present content myself with modestly, but peremptorily and irrevocably denying.’

Mr. Pattison surely speaks the language of ordinary good sense when he writes: ‘For the world of Paradise Lost is an ideal, conventional

world quite as much as the world of the Arabian Nights, or the world of the chivalrous romance, or that of the pastoral novel.’

Coleridge, in the twenty-second chapter of the Biographia Literaria, points out that the fable and characters of Paradise Lost are not derived from Scripture, as in the Messiah of Klopstock, but merely suggested by it—the illusion on which all poetry is founded being thus never contradicted.  The poem proceeds upon a legend, ancient and fascinating, and to call it a commentary upon a few texts in Genesis is a marvellous criticism.

The story of the Fall of Man, as recorded in the Semitic legend, is to me more attractive as a story than the Tale of Troy, and I find the rebellion of Satan and his dire revenge more to my mind than the circles of Dante.  Eve is, I think, more interesting than ‘Heaven-born Helen, Sparta’s queen’—I mean in herself, and as a woman to write poetry about.

The execution of the poem is another matter.  So far as style is concerned its merits have not yet been questioned.  As a matter of style and diction, Milton is as safe as Virgil.  The handling of the story is more vulnerable.  The long speeches put in the mouth of the Almighty are

never pleasing, and seldom effective.  The weak point about argument is that it usually admits of being answered.  For Milton to essay to justify the ways of God to man was well and pious enough, but to represent God Himself as doing so by argumentative process was not so well, and was to expose the Almighty to possible rebuff.  The king is always present in his own courts, but as judge, not as advocate; hence the royal dignity never suffers.

It is narrated of an eminent barrister, who became a most polished judge, Mr. Knight Bruce, that once, when at the very head of his profession, he was taken in before a Master in Chancery, an office since abolished, and found himself pitted against a little snip of an attorney’s clerk, scarce higher than the table, who, nothing daunted, and by the aid of authorities he cited from a bundle of books as big as himself, succeeded in worsting Knight Bruce, whom he persisted in calling over again and again ‘my learned friend.’  Mr. Bruce treated the imp with that courtesy which is always an opponent’s due, but he never went before the Masters any more.

The Archangel has not escaped the reproach often brought against affable persons of being a

bit of a bore, and though this is to speak unbecomingly, it must be owned that the reader is glad whenever Adam plucks up heart of grace and gets in a word edgeways.  Mr. Bagehot has complained of Milton’s angels.  He says they are silly.  But this is, I think, to intellectualize too much.  There are some classes who are fairly exempted from all obligation to be intelligent, and these airy messengers are surely amongst that number.  The retinue of a prince or of a bride justify their choice if they are well-looking and group nicely.

But these objections do not touch the main issue.  Here is the story of the loss of Eden, told enchantingly, musically, and in the grand style.  ‘Who,’ says M. Scherer, in a passage quoted by Mr. Arnold, ‘can read the eleventh and twelfth books without yawning?’  People, of course, are free to yawn when they please, provided they put their hands to their mouths; but in answer to this insulting question one is glad to be able to remember how Coleridge has singled out Adam’s vision of future events contained in these books as especially deserving of attention.  But to read them is to repel the charge.

There was no need for Mr. Arnold, of

all men, to express dissatisfaction with Milton:

‘Words which no ear ever to hear in heaven
Expected; least of all from thee, ingrate,
In place thyself so high above thy peers.’

The first thing for people to be taught is to enjoy great things greatly.  The spots on the sun may be an interesting study, but anyhow the sun is not all spots.  Indeed, sometimes in the early year, when he breaks forth afresh,

‘And winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring,

we are apt to forget that he has any spots at all, and, as he shines, are perhaps reminded of the blind poet sitting in his darkness, in this prosaic city of ours, swinging his leg over the arm of his chair, and dictating the lines:

‘Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom or summer’s rose,
Or flocks or herds, or human face divine.
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me—from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off; and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with a universal blank
Of nature’s works, to me expunged and razed
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather, Thou, Celestial Light,

Shine inwards, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate—there plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.’

Coleridge added a note to his beautiful poem, ‘The Nightingale,’ lest he should be supposed capable of speaking with levity of a single line in Milton.  The note was hardly necessary, but one loves the spirit that prompted him to make it.  Sainte-Beuve remarks: ‘Parler des poètes est toujours une chose bien délicate, et surtout quand on l’a été un peu soi-même.’  But though it does not matter what the little poets do, great ones should never pass one another without a royal salute.

POPE.

A Lecture delivered at Birmingham before the Midland Institute.

The eighteenth century has been well abused by the nineteenth.  So far as I can gather, it is the settled practice of every century to speak evil of her immediate predecessor, and I have small doubt that, had we gone groping about in the tenth century, we should yet have been found hinting that the ninth was darker than she had any need to be.

But our tone of speaking about the last century has lately undergone an alteration.  The fact is, we are drawing near our own latter end.  The Head Master of Harrow lately thrilled an audience by informing them that he had, that very day, entered an existing bonâ fide boy upon the school books, whose education, however, would not begin till the twentieth century.  As a parent was overheard to observe, ‘An illustration

of that sort comes home to one.’  The older we grow the less confident we become, the readier to believe that our judgments are probably wrong, and liable, and even likely, to be reversed; the better disposed to live and let live.  The child, as Mr. Browning has somewhere elaborated, cries for the moon and beats its nurse, but the old man sips his gruel with avidity and thanks Heaven if nobody beats him.  And so we have left off beating the eighteenth century.  It was not so, however, in our lusty prime.  Carlyle,