Halleck's New English Literature by Reuben Post Halleck
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page 50 of 775 (06%)
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of its strong passages show a marked likeness to certain parts of
Milton's _Paradise Lost_. As some critics have concluded that Milton must have been familiar with the Caedmonian _Genesis_, it will be instructive to note the parallelism between the two poems. Caedmon's hell is "without light and full of flame." Milton's flames emit no light; they only make "darkness visible." The following lines are from the _Genesis_:-- "The Lord made anguish a reward, a home In banishment, hell groans, hard pain, and bade That torture house abide the joyless fall. When with eternal night and sulphur pains, Fullness of fire, dread cold, reek and red flames, He knew it filled."[15] With this description we may compare these lines from Milton:-- "A dungeon horrible, on all sides round. As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light; but rather darkness visible. ...a fiery deluge, fed With ever burning sulphur unconsumed."[16] In Caedmon "the false Archangel and his band lay prone in liquid fire, scarce visible amid the clouds of rolling smoke." In Milton, Satan is shown lying "prone on the flood," struggling to escape "from off the tossing of these fiery waves," to a plain "void of light," except what comes from "the glimmering of these livid flames." The older poet sings with forceful simplicity:-- |
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