386 A Winter Evening with the Poets. [APRIL, 



a critic in the Athenaeum alluded to this omission,, when he accused 

 Mr. Mitford of having "thrown out no new views of Paradise Lost." 

 Surely the list is sufficiently extensive. 



Poetry never more clearly proved itself to be the antithesis to prose 

 than in the Paradise Lost. We do not remember a purely prosaic 

 passage in the whole twelve books. The spirit of life is every where 

 diffused. A current of celestial blood seems to circulate in the veins 

 of the immortal agents you never cease for a moment to recognize the 

 divinity of Milton's angels. And here he surpasses Homer, and all the 

 writers of antiquity. He appears undismayed by the magnitude of his 

 subject ; the proportions of his mind increase with the events which 

 he describes. His spiritual converse has communicated a heavenly 

 power to his understanding. The tumult of affairs, says Pliny, is con- 

 tinually drawing off the attention, and the master-pieces of art require 

 silence and tranquillity of mind. The Roman critic is alluding to the 

 study of painting but the observation is not inapplicable to Milton. 

 His poetical life that season which he devoted to the composition of 

 his great poem may be dated from the conclusion of his political en- 

 gagements. He retreated out of the turbulent animosities of the time 

 into the sanctitude of his own imagination. The bitter passions of a 

 violent republican were replaced by meditations upon the fall of hu- 

 manity. All his youthful dreams of King Arthur vanished, and he 

 felt himself called to a nobler daring. 



We promised an extract from Mr. Mitford's memoir, and we cannot 

 do better than quote the beautiful passage in which he notices this 

 change in Milton's sentiments : i 



"We should have had the enchantments of Comus, the sounds of revelry and 

 Circe's cup; but we should have wanted the songs of a higher mood, the sor- 

 rows and the pride of the Hebrew captive. We should not have been carried 

 back, as it were by vision, into the dark and austere learning of the Sanhedrim, 

 and had the Teraphim and the Ephod, pall and mitre, and the 'old Flamen's 

 vestry' brought before our eyes. We should still have possessed the noblest 

 epic of modern days ; but its argument would not have been the talk of angels, 

 the sullen despair, or the haughty resolves of rebellious spirits, the contrition of 

 fallen man, or the decrees of eternal Wisdom. We should have had tales of 

 chivalrous emprise, of ' gentle knights that pricked along the plain/ the ' cru- 

 elty of inexorable beauty, and the achievements of unconquerable love.' Its 

 scenes would not have been laid in the bowers of paradise, or by the thunderous 

 throne of Heaven, nor where the wings of the cherubim fan the Mercy- seat ; 

 but amid royal halls, in the palaces of magicians, and islands of enchantment. 

 Instead of the serpent with hairy mane, and eye of carbuncle, gliding among the 

 myrtle thickets of Eden, we should have had jousts and tournaments, the stream- 

 ing of gonfalons, the glitter of dancing plumes, the wailing of barbaric trumpets, 

 and the sound of silver clarions ; battles fiercer than that of Fontarabia, and 

 fields more gorgeous than that of the Cloth of Gold. What crowds of pilgrims 

 and palmers should we not have seen journeying to and fro, with shell and 

 staff of ivory, filling the port of Joppa with their galleys. What youthful war- 

 riors, the flower of British chivalry, should we not have seen caparisoned, and 

 in quest of the holy Sangreal ? The world of reality, and the world of vision, 

 would have been equally exhausted to supply the materials. The odours would 

 have been wafted from the weeping woods of Araby ; the dazzling mirrors would 

 have been of solid diamond ; and the flowers would have been amaranths, from 

 the land of Faery. Every warrior would have been clothed in pyropus and 

 adamant. We should have watched in battle, not the celestial sword of 

 Michael, but the enchanted Caliburn ; we should have had, not the sorrows 

 of Eve, and the fall of Adam, but the loves of Angelica, or the exploits of 

 Arthur." 



