the bridge thrown over the
stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The
distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton
have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these
great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a
difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the
distinction which must have subsisted in their minds between their own
creeds and that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark
the full extent of it by placing Riphaeus, whom Virgil calls
_iustissimus unus_, in Paradise, and observing a most heretical
caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton's
poem contains within itself a philosophical refutation of that system,
of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, it has been a chief
popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the
character of Satan as expressed in _Paradise Lost_. It is a mistake to
suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular
personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a
sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an
enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not
to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles
his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his
conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far
superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he
has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to
one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most
horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of
inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the
alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has
so far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a
violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his
God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is
the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius. He
mingled as it were the elements of human nature as colours upon a
single pallet, and arranged them in the composition of his great
picture according to the laws of epic truth; that is, according to the
laws of that principle by which a series of actions of the external
universe and of intelligent and ethical beings is calculated to excite
t