If you will bear with a poetic excursion upon the subject, not to solve, but to illustrate, the difficulty; taKe it in a few lines, thus:
Thou sin of witchcraft! first-born child of crime!
Produced before the bloom of time;
Ambition’s maiden sin, in heaven conceived!
And who could have believed
Defilement could in purity begin,
And bright eternal day be soiled with sin?
Tell us, sly penetrating crime,
How cam’st thou here, thou fault sublime?
How didst thou pass the adamantine gate;
And into spirit thyself insinuate?
From what dark state? from what deep place?
From what strange, uncreated race?
Where was thy ancient habitation found,
Before void chaos heard the forming sound?
Wast thou a substance, or an airy ghost,
A vapor flying in the fluid waste
Of unconcocted air?
And how at first didst thou come there?
Sure there was once a time when thou wert not:
By whom wast thou created? and for what?
Art thou a steam from some contagious damp exhaled?
How should contagion be entailed
On bright seraphic spirits, and in a place,
Where all’s supreme, and glory fills the space?
No noxious vapor there could rise;
For there no noxious matter lies:
Nothing that’s evil could appear;
Sin never could seraphic glory bear;
The brightness of the eternal face,
Which fills as well as constitutes the place,
Would be a fire too hot for crime to bear,
‘T would calcine sin, or melt it into air.
How then did first defilement enter in?
Ambition, thou first vital seed of sin!
Thou life of death, how cam’st thou there?
In what bright form didst thou appear?
In what seraphic orb didst thou arise?
Surely that place admits of no disguise:
Eternal sight must know thee there,
And, being known, thou soon must disappear.
But since the fatal truth we know,
Without the matter whence, or manner how:
Thou highest superlative of sin,
Tell us thy nature, where thou didst begin?
The first degree of thy increase
Debauched the regions of eternal peace
And filled the breasts of loyal angels there
With the first treason, and infernal war.
Thou art the high extreme of pride,
And dost o’er lesser crimes preside;
Not for the mean attempt of vice designed,
But to embroil the world, and damn mankind.
Transforming mischief! how hast thou procured,
That loss that’s ne’er to be restored,
And made the bright seraphic morning star
In horrid monstrous shapes appear?
Satan, that, while he dwelt in glorious light,
Was always then as pure as he was bright,
That in effulgent rays of glory shone,
Excelled by eternal Light, by him alone,
Distorted now, and stript of innocence,
And banished with thee from the high preeminence.
How has the splendid seraph changed his face,
Transformed by thee, and like thy monstrous race!
Ugly as is the crime for which he fell;
Fitted by thee to make a local hell;
For such must be the place where either of you dwell.
Thus, as I told yon, I only moralize upon the subject; but, as to the difficulty. I must leave it as I find it, unless, as I hinted at first, I could prevail with Satan to set peri to paper, and write this part of his own history: no question, but he could let us into the secret; but, to be plain, I doubt I shall tell so many plain truths of the Devil in this history, and discover so many of his secrets, which it is not for his interest to have discovered, that before I have done, the Devil and I may not be so good friends as you may suppose we are; at least, not friends enough to obtain such a favor of him, though it be for public good; so we must be content till we come on the other side of the blueblanket, and then we shall know the whole story.
But now, though, as I said, I will not attempt to solve the difficulty, I may, I hope, venture to tell you, that there is not so much difficulty in it, as at first sight appears; and especially not so much as some people would make us believe: let us see how others are mistaken in it; perhaps that may help us a little in the inquiry; for to know what it is not. is one help towards knowing what it is.
Mr. Milton has indeed told us a great many merry things of the Devil, in a most formal, solemn manner; till, in short, he has made a good play of heaven and hell; and, no doubt, if he had lived in our times, he might have had it acted with our Pluto and Proserpine. He has made fine speeches both for God and the Devil; and a little addition might have turned it, d la moderne, into an Harlequin Dieu et Diable.
I confess I do not well know how far the dominion of poetry extends itself; it seems the buts and bounds of Parnassus are not yet ascertained; so that, for aught I know, by virtue of their ancient privilege, called licentia poetarum, there can be no blasphemy in verse; as some of our divines say, there can be no treason in the pulpit. But they that will venture to write that way, ought to be better satisfied about that point than I am.
Upon this foot, Mr. Milton, to grace his poem, and give room for his towering fancy, has gone a length beyond all that ever went before him, since Ovid in his Metamorphosis. He has indeed complimented God Almighty with a flux of lofty words, and great sounds; and has made a very fine story of the Devil; but he has made a mere je ne scai quoi of Jesus Christ. In one line he has him riding on a cherub, and in another sitting on a throne, both in the very same moment of action. In another place, he has brought him in making a speech to his saints, when it is evident he had none there; for we all know man was not created till a long while after; and nobody can be so dull as to say the angels may be called saints, without the greatest absurdity in nature. Besides, he makes Christ himself distinguish them, as in two several bands, and of differing persons and species, as to be sure they are.
“Stand still in bright array, ye saints,
Here stand.
Ye angels.”
Par. Lost. lib. vi. fol. 174.
So that Christ here is brought in drawing up his army before the last battle, and making a speech to them, to