These imperfect illustrations may serve to direct attention to a general law governing human thought and effort. Under this law, which extends to all departments of art, the pioneer in any branch of literature furnishes to a considerable extent the rules for that branch in all time to come. The world's ideal of epic poetry was formed after Homer, and his success has been a perpetual invitation ever since to other poets to walk in the same path. In fact, his plan was often imitated, but never, in the judgment of following generations, successfully, until Virgil, a man of vastly different temperament and genius, won a place in fame beside the master. The right-hand seat was still vacant, and remained so for twice the former period, until a recent century filled it with Milton,-worthy by the force of transcendent genius, had he been earliest in time, to have occupied the central throne. Virgil's imitation of his predecessor, though sometimes stigmatized as that of a copyist, did not prevent his producing a truly great and original work. Milton's imitation of both is less patent in the general plan, but is evident in a vast number of particulars, where the likeness is rather paraded as a merit than covered as a fault. The seventeenth century had not assed away before Patrick Hume, a Scotch schoolmáster, had laboriously and carefully annotated Paradise Lost, and, among other things, had cited and compared "the parallel passages and imitations of the most excellent Homer and Virgil." In the very first lines of the Iliad, the Eneid, and Paradise Lost, rhetoricians have found and commended the same virtues, the virtues of dignity, directness, and simplicity in the statement of the subject. To the ex ample set in the first of these masterpieces we are unquestionably indebted for what appears in the other two. Homer proposes to sing the wrath of Achilles and its calamitous consequences to the Greeks; Virgil to celebrate the wanderings and warlike deeds of Ancas; Milton to tell the story of Man's first disobedience and the temporary loss of Eden. With remarkable scntentiousness each of the poets announces his subject completely in the first period, and pretty definitely in the first line. Though in each of these works all the incidents are made to turn upon the event thus proposed, yet the. latter is far from being suggestive of the contents of the poem, or from giving a clear intimation of its majesty and sublimity. A single man is presented as the central figure of the poem, but nothing less than the interests of nations is large enough to meet the requirements of an epic. Indeed, the poets aim to give their story not merely a national but a world-wide importance. The Greeks, Trojans, and their several allies probably constituted almost the whole of mankind known to Homer; the Romans, for whom Virgil wrote, were, at the time of the writing, masters of the earth; while Milton's theme unquestionably concerns the fate of the whole human family. Each poet chos the loftiest subject of which he could conceive. Aclles was the representative of an heroic age and the type of that which was most highly esteemed among the Greeks of Homer's day,-physical strength and courage; Æneas was the creation of an age of philosophy and culture, and was distinguished less for his warlike exploits than for his piety towards the gods and his humane disposition; Adam, at first physically 1 perfect, though leading mainly an intellectual existence, is man as portrayed by Christianity, having in himself elements of great strength and of great weakness. Thus the heroes merit additional notice from being respectively typical of three widely different periods of social development. But an epic poct not only embraces in his proper domain the largest concerns of nations or of universal humanity, for he likewise makes excursions into the invisible world, revealing its secrets and showing to men how its beings act and speak. In reading the Iliad the heights of Olympus and the synod of the gods become as familiar to us as the walls of Troy and the embattled chieftains about them. Virgil employs celestial and infernal machinery scarcely less frequently, though more reverently, than Homer. In Paradise Lost all the characters except two are superhuman, and these two are so situated as almost to fall into the same category. The difficulty of consistently representing beings concerning whose attributes our information is so imperfect and cannot be improved by investigation must be apparent to all. This difficulty is much enhanced for Milton beyond what it was for Homer, because in those earlier ages the distinctions between gods and men were few, and though in Virgil's time these distinctions had by philosophical research been increased in number, there were not those differences between the spiritual and the natural which have become recognized under the tutelage of Christianity. An important question here meets us: Whence did Milton derive the ideas which he has used in describing spiritual beings and the invisible universe? The prin cipal sources may, we think, be reduced to threc. First and chief are the Sacred Scriptures. When script gathered together and arranged in a system, the knowledge of the Deity and of his spiritual creation there given is ample, and Milton has made use of a very large part of it. This source was inaccessible to Milton's pagan predecessors; and it supplics much of the information which personal investigation will not reach. The second. source is tradition, and this is of two kinds that which arose in connection with the Hebrew Scriptures, and that which was prevalent among theathen poets and philosophers, To the former he usually goes for instruction with reference to Heaven and the holy angels, and to the latter for information about the world of darkness and its inhabitants. In the third place, the poet makes use of philosophic reason. Milton's soul was filled with a lofty philosophy which his subject afforded him abundant opportunity to employ. The noblest moral sentiments, the loftiest apprehensions of spiritual worthiness, the grandest conceptions of the universe, cxalt and dignify the poem. The materials furnished from these sources are seized upon by poctic reason, or, as some may prefer, fancy, which connects the various facts into a harmonious tale, bridging over the intervals and conducting the reader easily from one great thought or event to another. It has been erroneously imagined that Milton had only the first few chapters of Genesis from which to derive the materials for this poem, but the fact is that he drew from every part of the Sacred Writings, and by an casy and common device he was able to gather tribute from the whole vast field of mythology. The |