The hardiest critic must approach the _Paradise Lost_ with wonder and reverence. What an imagination, and what a compass of imagination! Now with the lost peers in Hell, his glowing fancy projects an empire almost as grand and glorious as that of God himself. Now with undazzled, presumptuous gaze he stands face to face with the Almighty, and records the words falling from His lips; words which he has dared to place in the mouth of the Most High--words at the utterance of which
... ambrosial fragrance filled All heaven, and in the blessed spirits elect Sense of new joy ineffable diffused.
Little wonder that in his further flight he does not shrink from colloquy with the Eternal Son--in his theology not the equal of His Father--or that he does not fear to describe the fearful battle between Christ with his angelic hosts against the kingdom of darkness:
... At his right hand victory Sat eagle-winged: beside him hung his bow And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored.
... Them unexpected joy surprised, When the great ensign of Messiah blazed, Aloft by angels borne his sign in heaven.
How heart-rending his story of the fall, and of the bitter sorrow of our first parents, whose fatal act
Brought death into the world and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.
How marvellous is the combat at Hell-gate, between Satan and Death; how terrible the power at which "Hell itself grew darker"! How we strive to shade our mind's eye as we enter again with him into the courts of Heaven. How refreshingly beautiful the perennial bloom of Eden:
What a wonderful story of the teeming creation related to our first parents by the lips of Raphael:
When from the Earth appeared The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded mane.
And withal, how compact the poem, how perfect the drama. It is Paradise, perfect in beauty and holiness; attacked with devilish art; in danger; betrayed; lost!
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked and ate; Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe That all was lost!
Unit-like, complete, brilliant, sublime, awful, the poem dazzles criticism, and belittles the critic. It is the grandest poem ever written. It almost sets up a competition with Scripture. Milton's Adam and Eve walk before us instead of the Adam and Eve of Genesis. Milton's Satan usurps the place of that grotesque, malignant spirit of the Bible, which, instead of claiming our admiration, excites only our horror, as he goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He it is who can declare
