e former; it does not determine the Fate of single
Persons or Nations, but of a whole Species. The united Powers of Hell
are joined together for the Destruction of Mankind, which they affected
in part, and would have completed, had not Omnipotence it self
interposed. The principal Actors are Man in his greatest Perfection, and
Woman in her highest Beauty. Their Enemies are the fallen Angels: The
Messiah their Friend, and the Almighty their Protector. In short, every
thing that is great in the whole Circle of Being, whether within the
Verge of Nature, or out of it, has a proper Part assigned it in this
noble Poem.

In Poetry, as in Architecture, not only the Whole, but the principal
Members, and every Part of them, should be Great. I will not presume to
say, that the Book of Games in the _AEneid_, or that in the _Iliad_, are
not of this Nature, nor to reprehend _Virgil's_ Simile of the Top [15],
and many other of the same [kind [16]] in the _Iliad_, as liable to any
Censure in this Particular; but I think we may say, without [derogating
from [17]] those wonderful Performances, that there is an unquestionable
Magnificence in every Part of _Paradise Lost_, and indeed a much greater
than could have been formed upon any Pagan System.

But _Aristotle_, by the Greatness of the Action, does not only mean that
it should be great in its Nature, but also in its Duration, or in other
Words that it should have a due Length in it, as well as what we
properly call Greatness. The just Measure of this kind of Magnitude, he
explains by the following Similitude. [18] An Animal, no bigger than a
Mite, cannot appear perfect to the Eye, because the Sight takes it in at
once, and has only a confused Idea of the Whole, and not a distinct Idea
of all its Parts; if on the contrary you should suppose an Animal of ten
thousand Furlongs in length, the Eye would be so filled with a single
Part of it, that it could not give the Mind an Idea of the Whole. What
these Animals are to the Eye, a very short or a very long Action would
be to the Memory. The first would be, as it were, lost and swallowed up
by it, and the other difficult to be contained in it. _Homer_ and
_Virgil_ have shewn their principal Art in this Particular; the Action
of the _Iliad_, and that of the _AEneid_, were in themselves exceeding
short, but are so beautifully extended and diversified by the [Invention
[19]] of _Episodes_, and the Machinery of Gods, with the like poetical
Or