of Thomas Tomkyns. The moment beseemed the event, it was a crisis in English history, when heaven's "golden scales" for weighing evil against good were hung

"Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,"

one weighted with a consuming fleet, the other with a falling minister. The Dutch had just burned the English navy at Chatham; on the other hand, the reign of respectable bigotry was about to pass away with Clarendon. Far less reputable men were to succeed, but men whose laxity of principle at least excluded intolerance. The people were on the move, if not, as Milton would have wished, a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep," at least a faint and weary nation creeping slowly-Tomkyns and all-towards an era of liberty and reason when Tomkyns's imprimatur would be accounted Tomkyns's impertinence.

THE

CHAPTER VII.

Such are the Iliad,
Persian epics, the

HE world's great epics group themselves in two divisions, which may be roughly defined as the natural and the artificial. The spontaneous or selfcreated epic is a confluence of traditions, reduced to symmetry by the hand of a master. the Odyssey, the great Indian and Nibelungen Lied. In such instances it may be fairly said that the theme has chosen the poet, rather than the poet the theme. When the epic is a work of reflection, the poet has deliberately selected his subject, and has not, in general, relied so much upon the wealth of preexisting materials as upon the capabilities of a single circumstance. Such are the epics of Virgil, Camoens, Tasso, Milton; Dante, perhaps, standing alone as the one epic poet (for we cannot rank Ariosto and Spenser in this class) who owes everything but his creed to his own invention. The traditional epic, created by the people and only moulded by the minstrel, is so infinitely the more important for the history of culture, that, since this new field of investigation has become one of paramount interest, the literary epic has been in danger of neglect. Yet it must be allowed that to evolve an epic out of a

single incident is a greater intellectual achievement than to weave one out of a host of ballads. We must also admit that, leaving the unique Dante out of account, Milton essayed a more arduous enterprise than any of his predecessors, and in this point of view may claim to stand above them all. We are so accustomed to regard the existence of "Paradise Lost" as an ultimate fact, that we but imperfectly realize the gigantic difficulty and audacity of the undertaking. To paint the bloom of Paradise with the same brush that has depicted the flames and blackness of the nether world; to make the Enemy of Mankind, while preserving this character, an heroic figure, not without claims on sympathy and admiration; to lend fit speech to the father and mother of humanity, to angels and archangels, and even Deity itself;-these achievements required a Michael Angelo shorn of his strength in every other province of art, that all might be concentrated in song.

It is easy to represent "Paradise Lost" as obsolete by pointing out that its demonology and angelology have for us become mere mythology. This criticism is more formidable in appearance than in reality. The vital question for the poet is his own belief, not the belief of his readers. If the Iliad has survived not merely the decay of faith in the Olympian divinities, but the criticism which has pulverized Achilles as a historical personage, "Paradise Lost" need not be much affected by general disbelief in the personality of Satan, and universal disbelief in that of Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. A far more vulnerable point is the failure of the purpose so ostentatiously proclaimed, "To justify the

ways of God to men." This problem was absolutely insoluble on Milton's data, except by denying the divine foreknowledge, a course not open to him. The conduct of the Deity who allows his adversary to ruin his innocent creature from the purely malignant motive

"That with reiterated crimes he might

Heap on himself damnation,"

without further interposition than a warning which he foresees will be fruitless, implies a grievous deficiency either in wisdom or in goodness, or at best falsifies the declaration :

The like flaw runs through the entire poem, where Satan alone is resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat, considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the intention of returning as soon as convenient. The angels take all possible pains to prevent his gaining an entrance into Paradise, but omit to keep Adam and Eve themselves in sight, notwithstanding the strong hint they have received by finding the intruder

66 Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
Assaying by his devilish art to reach

The organs of her fancy, and with them forge

Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams.”

If anything more infatuated can be imagined, it is the simplicity of the All-Wise Himself in entrusting the wardership of the gate of Hell, and consequently the charge of keeping Satan in, to the beings in the universe most interested in letting him out. The sole but sufficient excuse is that these faults are inherent in the subject. If Milton had not thought that he could justify the ways of Jehovah to man he would not have written at all; common sense on the part of the angels would have paralysed the action of the poem; we should, if conscious of our loss, have lamented the irrefragable criticism that should have stifled the magnificent allegory of Sin and Death. Another critical thrust is equally impossible to parry. It is true that the Evil One is the hero of the epic. Attempts have been made to invest Adam with this character. He is, indeed, a great figure to contemplate, and such as might represent the ideal of humanity till summoned to act and suffer. When, indeed, he partakes of the forbidden fruit in disobedience to his Maker, but in compassion to his mate, he does seem for a moment to fulfil the canon which decrees that the hero shall not always be faultless, but always shall be noble. The moment, however, that he begins to wrangle with Eve about their respective shares of blame, he forfeits his estate of heroism more irretrievably than his estate of holiness-a fact of which Milton cannot have been unaware, but he had no liberty to forsake the Scripture