of it by our first parents. Three-fourths of the
work are taken up with these characters, and nearly all that relates to
them is unmixed sublimity and beauty. The two first books alone are like
two massy pillars of solid gold.

Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem; and
the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the first of
created beings, who, for endeavouring to be equal with the highest, and
to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down to
hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the universe; his means,
myriads of angelic armies bright, the third part of the heavens, whom he
lured after him with his countenance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent
in arms. His ambition was the greatest, and his punishment was the
greatest; but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his
sufferings. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body;
the vastness of his designs did not surpass the firm, inflexible
determination with which he submitted to his irreversible doom, and
final loss of all good. His power of action and of suffering was equal.
He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest
will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He
stood like a tower; or

"------As when Heaven's fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines."

He was still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors, who
own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he sympathises as
he views them round, far as the eye can reach; though he keeps aloof
from them in his own mind, and holds supreme counsel only with his own
breast. An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet, Sin and
Death are at his heels, and mankind are his easy prey.

"All is not lost; th' unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what else is not to be overcome,"

are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magnitude
of it; the fierceness of tormenting flames is qualified and made
innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride; the loss of infinite
happiness to himself is compensated in thought, by the power of
inflicting infinite misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle of
malignity, or of the abstract love of evil--but of the abstract love
of power, of pride, of sel