nd
In search of this new world? Whom shall we find
Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering feet
The dark, unbottom'd, infinite abyss,
And through the palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight,
Upborne with indefatigable wings
Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive
The happy isle?"

And Satan is the self-chosen missionary of the religion of Hell. In Dryden
Asmoday suggests the enterprise, and

"_Moloch._ This glorious enterprise--(_rising up._)
_Lucifer._ Rash angel, stay. (_Rising, and laying his sceptre on
Moloch's head._)
That palm is mine, which none shall take away.
_Hot braves like thee may fight_, but know not well
To manage this, the last great stake of hell."

The council comes to a close--and Lucifer promises to be with them again,

"Before yon brimstone lake thrice ebb and flow."

Tides in the Mediterranean! a touch beyond Milton.

"Here, while the chiefs sit in the palace, may be expressed the sports of
the devils, as flights and dancing in grotesque figures; and a song,
expressing the change of their condition, what they enjoyed before, and
how they fell bravely in battle, having deserved victory by their valour,
and what they would have done if they had conquered."

What had Dryden purposed to achieve? Out of two books of a great epic, to
edify one act of an opera. To invention of situation, character, or
passion, he aspires not; all he had to do--since he must needs meddle--was
to select, compress, and abridge, with some judgment and feeling, and to
give the result--unhappy at the best--in his own vigorous verse and
dearly-beloved rhyme. But beneath the majesty and imagination of Milton,
his genius, strong as it was, broke down, and absolutely sunk beneath the
level of that of common men. Yet not in awe, nor in reverence of a
superior power; for there is no trepidation of spirit; on the contrary,
with cool self-assurance he rants his way through the fiery gloom of hell.
By his hands shorn of their beams, the fallen angels are, one and all,
poor devils indeed. The Son of the Morning is seedy, and has lost all
authority over the swell mob, which he vainly essays to recover by
cracking Moloch's organ with his sceptre. Yet Sir Walter, blinded by his
generous admiration of Dryden's great endowments, scruples not to say that
"the scene of the consultation in Pandemonium, and of the soliloquy of
Satan (not Satan, it seems, but Lucifer) on his