NORTH.
Yes—from the bold nature of Impersonation, which comprehends always a variable thought. For Imagination blends and comprehends rather than it severs and excludes. It delights in conceiving that as another manner of acting in some imaginary being which the analytical understanding would class as a distinct metaphysical faculty. It delights in unity of creation; and, having created, in bestowing power, and in accumulating power on its creature. I have heard people say that Collins, in speaking of Danger—
“Who throws himself on the ridgy steep
Of some low-hanging rock to sleep”—
confounds the Power, Danger, and the endangered Man. But I say he was right in such poetical confusion of one with the other.
TALBOYS.
Might one word, my dear sir, be dropped in, purporting or reminding, that the Beautiful, or Beauty, is here used, with its most capacious meaning, to comprehend many other qualities distinct from the Beautiful taken in its narrowest acceptation among critics. For example, the solemn, the sublime, and many other qualities are included, that are distinct from the Beautiful, taken in the mere sense that critics have attached to it; all such qualities agreeing in this, that they affect the mind suddenly, and without time given for reflection, and that they appear as a glory poured over objects as over the natural universe. The large sense of the term Beauty belongs to a perfectly legitimate use of language—a use at once high and popular; as every one feels that the beauty of creation includes whatever affects us with irreflective admiration—appears as a glory—stupendous forests—mountains—rivers—the solemn, boundless munificence of the starry firmament. Milton says there is terror in Beauty—and we may say there is a beauty in terror.
NORTH.
The holy Mind of the Poet has been represented from his life; the holy aspirations of his Genius have been shown from the record of his literary purposes; the holy meaning of the Paradise Lost from the Two Invocations. You may go on to examining the Poem well prepared; for you now know in what Spirit of thought it was entered upon and composed, and in what Spirit of thought you must engage in, and carry through, the examination of the Poem. You can understand that Milton, sanctified in Will by a dedicated life—intellectually armed and accomplished by the highest mere human learning, as a Scholar, as a Thinker, as a Master of his own sublime and beautiful Art—enriched by more solemn studies, whether of God’s written word or of its devout and powerful expounders, with all the knowledge, especially claimed by his task, which a Mind, capacious, profound, retentive, indefatigable, could bring to the celebration of this most stupendous theme;—finally, led—as he, in all reverence, believed himself,—upheld, and enlightened by the Spirit of supernal grace, prayed for and vouchsafed;—that He, coming,—by nature and by nurture such and so fitted,—to relate anew and at large—and as if He, the Poet, were himself enfolded with the garb of a Prophet,—as if He were himself commissioned from on High, and charged with a second, a more explicit and copious, an ampler and more unbosoming revelation,—that History, full of creating Love and provoked Wrath,—full of zeal and loyal truth, in pure angelical creatures, and of hateful revolt—full, in the lower creature, Man, at first of gracious and ineffable glory and bliss, and native immortality, then of lamentable dishonour, sin and misery, and death—You can readily conceive that Milton approaching to begin this Work, to which alone the desires, to which alone the labours, to which alone the consecration of his genius looked—that he, indeed, felt in his now near, in his now reached undertaking, a burthen overwhelming to his mortal strength; and that his prayer, put up for support, rose indeed from his lips as men pray who are overtaken with some sharp fear and sore constraint.
TALBOYS.