t watered by
the Scamander, is the theatre of their exploits. Jupiter, from the
summit of Gargarus, could not have beheld the contending armies. The
most ardent imagination, indeed, is satiated with his adventures, but
the closest attention can hardly follow their thread. Story after
story is told, the exploits of knight after knight are recounted, till
the mind is fatigued, the memory perplexed, and all general interest
in the poem lost.

Milton has admirably preserved the unity of his poem; the grand and
all-important object of the fall of man could hardly admit of
subordinate or rival interests. But the great defect in the _Paradise
Lost_, arising from that very unity, is want of variety. It is strung
throughout on too lofty a key; it does not come down sufficiently to
the wants and cravings of mortality. The mind is awe-struck by the
description of Satan careering through the immensity of space, of the
battle of the angels, of the fall of Lucifer, of the suffering, and
yet unsubdued spirit of his fellow rebels, of the adamantine gates,
and pitchy darkness, and burning lake of hell. But after the first
feeling of surprise and admiration is over, it is felt by all, that
these lofty contemplations are not interesting to mortals like
ourselves. They are too much above real life--too much out of the
sphere of ordinary event and interest.

The fourth book is the real scene of interest in the _Paradise Lost_;
it is its ravishing scenes of primeval innocence and bliss which have
given it immortality. We are never tired of recurring to the bower of
Eve, to her devotion to Adam, to the exquisite scenes of Paradise, its
woods, its waters, its flowers, its enchantments. We are so, because
we feel that it paints the Elysium to which all aspire, which all have
for a brief period felt, but which none in this world can durably
enjoy.

No one can doubt that Homer was endowed with the true poetic spirit,
and yet there is very little of what we now call poetry in his
writings. There is neither sentiment nor declamation--painting nor
reflection. He is neither descriptive nor didactic. With great powers
for portraying nature, as the exquisite choice of his epithets, and
the occasional force of his similes prove, he never makes any
laboured attempt to delineate her features. He had the eye of a great
painter; but his pictorial talents are employed, almost unconsciously,
in the fervour of narrating events, or the animation of giving