of it. Milton himself
was only partially emancipated from the bondage of the letter; half in
earth, half 'pawing to get free' like his own lion. The war in heaven,
the fall of the rebel angels, the horrid splendours of Pandemonium
seem legitimate subjects for Christian poetry. They stand for
something which we regard as real, yet we are not bound to any actual
opinions about them. Satan has no claim on reverential abstinence; and
Paradise and the Fall of Man are perhaps sufficiently mythic to permit
poets to take certain liberties with them. But even so far Milton has
not entirely succeeded. His wars of the angels are shadowy. They have
no substance like the battles of Greeks and Trojans, or Centaurs and
Lapithae; and Satan could not be made interesting without touches of a
nobler nature, that is, without ceasing to be the Satan of the
Christian religion. But this is not his worst. When we are carried up
into heaven and hear the persons of the Trinity conversing on the
mischiefs which have crept into the universe, and planning remedies
and schemes of salvation like Puritan divines, we turn away
incredulous and resentful. Theologians may form such theories for
themselves, if not wisely, yet without offence. They may study the
world in which they are placed, with the light which can be thrown
upon it by the book which they call the Word of God. They may form
their conclusions, invent their schemes of doctrine, and commend to
their flocks the interpretation of the mystery at which they have
arrived. The cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic astronomers were
imperfect hypotheses, but they were stages on which the mind could
rest for a more complete examination of the celestial phenomena. But
the poet does not offer us phrases and formulas; he presents to us
personalities living and active, influenced by emotions and reasoning
from premises; and when the unlimited and incomprehensible Being whose
attributes are infinite, of whom from the inadequacy of our ideas we
can only speak in negatives, is brought on the stage to talk like an
ordinary man, we feel that Milton has mistaken the necessary limits of
his art.

When Faust claims affinity with the Erdgeist, the spirit tells him to
seek affinities with beings which he can comprehend. The commandment
which forbade the representation of God in a bodily form, forbids the
poet equally to make God describe his feelings and his purposes. Where
the poet would create a character he m