97 



cations, is the attributing of natural events, 

 to the immediate action of some angry 

 and powerful agent. 



Ipse Pater medii, &c. 



Neptunus muros saevoque emota tridente 



Fundamenta quatit. 



"Whenever Dante is mentioned, the in- 

 scription over the gates of hell, and the 

 Conte Ugolino, are among the first things 

 which occur. Milton's Paradise Lost is 

 wrought up to a higher pitch of awful 

 terror than any other poem; to a mind full 

 of poetical fire, he added the most studied 

 attention to effect ; and I think there is a 

 singular instance of that attention, and of 

 the use he made of terror, in one of his 

 most famous similes: 



As when the sun new risen, 

 Looks through the horizontal misty air 

 Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon 

 In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 

 On half the nations. 



The circumstances are perfectly appli- 

 cable to the fallen archangel; but Milton 

 possibly felt that the sun himself, when 



vol. I. H 



