ght have
indulged his imagination in the invention of incidents, he had
represented character with the fidelity of a conscientious historian.
His religious views, moreover, are such as he could never have thought
it right to publish if he had not been intimately convinced of their
truth. He has strayed far from the creed of Puritanism. He is an Arian;
his Son of God, though an unspeakably exalted being, is dependent,
inferior, not self-existent, and could be merged in the Father's person
or obliterated entirely without the least diminution of Almighty
perfection. He is, moreover, no longer a Calvinist: Satan and Adam both
possess free will, and neither need have fallen. The reader must accept
these views, as well as Milton's conception of the materiality of the
spiritual world, if he is to read to good purpose. "If his imagination,"
says Pattison, pithily, "is not active enough to assist the poet, he
must at least not resist him."

This is excellent advice as respects the general plan of "Paradise
Lost," the materiality of its spiritual personages, and its system of
philosophy and theology. Its poetical beauties can only be resisted
where they are not perceived. They have repeated the miracles of Orpheus
and Amphion, metamorphosing one most bitterly obnoxious, of whom so late
as 1687 a royalist wrote that "his fame is gone out like a candle in a
snuff, and his memory will always stink," into an object of universal
veneration. From the first instant of perusal the imagination is led in
captivity, and for the first four books at least stroke upon stroke of
sublimity follows with such continuous and undeviating regularity that
sublimity seems this Creation's first law, and we feel like pigmies
transported to a world of giants. There is nothing forced or affected
in this grandeur, no visible effort, no barbaric profusion, everything
proceeds with a severe and majestic order, controlled by the strength
that called it into being. The similes and other poetical ornaments,
though inexpressibly magnificent, seem no more so than the greatness of
the general conception demands. Grant that Satan in his fall is not
"less than archangel ruined," and it is no exaggeration but the simplest
truth to depict his mien--

"As when the sun, new risen,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations."

When s