vista of eternity before the poet's view, and leaving him unrestrained by prescriptive forms, while it freed him from the bonds of history, by giving him a place beyond its limits where he might transfer the heroic spirit of his age, and surround his heroes with supernatural agents, capable of raising for his action the highest admiration, subjected him to a far greater difficulty than any yet experienced by former poets; that of finding a subject, an action to fill those boundless realms of space, and call forth the energies of the spirits that people it. In considering the efforts which Christian poets have made to overcome this difficulty, and bridge the space between time and eternity, we shall find the great reason for not expecting another attempt, so successful as that made by Milton, arising from circumstances which have rendered the difficulty far more formidable since his time.

If we consider Tasso as having chosen a subject exhibiting the first development of the Christian heroic character, the poem of Dante will exhibit to us the second. Though not an epic, if viewed with reference to classical models whose aim and spirit were intrinsically different from any produced since, it will serve to show how the genius of Dante overcame the difficulty we have mentioned. His poem is unique, but produced under circumstances which would have rendered it, if the obstacles we have

alluded to had not opposed, a regular epic poem. It had its origin, like other sublime works of genius, in that desire, which is continually felt by the greatest minds, of giving to their age a copy of their own souls, and embodied the vague but universal spirit of the times when it was written. Its foundations were the popular creed of all Christendom; its supports, the deep reasonings and curious subtilties of countless theologians; and the scenes it represents, such as had long formed the dreams of many a monk on Vallombrosa, and perhaps entered into the sermon of every preacher in Europe.

Thus, although the circumstances which gave birth to Dante's poem, were, if we may so say, epic, yet the form which that poem took, shows the hostility which the Christian influence has towards the strictly classical model. That influence had already divested of its greatness every subject like that of Homer's or Virgil's, and turned upon himself, as an individual, the interest which man in their times had given to the outward world. It is in Dante's poem that we find man, as a physical being, first made the great point of epic interest. He is the first epic poet that exhibits the tendency we have so often alluded to. Favored beyond succeeding poets by the belief of his age, he was enabled to gather around man beings which his ignorance and fear shrouded in a sublimity not their own. That

strange world of beings, which the spirit creates for itself, has fled before the light of science; their forms no longer float in the fairy halls of earth, nor throng the untravelled regions of space. Their foot-prints, which our infant eyes saw impressed on this strange world of ours, and which once conjured up so many and wondrous shapes of beauty or terror, tell us now but of one creative spirit in whom we recognise our Father.

"The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,

The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms or watery depths, — all these have

vanished;

They live no longer in the faith of reason."

In Dante's time, Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven had long been considered as the separate states in which vice and virtue would meet their fitting reward. This belief had been taught by signs and emblems; and those of his day had been made to learn rather through the medium of their senses, than the silent arguments of conscience "accusing or excusing itself," what were the rewards and punishments of the future world. This material

development of Christianity it was Dante's mission to hold up to his age, and upon that age it must have had and did have its greatest influence; for it was produced by the power of materiality which is lessened with every advance of the Christian character. His poem plainly shows that the tendency which Christianity gave to poetry was not to the epic but to the dramatic form, and if it freed the heroic poet from difficulties to which he was before liable, it also exposed him to another, which, although evaded by Milton, must in the end prove fatal.

The next and highest development of the heroic character, yet shown in action, was that exhibited by the sublime genius of Milton. The mind had taken a flight above the materiality of Dante, and resting between that and the pure spirituality of the present day, afforded him a foundation for his action. He could not adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system, and he therefore raised his structure on the then debatable ground. The greatest objection, which our minds urge against his agents, is the incongruity between their spiritual properties and the human modes of existence, he was obliged to ascribe to them. But this is an objection of our own times, of men requiring a more spiritual representation of the mind's action, which, if it cannot be given, must preclude the possibility of another great epic. In fact, Milton's poem but confirms

more strongly the conclusion we drew from Dante's, that dramatic is supplying the place of epic interest. His long deliberation in the choice of a subject suited to his conceptions, shows the difficulty then lying in the way of an epic; and his first intention of making Paradise Lost a tragedy, shows whence this difficulty originated. The tendency of the mind, to which we have before alluded, and which had grown yet stronger in Milton's time than before, compelled him to make choice of the Fall of Man as his subject; a subject exclusive in its nature, being the only one which to our minds possesses a great epic interest. The interest of his poem depends upon the strong feeling we have of our own free agency, and of the almost infinite power it is capable of exercising. An intense feeling of this kind seems to have pervaded Milton's whole life, and by this he was probably directed in the choice of his theme. We find in his " Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing," written many years before the conception of his poem, a sentence confirming this supposition. "Many," says he, “there be that complain of Divine Providence for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose; for reason is but choosing. He had been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that