nce might almost have come from some
Republican leader when the Good Old Cause went down.

"What though the field be lost?
All is not lost, the unconquerable will
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield."

But when all has been said that can be said in disparagement or
qualification, _Paradise Lost_ remains the foremost of English poems
and the {158} sublimest of all epics. Even in those parts where
theology encroaches most upon poetry, the diction, though often heavy,
is never languid. Milton's blank verse in itself is enough to bear up
the most prosaic theme, and so is his epic English, a style more
massive and splendid than Shakspere's, and comparable, like
Tertullian's Latin, to a river of molten gold. Of the countless single
beauties that sow his page

"Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Valombrosa,"

there is no room to speak, nor of the astonishing fullness of substance
and multitude of thoughts which have caused the _Paradise Lost_ to be
called the book of universal knowledge. "The heat of Milton's mind,"
said Dr. Johnson, "might be said to sublimate his learning and throw
off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser
parts." The truth of this remark is clearly seen upon a comparison of
Milton's description of the creation, for example, with corresponding
passages in Sylvester's _Divine Weeks and Works_ (translated from the
Huguenot poet, Du Bartas), which was, in some sense, his original. But
the most heroic thing in Milton's heroic poem is Milton. There are no
strains in _Paradise Lost_ so absorbing as those in which the poet
breaks the strict epic bounds and speaks directly of himself, as in the
majestic lament over his own blindness, and in the invocation to
Urania, which open the third and seventh {159} books. Every-where,
too, one reads between the lines. We think of the dissolute cavaliers,
as Milton himself undoubtedly was thinking of them, when we read of
"the sons of Belial flown with insolence and wine," or when the Puritan
turns among the sweet landscapes of Eden, to denounce

"court amours
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenade which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain."

And we think of Milton among the triumphant royalists when we read of
the Seraph Abdiel "faithful found among the faithless."

"Nor number nor example wi