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Must we renounce, and changing style, be called
Princes of hell?"

Shakspeare could have done a similar feat, by creating five men, all husbands, all black, and all jealous of their white wives; or else, five human fiends, all white, all Italian, and all eager to throw salt and gunpowder on the rising flame of jealousy, and yet each distinct from our present Othello and Iago; and this Shakspeare might have done, and done with ease, though he did it not.

Perhaps, to settle the place, and comparative merit, of the "Paradise Lost," is an attempt which appears more difficult than it really is. Milton himself may have, and has a considerable number of competitors, and, in our judgment, two superiors Shakspeare and Dante. His work can be compared properly to but two others; the "Iliad" and the "Divina Comedia." These are the first three among the productions of imaginative genius. Like Bennevis, Benmacdhui, and Cairntoul, still contesting, it is said, the sovereignty of Scotland's hills, (now rising above, and now sinking below each other, like three waves of the sea,) seem those surpassing masterpieces. We cannot, in our limits, even enter into a field so wide as the discussion of all the grounds on which we prefer the English poem. It is not because it is of later date than both, and yet as original as either. Time should never be taken into account when we speak of an immortal work; what matters it whether it was written in the morning, in the evening, or at noon? It is not that it was written amid danger and darkness-who knows how Homer fared as he rhapsodized the "Iliad?" or who knows not that Dante found in his poem the escape of immeasurable sorrow? It is not (Warton notwithstanding) that it has borrowed so much from Scripture: such glorious spangles we are ready to shear off, and deduct, in our estimate of the poem's greatness. It is not that it bears unequivocal traces of a higher path of genius, or that it is more highly or equally finished. But it is that, begun with a nobler purpose, and all but equal powers, it has called down, therefore, a mightier inspiration. Homer's spur to write or rhapsodize was that which sends the war-horse upon the spears; and the glory of the "Iliad" is that of a garment rolled in blood. In Dante, the sting is that of personal

anguish, and the acmé of his poem is in the depth of hell-a hell which he has replenished with his foes. Milton, in fact, as well as in figure, wrote his work to vindicate the " ways of God to men;" and this purpose never relinquishedpenetrating the whole poem straight as a ray passing through an unrefracting medium, gathering around it every severe magnificence and beauty, attracting from on high, from the very altar of celestial incense, burning coals of inspiration -becomes at last the poem's inaccessible and immortal

crown.

Let us glance for a moment, ere we close, at what was even finer than Milton's transcendent genius--his character. His life was a great epic itself; Byron's life was a tragicomedy; Sheridan's was a brilliant farce; Shelley's was a wild, mad, stormy tragedy, like one of Nat Lee's; Keats' life was a sad, brief, beautiful lyric; Moore's has been a lovesong; Coleridge's was a "Midsummer Night's Dream;" Schiller's was a harsh, difficult, wailing, but ultimately victorious war ode, like one of Pindar's; Goethe's was a brilliant, somewhat melodramatic, but finished novel; Tasso's was an elegy; but Milton, and Milton alone, acted as well as wrote an epic complete in all its parts-high, grave, sustained, majestic. His life was a self-denied life. "Susceptible," says one, "as Burke, to the attractions of historical prescription, of royalty, of chivalry, of an ancient church, installed in cathedrals, and illustrated by old martyrdoms-he threw himself, the flower of elegance, on the side of the reeking conventicle―the side of humanity, unlearned and unadorned." It was a life of labor and toil; labor and toil unrewarded, save by the secret sunshine of his own breast, filled with the consciousness of divine approbation, and hearing from afar the voice of universal future fame. It was a life of purity. Even in his youth, and in the countries of the south, he seems to have remained entirely unsullied. Although no anchorite, he was temperate to a degree, saying with John Elliot, "Wine is a noble, generous liquor, and we should be thankful for it, but water was made before it." Rapid in his meals, he was never weary of the refreshment of music; his favorite instrument, as might have been expected, being the organ. It was a life not perfect: there were spots on his fame, acerbities of temper, harshness of language, peculiar

ities of opinion, which proved him human, and grappled him with difficulty to earth, like a vast balloon ere it takes its bound upwards. It was in some measure a complete life, not a tantalizing fragment, nor separated segment; but it evolved as gradually and certainly as a piece of solemn music. It was the life of a patriot, faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he; and Abdiel, that dreadless angel, is just Milton transferred to the skies. It was, above all, the life of a Christian-yes, the life of a Christian, although the Evangelical Alliance would now shut its door in his face. It was a life of prayer, of faith, of meek dependence, of perpetual communing with heaven. Milton's piety was not a hollow form, not a traditional cant, not a bigotry, not the remains merely of youthful impression, as of a scald received in childhood; it was founded on personal inquiry; it was at once sincere and enlightened, strict and liberal; it was practical, and pressed on his every action and word, like the shadow of an unseen presence. Hence was his soul cheered in sorrow and blindness, the more he lived in daily, hourly expectation of Him whom he called "the shortly-expected King," who, rending the heavens, was to, and shall yet, give him a house from heaven, where they that look out at the windows are not darkened.

Thus faintly have we pictured John Milton. Forgive us, mighty shade! wherever thou art, mingling in whatever choir of adoring spirits, or engaged in whatever exalted ministerial service above, or whether present now among those "millions of spiritual creatures which walk the earth;" forgive us the feebleness, for the sake of the sincerity of the offering; and reject it not from that cloud of incense which, with enlarging volume, and deepening fragrance, is ascending to thy name, from every country and in every language!

We say with enlarging volume, for the fame of Milton must not only continue but extend. And perhaps the day may come, when, after the sun of British empire is set, and Great Britain has become as Babylon, and as Tyre, and even after its language has ceased to be a living tongue, the works of Milton and Shakspeare shall alone preserve it for these belong to no country, and to no age, but to all countries, and all ages, to all ages of time-to all cycles of eternity. Some books may survive the last burning, and be preserved in ce

lestial archives, as specimens and memorials of extinguished worlds; and if such there be, surely one of them must be the "Paradise Lost."

In fine, we tell not our readers to imitate Milton's genius -that may be too high a thing for them; but to imitate his life, the patriotism, the sincerity, the manliness, the purity, and the piety of his character. When considering him, and the other men of his day, we are tempted to say, "There were giants in those days," while we have fallen on the days of little men-nay, to cry out with her of old, "I saw gods ascending from the earth, and one of them is like to an old man whose face is covered with a mantle." In these days of rapid and universal change, what need for a spirit so pure, so wise, so sincere, and so gifted, as his! and who will not join in the language of Wordsworth?

"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour.
England hath need of thee. She is a fen
Of stagnant waters. We are selfish men.

Thy soul was like a star; and dwelt apart;
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay."

LORD BYRON.

AN objection may meet us on the threshold of this, as well as on that of our previous paper. It may seem that to attempt a new estimate of a character so thoroughly scrutinized, and so widely appreciated as Byron's, is an attempt alike hopeless and presumptuous. And if we did approach it with the desire of finding or saying any thing absolutely new, we should feel the full force of the objection. But this is far from being our ambition. We have decided to sketch Lord Byron's genius for the following reasons. In the first place, a very minute is never a very wide, a very particular is seldom a very just, scrutiny or estimate. In the second

place, the criticism of single works pouring from the press, however acute and admirable, is not equivalent to a review of those works taken as a whole. A judgment pronounced upon the first, second, or third stories of a building, as they successively arise, does not forestall the opinion of one who can overlook the completed structure. Of Byron's several writings we have every variety of separate critiques, good, bad, and indifferent of his genius, as animating his whole works, we have little criticism, either indifferent, bad, or good. In the third place, the tumult which all Byron's productions instantly excited, the space they cleared and burnt out for themselves, falling like bombshells among the crowd, the strong passions they awakened in their readers, through that intense personality which marked them all, rendered cool appreciation at the time impossible. They came upon the public like powerful sermons on an excited audience, sweeping criticism away before them, blotting out principles of art from the memory of the severest judges, whose hearts they stormed, whose passions they inflamed-at the same time that they sometimes revolted their tastes, and sometimes insulted their understandings. At night there was intoxication-in the morning calm reflection came. But, in the meantime, the poet was away, his song had become immortal, and the threatened arrows were quietly returned to the quiver again. In the next place, Byron's life and story formed a running commentary upon his works, which tended at once to excite and to bewilder his readers. His works have now illustrated editions: they did not require this while he lived. Then, his romantic history, partially disclosed, and, therefore, more effective in its interest-his early, hapless love-his first unfortunate publication-his Grecian travels-his resistless rush into fame-his miserable marriage-his amours-the glorious backgrounds which he chose for his tragic attitudes, Switzerland and Italy-his personal beauty-his very lameness-the odd and yet unludicrous compound which he formed of Vulcan and Venus, of Apollo and Satyr, of favorite and football of destiny-the mysterious spectacle he presented of a most miserable man, composed of all the materials which make others happy-the quaint mixture of all opposites in his character, irreconcilable till in the ruin of death-the

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