A CRITIQUE ON PARADISE LOST, 107 



lieve to be a general misconception of the poem. Ask those who 

 pay to Paradise Lost that awful homage which is so general, and 

 which they display as the Jews did theirs for the Holy of Holies, 

 by never venturing near it ; interrupt these I say in the sacrifice 

 of adulation they are paying to their idol with the perhaps im- 

 i pertinent question why they pay it, and they will quote not any 

 of those passages of awful sublimity, or exquisite innocence, or 

 touching pathos, with which -tikis magnificent poem, for such all 

 must confess it to be, abounds ; not the description of the yearn- 

 ing in man's soul for sympathy, the feeling of a yet indistinct and 

 indistinguishable want, though furnished with all that could de- 

 light his sense not the introduction of woman ' led by her 

 heavenly maker, ' emblem of the truth that love is ever connected 

 with or rather makes part of religion not the new feeling that 

 stole upon man at the sight of woman, surpassing, while it puri- 

 fied, all his previous affections, not the picture of Adam's solicitude 

 over the troubled slumbers of Eve, or of Eve's forgetfulness of 

 her sleeping fears when her eyes opened on the watching Adam, 

 not the anxious providence with which he foresees danger in sepa- 

 ration, or the bewitchingly tender language, aye and spirit too, in 

 which sense she urges her purpose, not that harrowing scene>of 

 first difference and misunderstanding consequent on their fall from 

 innocence, or the affecting account of their reconciliation, not the 

 despair of woman, the weaker, corrected, how touchingly by man, 

 the stronger being, not the noble dignity of virtue displayed so 

 strikingly in the contrast of the simple manners of the primal 

 pair with their philosophic converse and their entertainment of 

 angelic guests ; the idolizers of Milton quote nor this nor this 

 -nor this, but barren authority, the opinion of the world, a world 

 which too often reminds me, ( forgive the simplicity of the illus- 

 tration) of a cat running after its tail. 19 



"Where they do condescend to give a reason for their < untiring 

 faith,' it is generally the sublimity of the. subject. Now as it 

 seemed to me that it was this very sublimity of ihe subject that 

 prevented the poem being sublime, I have taken the proof of 

 this for the matter of my present lecture. An enthusiast in poetry 

 myself, and therefore necessarily an intense admirer of the genius 

 - of Milton, the greatest perhaps of poets, and addressing too many 

 whom I am conscious 1 have galled in their tenderest feelings, in 

 their feelings of love, of gratitude, of veneration, I cannot but feel 

 the ungratefulness of my situation in concluding a lecture on 

 Paradise Lost with scarce one word on ought but its errors of 

 plan and execution. I feel as the youngest of an orphan family 

 would, in exposing before his brethren the errors of a deceased 

 and revered parent. I feel, as Brutus must have felt under the up- 

 braiding eye of many of the senate, when he had aimed his dagger at 

 the breast of Caesar, before their face, of Caesar his friend, his patron. 

 And it is in the language of Brutus and vfjfrutus only, that I will 

 apologize. * If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of 



