THE SPECTATOR.

No, 315.] Saturday, March 1, 1711-12.

Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus
Inciderit-

Hor. Ars Poet. v. 191.

Never presume to make a god appear But for a business worthy of a god.-Roscommon, HORACE advises a poet to consider thooughly the nature and force of his genius. Milton seems to have known perfectly well wherein his strength lay, and has therefore chosen a subject entirely conformable to hose talents of which he was master. As is genius was wonderfully turned to the ublime, his subject is the noblest that could have entered into the thoughts of nan. Every thing that is truly great and stonishing has a place in it. The whole ystem of the intellectual world; the chaos, ind the creation: heaven, earth, and hell; enter into the constitution of his poem. Having in the first and second books represented the infernal world with all its lorrors, the thread of his fable naturally eads him into the opposite regions of bliss and glory.

energy of expression, and in a clearer and
stronger light than I ever met with in any
other writer. As these points are dry in
themselves to the generality of readers, the
concise and clear manner in which he has
treated them is very much to be admired,
as is likewise that particular art which he
has made use of in the interspersing of all
those graces of poetry which the subject
was capable of receiving,

The survey of the whole creation, and of
every thing that is transacted in it, is a
prospect worthy of Omniscience, and as
much above that in which Virgil has drawn
his Jupiter, as the Christian idea of the Su-
preme Being is more rational and sublime
than that of the Heathens. The particu-
lar objects on which he is described to have
cast his eye, are represented in the most
beautiful and lively manner:

If Milton's majesty forsakes him any where, it is in those parts of his poem where the divine persons are introduced as speakers. One may, I think, observe, hat the author proceeds with a kind of fear and trembling, whilst he describes the seniments of the Almighty. He dares not give | his imagination its full play, but chooses to Confine himself to such thoughts as are rawn from the books of the most ortholox divines, and to such expressions as may be met with in scripture. The beau-f ies, therefore, which we are apt to look or in these speeches, are not of a poetical nature, nor so proper to fill the mind with Sentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts

Now had th' Almighty Father from above
(From the pure empyrean where he sits
High thron'd above all height) bent down his eye,
His own works and their works at once to view
About him all the sanctities of heaven

Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv'd
Beatitude past utterance. On his right
The radiant image of his glory sat,
His only Son. On earth he first beheld
Our two first parents, yet the only two
Of mankind, in the happy garden plac'd,
Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love.
Uninterrupted joy, unrivall'd love,
In blissful solitude. He then survey'd
Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there
Coasting the wall of heav'n on this side night,
In the dun air sublime; and ready now
To stoop with wearied wings and willing feet
On the bare outside of this world, that seem'd
Firm land imbosom'd without firmament;
Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.
Him God beholding from his prospect high,
Wherein past, present, future he beholds,
Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake.

Satan's approach to the confines of the

of devotion. The passions which they are creation is finely imaged in the beginning
esigned to raise, are a divine love and re- of the speech which immediately follows.
Speeches in the third book, consists in that spirits, and in the divine person to whom
igious fear. The particular beauty of the The effects of this speech in the blessed
he poet has couched the greatest mysteries of the reader with a secret pleasure and
hortness and perspicuity of style, in which it was addressed, cannot but fill the mind
of Christianity, and drawn together, in a complacency:
Providence with respect to man.
egular scheme, the whole dispensation of |
epresented all the abstruse doctrines of
Predestination, free-will and grace, as also
he great points of incarnation and redemp-I
on, (which naturally grow up in a poem
hat treats of the fall of man) with great |

He has

Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill'd
All heav'n, and in the blessed spirits elect
Sense of new joy ineffable diffus'd,
Beyond compare the Son of God was seen
Most glorious; in him all bis Father shone,
Substantially express'd; and in his face
Divine compassion visibly appear'd,.

Love without end, and without measure grace.
3

No sooner had th' Almighty ceas'd, but all
The multitude of angels with a shout
(Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices) utt'ring joy, heav'n rung
With jubilee, and loud Hosannas fill'd
Th' eternal regions, &c. &c.-

Satan's walk upon the outside of the verse, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but upon his nearer approach looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble; as his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation, between that mass of matter which was wrought into a world, and that shapeless unformed heap of materials which still lay in chaos and confusion, strikes the imagination with something astonishingly great and wild. I have before spoken of the Limbo of Vanity, which the poet places upon this outermost surface of the universe, and shall here explain myself more at large on that, and other parts of the poem, which are of the same shadowy

nature.

I need not point out the beauty of that | prising accidents, are nevertheless probable circumstance, wherein the whole host of when we are told, that they were the gods angels are represented as standing mute; who thus transformed them. It is this kind nor show how proper the occasion was to of machinery which fills the poems both of produce such a silence in heaven. The Homer and Virgil with such circumstances close of this divine colloquy, with the hymn as are wonderful but not impossible, and of angels that follows upon it, are so won- so frequently produce in the reader the derfully beautiful and poetical, that I should most pleasing passion that can rise in the not forbear inserting the whole passage, if mind of man, which is admiration. If there the bounds of my paper would give me be any instance in the Æneid liable to exleave: ception upon this account, it is in the beginning of the third book, where Æneas is represented as tearing up the myrtle that dropped blood. To qualify this wonderful circumstance, Polydorus tells a story from the root of the myrtle, that the barbarous inhabitants of the country having pierced uni-him with spears and arrows, the blood which was left in his body took root in his wounds, and gave birth to that bleeding tree. This circumstance seems to have the marvellous without the probable, because it is represented as proceeding from natu ral causes, without the interposition of any god, or other supernatural power capable of producing it. The spears and arrows grow of themselves without so much as the modern help of enchantment. If we look into the fiction of Milton's fable, though we find it full of surprising incidents, they are generally suited to our notions of the things and persons described, and tempered with a due measure of probability. I must only make an exception to the Limbo of Vanity, with his episode of Sin and Death, and some of the imaginary persons in his chaos.These passages are astonishing, but not credible: the reader cannot so far impose upon himself as to see a possibility in them; they are the description of dreams and sha dows, not of things or persons. I know that many critics look upon the stories of Circe, If the fable is only probable, it differs Polypheme, the Sirens, nay the whole Odys nothing from a true history; if it is only sey and Iliad, to be allegories; but allowing marvellous, it is no better than a romance. this to be true, they are fables, which, con The great secret, therefore, of heroic poe-sidering the opinions of mankind that pre try is to relate such circumstances as may vailed in the age of the poet, might possibly produce in the reader at the same time both have been according to the letter. The belief and astonishment. This is brought to persons are such as might have acted what pass in a well-chosen fable, by the account is ascribed to them, as the circumstances of such things as have really happened, or in which they are represented might pos at least of such things as have happened sibly have been truths and realities. This according to the received opinions of man- appearance of probability is so absolutely kind. Milton's fable is a master-piece of requisite in the greater kinds of poetry, that this nature; as the war in heaven, the con- Aristotle observes the ancient tragic writers dition of the fallen angels, the state of inno-made use of the names of such great men cence, the temptation of the serpent, and as had actually lived in the world, though the fall of man, though they are very asto- the tragedy proceeded upon adventures nishing in themselves, are not only credible, they were never engaged in, on purpose to but actual points of faith. make the subject more credible. In a word, The next method of reconciling miracles besides the hidden meaning of an epic alle with credibility, is by a happy invention of gory, the plain literal sense ought to appear the poet: as in particular, when he intro-probable. The story should be such as an duces agents of a superior nature, who are ordinary reader may acquiesce in, whatcapable of effecting what is wonderful, and ever natural, moral, or political truth may what is not to be met with in the ordinary be discovered in it by men of greater pene course of things. Ulysses's ship being turned into a rock, and Æneas's fleet into a shoal Satan, after having long wandered upon of water-nymphs, though they are very sur-the surface or outermost wall of the uni

Aristotle observes, that the fable of an epic poem should abound in circumstances that are both credible and astonishing; or, as the French critics choose to phrase it, the fable should be filled with the probable and the marvellous. This rule is as fine and just as any in Aristotle's whole Art of Poetry.

tration.

erse, discovers at last a wide gap in it, I poem. The same observation might be
which led into the creation, and is described applied to that beautiful digression upon
s the opening through which the angels hypocrisy in the same book.
ass to and fro into the lower world, upon

heir errands to mankind. His sitting upon

Libertas; quæ sera, tamen respexit inertem.

Virg. Ecl. i. 28.
Freedom, which came at length, though slow to come.
Dryden.

me brink of this passage, and taking a No. 316.] Monday, March 3, 1711-12.
rvey of the whole face of nature, that
ppeared to him new and fresh in all its
eauties, with the simile illustrating this
rcumstance, fills the mind of the reader
ith as surprising and glorious an idea as
my that arises in the whole poem. He 'MR. SPECTATOR,-If you ever read a
poks down into that vast hollow of the uni- letter which is sent with the more pleasure
erse with the eye, or (as Milton calls it in for the reality of its complaints, this may
is first book) with the ken of an angel. have reason to hope for a favourable ac-
le surveys all the wonders in this immense ceptance; and if time be the most irretriev-
mphitheatre that lie between both the able loss, the regrets which follow will be
oles of heaven, and takes in at one view thought, I hope, the most justifiable. The
he whole round of the creation.
regaining of my liberty from a long state of
His flight between the several worlds indolence and inactivity, and the desire of
nat shined on every side of him, with the resisting the farther encroachments of idle-
articular description of the sun, are set ness, make me apply to you; and the un-
orth in all the wantonness of a luxuriant easiness with which I recollect the past
nagination. His shape, speech, and be-years, and the apprehensions with which I
aviour, upon his transforming himself into expect the future, soon determined me to
n angel of light, are touched with exquisite it. Idleness is so general a distemper, that
eauty. The poet's thought of directing I cannot but imagine a speculation on this
atan to the sun, which, in the vulgar subject will be of universal use. There is
pinion of mankind, is the most conspicuous hardly any one person without some allay
art of the creation, and the placing in it of it; and thousands besides myself spend
n angel, is a circumstance very finely con- more time in an idle uncertainty which to
rived, and the more adjusted to a poetical begin first of two affairs, than would have
robability, as it was a received doctrine been sufficient to have ended them both.
mong the most famous philosophers, that The occasion of this seems to be the want
very orb had its intelligence; and as an of some necessary employment, to put the
postle in sacred writ is said to have seen spirits in motion, and awaken them out of
uch an angel in the sun. In the answer their lethargy. If I had less leisure, I
which the angel returns to the disguised should have more; for I should then find
vil spirit, there is such a becoming ma- my time distinguished into portions, some
esty as is altogether suitable to a superior for business, and others for the indulging of
eing. The part of it in which he repre-pleasures; but now one face of indolence
ents himself as present at the creation, is overspreads the whole, and I have no land-
ery noble in itself, and not only proper mark to direct myself by. Were one's time
here it is introduced, but requisite to pre- a little straitened by business, like water
are the reader for what follows in the enclosed in its banks, it would have some
eventh book:
determined course; but unless it be put into
some channel it has no current, but becomes
a deluge without either use or motion.

I saw when at his word the formless mass,
This world's material mould, came to a heap:
Confusion heard his voice, and wild Uproar
Stood rul'd, stood vast infinitude confin'd;
Till at his second bidding Darkness fled,
Light shone, &c.

[no

'When Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, was dead, the Turks, who had but too often felt the force of his arm in the battles he had won from them, imagined that by wear

In the following part of the speech he ing a piece of his bones near their heart, oints out the earth with such circum- they should be animated with a vigour and tances, that the reader can scarce forbear force like to that which inspired him when ncying himself employed on the same living. As I am like to be but of little use

istant view of it.

Look downward on that globe, whose hither side
With light from hence, though but reflected, shines;
That place is earth, the seat of man, that light

His day,

&c.

whilst I live, I am resolved to do what good
I can after my decease; and have accord-
ingly ordered my bones to be disposed of
in this manner for the good of my coun-
trymen, who are troubled with too exorbi-

I must not conclude my reflections upon tant a degree of fire. All fox-hunters,
his third book of Paradise Lost, without upon wearing me, would in a short time be
aking notice of that celebrated complaint brought to endure their beds in a morning,
Milton with which it opens, and which and perhaps even quit them with regret at
ertainly deserves all the praises that have ten. Instead of hurrying away to tease a
inted, it may rather be looked upon as an thoughts, a chair or a chariot would be
ten given it; though, as I have before poor animal, and run away from their own
xcrescence than as an essential part of the thought the most desirable means of per-