Purge and disperse; that I may see and tell

Of things invisible to mortal sight.

It is certain that Milton deals with the invisible more than any other poet that ever lived. Like Jonathan Edwards in his "History of Redemption," he would relate a story which begins in an eternity past and ends in an eternity to come, the whole life of angels and of men being spanned by its mighty arch. Supernatural beings play a greater part in this epic than in any other-the persons of the Godhead and the celestial emissaries and servants of the Almighty do two-thirds of all the speaking, and the other third is done by two specimens of unfallen humanity whose thought and language transcend all ordinary human standards.

The world into which the poet introduces us is not a part of this universe-it is rather that empyrean which subsisted before this universe had a being. The demands of such an epic as this are simply colossal; the conception of it could come only to one to whom the sublime was as his native air; the mere statement of the fact gives us one of the best explanations of the Miltonic poetry and one of the best reasons for its power. In order that we may better appreciate the greatness of "Paradise Lost," the work resumed with such new advantages after twenty years of enforced silence, and may understand what manner of " singing robes" the great poet then put on, it will be indispensable to distinguish between Dante's universe and Milton's universe, and to see how much more supersensual and ideal the latter was than the former.

Both Dante and Milton were believers in the Ptole

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maic or geocentric theory of the universe. Milton indeed had heard of Copernicus, and he seems to have suspected the new scheme of things to be true; but all his education and all the ideas of his time were of the older sort, and, for poetic purposes at least, he thought it not wise to change. It was not in this universe, however, Ptolemaic as it was, that Milton laid the scene of his epic. Dante's hell and purgatory, on the contrary, and even his heaven, were parts of this present visible frame of things. Hell was that tremendous cone-shaped cavity in the very earth beneath our feet, which Satan's falling mass and bulk had hollowed out when he was thrust from heaven and came hurtling down upon our sublunary planet, crashing through its successive strata till gravitation brought him up standing at the center and held him fast there at the very bottom of the pit.

Purgatory, to Dante's mind, was a mount on this earth, on the side opposite to the mouth of hell, composed of the material dislodged by Satan's fall and made to bulge out when that material fled from his hated presence. And what was Dante's heaven? Why, it was simply the concentric spheres which in the Ptolemaic system enclosed this earth and revolved around it as their center. In those spheres, the moon, the sun, the planets were fixed, and surrounding all was the Primum Mobile, so called because it moved all the rest, but itself never moved at all. Here God himself dwelt. This was the abode of the Almighty and of the most exalted saints. But Dante's heaven was as definite in extent as Dante's earth. The Primum Mobile had its bounds, and everything in existence could be weighed

and measured. William Watson characterizes the Dantean sublimity as "mysticism tempered by mensuration."

The essence of the sublime is its suggestion of the infinite. Macaulay's essay on Milton makes its best point by showing how much more sublime Milton's indefinite descriptions are than any of the definite statements of Dante. Dante would excite our imagination by giving us the size of Satan in feet and inches; by this intrusion of earthly and finite measures he limits and degrades. It is the old error of the pictures and images of the Roman Church. Milton has in him the spirit of Protestantism and the spirit of true art-he suggests, but he does not define. There is an air of vastness about his poetry; the very absence of fixed limits permits the imagination of the reader, nay, compels his imagination, to spread its own wings and soar; Milton's Satan is incomparably grander than the Satan of Dante.

At the beginBeneath him is

But I wish now especially to point out what Macaulay seems not to see, namely, that Dante's whole universe. is infinitesimal compared with that of Milton. For Milton hangs Dante's whole universe as a mere drop in the center of his empyrean. Milton, being a Protestant, has, of course, no purgatory, and his heaven and hell are both outside of Dante's universe. ning God dwells in an infinite heaven. a weltering chaos, formless and dark, yet containing the material of the world that is to be. Angels of many ranks and endowments are created, to be his servants and companions, long before the earth or man appears. When the Son of God is exalted above them and they are bidden to worship him, there is rebellion and war in

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heaven; Satan and the rebel angels are cast out of heaven and thrust down to the lowermost point of chaos, and the abode constructed for them and by them becomes hell. Nine days they fall; nine days they lie stupefied upon the burning marl; during six days of these nine the Almighty creates our universe, and suspends it like a solid sphere at that point in the floor of heaven where Satan and his host burst through when they fell. When the fallen archangel gathers strength and essays to pass through chaos on his way to tempt mankind, he sees the new-created universe hanging in space so far above him that it appears, in comparison with "the empyreal heaven, extended wide in circuit . . . once his native seat,"

in bigness as a star,

Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon.

Into this universe, hard, solid, opaque, and illuminated only from the empyrean above, there is but one opening, and that is at the point of attachment to heaven. Satan perceives a gleam of light from the staircase, not yet withdrawn, by which angels went up and down. There he enters, and entering, all the flaming systems of orbs that constitute our universe dawn for the first time upon his sight. He makes his way to our sun, and, on pretence of being a belated spirit just returned from some distant errand in heaven, he inquires about God's new creation. Uriel, the archangelic regent of the sun, unsuspectingly directs his steps to earth. There the adversary finds our first parents, clad only in the majesty of spotless innocence and "imparadis'd in one another's arms." Filled with jealousy, he plans their over

throw. Raphael is sent from heaven to instruct them and prepare them to resist; and here come in, after the fashion of Homer and Virgil, three whole books of information with regard to the war in heaven, Adam's previous experiences, and Milton's whole scheme of philosophy and theology.

The historical background of the drama being thus complete, the tragedy can proceed to its sad climax. Satan tempts, our first mother and father fall, the Son of God comes down to pronounce their doom, the guilty pair incriminate each other and sink into despair. But at last they pray; and in answer to that first evidence of penitence, the same Archangel Michael, who is sent to expel them from Paradise, comforts them on their way by two whole books of prophecy. All the future history of redemption is unfolded to them; they are taught that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head; they are promised a return to paradise when discipline has done its work. So the heavenly Muse taught John Milton to cover past, present, and future with his sublime epic, and to fulfill, in age and weariness and pain and solitude, the purpose, formed at least thirty years before, to sing.

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.

It is not true that the poem met with a cold reception from the public. The impression that it did so is probably derived from the fact that the author received