here we feel as if, in using the word art or genius, we were guilty of profanation; for so long have we been accustomed to think and speak of the "Paradise Lost," that it seems to us to rank with the great works of nature themselves. We think of it as of Enoch or Elijah, when just rising out of the sphere of earth's attraction, and catching a brighter radiance than any that earth owns upon their ascending forms. And there are works of genius which seem standing and stretching up towards the measure and the stature of the works of God, and to which these seem to nod in responsive sympathy. For, as the poet says—

"Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For out of thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adapted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat."

Such a work is that of "Paradise Lost," where earth and heaven appear contending for the mastery-where, as over the morning star, the night and the dawning seem engaged in contest as to the possession of a thing so magnificent, because in it, and in fine proportions, gloom and glory-the gloom of hell and the glory of heaven-have met and embraced each other.

"Paradise Lost" has sometimes been called the most perfect of human productions-it ought to be called the most ambitious. It is the Tower of Babel, the top of which did not, indeed, reach unto heaven, but did certainly surpass all the other structures then upon earth. It stands alone, unequalled-Man's Mountain. It is a Samson throw, to reach which, in our degenerate days, no one need aspire. Even to higher intelligences it may appear wonderful, and strange as to us those likenesses of the stars and of man which are to be found in flowers and animals. In the language of Pope, they may

"Admire such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And show a Milton as men show an ape."

But in proportion, perhaps, as this work rises above the works of man, and hangs aloft like a half-born celestial product, it loses a portion of its interest with human mortals." It is not, on the one hand, a book like the Bible, commanding all belief as well as all admiration; it is not, on the other hand, a popular and poetical manual, like the "Pilgrim's Progress," commending itself to the hearts of all who have hearts to feel its meaning; nor is it a work valuable to a party, as having inshrined and transfigured some party notion, which, like a Gipsy in the wild, had been wandering undistinguished, till a sudden slip of sunshine had bathed him in transient glory. It is the written-out, illuminated creed of a solitary, independent, daring, yet devout man, which all ages have agreed to admire in Milton's poem. And hence the admiration awarded has been rather general than particular-rather that of the whole than of the part, -rather that of stupefied and silent amazement than of keen, warm, and anxious enthusiasm-rather the feeling of those who look hopelessly upon a cloud or a star, or a glowing west, than of those who look on some great, yet imitable perfection, in the arts of painting, statuary, or poesy.

We must be permitted a word about the hero of this poem, about its picture of hell, about its pictures of paradise and heaven, about the representation of Adam and Eve, about its subordinate machinery of angels and devils, and about its place and comparative merits when put beside the other masterpieces of the human mind. Its hero is undoubtedly, as Dryden long ago asserted, Satan, if the most interesting character in the book deserves the name of hero -if, for example, Fergus MacIvor, and not Waverley, is the hero of that tale-if of Ivanhoe not that insipid personage himself, but Richard, the lion-hearted, be the real hero. Wherever Satan appears, he becomes the centre of the scene. Round him as he lies on the fiery gulf, floating many a rood, the flames seem to do obeisance, even as their red billows break upon his sides. When he rises up into his proper stature, the surrounding hosts of hell cling to him, like leaves to a tree. When he disturbs the old deep of Chaos, its Anarchs, Orcus, Hades, Demogorgon, own a superior.

When he stands on Niphates, and bespeaks that sun which was once his footstool, Creation becomes silent to listen to the dread soliloquy. When he enters Eden, a shiver of horror shakes all its roses, and makes the waters of the four rivers to tremble. Even in heaven, the Mountain of the Congregation on the sides of the north, where he sits, almost mates with the throne of the Eternal. Mounted on the night as on a black charger, carrying all hell in his breast, and the trail of heaven's glory on his brow-his eyes eclipsed suns -his cheeks furrowed not by the traces of tears but of thunder-his wings two black forests-his heart a mount of millstone-armed to the teeth-doubly armed by pride, fury, and despair-lonely as death-hungry as the grave-intrenched in immortality-defiant against every difficulty and danger, does he pass before us, the most tremendous conception in the compass of poetry-the sublimest creation of the mind of man. There is but one other, which approaches it at a distance that of Lucifer, in Dante, who appears with three faces :

"Under each shot forth

Two mighty wings, enormous, as became

A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw

Outstretched on the wide sea. No plumes had they,

But were in texture like a bat, and these

He flapped i' the air, that from them issued still
Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth
Was frozen. At six eyes he wept; the tears
Adown three chins distill'd with bloody foam!
At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ'd,
Bruised as with ponderous engine.

Judas is he that hath his head within,
And plies the feet without; of the other two,
The one is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe,

And speaks not. The other Cassius, that appears

So large of limb."

Nothing can be more frightfully picturesque than this description, but it is, perhaps, too grotesque to be sublime; and the thought of the Devil being a vast windmill, and creating ice by the action of his wings, is ludicrous. One is reminded of Don Quixotte's famous mistake of the windmills for giants.

Burns, in one of his letters, expresses a resolve to buy a pocket-copy of Milton, and study that noble character, Satan.

We cannot join in this opinion entirely, although very characteristic of the author of the "Address to the De'il;" but we would advise our readers, if they wish to see the loftiest genius passing into the highest art-if they wish to see combined in one stupendous figure every species of beauty, deformity, terror, darkness, light, calm, convulsion—the essence of man, devil, and angel, collected into a something distinct from each, and absolutely unique-all the elements in nature ransacked, and all the characters in history analyzed, in order to deck that brow with terror-to fill that eye with fire-to clothe that neck with thunder-to harden that heart into stone to give to that port its pride, and to that wing its swiftness and that glory so terrible to those nostrils, snorting with hatred to God, and scorn to man-to buy, beg, or borrow a copy of Milton, and study the character of Satan, not like Burns, for its worth, but for the very grandeur of its worthlessness. An Italian painter drew a representation of Lucifer so vivid and glowing, that it left the canvas, and came into the painter's soul; in other words, haunted his mind by night and day-became palpable to his eye, even when he was absent from the picture-produced at last a frenzy, which ended in death. We might wonder that a similar effect was not produced upon Milton's mind, from the long presence of his own terrific creation (to be thinking of the Devil for six or ten years together looks like a Satanic possession), were it not that we remember his mind was more than equal to confront its own workmanship. Satan was not a spasm, but a calm, deliberate production of Milton's mind; he was greater, therefore, than Satan, and was enabled, besides, through his habitual religion, to subdue and master his tone of feeling in reference to him.

Milton's Hell is the most fantastic piece of fancy, based on the broadest superstructure of imagination. It presents such a scene, as though Switzerland were set on fire. Such an uneven colossal region, full of bogs, caves, hollow valleys, broad lakes, and towering Alps, has Milton's genius cut out from chaos, and wrapped in devouring flames, leaving, indeed, here and there a snowy mountain, or a frozen lake, for a variety in the horror. This wilderness of death is the platform which imagination raises and peoples with the fallen thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, and powers. On it the

same power, in its playful, fanciful mood, piles up the pandemonian palace, suggests the trick by which the giant fiends reduce their stature, shrinking into imps, and seats at the gates of hell the monstrous forms of sin and death. These have often been objected to, as if they were unsuccessful and abortional efforts of imagination; whereas they are the curvettings and magnificent nonsense of that power after its proper work-the creation of hell has been performed. The great merit of Milton's hell, especially as compared to Dante's, is the union of a general sublime indistinctness, with a clear statuesque marking out from, or painting on, the gloom, of individual forms. From a sublime idea of hell, he descends to severely-selected particular forms and features. Dante, on the contrary (although literally descending), in reality ascends, on endless lost spirits, as on steps, to that dreadful whole which he calls the Inferno; and in the strange inverted climax lies much of the power of the poem. Milton

is the synthetist, Dante the analyst of hell-the one here practises the transcendental, the other the ascendental method. The one describes hell like an angel, passing through it in haste, and with time only to behold its leading outlines and figures-the other, like a pilgrim, compelled with slow and painful steps to thread all its highways and byways of pain and punishment. Milton has pictured to us the young flames, and unpeopled wastes of hell as well as of earth." By Dante's time, it is overflowing with inhabitants, and teeming with sad incidents. The hell of each has its root as much in the heart as in the imagination-it is to each a red reservoir, into which he pours his ire and disappointment; but as Milton's sadness was of a milder type than Dante's, so his hell is less savage and more sublime. He gazes reverently, and from a distance, on the awful scene whereas the fierce Florentine enters into its heart, goes down on his knees to watch more narrowly the degradations of the down-trodden damned-nay, applies a microscope to their quivering flesh and fire-shrivelled skin; nor did Ugolino, over the skull, go to his task with a more terrible and tingling gusto.

In Milton's Paradise, no less than in his Pandemonium, we find the giant character of his genius. It is no snug garden-plot, it is no tame, though wide, landscape; no