immortality, and their restoration to hope and peace.

Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated
dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem, all other
greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the highest
and noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with
whose actions the elements consented; on whose rectitude or
deviation of will, depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the
condition of all the future inhabitants of the globe.

Of the other agents in the poem, the chief are such as it is
irreverence to name on slight occasions. The rest were lower powers
-


Of which the least could wield
Those elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions;


powers, which only the control of Omnipotence restrains from laying
creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and
confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus
superior, so far as human reason can examine them, or human
imagination represent them, is the task which this mighty poet has
undertaken and performed.

In the examination of epic poems much speculation is commonly
employed upon the CHARACTERS. The characters in the "Paradise
Lost," which admit of examination, are those of angels and of man;