nt 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 demons of Aeschylus 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 Aeschylus
seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticos in
which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light 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 favorite 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,