TALBOYS.
And the reason is manifest for the distinguishing of Moses. For all critics of the style of the inspired Writers distinguish that of Moses from all the others, as antique, austere, grave, sublime, as if there were in him who conversed personally with God greater sanctity of style, even as his face shone when he came down from the Mount; as the whole character and office of Moses was held by the Hebrews, and is held, perhaps, by us, as lifting him above all other prophetic leaders.
NORTH.
He was the founder of the Nation, and the type of the Saviour.
TALBOYS.
Milton desires for his work, all qualities of style, as the variable subject shall require them. Not only the high rank of Moses as the author of the Pentateuch required that he should be named, but this in particular, that Moses was the historian of the Creation and Fall.
NORTH.
One might for a moment be tempted to confound the inspiration here meant with that highest inspiration which was vouchsafed in those holy places, and which we distinguish by the unequivocal name of revelation. But on reflection we perceive it not possible that Milton should have ascribed such an office to an Impersonation—those awful Communications which distinguished those persons chosen by the Almighty to be the vessels of his Will to the Children of Men. His revelations, we are instructed to believe, are immediately from himself.
TALBOYS.
Somebody said to me once that Milton’s First Invocation to the Muse is oppressed with Mountains; that it is as if he had shaken out what he had got under the head Mountains, in his Common-Place Book; and—