What an intense picture of ardour preparatory to action (it is night, remember) is presented to our imaginations by the words "turned fiery red!"
"On t'other side, Satan alarm'd,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff, or Atlas, unremov'd:
His stature reach'd the sky."
Then would have come the tug of war—then
"Dreadful deeds
Might have ensued;"
and would have ensued—
"Had not soon
The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray,
Hung forth in heaven his golden scales."—
"The fiend look'd up and knew
His mounted scale aloft; nor more, but fled
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night."
But in the interview which Miss Barrett describes between Gabriel and Lucifer, no such headlong propensity to act is manifested by either party—no such crisis ensues to interrupt the fray. Gabriel is satisfied with giving utterance to a feeble threat, which, when he finds that Lucifer pays no attention to it, he never attempts to carry into execution. For no apparent cause, he suddenly changes his tone, and condescends to hold parley with his foe on a variety of not very interesting particulars, informing him, among other things, that he "does not dream!"
The following is Lucifer's description of our First Mother. It is impregnated with Miss Barrett's mannerisms, and strongly characterized by that fantastical and untrue mode of picturing sensible objects, which the example of Shelley and Keates tended especially to foster, if they were not the first to introduce it:—
"Lucifer. Curse freely! curses thicken. Why, this Eve
Who thought me once part worthy of her ear,
And somewhat wiser than the other beasts,—
Drawing together her large globes of eyes,
The light of which is throbbing in and out
Around their continuity of gaze,—
Knots her fair eyebrows in so hard a knot,
And, down from her white heights of womanhood,
Looks on me so amazed,—I scarce should fear
To wager such an apple as she pluck'd,
Against one riper from the tree of life,
That she could curse too—as a woman may—
Smooth in the vowels."
We do not very well understand why Eve's curses should have been smoother in the vowels than in the consonants. But as we are no great elocutionists, or at all well conversant with the mysteries of "labials," "dentals," and "gutterals," we shall not contest the point with Lucifer, lest we should only expose our own ignorance.