have already observed, rendered the | ful porticoes in which his countrymen ntmost accuracy of description neces- paid their vows to the God of Light sary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an interest; but it is not the interest which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk to the ghosts and dæmons, without any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper, and eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful ugly executioners. His dead men are merely living men in strange situations. The scene which passes between the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Farinata in the burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have been at an auto da fe. Nothing can be more touching than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere composure, the lover for whose affection she is grateful, but whose vices she reprobates ? The feelings which give the passage its charm would suit the streets of Florence as well as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory.

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They have just enough in common with human nature to be intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom.

Perhaps the gods and dæmons of Eschylus may best bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something of the Oriental character; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Eschylus seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and grace

and Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favourite gods are those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture: he is rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he possesses that he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an eternity of unintermitted misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, requiring no support from any thing external, nor even from hope itself.

To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry of these great men has in a considerable degree taken its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in

common with those modern beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have been more completely, though undesignedly, coloured by their personal feelings.

foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the style of a bellman, were now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and of the public. It was a The character of Milton was pecu- loathsome herd, which could be comliarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit; pared to nothing so fitly as to the that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, every line of the Divine Comedy we half bestial, half human, dropping with discern the asperity which is produced wine, bloated with gluttony, and reelby pride struggling with misery. There ing in obscene dances. Amidst these is perhaps no work in the world so that fair Muse was placed, like the deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotmelancholy of Dante was no fantastic less, and serene, to be chattered at, and caprice. It was not, as far as at this pointed at, and grinned at, by the distance of time can be judged, the whole rout of Satyrs and Goblins. If effect of external circumstances. It ever despondency and asperity could was from within. Neither love nor be excused in any man, they might glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor have been excused in Milton. But the the hope of heaven could dispel it. It strength of his mind overcame every turned every consolation and every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, pleasure into its own nature. It re- nor age, nor penury, nor domestic sembled that noxious Sardinian soil of afflictions, nor political disappointwhich the intense bitterness is said to ments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor have been perceptible even in its honey. neglect, had power to disturb his seHis mind was, in the noble language date and majestic patience. His spirits of the Hebrew poet, " a land of dark- do not seem to have been high, but ness, as darkness itself, and where the they were singularly equable. His light was as darkness." The gloom of temper was serious, perhaps stern; his character discolours all the passions but it was a temper which no sufferof men, and all the face of nature, and ings could render sullen or fretful. tinges with its own livid hue the flowers Such as it was when, on the eve of of Paradise and the glories of the eternal great events, he returned from his throne. All the portraits of him are travels, in the prime of health and singularly characteristic. No person manly beauty, loaded with literary discan look on the features, noble even to tinctions, and glowing with patriotic ruggedness, the dark furrows of the hopes, such it continued to be when, cheek, the haggard and woful stare of after having experienced every calamity the eye, the sullen and contemptuous which is incident to our nature, old, curve of the lip, and doubt that they poor, sightless and disgraced, he rebelong to a man too proud and too tired to his hovel to die. sensitive to be happy.

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love

He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been distinguished at his entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come; some bad carried into

Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and delightful in the physical and in the moral world. Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthful sense of the ples

santness of external objects, or loved directly egotistical. But the qualities better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams which we have ascribed to Milton, and flowers, the songs of nightingales, though perhaps most strongly marked the juice of summer fruits, and the in those parts of his works which treat coolness of shady fountains. His con- of his personal feelings, are distinguishception of love unites all the voluptu- able in every page, and impart to all ousness of the Oriental haram, and all his writings, prose and poetry, English, the gallantry of the chivalric tourna- Latin, and Italian, a strong family ment, with all the pure and quiet affec-likeness.

tion of an English fireside. His poetry His public conduct was such as was reminds us of the miracles of Alpine to be expected from a man of a spirit scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful so high and of an intellect so poweras fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.

Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have since worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an unwonted fear.

ful. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind, at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes and AriTraces, indeed, of the peculiar cha- manes, liberty and despotism, reason racter of Milton may be found in all and prejudice. That great battle was his works; but it is most strongly dis- fought for no single generation, for no played in the Sonnets. Those remark-single land. The destinies of the huable poems have been undervalued by man race were staked on the same cast critics who have not understood their with the freedom of the English people. nature. They have no epigrammatic point. There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple but majestic records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been. A victory, an unexpected attack upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out against one of his books, a dream Of those principles, then struggling which for a short time restored to him for their infant existence, Milton was that beautiful face over which the grave the most devoted and eloquent literary had closed for ever, led him to mu-champion. We need not say how sings, which, without effort, shaped much we admire his public conduct. themselves into verse. The unity of But we cannot disguise from ourselves sentiment and severity of style which that a large portion of his countrymen characterise these little pieces remind still think it unjustifiable. The civil us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps war, indeed, has been more discussed, still more of the Collects of the English and is less understood, than any event Liturgy. The noble poem on the in English history. The friends of Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a liberty laboured under the disadvantage collect in verse. of which the lion in the fable com.

The Sonnets are more or less strik-plained so bitterly. Though they were ing, according as the occasions which the conquerors, their enemies were the gave birth to them are more or less in- painters. As a body, the Roundheads teresting. But they are, almost with- had done their utmost to decry and out exception, dignified by a sobriety | ruin literature; and literature was even and greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to the character of a writer from passages

with them, as, in the long run, it always is with its enemies. The best book on their side of the question is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the Parlia

In one respect, only, we think, can the warmest admirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son. He was not, in name and profession, a Papist; we say

Charles himself and his creature Laud, while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices a complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will concede that Charles was a good Protestant; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the slightest distinction between his case and that of James.

ment is good; but it breaks off at the most interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish and violent; and most of the later writers who have espoused the same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Ca-in name and profession, because both therine Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candour or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative and the most popular historical works in our language, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume. The former is not only ably written and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a judge.

The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned according as the resistance of the people to Charles the First shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and most important question. We shall not argue it on general grounds. We shall not recur to those primary principles from which the claim of any government to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage ground; but we will relinquish it. We are, on this point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We will take the naked constitutional question. We confidently affirm, that every reason which can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be urged with at least equal force in favour of what is called the Great Rebellion.

The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present year. There is a certain class of men, who, while they profess to hold in reverence the great names and great actions of former times, never look at them for any other purpose than in order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses. In every venerable precedent they pass by what is essential, and take only what is accidental: they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that is defective. If, in any part of any great example, there be any thing unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some good end has been attained in spite of them, they feel, with their prototype, that "Their labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil.”

To the blessings which England has derived from the Revolution these people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go for nothing with them. One sect there was, which, from unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close restraint. One part of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our

No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions of the King himself, If there be any truth in any historian of any party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a continued course of oppression and treachery.

freedom. These are the parts of the to be tyrants. The ground on which Revolution which the politicians of they, in their famous resolution, dewhom we speak, love to contemplate, clared the throne vacant, was this, "that and which seem to them not indeed to James had broken the fundamental vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, laws of the kingdom." Every man, the good which it has produced. Talk therefore, who approves of the Revoto them of Naples, of Spain, or of lution of 1688 must hold that the South America. They stand forth breach of fundamental laws on the part zealots for the doctrine of Divine Right of the sovereign justifies resistance. which has now come back to us, like a The question, then, is this; Had Charles thief from transportation, under the the First broken the fundamental laws alias of Legitimacy. But mention the of England? miseries of Ireland. Then William is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great men. Then the Revolution is a glorious era. The very same persons who, in this country, never omit an opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St. George's Channel, than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious and immortal memory. They may truly boast that they look not at men, but at measures. So that evil be done, they care not who does it; the arbitrary Charles, or the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic, or Frederic the Protestant. On such occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid construction. The bold assertions of these people have of late impressed a large portion of the public with an opinion that James the Second was expelled simply because he was a Catholic, and that the Revolution was essentially a Protestant Revolution.

But this certainly was not the case; nor can any person who has acquired more knowledge of the history of those times than is to be found in Goldsmith's Abridgment believe that, if James had held his own religious opinions without wishing to make proselytes, or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had contented himself with exerting only his constitutional influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own meaning; and, if we may believe them, their hostility was primarily not to popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a tyrant because he was a Catholic; but they excluded Catholics from the crown, because they thought them likely

Let those who applaud the Revolution, and condemn the Rebellion, mention one act of James the Second to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in the Declaration of Right, presented by the two Houses to William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had, according to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate; the right of petition was grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments, were grievances of daily occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason; if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable.

But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures? Why, after the King had consented to so many reforms, and renounced so many oppressive prerogatives, did the parliament continue to rise in their demands at the risk of provoking a civil war? The ship-money