There was great room therefore, and, we will even say, great occasion, for such a work as this of Mr. Campbell's, in the present state of our literature ;-and we are persuaded, that all who care about poetry, and are not already acquainted with the authors of whom it treats and even all who are cannot possibly do better than read it fairly through, from the first page to the last-without skipping the extracts which they know, or those which may not at first seem very attractive. There is no reader, we will venture to say, who will rise from the perusal even of these partial and scanty fragments, without a fresh and deep sense of the matchless richness, variety, and originality of English Poetry: while the juxtaposition and arrangement of the pieces not only gives room for endless comparisons and contrasts, but displays, as it were in miniature, the whole of its wonderful progress; and sets before us, as in a great gallery of pictures, the whole course and history of the art, from its first rude and infant beginnings, to its maturity, and perhaps its decline. While it has all the grandeur and instruction that belongs to such a gallery, it is free from the perplexity and distraction which is generally complained of in such exhibitions; as each piece is necessarily considered separately and in succession, and the mind cannot wander, like the eye, through the splendid labyrinth in which it is enchanted. Nothing, we think, can be more delightful, than thus at our ease to trace, through all its periods, vicissitudes, and aspects, the progress of this highest and most intellectual of all the arts-coloured as it is in every age by the manners of the times which produce it, and embodying, besides those flights of fancy and touches of pathos that constitute its more immediate essence, much of the wisdom and much of the morality that was then current among the people; and thus presenting us, not merely with almost all that genius has ever created for delight, but with a brief chronicle and abstract of all that was once interesting to the generations which have gone by. which they derive pleasure from such studies. | being a mere bookseller's speculation.--As Nor would the benefit, if it once extended so we have heard nothing of it from the time of far, by any means stop there. The character its first publication, we suppose it has had the of our poetry depends not a little on the taste success it deserved. of our poetical readers; and though some bards have always been before their age, and some behind it, the greater part must be pretty nearly on its level. Present popularity, whatever disappointed writers may say, is, after all, the only safe passage of future glory; -and it is really as unlikely that good poetry should be produced in any quantity where it is not relished, as that cloth should be manufactured and thrust into the market, of a pattern and fashion for which there was no demand. A shallow and uninstructed taste is indeed the most flexible and inconstantand is tossed about by every breath of doctrine, and every wind of authority; so as neither to derive any permanent delight from the same works, nor to assure any permanent fame to their authors;-while a taste that is formed upon a wide and large survey of enduring models, not only affords a secure basis for all future judgments, but must compel, whenever it is general in any society, a salutary conformity to its great principles from all who depend on its suffrage. To accomplish such an object, the general study of a work like this certainly is not enough:-But it would form an excellent preparation for more extensive reading-and would, of itself, do much to open the eyes of many self-satisfied persons, and startle them into a sense of their own ignorance, and the poverty and paltriness of many of their ephemeral favourites. Considered as a nation, we are yet but very imperfectly recovered from that strange and ungrateful forgetfulness of our older poets, which began with the Restoration, and continued almost unbroken till after the middle of the last century.-Nor can the works which have chiefly tended to dispel it among the instructed orders, be ranked in a higher class than this which is before us.-Percy's Relics of Antient Poetry produced, we believe, the first revulsion--and this was followed up by Wharton's History of Poetry.-Johnson's Lives of the Poets did something;-and the great effect has been produced by the modern commentators on Shakespeare. Those various works recommended the older writers, and reinstated them in some of their honours; but still the works themselves were not placed before the eyes of ordinary readers. This was done in part, perhaps overdone, by the entire republication of some of our older dramatists and with better effect by Mr. Ellis's Specimens. If the former, however, was rather too copious a supply for the returning appetite of the public, the latter was too scanty; and both were confined to too narrow a period of time to enable the reader to enjoy the variety, and to draw the comparisons, by which he might be most pleased and instructed.-Southey's continuation of Ellis did harm rather than good; for though there is some cleverness in the introduction, the work itself is executed in a crude, petulant, and superficial manner, and bears all the marks of The steps of the progress of such an art, and the circumstances by which they have been effected, would form, of themselves, a large and interesting theme of speculation. Conversant as poetry necessarily is with all that touches human feelings, concerns, and occupations, its character must have been impressed by every change in the rnoral and political condition of society, and must even retain the lighter traces of their successive follies, amusements, and pursuits; while, in the course of ages, the very multiplication and increasing business of the people have forced it through a progress not wholly dis similar to that which the same causes have produced on the agriculture and landscape of the country;-where at first we had ruce and dreary wastes, thinly sprinkled with sunny spots of simple cultivation-then vast forests and chases, stretching far around feudal cas- has complied perhaps too far with the popular tles and pinnacled abbeys-then woodland prejudice, in confining his citations from Milhamlets, and goodly mansions, and gorgeous ton to the Comus and the smaller pieces, and gardens, and parks rich with waste fertility, leaving the Paradise Lost to the memory of and lax habitations and, finally, crowded his readers. But though we do not think the cities, and road-side villas, and brick-walled extracts by any means too long on the whole, gardens, and turnip-fields, and canals, and we are certainly of opinion that some are too artificial ruins, and ornamented farms, and long and others too short; and that many, cottages trellised over with exotic plants! especially in the latter case, are not very But, to escape from those metaphors and well selected. There is far too little of Marenigmas to the business before us, we must lowe for instance, and too much of Shirley, remark, that in order to give any tolerable and even of Massinger. We should have idea of the poetry which was thus to be rep-liked more of Warner, Fairfax, Phineas resented, it was necessary that the specimens Fletcher, and Henry More-all poets of no to be exhibited should be of some compass scanty dimensions-and could have spared and extent. We have heard their length several pages of Butler, Mason, Whitehead, complained of-but we think with very little Roberts, Meston, and Amhurst Selden. We justice. Considering the extent of the works do not think the specimens from Burns very from which they are taken, they are almost well selected; nor those from Prior-nor can all but inconsiderable fragments; and where we see any good reason for quoting the whole the original was of an Epic or Tragic charac- Castle of Indolence, and nothing else, for ter, greater abridgment would have been Thomson-and the whole Rape of the Lock, mere mutilation, and would have given only and nothing else, for Pope. such a specimen of the whole, as a brick might do of a building. From the earlier and less familiar authors, we rather think the citations are too short; and, even from those that are more generally known, we do not well see how they could have been shorter, with any safety to the professed object, and only use, of the publication. That object, we conceive, was to give specimens of English poetry, from its earliest to its latest periods; and it would be a strange rule to have followed, in making such a selection, to leave out the best and most popular. The work certainly neither is, nor professes to be, a collection from obscure and forgotten authorsbut specimens of all who have merit enough to deserve our remembrance ;-and if some few have such redundant merit or good fortune as to be in the hands and the minds of all the world, it was necessary, even then, to give some extracts from them, that the series might be complete, and that there might be room for comparison with others, and for tracing the progress of the art in the strains of its best models and their various imitators. In one instance, and one only, Mr. C. has declined doing this duty; and left the place of one great luminary to be filled up by recollections that he must have presumed would be universal. He has given but two pages to SHAKESPEARE and not a line from any of his plays! Perhaps he has done rightly. A knowledge of Shakespeare may be safely presumed, we believe, in every reader; and, if he had begun to cite his Beauties, there is no saying where he would have ended. A little book, calling itself Beauties of Shakespeare, was published some years ago, and shown, as we have heard, to Mr. Sheridan. He turned over the leaves for some time with apparent satisfaction, and then said, "This is very well; but where are the other seven volumes?" There is no other author, however, whose fame is such as to justify a similar ellipsis, or whose works can be thus elegantly understood, in a collection of good poetry. Mr. C. Next to the impression of the vast fertility, compass, and beauty of our English poetry, the reflection that recurs most frequently and forcibly to us, in accompanying Mr. C. through his wide survey, is that of the perishable nature of poetical fame, and the speedy oblivion that has overtaken so many of the promised heirs of immortality! Of near two hundred and fifty authors, whose works are cited in these volumes, by far the greater part of whom were celebrated in their generation, there are not thirty who now enjoy any thing that can be called popularity-whose works are to be found in the hands of ordinary readers-in the shops of ordinary booksellers or in the press for republication. About fifty more may be tolerably familiar to men of taste or literature:-the rest slumber on the shelves of collectors, and are partially known to a few antiquaries and scholars. Now, the fame of a Poet is popular, or nothing. He does not address himself, like the man of science, to the learned, or those who desire to learn, but to all mankind; and his purpose being to delight and be praised, necessarily extends to all who can receive pleasure, or join in applause. It is strange, then, and somewhat humiliating, to see how great a proportion of those who had once fought their way successfully to distinction, and surmounted the rivalry of contemporary envy, have again sunk into neglect. We have great deference for public opinion; and readily admit, that nothing but what is good can be permanently popular. But though its vivat be generally oracular, its pereat ap pears to us to be often sufficiently capricious; and while we would foster all that it bids to live, we would willingly revive much that it leaves to die. The very multiplication of works of amusement, necessarily withdraws many from notice that deserve to be kept in remembrance; for we should soon find it labour, and not amusement, if we were obliged to make use of them all, or even to take all upon trial. As the materials of enjoyment and instruction accumulate around us, more and more, we fear, must thus be daily rejected, and left to waste: For while our tasks lengthen, | for antiquity of his predecessor-there shall our lives remain as short as ever; and the posterity still hang with rapture on the half of calls on our time multiply, while our time Campbell-and the fourth part of Byron-and itself is flying swiftly away. This superfluity the sixth of Scott-and the scattered tythes and abundance of our treasures, therefore, of Crabbe-and the three per cent. of Southey, necessarily renders much of them worthless;-while some good-natured critic shall sit in and the veriest accidents may, in such a case, our mouldering chair, and more than half predetermine what part shall be preserved, and fer them to those by whom they have been what thrown away and neglected. When an superseded!-It is an hyperbole of good na army is decimated, the very bravest may fall; ture, however, we fear, to ascribe to them even and many poets, worthy of eternal remem- those dimensions at the end of a century. Afbrance, have probably been forgotten, merely ter a lapse of two hundred and fifty years, we because there was not room in our memories are afraid to think of the space they may have for all. shrunk into. We have no Shakespeare, alas! to shed a never-setting light on his contemporaries:-and if we continue to write and rhyme at the present rate for two hundred years longer, there must be some new art of short-hand reading invented-or all reading will be given up in despair. We need not distress ourselves, however, with these afflic tions of our posterity-and it is quite time that the reader should know a little of the work before us. By such a work as the present, however, this injustice of fortune may be partly redressed some small fragments of an immortal strain may still be rescued from oblivion— and a wreck of a name preserved, which time appeared to have swallowed up for ever. There is something pious we think, and endearing, in the office of thus gathering up the ashes of renown that has passed away; or rather, of calling back the departed life for a transitory glow, and enabling those great The Essay on English Poetry is very clev spirits which seemed to be laid for ever, still erly, and, in many places, very finely written to draw a tear of pity, or a throb of admira--but it is not equal, and it is not complete. tion, from the hearts of a forgetful generation. The body of their poetry, probably, can never be revived; but some sparks of its spirit may yet be preserved, in a narrower and feebler frame. When we look back upon the havoc which two hundred years have thus made in the ranks of our immortals—and, above all, when we refer their rapid disappearance to the quick succession of new competitors, and the accumulation of more good works than there is time to peruse, we cannot help being dismayed at the prospect which lies before the writers of the present day. There never was an age so prolific of popular poetry as that in which we now live-and as wealth, population, and education extend, the produce is likely to go on increasing. The last ten years have produced, we think, an annual supply of about ten thousand lines of good staple poetry-poetry from the very first hands that we can boast of-that runs quickly to three or four large editions—and is as likely to be permanent as present success can make it. Now, if this goes on for a hundred years longer, what a task will await the poetical readers of 1919! Our living poets will then be nearly as old as Pope and Swift are at present-but there will stand between them and that generation nearly ten times as much fresh and fashionable poetry as is now interposed between us and those writers:-and if Scott and Byron and Campbell have already cast Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, in what form and dimensions are they themselves likely to be presented to the eyes of our great grandchildren? The thought, we own, is a little appalling;-and we confess we see nothing better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable place in some new collection of specimens-the centenary of the present publication. There-if the future editor have any thing like the indulgence and veneration There is a good deal of the poet's waywardness even in Mr. C.'s prose. His historical Muse is as disdainful of drudgery and plain work as any of her more tuneful sisters;and so we have things begun and abandoned passages of great eloquence and beauty followed up by others not a little careless and disorderly- -a large outline rather meagerly filled up, but with some morsels of exquisite finishing scattered irregularly up and down its expanse-little fragments of detail and controversy-and abrupt and impatient conclusions. Altogether, however, the work is very spirited; and abounds with the indications of a powerful and fine understanding, and of a delicate and original taste. We can not now afford to give any abstract of the information it contains-but shall make a few extracts, to show the tone and manner of the composition. The following sketch of Chaucer, for instance, and of the long interregnum that succeeded his demise, is given with great grace and spirit. His first, and long-continued predilection, was attracted by the new and allegorical style of romance, which had sprung up in France, in the thirteenth century, under William de Lorris. We find him, accordingly, during a great part of his poetical career, engaged among the dreams, emblems, flower-worshippings, and amatory parlia ments, of that visionary school. This, we may say, was a gymnasium of rather too light and playful exercise for so strong a genius; and it must be owned, that his allegorical poetry is often puerile and prolix. Yet, even in this walk of fiction, we gaiety, which distinguish the Muse of Chaucer; never entirely lose sight of that peculiar grace and and no one who remembers his productions of the House of Fame, and the Flower and the Leaf, will regret that he sported, for a season, in the field of allegory. Even his pieces of this description, the most fantastic in design, and tedious in execution, descriptions of external nature. In this new species are generally interspersed with fresh and joyous of romance, we perceive the youthful Muse of the language, in love with mystical meanings and forms of fancy, more remote, if possible from reality, than those of the chivalrous fable itself; and we could, sometimes, wish her back from her emblematic castles, to the more solid ones of the elder fable; but still she moves in pursuit of those shadows with an impulse of novelty, and an exuberance of spirit, that is not wholly without its attraction and delight. Chaucer was, afterwards, happily drawn to the more natural style of Boccaccio; and from him he derived the hint of a subject, in which, besides his own original portraits of contemporary life, he could introduce stories of every description, from the most heroic to the most familiar." pp. 71-73. "Warton, with great beauty and justice, compares the appearance of Chaucer in our language, to a premature day in an English spring; after which the gloom of winter returns, and the buds and blossoms, which have been called forth by a transient sunshine, are nipped by frosts, and scattered by storms. The causes of the relapse of our poetry, after Chaucer, seem but too apparent in the annals of English history; which, during five reigns of the fifteenth century, continue to display but a tissue of conspiracies, proscriptions, and bloodshed. Inferior even to France in literary progress, England displays in the fifteenth century a still more mortifying contrast with Italy. Italy, too, had her religious schisms and public distractions; but her arts and literature had always a sheltering place. They were even cherished by the rivalship of independent communities, and received encouragement from the opposite sources of commercial and ecclesiastical wealth. But we had no Nicholas the Fifth, nor House of Medicis. In England, the evils of civil war agitated society as one mass. There was no refuge from them-no enclosure to fence in the field of improvement-no mound to stem the torrent of public troubles. Before the death of Henry VI. it is said that one half of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom had perished in the field, or on the scaffold!"" The golden age of Elizabeth has often been extolled, and the genius of Spenser delineated, with feeling and eloquence. But all that has been written, leaves the following striking passages as original as they are eloquent. back to us from the southern languages, clothed in new luxury by the warm imagination of the south. The growth of poetry under such circumstances might indeed be expected to be as irregular as it was profuse. The field was open to daring absurdity, as well as to genuine inspiration; and accordingly there is no period in which the extremes of good and bad writing are so abundant."-pp. 120-122. "The mistaken opinion that Ben Jonson censured the antiquity of the diction in the Fairy Queen,' has been corrected by Mr. Malone, who pronounces it to be exactly that of his contemporaries. His authority is weighty; still, however, without reviving the exploded error respecting Jonson's censure, one might imagine the difference of Spenser's style from that of Shakespeare's, whom he so shortly preceded, to indicate that his Gothic subject and story made him lean towards words of the elder time. At all events, much of his expression is now become antiquated; though it is beautiful in its antiquity, and, like the moss and ivy on some majestic building, covers the fabric of his language with romantic and venerable associations. "His command of imagery is wide, easy, and luxuriant. He threw the soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been since. It must certainly be owned, that in description he exhibits nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which characterize the very greatest poets: But we shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colours of language, than in this Rubens of English poetry. His fancy teems exuberantly in minuteness of circumstance; like a fertile soil sending bloom and verdure through the utmost extremities of the foliage which it nourishes. On a comprehensive view of the whole work, we certainly miss the charm of strength, symmetry, and rapid or interesting progress; for though the plan which the poet designed is not completed, it is easy to see that no additional still there is a richness in his materials, even where cantos could have rendered it less perplexed. But their coherence is loose, and their disposition confused. The clouds of his allegory may seem to spread into shapeless forms, but they are still the clouds of a glowing atmosphere. Though his story grows desultory, the sweetness and grace of his manner still abide by him. We always rise from perusing him with melody in the mind's ear, and with pictures of romantic beauty impressed on the "In the reign of Elizabeth, the English mind put forth its energies in every direction, exalted by a purer religion, and enlarged by new views of truth. This was an age of loyalty, adventure, and gener-imagination."-pp. 124-127. ous emulation. The chivalrous character was softened by intellectual pursuits, while the genius of chivalry itself still lingered, as if unwilling to depart; and paid his last homage to a Warlike and Female reign. A degree of romantic fancy remained, too, in the manners and superstitions of the people; and Allegory might be said to parade the streets in their public pageants and festivities. Quaint and pedantic as those allegorical exhibitions might often be, they were nevertheless more expressive of erudition, ingenuity, and moral meaning, than they had been in former times. The philosophy of the highest minds, on the other hand, still partook of a visionary character. A poetical spirit infused itself into the practical heroism of the age; and some of the worthies of that period seem less like ordinary men, than like beings called forth out of fiction, and arrayed in the brightness of her dreams. They had high thoughts seated in hearts of courtesy." The life of Sir Philip Sydney was poetry put into action. "The result of activity and curiosity in the public mind was to complete the revival of classical literature, to increase the importation of foreign books, and to multiply translations, from which poetry sup plied herself with abundant subjects and materials. and in the use of which she showed a frank and fearless energy, that criticism and satire had not yet acquired power to overawe. Romance came In his account of the great dramatic writers of that and the succeeding reign, Mr. C.'s veneration for Shakespeare has made him rather unjust, we think, to the fame of some of his precursors.-We have already said that he passes Marlowe with a very slight notice, and a page of citation.-Greene, certainly a far inferior writer, is treated with the same scanty courtesy-and there is no account and no specimen of Kyd or Lodge, though both authors of very considerable genius and originality.-With the writings of Peele, we do not profess to be acquainted-but the quotations given from him in the Essay should have entitled him to a place in the body of the work. We must pass over what he says of Shakespeare and Jonson, though full of beauty and feeling.-To the latter, indeed, he is rather more than just.-The account of Beaumont and Fletcher is lively and discriminating. "The theatre of Beaumont and Fletcher contains all manner of good and evil. The respective shares of those dramatic partners, in the works collectively published with their names, have been stated in a different part of these volumes. Fletcher's share | practice of the age. He stood alone, and aloof above in them is by far the largest; and he is chargeable his times; the bard of immortal subjects, and, as far with the greatest number of faults, although at the as there is perpetuity in language, of immortal fame. same time his genius was more airy, prolific, and The very choice of those subjects bespoke a confanciful. There are such extremes of grossness tempt for any species of excellence that was attain. and magnificence in their drama, so much sweetness able by other men. There is something that and beauty interspersed with views of nature either overawes the mind in conceiving his long-deliberfalsely romantic, or vulgar beyond reality; there is ated selection of that theme-his attempting it after so much to animate and amuse us, and yet so much his eyes were shut upon the face of nature-his de that we would willingly overlook, that I cannot pendence, we might almost say, on supernatural help comparing the contrasted impressions which inspiration, and in the calm air of strength with they make to those which we receive from visiting which he opens Paradise Lost, beginning a mighty some great and ancient city, picturesquely but irreg-performance without the appearance of an effort." ularly built, glittering with spires and surrounded with gardens, but exhibiting in many quarters the lanes and hovels of wretchedness. They have scenes of wealthy and high life, which remind us of courts and palaces frequented by elegant females and high-spirited gallants, whilst their noble old martial characters, with Caractacus in the midst of them, may inspire us with the same sort of regard which we pay to the rough-hewn magnificence of an ancient fortress. is 'In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood The warlike part of Paradise Lost was inseparable from its subject. Whether it could have been differently managed, is a problem which our reverence for Milton will scarcely permit us to state. I feel that reverence too strongly to suggest even the possibility that Milton could have improved his poem, by having thrown his angelic warfare into more remote perspective: But it seems to me to be most sublime when it is least distinctly brought home to the imagination. What an awful effect has "Unhappily, the same simile, without being the dim and undefined conception of the conflict, hunted down, will apply but too faithfully to the which we gather from the retrospects in the first nuisances of the drama. Their language is often book! There the veil of mystery is left undrawn basely profligate. Shakespeare's and Jonson's in-between us and a subject which the powers of de. delicacies are but casual blots; whilst theirs are scription were inadequate to exhibit. The ministers sometimes essential colours of their painting, and of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled extend, in one or two instances, to entire and offen--the thunders had ceased sive scenes. This fault has deservedly injured their To bellow through the vast and boundless deep,' reputation; and, saving a very slight allowance for the fashion and taste of their age, admits of no sort of apology. Their drama, nevertheless, is a very wide one, and has ample room and verge enough' to permit the attention to wander from these, and to fix on more inviting peculiarities as on the great variety of their fables and personages, their spirited dialogue, their wit, pathos, and humour. Thickly sown as their blemishes are, their merits will bear great deductions, and still remain great. We never can forget such beautiful characters as their Cellide, their Aspatia and Bellario, or such humorous ones as their La Writ and. Cacafogo. Awake they will always keep us, whether to quarrel or to be pleased with them. Their invention is fruitful; its beings are on the whole an active and sanguine generation; and their scenes are crowded to fulness with the warmth, agitation, and interest of actual life."-pp. 210-213. Some of the most splendid passages in the Essay are dedicated to the fame of Miltonand are offerings not unworthy of the shrine. "If we call diction the garb of thought, Milton, "In Milton," he says, "there may be traced ob-in his style, may be said to wear the costume of ligations to several minor English poets: But his sovereignty. The idioms even of foreign languages genius had too great a supremacy to belong to any contributed to adorn it. He was the most learned school. Though he acknowledged a filial rever- of poets; yet his learning interferes not with his ence for Spenser as a poet, he left no Gothic irregu- substantial English purity. His simplicity is unim. lar tracery in the design of his own great work, but paired by glowing ornament,-like the bush in the gave a classical harmony of parts to its stupendous sacred flame, which burnt but was not consumed.' pile. It thus resembles a dome, the vastness of which is at first sight concealed by its symmetry, but which expands more and more to the eye while it is contemplated. His early poetry seems to have neither disturbed nor corrected the bad taste of his age. Comus came into the world unacknowledged by its author, and Lycidas appeared at first only with his initials. These, and other exquisite pieces, composed in the happiest years of his life, at his father's country-house at Horton, were collectively published, with his name affixed to them, in 1645; but that precious volume, which included L'Allegro and Il Penseroso did not (I believe) come to a second edition, till it was republished by himself at the distance of eight-and-twenty years. Almost a century elapsed before his minor works obtained their proper fame. "Even when Paradise Lost first appeared, though it was not neglected, it attracted no crowd of imitators, and made no visible change in the poetical all this human pomp and circumstance of war is magic and overwhelming illusion. The imagination is taken by surprise. But the noblest efforts of language are tried with very unequal effect, to interest us in the immediate and close view of the battle who charmed us in the shades of hell, lose some itself in the sixth book; and the martial demons, portion of their sublimity, when their artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven. "In delineating the blessed spirits, Milton has exhausted all the conceivable variety that could be given to pictures of unshaded sanctity; but it is chiefly in those of the fallen angels that his excellence is conspicuous above every thing ancient or modern. Tasso had, indeed, portrayed an infernal council, and had given the hint to our poet of ascribing the origin of pagan worship to those reprobate spirits. But how poor and squalid in comparison of the Miltonic Pandemonium are the Scyllas, the Cyclopses, and the Chimeras of the Infernal Council of the Jerusalem! Tasso's conclave of fiends is a den of ugly incongruous monsters. The powers of Milton's hell are godlike shapes and forms. Their appearance dwarfs every other poetical conception, when we turn our dilated eyes from contemplating them. It is not their external attributes alone which expand the imagina. tion, but their souls, which are as colossal as their stature-their thoughts that wander through eter、 1 |