and
archangels for hearers. There is a decided manly tone in the arguments and
sentiments, an eloquent dogmatism, as if each person spoke from thorough
conviction; an excellence which Milton probably borrowed from his spirit
of partisanship, or else his spirit of partisanship from the natural
firmness and vigour of his mind. In this respect Milton resembles Dante,
(the only modern writer with whom he has any thing in common) and it is
remarkable that Dante, as well as Milton, was a political partisan. That
approximation to the severity of impassioned prose which has been made an
objection to Milton's poetry, and which is chiefly to be met with in these
bitter invectives, is one of its great excellences. The author might here
turn his philippics against Salmasius to good account. The rout in Heaven
is like the fall of some mighty structure, nodding to its base, "with
hideous ruin and combustion down." But, perhaps, of all the passages in
Paradise Lost, the description of the employments of the angels during the
absence of Satan, some of whom "retreated in a silent valley, sing with
notes angelical to many a harp their own heroic deeds and hapless fall by
doom of battle" is the most perfect example of mingled pathos and
sublimity.--What proves the truth of this noble picture in every part, and
that the frequent complaint of want of interest in it is the fault of the
reader, not of the poet, is that when any interest of a practical kind
takes a shape that can be at all turned into this, (and there is little
doubt that Milton had some such in his eye in writing it,) each party
converts it to its own purposes, feels the absolute identity of these
abstracted and high speculations; and that, in fact, a noted political
writer of the present day has exhausted nearly the whole account of Satan
in the Paradise Lost, by applying it to a character whom he considered as
after the devil, (though I do not know whether he would make even that
exception) the greatest enemy of the human race. This may serve to show
that Milton's Satan is not a very insipid personage.

Of Adam and Eve it has been said, that the ordinary reader can feel little
interest in them, because they have none of the passions, pursuits, or
even relations of human life, except that of man and wife, the least
interesting of all others, if not to the parties concerned, at least to
the by-standers. The preference has on this account been given to Homer,
who, it is said, h