Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

is a duty rather than a pleafure. We read Milton for inftruction, retire harraffed and overburdened, and look elfewhere for recreation; we defert our mafter, and feek for companions.

Another inconvenience of Milton's defign is, that it requires the defcription of what cannot be defcribed, the agency of fpirits. He faw that immateriality fupplied no images, and that he could not fhow angels acting but by inftruments of action; he therefore invefted them with form and matter. This, being neceffary, was therefore defenfible; and he fhould have fecured the confiftency of his fyftem, by keeping immateriality out of fight, and enticing his reader to drop it from his thoughts. But he has unhap

5

unhappily perplexed his poetry with hist philofophy. His infernal and celeftial. powers are sometimes pure fpirit, and fometimes animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the burning marle, he has a body; when in his paffage between hell and the new world, he is in danger of finking in the vacuity, and is fupported by a guft of rifing vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad, he feems to be mere fpirit, that can penetrate matter at pleafure; when he starts up in his own shape, he has at least a determined form; and when he is brought before Gabriel, he has a fpear and fhield, which he had the power of hiding in the toad, though the

arms

arms of the contending angels are evi

dently material.

The vulgar inhabitants of Pandæmonium being incorporeal Spirits, are at large, though without number, in a limited fpace; yet in the battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them, crushed in upon their fubftance, now grown grofs by finning. This likewife happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the fooner for their arms, for unarmed they might eafily as fpirits have evaded by contraction, or remove.

Even

as fpirits they are hardly fpiritual; for contraction and remove are images of matter; but if they could have efcaped without their armour, they might have escaped

7

efcaped from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he rides on a fun-beam, is material: Satan is material when he is afraid of the prowefs of Adam.

The confufion of fpirit and matter which pervades the whole narration of the war of heaven fills it with incongruity; and the book, in which it is related, is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased.

After the operation of immaterial agents, which cannot be explained, may be confidered that of allegorical perfons, which have no real existence. To exalt

caufes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and animate them with

activity, has always been the right of poetry. But fuch airy beings are, for the moft part, fuffered only to do their natural office; and retire. Thus Fame tells a tale, and Victory hovers over a general, or perches on a ftandard; but Fame and Victory can do no more. To give them any real employment, or afcribe to them any material agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to fhock the mind by afcribing effects to non-entity. In the Prometheus of Efchylus, we fee Violence and Strength, and in the Alceftis of Euripides, we fee Death brought upon the stage, all as active perfons of the drama; but no precedents can justify abfurdity.

« ПредишнаНапред »