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And withal, how compact the poem, how perfect the drama. It is Paradise,
perfect in beauty and holiness; attacked with devilish art; in danger;
betrayed; lost!
Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked and ate;
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe
That all was lost!
Unit-like, complete, brilliant, sublime, awful, the poem dazzles
criticism, and belittles the critic. It is the grandest poem ever written.
It almost sets up a competition with Scripture. Milton's Adam and Eve walk
before us instead of the Adam and Eve of Genesis. Milton's Satan usurps
the place of that grotesque, malignant spirit of the Bible, which, instead
of claiming our admiration, excites only our horror, as he goes about like
a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He it is who can declare
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be?

MILTON AND DANTE.


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