Of glory obscured.’
Milton has got rid of the horns and tail, the vulgar and physical insignia of the devil, and clothed him with other greater and intellectual terrors, reconciling beauty and sublimity, and converting the grotesque and deformed into the ideal and classical. Certainly Milton’s mind rose superior to all others in this respect, on the outstretched wings of philosophic contemplation, in not confounding the depravity of the will with physical distortion, or supposing that the distinctions of good and evil were only to be subjected to the gross ordeal of the senses. In the subsequent stanzas, we however find the traces of some of Milton’s boldest imagery, though its effect is injured by the incongruous mixture above stated.
‘Struck with these great concurrences of things,[[35]]
Symptoms so deadly unto death and him;
Fain would he have forgot what fatal strings
Eternally bind each rebellious limb.
He shook himself, and spread his spacious wings,
Which like two bosom’d sails[[36]] embrace the dim
Air, with a dismal shade, but all in vain;
Of sturdy adamant is his strong chain.