Swarm'd, and were straiten'd: till the signal given,
Behold a wonder!"****

The verse, in the exquisitely modulated passage that folows, floats up and down as if it had itself wings:

"Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood
So high above the circling canopy

Of night's extended shade) from th' eastern point
Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas

Beyond the horizon: then from pole to pole
He views in breadth, and without longer pause
Down into the world's first region throws
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease
Through the pure marble air his oblique way
Among innumerable stars that shone,

Stars distant, but nigh hand seem'd other worlds, Or other worlds they seem'd, or happy isles," &c. The interest of the poem arises from the daring ambition and fierce passions of Satan, and from the account of the paradisaical happiness, and the loss of it by our first parents. Three fourths of the work are taken up with these characters, and nearly all that relates to them is unmixed sublimity and beauty. The first two books alone are like two massy pillars of solid gold.

Satan is the most heroic subject that was ever chosen for a poem; and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the first of created beings, who, for endeavoring to be equal with the Highest, and to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the universe; his means, myriads of angelic armies bright, the third part of the heavens, whom he lured after him with his countenance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms. His ambition was the greatest, and his punishment was the greatest: but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body. He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist, or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He stood like a tower; or "As when Heaven's fire

Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines."

He is still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors, who own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he sympathizes as he views them round, far as

the eye can reach; though he keeps aloof from them in his own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own breast. An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet, Sin and Death are at his heels, and mankind are his easy prey.

"All is not lost; the unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what else is not to be overcome,"

are still his. The loss of infinite happiness to himself is compensated in thought by the power of inflicting infinite misery on others. Yet Milton's Satan is not the principle of malignity, or of the abstract love of evil, but of the abstract love of power, of pride, of self-will personified. He expresses the sum and substance of all ambition in one line:

"Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering ""

After his conflict and defeat, he founds a new empire in Hell, and from it conquers this new world, whither he bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way through nether and surrounding fires. Wherever the figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies, "rising aloft, incumbent on the dusky air," it is illustrated with the most striking and appropriate images: so that we see it always before us, gigantic, irregular, portentous, uncasy, and disturbed, but dazzling in its faded splendor. The deformity of Satan is only in the unparalleled depravity of his will. He has no bodily depravity to excite our loathing or disgust. He has neither horns, nor tail, nor cloven foot. Some think, and perhaps justly, that Milton has erred in drawing the character of Satan too favorably, or, rather, in making him the chief person in his poem; and they have ascribed this to Milton's love of rebellion against the magistracies of his own day.

Satan's final departure from Heaven, and the sentiments with which he approaches and enters Hell, are portrayed in the most masterly style:

"Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors, hail
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

T

What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less than He

Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."

Perhaps of all the passages in Paradise Lost, the descrip tion of the employments of the angels during the absence of Satan, some of whom, "retreated in a silent valley, sing with notes angelical to many a harp their own heroic deeds and hapless fall by doom of battle," is the most perfect example of mingled pathos and sublimity.

The character which a living poet has given of Spenser would be much more true of Milton:

"Yet not more sweet

Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise,
High Priest of all the Muses' mysteries."

Milton has finely shown the power of discrimination in respect to character in

EVE'S LAMENTATION

ON BEING DRIVEN FROM PARADISE.

"O unexpected stroke, worse than of death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods? where I had hoped to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation and my last

At even, which I bred up with tender hand

From the first opening bud, and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Thee, lastly, nuptial bower, by me adorn'd

With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure

And wild? How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits ?"

Adam's reflections on the same mournful occasion are in a different strain, and still finer. After expressing his submission to the will of his Maker, he says,

"This most afflicts me, that departing hence
As from His face I shall be hid, deprived

His bless'd countenance; here I could frequent
With worship place by place where He vouchsafed
Presence divine, and to my sons relate,

On this mount He appear'd, under this tree
Stood visible, among these pines His voice
I heard, here with Him at this fountain talk'd:
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory

Or monument to ages, and thereon

Offer sweet-smelling gums, and fruits, and flowers.
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances, or footstep trace?
For though I fled him angry, yet, recall'd
To life prolong'd and promised race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory, and far off his steps adore."

SECTION III.

SAMUEL BUTLER,

Author of Hudibras.

Strongly contrasted to Milton in every respect was his contemporary, Samuel Butler (1612-1680), the son of a farmer in Worcestershire, and at all times a poor man, but possessed of a rich fancy and a singular power of witty and pointed expression. His chief work was Hudibras, published in 1663 and subsequent years, a comic poem in shortrhymed couplets, designed to burlesque the characters of the zealously religious and Republican party, which had recently held sway. Notwithstanding the service which he thus performed to the Royalist cause and to Charles II., he was suffered to die in such poverty that the expense of his funeral was defrayed by a friend. In Hudibras, a Republican officer, of the most grotesque figure and accoutrements, s represented as sallying out, like a knight-errant, for the reformation of the state; and his character is thus, in the first place, described:

CHARACTER OF SIR HUDIBRAS.

He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in analytic:
He could distinguish, and divide

A hair 'twixt south and southwest side;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute. change hands, and still confute;

He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination:
All this by syllogism true,

In mood and figure he would do.
For rhetoric, he could not ope

His mouth, but out there flew a trope;
And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by;
Else when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk;
For all a rhetorician's rules

Teach nothing but to name his tools.
But when he pleased to show 't, his speech
In loftiness of sound was rich;

A Babylonish dialect,

Which learned pedants much affect;
It was a party-color'd dress

Of patch'd and py-bald languages;
'Twas English, cut on Greek and Latin,
Like fustian, heretofore, on satin.
In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater;
For he, by geometric scale,

Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve by signs and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight,
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock does strike by algebra.
Beside, he was a shrewd philosopher,
And had read every text and gloss over;
Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath,
He understood b' implicit faith;
Whatever sceptic could inquire for,
For every why he had a wherefore;
Knew more than forty of them do,
As far as words and terms could go;
All which he understood by rote,
And, as occasion served, would quote;
No matter whether right or wrong,
They might be either said or sung.

SECTION IV.

YOUNG (1681-1765).
Night Thoughts.

The principal work of Edward Young is the Nigni Thoughts. This poem, by some critics, has been pronounced mournful, angry, gloomy, and represented as