uch a being voyages through space it is no hyperbole to compare
him to a whole fleet, judiciously shown at such distance as to suppress
every minute detail that could diminish the grandeur of the image--

"As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood,
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,
Ply stemming nightly towards the pole: so seemed
Far off the flying Fiend."

These similes, and an infinity of others, are grander than anything in
Homer, who would, however, have equalled them with an equal subject.
Dante's treatment is altogether different; the microscopic intensity of
perception in which he so far surpasses Homer and Milton affords, in
our opinion, no adequate compensation for his inferiority in
magnificence. That the theme of "Paradise Lost" should have evoked such
grandeur is a sufficient compensation for its incurable flaws and the
utter breakdown of its ostensible moral purpose. There is yet another
department of the poem where Milton writes as he could have written on
nothing else. The elements of his under-world are comparatively simple,
fire and darkness, fallen angels now huddled thick as leaves in
Vallombrosa; anon,

"A forest huge of spears and thronging helms,"

charming their painful steps over the burning marl by

"The Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft recorders;"

the dazzling magnificence of Pandemonium; the ineffable welter of Chaos;
proudly eminent over all like a tower, the colossal personality of
Satan. The description of Paradise and the story of Creation, if making
less demand on the poet's creative power, required greater resources of
knowledge, and more consummate skill in combination. Nature must yield
up her treasures, whatever of fair and stately the animal and vegetable
kingdoms can afford must be brought together, blended in gorgeous masses
or marshalled in infinite procession. Here Milton is as profuse as he
has hitherto been severe, and with good cause; it is possible to make
Hell too repulsive for art, it is not possible to make Eden too
enchanting. In his descriptions of the former the effect is produced by
a perpetual succession of isolated images of awful majesty; in his
Paradise and Creation the universal landscape is bathed in a general
atmosphere of lustro