accompany great sufferings,-even of sin. But we are never for a while seduced in our souls to question the righteousness and the justice of such decrees. Free Will has been abused, and that is a great mystery. But our faculties of thought and reason justify the Divine judgment; and in all they say we believe the teacher asserting Eternal Providence-nor, till we obscure our ideas of Right and Justice and Truth, can we doubt that such delinquency and such anguish are connate and included in a Holy Fiat. NORTH. Yet many critics have confined themselves too much to the Two First Books for the character of Satan-the Enemy, and thus have not given the whole character in its entirety. But this is unjust to the divine Poet, and it is unjust to his readers, who may be thus greatly misled, and miss, or be defrauded of the moral and the theology which he the devout desired to leave engraven on the human soul. We are taught by him the Goodness and Bliss of an angelical Being Unfallen, and the wickedness and misery of an angelical Fallen. At first "not less" than archangel ruined; but afterwards less than that first. Therefore from his first appearance to his last must the Enemy of God and of Man be in our imagination as in Milton's. And thus, you see, not merely that we may understand the Poem as a great work of art, but the doctrine as a great doctrine necessary to salvation. But both are done at once by right-that is, by full comprehensive view of Him-that is, by elucidatory criticism, drawing Him at full length-in all conditions and vocations. TALBOYS. Satan's degradation is early begun. From the first there is a contradiction between his words and himself "Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair." And again, when he cheers his troops "His high word that bore Semblance of worth, not substance." Showing, on Milton's part, whilst he most exalts him, at least a willingness to let him down-an intimation of hollowness. SEWARD. He flatters the Monster at Hell's gate. He changes his shape, and lies through thick and thin to the angel Üriel. Leaping into Paradise, he is compared to a thief and a wolf. The will of the poet is shown towards a subject by the similes. Homer thus always exalts Achilles. Milton vilifies and vilipends the Devil. He exalted him lately. What an insulting line "The tempter, ere the accuser of mankind." Base to turn against his own tempted. Moreover, Milton disparages him for avenging his loss in Heaven, on innocent man! He nowhere diminishes that representation of his agony! The First and Second Books are full of confessions how it is within him Hell. How conscience wakes despair, that slumbered! And put all the acknowledgments together that are in the soliloquy! The confession of suffering-of lying-the infatuation of Evil"the first to practise falsehood under saintly show "-" artificer of fraud !" Already there is nothing enviable-there is glory deeply overshadowed. He sits a cormorant on the tree of life. That is a particularly disparaging shape. A scarth-not an eagle-not a swan-not a bird of Paradise. He watches about Adam and Eve in divers animal shapes, in which there is a certain humiliation. He squats as a toad at Eve's ear, poisoning her innocent sleep. Vile squatter! All God's creatures are good-a toad, as a toad, not to be despised. Fair fiction has in one imprisoned a Princess. SEWARD. He is abashed by Zephon. He is in some nameless way quelled or controlled by Ithuriel-like a proud steed! Being ready to fight with Gabriel and all his angelical band, he is put to flight by an ill sign in the sky, which is, at the best, defeat. The detecting as a toad, and being compelled by the touch of Ithuriel's falsehood-detecting spear is a great dishonour-to spring up in his own ugly shape-for he is getting ugly fast. The Son of the Morning is losing his good looks! He would be black-balled at the "Face!" TALBOYS. And the simile to a heap of gunpowder is not at all enchanting. NORTH. The dialogue between Gabriel and him in Paradise seems really not very creditable to either of them. As far as Milton's intention is inquired after, it is evidently against Satan. Upon the whole, even thus far it is evident that Milton means to load shame on his head, and that he does bring him down in your esteem. But I see plainly that this way of taking it out is confused and undemonstrative. There should be regular heads of the degradation. We must discuss the matter more deeply and truly another day. To-morrow? SEWARD. NORTH. I never can help fancying that the sublime of the Paradise Lost-on the infernal side-is most felt when Satan is most alone. If you want epic magnitude in the ordinary sense, you have it, when a "third part of Heaven's host " are in motion or prostrate before you. But the true sublime is inward, and that sublime is most perceived when "He who seemed alone the antagonist of Heaven," stands or moves alone. "Meantime the adversary of God and man Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of Hell I suppose, sir, there may be several reasons. One is, that it is the business of Poetry to find representative Unities. Our affection, sympathy, admiration -whatsoever emotion is to be raised-concentrates itself upon the One, being so strengthened; diffuses itself upon the many, being so weakened. The multitude-all the others-are there to support Satan, and not one of them for himself, and with right; for He is the Soul of Evil! And howsoever the theologico-ethical reason of the Poem may be wrapped up and hidden in persons, the intellectual basis is the conflict of Moral Good and Evil. Strongly and effectually as the personal interests are presented, this grounding signification predominates, taking the Poem into a separate sphere from all others, and entitling it to be judged by its own laws. It is the greatest of all conflicts, involving all our interests, and all our destinies; is for us the fight of the universe, our fight. The muster of the "third part of heaven's host," in Pandemonium, ends in this The enterprise, too, which we know that He has imagined. And He gocs, alone, to wage the renewed warfare. TALBOYS. And let us for a few hours go along with him. Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh. |