99 



that it was not correct taste, that produced mysteries and miracle plays, 

 but an intense, though rude, not to say coarse, religiosity. We 

 pardou the pious friars, who wrote their crude dramas to honour God 

 in their way ; we even respect them for their zeal, and we sympathise 

 in some degree with their delighted and edified audiences ; but we hold 

 their productions to be false taste and a perversion of religion. We 

 do not think, that these subjects are the best that could be selected, 

 although they do possess a general interest. Mr. Hallam's theory there- 

 fore, it appears, does not apply to dramas. But is not the religious epic 

 in its peculiar branch, what the miracle play is as a drama ? What is the 

 difference but this,— that the latter brings its persons before the bodily 

 eye, whilst the epic paints them to our imagination ? 



The day of the miracle play is gone. It lingers, supported, and as 

 it were sublimated, by the strains of music in our oratorios, where the 

 words are overlooked aud music alone fills the ear and the heart. The 

 days of the sacred epic are numbered too. The time is coming, and 

 we can discern its approach by unmistakeable signs,* when the subject 

 of " Paradise Lost," in spite of the general interest which it excites, and 

 which has made it so popular, will be among the first and most power- 

 ful reasons to remove it from the table, and erase it from the imagina- 

 tion of the pious Christian. f 



In venturing to pronounce this prophecy, I take my standing exclu- 

 sively upon the above-mentioned ground, viz., the general unfitness 

 of a sacred subject for epic poetry. But I am aware, that other secondary 

 causes, allied to and partly derived from the main cause, tend to the 

 same effect.^ The mysteries of religion are dangerous ground. The 



•Hallam's Lit. of Europe, IV. 5, sec. 30: — "Yet much that is ascribed to God, 

 sometimes with the sanction of Scripture, sometimes without it, is not wli dly pleasing, such 

 as the ' Oath, that shook heaven's vast circumference,' and several other images of the 

 same kind, which bring down the Deity in a manner not consonant to philosophical 

 religion, however it may be borne out by the sensual analogies or mythic symbolism of 

 oriental writing." 



+ Johnson's Life of Milton, p. 172 :—" Pleasure and terror are indeed the genuine sources 

 of poetry ; but poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can at least conceive ; 

 and poetical terror such as human strength and fortitude may combat. Tlie good and evil 

 of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of wit; the mind sinks under them in passive 

 helplessness, content with calm belief and humble adoration." 



t Johnson's Life of Milton, p. IC3:— " Milton has been censured for the impiety, which 

 sometimes breaks from Satan's mouth ; for there are thoughts , which no observation of 

 character can justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass, however 

 transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan siicak as a rebel wilhout any such 

 expressions as mi(jhl taint the readers imagination, was indeed one of the great dijjiculties in 

 Milton's undertaking." This is a fault of the subject, not of the poet, and shows the truth 

 of what we have advanced in the text. 



