nation. But we do not generally dwell on this excellence of the 'Paradise
Lost', because it seems attributable to Christianity itself;--yet in fact
the interest is wider than Christendom, and comprehends the Jewish and
Mohammedan worlds;--nay, still further, inasmuch as it represents the
origin of evil, and the combat of evil and good, it contains matter of
deep interest to all mankind, as forming the basis of all religion, and
the true occasion of all philosophy whatsoever.

The FALL of Man is the subject; Satan is the cause; man's blissful state
the immediate object of his enmity and attack; man is warned by an angel
who gives him an account of all that was requisite to be known, to make
the warning at once intelligible and awful; then the temptation ensues,
and the Fall; then the immediate sensible consequence; then the
consolation, wherein an angel presents a vision of the history of men
with the ultimate triumph of the Redeemer. Nothing is touched in this
vision but what is of general interest in religion; any thing else would
have been improper.

The inferiority of Klopstock's 'Messiah' is inexpressible. I admit the
prerogative of poetic feeling, and poetic faith; but I cannot suspend
the judgment even for a moment. A poem may in one sense be a dream, but
it must be a waking dream. In Milton you have a religious faith combined
with the moral nature; it is an efflux; you go along with it. In
Klopstock there is a wilfulness; he makes things so and so. The feigned
speeches and events in the 'Messiah' shock us like falsehoods; but nothing
of that sort is felt in the 'Paradise Lost', in which no particulars, at
least very few indeed, are touched which can come into collision or
juxta-position with recorded matter.

But notwithstanding the advantages in Milton's subject, there were