tale, and Victory hovers over a general, or perches on a standard;
but Fame and Victory can do no more. To give them any real
employment, or ascribe to them any material agency, is to make them
allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by ascribing effects to
nonentity. In the "Prometheus" of AEschylus, we see Violence and
Strength, and in the "Alcestis" of Euripides we see Death, brought
upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no
precedents can justify absurdity.

Milton's allegory of Sin and Death is undoubtedly faulty. Sin is
indeed the mother of Death, and may be allowed to be the portress of
hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described
as real, and when Death offers him battle, the allegory is broken.
That Sin and Death should have shown the way to hell, might have
been allowed; but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a
bridge, because the difficulty of Satan's passage is described as
real and sensible, and the bridge ought to be only figurative. The
hell assigned to the rebellious spirits is described as not less
local than the residence of man. It is placed in some distant part
of space, separated from the regions of harmony and order by a
chaotic waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but Sin and Death worked up
a "mole of aggravated soil" cemented with asphaltus, a work too
bulky for ideal architects.

This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of
the poem; and to this there was no temptation but the author's
opinion of its beauty.

To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made. Satan
is with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is