of some than to deny the reality of any.

We cannot continue a line of thought which would draw us on too far for
the patience of our readers. We must, however, make one more remark,
and we shall have finished our criticism on "Paradise Lost." It is
analogous to that which we have just made. The scheme of the poem is
based on an offense against positive morality. The offense of Adam was
not against nature or conscience, nor against anything of which we can
see the reason or conceive the obligation, but against an unexplained
injunction of the Supreme Will. The rebellion in heaven, as Milton
describes it, was a rebellion not against known ethics or immutable
spiritual laws, but against an arbitrary selection and an unexplained
edict. We do not say that there is no such thing as positive
morality,--we do not think so; even if we did, we should not insert a
proposition so startling at the conclusion of a literary criticism.
But we are sure that wherever a positive moral edict is promulgated, it
is no subject, except perhaps under a very peculiar treatment, for
literary art. By the very nature of it, it cannot satisfy the heart
and conscience. It is a difficulty; we need not attempt to explain it
away,--there are mysteries enough which will never be explained away.
But it is contrary to every principle of criticism to state the
difficulty as if it were not one; to bring forward the puzzle, yet
leave it to itself; to publish so strange a problem, and give only an
untrue solution of it: and yet such, in its bare statement, is all that
Milton has done.

Of Milton's other writings we have left ourselves no room to speak; and
though every one of them, or almost every one of them, would well repay
a careful criticism, yet few of them seem to throw much additional
light on his character, or add much to our essential notion of his
genius, though they may exemplify and enhance it. "Comus" is the poem
which does so the most. Literature has become so much lighter than it
used to be, that we can scarcely realize the position it occupied in
the light literature of our forefathers. We have now in our own
language many poems that are pleasanter in their subject, more graceful
in their execution, more flowing in their outline, more easy to read.
Dr. Johnson, though perhaps no very excellent authority on the more
intangible graces of literature, was disposed to deny to Milton the
capacity of creating the lighter literature: "Mi