"Why, Charles," said Sir John, "I am glad to find you the enthusiastic
eulogist of the passage of which I suspected you were about to be the
saucy censurer."

"Censure," replied I, "is perhaps too strong a term for any part
especially the most admired part of this fine poem. I need not repeat
the lines on which I was going to risk a slight observation; they live
in the mind and memory of every lover of the Muses."

"I will read the next passage, however," said Sir John, "that I may be
better able to controvert your criticism:

Look then abroad through nature to the range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres,
Wheeling unshaken through the void immense,
And speak, oh man! does the capacious scene
With half that kindling majesty dilate
Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose
Refulgent from the stroke of Caesar's fate
Amid the crowd of patriots, and his arm
Aloft extending, like eternal Jove
When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud
On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel,
And bade the father of his country hail;
For lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust,
And Rome again is free?

"What a grand and powerful passage!" said Sir John.

"I acknowledge it," said I, "but is it as just as it is grand? _Le vrai
est le seul beau._ Is it a fair and direct opposition between mind and
matter? The poet could not have expressed the image more nobly, but
might he not, out of the abundant treasures of his opulent mind have
chosen it with more felicity? Is an act of murder, even of an usurper,
as happily contrasted with the organization of matter, as the other
beautiful instances I named, and which he goes on to select? The
superiority of mental beauty is the point he is establishing, and his
elaborate preparation leads you to expect all his other instances to be
drawn from pure mental excellence. His other exemplifications are
general, this is particular. They are a class, this is only a variety. I
question if Milton, who was at least as ardent a champion for liberty,
and as much of a party-man as Akenside, would have used this
illustration. Milton, though he often insinuates a political stroke in
his great poem, always, I think, generalizes. Whatever had been his
principles, or at whatever period he had written, I question, when he
wanted to describe the overthrow of authority by the rebel angels, if he
would have illustrated it by Cromwell's seizing the mac