These similes, and an infinity of others, are grander than anything in Homer, who would, however, have equalled them with an equal subject. Dante's treatment is altogether different; the microscopic intensity of perception in which he so far surpasses Homer and Milton affords, in our opinion, no adequate compensation for his inferiority in magnificence. That the theme of "Paradise Lost" should have evoked such grandeur is a sufficient compensation for its incurable flaws and the utter breakdown of its ostensible moral purpose. There is yet another department of the poem where Milton writes as he could have written on nothing else. The elements of his under-world are comparatively simple, fire and darkness, fallen angels now huddled thick as leaves in Vallombrosa; anon,
"A forest huge of spears and thronging helms,"
charming their painful steps over the burning marl by
"The Dorian mood
Of flutes and soft recorders;"
the dazzling magnificence of Pandemonium; the ineffable welter of Chaos; proudly eminent over all like a tower, the colossal personality of Satan. The description of Paradise and the story of Creation, if making less demand on the poet's creative power, required greater resources of knowledge, and more consummate skill in combination. Nature must yield up her treasures, whatever of fair and stately the animal and vegetable kingdoms can afford must be brought together, blended in gorgeous masses or marshalled in infinite procession. Here Milton is as profuse as he has hitherto been severe, and with good cause; it is possible to make Hell too repulsive for art, it is not possible to make Eden too enchanting. In his descriptions of the former the effect is produced by a perpetual succession of isolated images of awful majesty; in his Paradise and Creation the universal landscape is bathed in a general atmosphere of lustrous splendour. This portion of his work is accordingly less great in detached passages, but is little inferior in general greatness. No less an authority than Tennyson, indeed, expresses a preference for the "bowery loneliness" of Eden over the "Titan angels" of the "deep-domed Empyrean." If this only means that Milton's Eden is finer than his war in heaven, we must concur; but if a wider application be intended, it does seem to us that his Pandemonium exalts him to a greater height above every other poet than his Paradise exalts him above his predecessor, and in some measure, his exemplar, Spenser.
To remain at such an elevation was impossible. Milton compares unfavourably with Homer in this; his epic begins at its zenith, and after a while visibly and continually declines. His genius is unimpaired, but his skill transcends his stuff. The fall of man and its consequences could not by any device be made as interesting as the fall of Satan, of which it is itself but a consequence. It was, moreover, absolutely inevitable that Adam's fall, the proper catastrophe of the poem, should occur some time before the conclusion, otherwise there would have been no space for the unfolding of the scheme of Redemption, equally essential from the point of view of orthodoxy and of art. The effect is the same as in the case of Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar," which, having proceeded with matchless vigour up to the flight of the conspirators after Antony's speech, becomes comparatively tame and languid, and cannot be revived even by such a masterpiece as the contention between Brutus and Cassius. It is to be regretted that Milton's extreme devotion to the letter of Scripture has not permitted him to enrich his latter books with any corresponding episode. It is not until the very end that he is again truly himself—
"They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon.
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."
Some minor objections may be briefly noticed. The materiality of Milton's celestial warfare has been censured by every one from the days of Sir Samuel Morland,[6] a splenetic critic, who had incurred Milton's contempt by his treachery to Cromwell and Thurloe. Warfare, however, there must be: war cannot be made without weapons; and Milton's only fault is that he has rather exaggerated than minimized the difficulties of his subject. A sense of humour would have spiked his celestial artillery, but a lively perception of the ridiculous is scarcely to be demanded from a Milton. After all, he was borrowing from good poets,[7] whose thought in itself is correct, and even profound; it is only when artillery antedates humanity that the ascription of its invention to the Tempter seems out of place. The metamorphosis of the demons into serpents has been censured as grotesque; but it was imperatively necessary to manifest by some unmistakable outward sign that victory did not after all remain with Satan, and the critics may be challenged to find one more appropriate. The bridge built by Sin and Death is equally essential. Satan's progeny must not be dismissed without some exploit worthy of their parentage. The one passage where Milton's taste seems to us entirely at fault is the description of the Paradise of Fools (iii., 481-497), where his scorn of—
"Reliques, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,"
has tempted him to chequer the sublime with the ludicrous.