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at last possessing himself of our central Earth, and impregnating its incipient history with the spirit of Evil? Vastness of scene and power of story together, little wonder that the poem should have so impressed the world. Little wonder that it should now be Milton's Satan, and Milton's narrative of the Creation in its various transcendental connexions, that are in possession of the British imagination, rather than the strict Biblical accounts from which Milton so scrupulously derived the hints to which he gave such marvellous expansion!

But will the power of the poem be permanent? Grand conception as it is, was it not a conception framed too much in congruity with special beliefs and modes of thinking of Milton's own age to retain its efficiency for ever? If the matters it symbolized are matters which the human imagination, and the reason of man in its most exalted mood, must ever strive to symbolize in some form or other, may not the very definiteness, the blazing visual exactness, of Milton's symbolization jar on modern modes of thought? Do we not desire, in our days also, to be left to our own liberty of symbolizing in these matters, and may it not be well to prefer, in the main, symbolisms the least fixed, the least sensuous, the most fluent and cloud-like, the most tremulous to every touch of new idea or new feeling? To this objection-an objection, however, which would apply to all great Poetry and Art whatever, and would affect the paintings of Michael Angelo, for example, as much as the Paradise Lost of Milton-something must be conceded. Changes in human ideas since the poem was written have thrown the poem, or parts of it, farther out of keeping with the demands of the modern imagination than it can have been with the requirements of Milton's contemporaries. Not to speak of the direct traces in it of a peculiar theology in the form of speeches and arguments (in which kind, however, there is less that need really be obsolete than some theological critics have asserted), the Ptolemaism of Milton's astronomical scheme would alone put the poem somewhat in conflict with the educated modern conceptions of physical Nature. No longer now is the Mundane Universe thought of as a definite succession of Orbs round the globe of Earth. No longer now can the fancy of man be stayed at any distance, however immense, by an imaginary Primum Mobile or outermost shell, beyond which all is Chaos. The Primum Mobile has been for ever burst; and into the Chaos supposed to be beyond it the imagination has voyaged out and still out, finding no Chaos, and no sign of shore or boundary, but only the same ocean of transpicuous space, with firmaments for its scattered islands, and such islands still rising to view on every farthest horizon. Thus accustomed to the idea of Nature as boundless, the mind, in one of its moods, may refuse to conceive it as bounded, and may regard the attempt to do so as a treason against pure truth. All this must be conceded, though the effects of the concession will not stop at Paradise Lost. But there are other moods of the mind-moral and spiritual moods-which poesy is bound to serve; and, just as Milton, in the interest of these, knowingly and almost avowedly repudiated the obligation of consistency with physical science as known to himself; and set up a great symbolic phantasy, so to this day the phantasy which he did set up has, for those anyway like-minded to him, lost none of its sublime significance. For all such is not that physical Universe, which we have learnt not to bound, still, in its inconceivable totality, but as a drop hung from the Empyrean; is not darkness around it; is not Hell beneath it? And what though all are not such? Is it not the highest function of a book to perpetuate like-mindedness to its author after he is gone, and

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may not Paradise Lost be doing this? Nay, and what though the relevanc of the poem to the present soul of the world should have been more impaire by the lapse of time and the change of ideas than we have admitted it to be and much of the interest of it, as of all the other great poems of the world should now be historical? Even so what interest it possesses! What portrait, what a study, of a great English mind of the seventeenth century brings before us! "I wonder not so much at the poem itself, though worthy "of all wonder," says Bentley in the preface to his Edition of the poem, “a "that the author could so abstract his thoughts from his own troubles as to "be able to make it-that, confined in a narrow and to him a dark chamber "surrounded with cares and fears, he could expatiate at large through the "compass of the whole Universe, and through all Heaven beyond it, and "could survey all periods of time from before the creation to the consum "mation of all things. This theory, no doubt, was a great solace to him "in his affliction, but it shows in him a greater strength of spirit, thạt made "him capable of such a solace. And it would almost seem to me to b "peculiar to him, had not experience by others taught me that there is tha power in the human mind, supported with innocence and conscia virtus. "that can make it shake off all outward uneasiness and involve itself secur "and pleased in its own integrity and entertainment." It is refreshing to be able to quote from the great scholar and critic words showing so deep ar appreciation by him of the real significance of the poem which, as an editor. he mangled. Whatever the Paradise Lost is, it is, as Bentley here points out, a monument of almost unexampled magnanimity.

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PARADISE LOST:

A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS

THE AUTHOR

JOHN MILTON.

:

COMMENDATORY VERSES,

PREFIXED TO THE SECOND EDITION,

IN PARADISUM AMISSAM SUMMI POETÆ

JOHANNIS MILTONI.

Qui legis Amissam Paradisum, grandia magni
Carmina Miltoni, quid nisi cuncta legis?
Res cunctas, et cunctarum primordia rerum,
Et fata, et fines, continet iste liber.
Intima panduntur magni penetralia Mundi,
Scribitur et toto quicquid in Orbe latet;
Terræque, tractusque maris, cœlumque profundum,
Sulphureumque Erebi flammivomumque specus;
Quæque colunt terras, pontumque, et Tartara cæca,
Quæque colunt summi lucida regna poli;
Et quodcunque ullis conclusum est finibus usquam;
Et sine fine Chaos, et sine fine Deus;

Et sine fine magis, si quid magis est sine fine,
In Christo erga homines conciliatus amor.
Hæc qui speraret quis crederet esse futurum?
Et tamen hæc hodie terra Britanna legit.
O quantos in bella duces, quæ protulit arma!
Quæ canit, et quantà prælia dira tubâ!
Coelestes acies, atque in certamine Cœlum !
Et quæ cœlestes pugna deceret agros !
Quantus in ætheriis tollit se Lucifer armis,
Atque ipso graditur vix Michaele minor!
Quantis et quam funestis concurritur iris,

Dum ferus hic stellas protegit, ille rapit!
Dum vulsos montes ceu tela reciproca torquent,
Et non mortali desuper igne pluunt,
Stat dubius cui se parti concedat Olympus,
Et metuit pugnæ non superesse suæ.
At simul in cœlis Messiæ insignia fulgent,
Et currus animes, armaque digna Deo,
Horrendumque rotæ strident, et sæva rotarum
Erumpunt torvis fulgura luminibus,
Et flammæ vibrant, et vera tonitrua rauco
Admistis flammis insonuere polo,

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