That structure in the dialect of men
Interpreted)-

Homer mentions persons and things, which, he tells us, in the language of the gods are called by different names from those they go by in the language of men. Milton has imitated him with his usual judgment in this particular place, wherein he has likewise the authority of Scripture to justify him. The part of Abdiel, who was the only spirit that in this infinite host of angels preserved his allegiance to his Maker, exhibits to us a noble moral of religious singularity. The zeal of the seraph breaks forth in a becoming warmth of sentiments and expressions, as the character which is given us of him denotes that generous scorn and intrepidity which attends heroic virtue. The author doubtless designed it as a pattern to those who live among mankind in their present state of degeneracy and corruption.

So spake the seraph Abdiel, faithful found;
Among the faithless, faithful only he;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified;
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal:
Nor number, nor example, with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained
Superior, nor of violence feared aught;

And with retorted scorn his back he turned
On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.

No. 333. SATURDAY, MARCH 22.

-Vocat in certamina divos. VIRG.

WE are now entering upon the sixth book of Paradise Lost, in which the poet describes the battle of angels; having raised his reader's expectation, and prepared him for it by several passages in the preceding books. I omitted quoting these passages in my observations on the former books, having purposely reserved them for the opening of this, the subject of which gave occasion to them. The author's ima gination was so inflamed with this scene of action, that wherever he speaks of it, he rises, if possible, above himself. Thus where he mentions Satan in the beginning of his

poem:

-Him the Almighty Power

Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,

Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms.

We have likewise several noble hints of it in the infernal conference.

O prince, O chief of many throned powers,
That led th' embattled seraphim to war,
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow, and foul defeat,
Hath lost us heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low.
But see the angry Victor has recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of heaven: the sulphurous hail
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid
The fiery surge that from the precipice

Of heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.

There are several other very sublime images on the same subject in the first book, as also in the second.

What when we fled amain, pursued, and struck
With heaven's afflicting thunder, and besought
The deep to shelter us; this hell then seemed
A refuge from those wounds-

In short, the poet never mentions anything of this battle, but in such images of greatness and terror as are suitable to the subject. Among several others, I cannot forbear quoting that passage, where the power who is described as presiding over the Chaos, speaks in the third book.

Thus Satan; and him thus the anarch old,
With faultering speech, and visage incomposed,
Answered: I know thee, stranger, who thou art,
That mighty leading angel, who of late

Made head against heaven's King, though overthrown.
I saw and heard; for such a numerous host

Fled not in silence through the frighted deep,

With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

Confusion worse confounded; and heaven's gates
Poured out by millions her victorious bands,
Pursuing-

It required great pregnancy of invention, and strength of imagination, to fill this battle with such circumstances as should raise and astonish the mind of the reader; and at the same time an exactness of judgment, to avoid everything that might appear light or trivial. Those who look into Homer, are surprised to find his battles still rising one above another, and improving in horror, to the conclusion of the Iliad. Milton's fight of angels is wrought up with the same beauty. It is ushered in with such signs of wrath, as are suitable to Omnipotence incensed. The first engagement is carried on under a cope of fire, occasioned by the flights of innumerable burning darts and arrows which are discharged from either host. The second onset is still more terrible, as it is filled with those artificial thunders which seem to make the victory doubtful, and produce a kind of consternation even in the good angels. This is followed by the tearing up of mountains and promontories; till, in the last place, the Messiah comes forth in the fulness of majesty and terror. The pomp of his appearance, amidst the roarings of his thunders, the flashes of his lightnings, and the noise of his chariot-wheels, is described with the utmost flights of human imagination.

There is nothing in the first and last day's engagement which does not appear natural, and agreeable enough to the ideas most readers would conceive of a fight between two armies of angels.

The second day's engagement is apt to startle an imagination, which has not been raised and qualified for such a description, by the reading of the ancient poets, and of Homer in particular. It was certainly a very bold thought in our author, to ascribe the first use of artillery to the rebel-angels. But as such a pernicious invention may be well supposed to have proceeded from such authors, so it entered very properly into the thoughts of that being who is all along described as aspiring to the majesty of his Maker. Such engines were the only instruments he could have made use of to imitate those thunders, that in all poetry, both sacred and profane, are represented as the arms of the Almighty. The tearing up of the hills was not altogether so daring a thought as the former. We are, in some measure, prepared for such an incident by the description of the giants' war, which we meet with among the ancient poets. What still

made this circumstance the more proper for the poet's use, is the opinion of many learned men, that the fable of the giants' war, which makes so great a noise in antiquity, and gave birth to the sublimest description in Hesiod's works, was an allegory founded upon this very tradition of a fight between the good and bad angels.

It may, perhaps, be worth while to consider with what judgment Milton, in this narration, has avoided everything that is mean and trivial in the descriptions of the Latin and Greek poets; and, at the same time, improved every great hint which he met with in their works upon this subject. Homer, in that passage which Longinus has celebrated for its sublimeness, and which Ovid and Virgil have copied after him, tells us, that the giants threw Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa. He adds an epithet to Pelion (Eivoriquλov) which very much swells the idea by bringing (εἰνοσίφυλλον) up to the reader's imagination all the woods that grew upon it. There is further a great beauty in his singling out by name these three remarkable mountains, so well known to the Greeks. This last is such a beauty as the scene of Milton's war could not possibly furnish him with. Claudian, in his fragment upon the giants' war, has given full scope to that wildness of imagination which was natural to him. He tells us, that the giants tore up whole islands by the roots, and threw them at the gods. He describes one of them in particular taking up Lemnos in his arms, and whirling it to the skies, with all Vulcan's shop in the midst of it. Another tears up Mount Ida, with the river Enipeus, which ran down the sides of it; but the poet, not content to describe him with this mountain upon his shoulders, tells us that the river flowed down his back, as he held it up in that posture. It is visible to every judicious reader, that such ideas savour more of burlesque than of the sublime. They proceed from a wantonness of imagination, and rather divert the mind than astonish it. Milton has taken everything that is sublime in these several passages, and composes out of them the following great image:

From their foundations loosening to and fro,

They plucked the seated hills with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods; and by the shaggy tops
Up-lifting bore them in their hands-

We have the full majesty of Homer in this short descrip

tion, improved by the imagination of Claudian, without its puerilities.

I need not point out the description of the fallen angels seeing the promontories hanging over their heads in such a dreadful manner, with the other numberless beauties in this book, which are so conspicuous, that they cannot escape the notice of the most ordinary reader.

There are, indeed, so many wonderful strokes of poetry in this book, and such a variety of sublime ideas, that it would have been impossible to have given them a place within the bounds of this paper. Besides that, I find it in a great measure done to my hand at the end of my Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Poetry. I shall refer my reader thither for some of the master-strokes in the sixth book of Paradise Lost, though at the same time there are many others which that noble author has not taken notice of.

Milton, notwithstanding the sublime genius he was master of, has in this book drawn to his assistance all the helps he could meet with among the ancient poets. The sword of Michael, which makes so great a havoc among the bad angels, was given him, we are told, out of the armoury of God.

-But the sword

Of Michael, from the armoury of God,

Was given him tempered so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met

The sword of Satan with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheer-

This passage is a copy of that in Virgil, wherein the poet tells us, that the sword of Æneas, which was given him by a deity, broke into pieces the sword of Turnus, which came from a mortal forge. As the moral in this place is divine, so by the way we may observe, that the bestowing on a man who is favoured by heaven such an allegorical weapon, is very conformable to the old Eastern way of thinking. Not only Homer has made use of it, but we find the Jewish hero in the book of Maccabees, who had fought the battles of the chosen people with so much glory and success, receiving in his dream a sword from the hand of the prophet Jeremiah. The following passage, wherein Satan is described as wounded by the sword of Michael, is in imitation of Homer:

The griding sword with discontinuous wound

Passed through him, but the ethereal substance closed,