his Fable, Milton "passed the flaming bounds of place and time:" forming his mere catastrophe of that Fall, without which no Achilles or Æneas could have had existence. Those therefore, whose classical, or rather foreign, palates can relish no Hero, who is not formed on a Greek or Roman model, must even concur with Dryden; and allot the Heroic character to Satan. Yet, in doing so, will they obtain what Dryden was in search of,-viz. a successful Hero?-Far otherwise, in my mind. One half of the glorious poem, out of which our question grows, is a picture of the defeat, punishment, and misery of this revolted Angel. His very success in seducing Man, independently of the artes lubrica by which it was obtained, of the disgrace and vengeance which immediately attend, and the ultimate frustration and further punishment which await it, is not intrinsically, that species of success, which those Criticks look to, who require an Epic Hero to be successful. It is the success which one might claim to have, who communicated the plague: thereby not mitigating his own torments, or averting his own destruction; but merely spreading a contagion, which should involve others in his fate. Thus, if an immediate transition may, without impiety, be allowed me, from the extreme of falsehood, hostility and sin, to ineffable goodness, love and truth, those who pronounce him Hero, whose efforts are crowned with the most glorious success, will, in the MESSIAH, find a personage fully answering this description. But what do I understand by the Hero of an Epic Poem? That central Personage, around whom, whose actions, and whose fate, the various incidents, and, as it were, system of the Poem, all revolve. This premised, I repeat the question;-who is Milton's Hero?—and I answer, without doubt or hesitation,-MAN. The creature, Man; figured by those first Parents, who were at once its origin and type; and in whose fate that of posterity was inextricably included. Man, whose fall (through the divine and counteracting grace) involved the incarnation and Manhood of GOD himself: whom thus with an awful and adventurous sublimity,* (no less pious than it was daring; and only therefore not too rash ;) the Poet may be considered as having, in some degree, made his Hero. To such as have read the first lines of this great poem with attention, it appears strange how any doubt, who was its Hero, could be raised.g By invoking the Muse to sing the wrath of Achilles; the direful spring of woes unnumbered to * Milton (B. i. I. 13) gives his poem the title of "advent❜rous song." the Greeks; and which dismissed the souls of many to untimely death, and the Infernal Regions;* Homer has not designated his Hero, or 'described his subject, with more precision, than will be found in Milton's introduction. "Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Yet no cavil has been founded on the prooemium of the Iliad. Who are the Heroes of the Iliad, and of Paradise lost? Homer answers us, Achilles: and Milton as explicitly informs us, Man. It is true this latter does not require the "Heavenly Muse" "to sing" of Man. But if from making his resentment the subject of a Poem, the Grecian Bard can be pronounced to have chosen Pelides for his Hero, Milton, from making human disobedience the theme of heroic song, may, with equal justice, be considered to have selected Man for his. Both Poets premise, in their exordia, and enlarge on, in their works, the consequences which respectively ensued, from the anger of Achilles, and diso * See the first lines of the Iliad, in the original, and in Pope's translation. + The title given by Milton himself to his Paradise lost. bedience of the Man. Calamities without number, death, precipitation into Hades of the souls of men, are, in both cases, the dismal and terrible effects. But while these cònsequences are, in the Iliad, confined to the inhabitants of Greece, and to little more than the period of a month, the world is the vast theatre of those woes which Milton sings; and their duration is from the beginning to the end of time. How dreary and cheerless is that necessitous resignation, which Homer offers to his countrymen, as a substitute for comfort! Διος δ' ετελείετο βέλη, But Milton, on the contrary, is misinterpreted by those, who represent his Hero, Man, as unsuccessful. The loss of Paradise he describes as a mere temporary forfeiture; and adverts to that bright sequel, by which it was to be regained. "With loss of Eden,-'TILL one greater Man Restore us; and regain the blissful Seat.” In this poem, MAN, instead of being represented as unfortunate, is described as gloriously successful; completely triumphing over his foe, by the intervention of the MESSIAH; whose mysterious union, in his own person, of the divine and human natures, renders him, as Man, a part of Milton's subject; thus communicating transcendant dignity to the Hero, and the Work.* * This union is, in terms, noticed by Milton, B. XII. 1, 388. Indeed, so signal has been the victory thus wonderfully obtained, that when permitted to discern this miracle, while it yet slumbered in the womb of Time, "Our Sire, Replete with joy and wonder, thus replied," to the Archangel who had removed the film from his obstructed sight; and who did not reprove the hesitation which his reply avowed: "Full of doubt I stand, Whether I should repent me now of sin By me done and occasioned; or rejoice Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring : Indeed this doubt seemed fully warranted by the -splendid picture which Michael had just drawn, of the state of things, on the second coming of the (humanly speaking) second Adam. "Then the Earth Shall all be Paradise: far happier place To assist in showing that not Adam, but Man, was Milton's Hero; not the individual, but collective Adam; Adam encreased and multiplied, and replenishing the earth; the following extracts from the fifth and ninth Books may be adduced, and the more relied |