horrors, during his sojourn with the poet in that obscure and bottomless abyss,-objects which will not bear to be long looked upon in their unmitigated blackness of darkness, or contemplated by the ghastly illumination of that "dungeon,” which “ on all sides flamed,” yet from whose flames "no light, but rather darkness visible-served only to discover sights of woe." Let the curious reader of these two books collect together, and peruse consecutively, all the embellishments of this kind which adorn and illustrate the various topics, and he will be surprised to mark the array of sublime and impressive imagery thus presented.

Of Satan himself it may be affirmed, that Milton's conception of his personal presence, his transcendent intellect, and his moral degradation,-" archangel in eclipse, and the excess of glory obscured,”—“ a murderer from the beginning, who abode not in the truth," "a liar and the father of lies," that conception alone as far exceeds every other personification of the Evil One, existent in poetry, tradition, or romance, as "Lucifer, the son of the morning," falling like lightning from heaven," transcends the flickering meteors of the marsh, or the torches that flare and go out in the mephitic atmosphere of a charnel house. On the development of this character throughout the progress of the poem, there is no room to dwell here; one feature only, which has scarcely been noticed, if at all, by former critics, deserves to be pointed out, as the very sign by which he may be infallibly detected when touched by the spear of an Ithuriel,-while it is the very means, in the successful exercise of which he won his usurped dominion on earth, and maintains by it his power to deceive the nations and rule in the hearts of the children of disobedience. The poet, who well knew

his devices, has represented him, in every voluntary act of his policy, taking a false shape, that he might in none be suspected for what he is. From his landing on this orb till he takes flight from it, after the accomplishment of his infernal errand, he does nothing in his own form, or as himself, the foe of God and man. Thus, in Book III., he transforms himself into an angel of light, to impose upon Uriel, the guardian of the sun, -"one of the seven spirits that stand in sight of God's high throne," that from him he may learn the way to that new world of which he was in search. Him he effectually deludes by his fair show and fairer words. Alighting on "the mount, north of Eden," from thence he addresses that marvellous speech to the sun, which discloses all the secrets of "the hell within him." During the delivery (by a master-stroke of the poet) he is represented as unconsciously relapsing into himself, under the agony of remorse, despair, and impotent malignity. This betrays him, as "alien from heaven," and one of the banished crew," to Uriel, whose eye had pursued him, and watched his fiendish gesticulations there. Forthwith "gliding through the even— on a sunbeam-swift as a shooting star in autumn thwarts the night," the seraph speeds to inform Gabriel and the angelic guard of Paradise of the ominous intrusion. The sequel shows the arch-traitor under another and a base disguise,-" squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, assaying, by his devilish art, to reach the organs of her fancy, and with them forge illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams." Being caught in this exercise by two of the watch, whom Gabriel had sent in search of him :-" Him, thus intent, Ithuriel with his spear touch'd lightly; for no falsehood can endure touch of celestial temper, but returns of force

to its own likeness: up he starts, discover'd and surprised." The interview that follows between "those two fair angels and the grisly king," and afterwards with Gabriel, to whom they bring him, reluctantly, "o'ercome with rage,” and, “like a proud steed rein'd, champing his iron curb,"—is the most spirited and dramatic scene in the poem. It ends, indeed, unsatisfactorily, but could not otherwise have been ended, without marring the catastrophe of the whole.

On his first entrance into Paradise, he assumes the appearance of "a cormorant, perched upon the tree of life," from which he discovers Adam and Eve. Thence he descends among the animals that companied together, and with the human pair who dwelt in the happy garden. "Nearer to view his prey, and unespied,

To mark what of their state he more might learn,
By word or action mark'd: about them round

A lion now he stalks with fiery glare;

Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied
In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play,

Straight couches close, then, rising, changes oft
His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground,
Whence rushing he might surest seize them both,
Griped in each paw."

The aptness of the simile of the tiger, in respect to the two fawns, and Satan meditating the destruction of Adam, the first of men," and "the first of women, Eve," who are immediately afterwards introduced in conversation, must strike every reader of discernment.

The grand disguise, under which, as a serpent, the Devil beguiles Eve by his subtlety, need not be dwelt upon; the passage is familiar to those with whom Milton is worthily known; the description of his form, his beauty, and his antics, is above all praise. On his return from earth through chaos, he is again seen by his

son and daughter, Sin and Death, in his most imposing disguise, as "an angel bright, betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering his zenith, while the sun in Aries rose." Arriving at home, he, through the midst of his legions assembled in Pandemonium, passes "in show plebeian, as an angel militant of lowest order," till, "from the door of that Plutonian hall, invisible ascending his high throne, ***** down awhile he sat, and round about him saw, unseen: at last, as from a cloud, his fulgent head and shape starbright appeared, or brighter, clad with what permissive glory since his fall was left him, or false glitter:-all amazed at that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng bent their aspèct, and whom they wish'd beheld, their mighty chief return'd: loud was the acclaim.”—But the triumph was brief; and, after all his own successful metamorphoses, an involuntary transformation was suddenly wrought upon him, and not on him only, but on all his peers, when, after he had made an oration setting forth his exploits, "he and his horrid crew were changed into reptiles of that class which he had chosen for perpetrating his fraud upon Eve. Being met with "a dismal, universal hiss from innumerable tongues on every side," when he expected their plaudits at the close of his speech,

"he wonder'd, but not long

Had leisure, wondering at himself now more ;
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare;
His arms clung to his ribs; his legs entwining
Each other, till, supplanted, down he fell,
A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain ;—a greater Power
Now ruled him, punish'd in the shape he sinn'd,
According to his doom; he would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss return'd with fork'd tongue

To forked tongue; for now were all transform'd
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories

To his bold riot."-PARADISE LOST, Book X.

Of the human actors, or, rather, sufferers, throughout this poem, the war in heaven, the creation of the world, and the prophetic disclosures with which it closes, analysis or exposition would be vain in this place. The first appearance of Adam and Eve, in Book IV., is a vision of beauty, unequalled in poetry. Their innocent endearments, their conjugal affection, their sweet and delicate discourse, their pastimes, their labours, their devotions, are all conceived and expressed with consummate ability. In the first pair Milton has delineated the ideal, which he fondly cherished, but never realised, of "wedded love." "Here

Love his golden shafts employs; here lights his constant lamp, and waves his purple wings; reigns here and revels." In all this author's poems there are no love-verses, addressed either to a living or an imaginary mistress-no Beatrice, no Laura, no Leonora.—In some of his school-boy elegiacs, in Latin, there are allusions to a tender passion, and a very ornate dream of a lady whom he saw in sleep, and sought, in vain, through the world afterwards, but it was manifestly head-work; there is not a trace of heart-love there, or elsewhere, except in the sonnet on his "late deceased saint," his second wife, formerly noticed. And yet no man of woman born has more glorified woman, in prose or rhyme, than he has done in Paradise Lost, in Comus, and even in his Treatise on Divorce.

Against one insuperable difficulty Milton had to wrestle, all the way through his subject, in Paradise Lost; the inexplicable and inextricable confusion continually recurring between the properties of matter