This conversation is doubly interesting: interesting by its subject,
interesting by its interlocutors; for the subject is Milton, whilst the
interlocutors are _Southey_ and _Landor_. If a British gentleman, when
taking his pleasure in his well-armed yacht, descries, in some foreign
waters, a noble vessel, from the Thames or the Clyde, riding peaceably at
anchor--and soon after, two smart-looking clippers, with rakish masts,
bearing down upon her in company--he slackens sail: his suspicions are
slightly raised; they have not shown their teeth as yet, and perhaps all
is right; but there can be no harm in looking a little closer; and,
assuredly, if he finds any mischief in the wind against his countryman, he
will show _his_ teeth also; and, please the wind, will take up such a
position as to rake both of these pirates by turns. The two dialogists are
introduced walking out after breakfast, 'each his Milton in his pocket;'
and says Southey, 'Let us collect all the graver faults we can lay our
hands upon, without a too minute and troublesome research;'--just so;
there would be danger in _that_--help might put off from shore;--'not,'
says he, 'in the spirit of Johnson, but in our own.' Johnson we may
suppose, is some old ruffian well known upon that coast; and '_faults_'
may be a flash term for what the Americans call 'notions.' A part of the
cargo it clearly is; and one is not surprised to hear Landor, whilst
assenting to the general plan of attack, suggesting in a whisper 'that
they should abase their eyes in reverence to so great a man, without
absolutely closing them;' which I take to mean--that, without trusting
entirely to their boarders, or absolutely closing their ports, they should
depress their guns and fire down into the hold, in respect of the vessel
attacked standing so high out of the water. After such plain speaking,
nobody can wonder much at the junior pirate (Landor) muttering, 'It will
be difficult for us always to refrain.' Of course it will: _refraining_
was no part of the business, I should fancy, taught by that same
buccaneer, Johnson. There is mischief, you see, reader, singing in the
air--'miching malhecho'--and it is our business to watch it.
But, before coming to the main attack, I must suffer myself to be detained
for a few moments by what Mr. L. premises upon the 'moral' of any great
fable, and the relation which it bears, or _should_ bear, to the solution
of such a fable. Philosophic criticism is so far improved, that, at this
day, few people, who have reflected at all upon such subjects, but are
agreed as to one point: viz., that in metaphysical language the moral
of an epos or a drama should be _immanent_, not _transient_; or,
otherwise, that it should be vitally distributed through the whole
organization of the tree, not gathered or secreted into a sort of red
berry or _racemus_, pendent at the end of its boughs. This view Mr. Landor
himself takes, as a general view; but, strange to say, by some Landorian
perverseness, where there occurs a memorable exception to this rule (as in
the 'Paradise Lost'), in that case he insists upon the rule in its rigor--
the rule, and nothing _but_ the rule. Where, on the contrary, the rule
does really and obviously take effect (as in the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'),
there he insists upon an exceptional case. There _is_ a moral, in _his_
opinion, hanging like a tassel of gold bullion from the 'Iliad;'--and what
is it? Something so fantastic, that I decline to repeat it. As well might
he have said, that the moral of 'Othello' was--'_Try Warren's Blacking!_'
There is no moral, little or big, foul or fair, to the 'Iliad.' Up to the
17th book, the moral might seem dimly to be this--'Gentlemen, keep the
peace: you see what comes of quarrelling.' But _there_ this moral ceases;
--there is now a break of guage: the narrow guage takes place after this;
whilst up to this point, the broad guage--viz., the wrath of Achilles,
growing out of his turn-up with Agamemnon--had carried us smoothly along
without need to shift our luggage. There is no more quarrelling after Book
17, how then can there be any more moral from quarrelling? If you insist
on _my_ telling _you_ what is the moral of the 'Iliad,' I insist upon
_your_ telling _me_ what is the moral of a rattlesnake or the moral of a
Niagara. I suppose the moral is--that you must get out of their way, if
you mean to moralize much longer. The going-up (or anabasis) of the Greeks
against Troy, was a _fact;_ and a pretty dense fact; and, by accident, the
very first in which all Greece had a common interest. It was a joint-stock
concern--a representative expedition--whereas, previously there had been
none; for even the Argonautic expedition, which is rather of the darkest,
implied no confederation except amongst individuals. How could it? For the
Argo is supposed to have measured only twenty-seven tons: how she would
have been classed at Lloyd's is hard to say, but certainly not as A 1.
There was no state-cabin; everybody, demi-gods and all, pigged in the
steerage amongst beans and bacon. Greece was naturally proud of having
crossed the herring-pond, small as it was, in search of an entrenched
enemy; proud also of having licked him 'into Almighty smash;' this was
sufficient; or if an impertinent moralist sought for something more,
doubtless the moral must have lain in the booty. A peach is the moral of a
peach, and moral enough; but if a man _will_ have something better--a
moral within a moral--why, there is the peach-stone, and its kernel, out
of which he may make ratafia, which seems to be the ultimate morality that
_can_ be extracted from a peach. Mr. Archdeacon Williams, indeed, of the
Edinburgh Academy, has published an _octavo_ opinion upon the case, which
asserts that the moral of the Trojan war was (to borrow a phrase from
children) _tit for tat_. It was a case of retaliation for crimes against
Hellas, committed by Troy in an earlier generation. It may be so; Nemesis
knows best. But this moral, if it concerns the total expedition to the
Troad, cannot concern the 'Iliad,' which does not take up matters from so
early a period, nor go on to the final catastrophe of Ilium.
Now, as to the 'Paradise Lost,' it happens that there is--whether there
ought to be or not--a pure golden moral, distinctly announced, separately
contemplated, and the very weightiest ever uttered by man or realized by
fable. It is a moral rather for the drama of a world than for a human
poem. And this moral is made the more prominent and memorable by the
grandeur of its annunciation. The jewel is not more splendid in itself
than in its setting. Excepting the well-known passage on Athenian oratory
in the 'Paradise Regained,' there is none even in Milton where the
metrical pomp is made so effectually to aid the pomp of the sentiment.
Hearken to the way in which a roll of dactyles is made to settle, like the
swell of the advancing tide, into the long thunder of billows breaking for
leagues against the shore:
'That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence.'--
Hear what a motion, what a tumult, is given by the dactylic close to each
of the introductory lines! And how massily is the whole locked up into the
peace of heaven, as the aerial arch of a viaduct is locked up into
tranquil stability by its key-stone, through the deep spondaic close,
'And justify the ways of God to man.'
That is the moral of the Miltonic epos; and as much grander than any other
moral _formally_ illustrated by poets, as heaven is higher than earth.
But the most singular moral, which Mr. Landor anywhere discovers, is in
his own poem of '_Gebir_.' Whether he still adheres to it, does not
appear from the present edition. But I remember distinctly, in the
original edition, a Preface (now withdrawn) in which he made his
acknowledgments to some book read at a Welsh Inn for the outline of the
story; and as to the moral, he declared it to be an exposition of that
most mysterious offence, _Over-Colonization_. Much I mused, in my
youthful simplicity, upon this criminal novelty. What might it be? Could
I, by mistake, have committed it myself? Was it a felony, or a
misdemeanor?--liable to transportation, or only to fine and imprisonment?
Neither in the Decemviral Tables, nor in the Code of Justinian, nor the
maritime Code of Oleron, nor in the Canon Law, nor the Code Napoleon, nor
our own Statutes at large, nor in Jeremy Bentham, had I read of such a
crime as a possibility. Undoubtedly the vermin, locally called
_Squatters_, [1] both in the wilds of America and Australia, who pre-
occupy other men's estates, have latterly illustrated the logical
possibility of such an offence; but they were quite unknown at the era of
Gebir. Even Dalica, who knew as much wickedness as most people, would have
stared at this unheard of villany, and have asked, as eagerly as _I_
did--'What is it now? Let's have a shy at it in Egypt.' I, indeed, knew a
case, but Dalica did _not_, of shocking over-colonization. It was the
case, which even yet occurs on out-of-the-way roads, where a man, unjustly
big, mounts into the inside of a stage-coach already sufficiently crowded.
In streets and squares, where men could give him a wide berth, they had
tolerated the injustice of his person; but now, in a chamber so confined,
the length and breadth of his wickedness shines revealed to every eye. And
if the coach should upset, which it would not be the less likely to do for
having _him_ on board, somebody or other (perhaps myself) must lie
beneath this monster, like Enceladus under Mount Etna, calling upon Jove
to come quickly with a few thunderbolts and destroy both man and mountain,
both _succubus_ and _incubus_, if no other relief offered. Meantime, the
only case of over-colonization notorious to all Europe, is that which some
German traveller (Riedesel, I think) has reported so eagerly, in ridicule
of our supposed English credulity; viz.--the case of the foreign swindler,
who advertised that he would get into a quart bottle, filled Drury Lane,
pocketed the admission money, and decamped, protesting (in his adieus to
the spectators) that' it lacerated his heart to disappoint so many noble
islanders; but that on his next visit he would make full reparation by
getting into a vinegar cruet.' Now, here certainly was a case of over-
colonization, not perpetrated, but meditated. Yet, when one examines this
case, the crime consisted by no means in doing it, but in _not_ doing it;
by no means in getting into the bottle, but in _not_ getting into it. The
foreign contractor would have been probably a very unhappy man, had he
fulfilled his contract by over-colonizing the bottle, but he would have
been decidedly a more virtuous man. He would have redeemed his pledge;
and, if he had even died in the bottle, we should have honored him as a
'_vir bonus, cum mala fortuna compositus_;' as a man of honor matched in
single duel with calamity, and also as the best of conjurers. Over-
colonization, therefore, except in the one case of the stage-coach, is
apparently no crime; and the offence of King Gebir, in my eyes, remains a
mystery to this day.
What next solicits notice is in the nature of a digression: it is a kind
of parenthesis on Wordsworth.
'_Landor._--When it was a matter of wonder how Keats, who was ignorant of
Greek, could have written his "Hyperion," Shelley, whom envy never
touched, gave as a reason--"because he _was_ a Greek." Wordsworth, being
asked his opinion of the same poem, called it, scoffingly, "a pretty piece
of paganism;" yet he himself, in the best verses he ever wrote--and
beautiful ones they are--reverts to the powerful influence of the "pagan
creed."'
Here are nine lines exactly in the original type. Now, nine tailors are
ranked, by great masters of algebra, as = one man; such is the received
equation; or, as it is expressed, with more liveliness, in an old English
drama, by a man who meets and quarrels with eighteen tailors--'Come, hang
it! I'll fight you _both_.' But, whatever be the algebraic ratio of
tailors to men, it is clear that nine Landorian lines are not always equal
to the delivery of one accurate truth, or to a successful conflict with
three or four signal errors. Firstly--Shelley's reason, if it ever was
assigned, is irrelevant as regards any question that must have been
intended. It could not have been meant to ask--Why was the 'Hyperion' so
Grecian in its spirit? for it is anything but Grecian. We should praise it
falsely to call it so; for the feeble, though elegant, mythology of Greece
was incapable of breeding anything so deep as the mysterious portents
that, in the 'Hyperion,' run before and accompany the passing away of
divine immemorial dynasties. Nothing can be more impressive than the
picture of Saturn in his palsy of affliction, and of the mighty goddess
his grand-daughter, or than the secret signs of coming woe in the palace
of Hyperion. These things grew from darker creeds than Greece had ever
known since the elder traditions of Prometheus--creeds that sent down
their sounding plummets into far deeper wells within the human spirit.
What had been meant, by the question proposed to Shelley, was no doubt--
How so young a man as Keats, not having had the advantage of a regular
classical education, could have been so much at home in the details of the
_elder_ mythology? Tooke's 'Pantheon' might have been obtained by
favor of any English schoolboy, and Dumoustier's '_Lettres a Emile sur
la Mythologie_' by favor of very many young ladies; but these,
according to my recollection of them, would hardly have sufficed. Spence's
'_Polymetis_,' however, might have been had by favor of any good
library; and the '_Bibliotheca_' of Apollodorus, who is the cock of
the walk on this subject, might have been read by favor of a Latin
translation, supposing Keats really unequal to the easy Greek text. There
is no wonder in the case; nor, if there had been, would Shelley's kind
remark have solved it. The _treatment_ of the facts must, in any
case, have been due to Keats's genius, so as to be the same whether he had
studied Greek or not: the _facts_, apart from the treatment, must in
any case have been had from a book. Secondly--Let Mr. Landor rely upon it
--that Wordsworth never said the thing ascribed to him here as any formal
judgment, or what Scottish law would call _deliverance_, upon the
'Hyperion.' As to what he might have said incidentally and collaterally;
the meaning of words is so entirely affected by their position in a
conversation--what followed, what went before--that five words dislocated
from their context never would be received as evidence in the Queen's
Bench. The court which, of all others, least strictly weighs its rules of
evidence, is the female tea-table; yet even that tribunal would require
the deponent to strengthen his evidence, if he had only five detached
words to produce. Wordsworth is a very proud man as he has good reason to
be; and perhaps it was I myself, who once said in print of him--that it is
not the correct way of speaking, to say that Wordsworth is as proud as
Lucifer; but, inversely, to say of Lucifer that some people have conceived
him to be as proud as Wordsworth. But, if proud, Wordsworth is not
haughty, is not ostentatious, is not anxious for display, is not arrogant,
and, least of all, is he capable of descending to envy. Who or what is it
that _he_ should be envious of? Does anybody suppose that Wordsworth
would be jealous of Archimedes if he now walked upon earth, or Michael
Angelo, or Milton? Nature does not repeat herself. Be assured she will
never make a second Wordsworth. Any of us would be jealous of his own
duplicate; and, if I had a _doppelganger_, who went about personating
me, copying me, and pirating me, philosopher as I am, I might (if the
Court of Chancery would not grant an injunction against him) be so far
carried away by jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder upon his
carcass; and no great matter as regards HIM. But it would be a sad thing
for _me_ to find myself hanged; and for what, I beseech you? for
murdering a sham, that was either nobody at all, or oneself repeated once
too often. But if you show to Wordsworth a man as great as himself, still
that great man will not be much _like_ Wordsworth--the great man will
not be Wordsworth's _doppelganger_. If not _impar_ (as you say) he will be
_dispar_; and why, then, should Wordsworth be jealous of him, unless he is
jealous of the sun, and of Abd el Kader, and of Mr. Waghorn--all of whom
carry off a great deal of any spare admiration which Europe has to dispose
of. But suddenly it strikes me that we are all proud, every man of us; and
I daresay with some reason for it, 'be the same more or less.' For I never
came to know any man in my whole life intimately, who could not do
something or other better than anybody else. The only man amongst us that
is thoroughly free from pride, that you may at all seasons rely on as a
pattern of humility, is the pickpocket. That man is so admirable in his
temper, and so used to pocketing anything whatever which Providence sends
in his way, that he will even pocket a kicking, or anything in that line
of favors which you are pleased to bestow. The smallest donations are by
him thankfully received, provided only that you, whilst half-blind with
anger in kicking him round a figure of eight, like a dexterous skater,
will but allow _him_ (which is no more than fair) to have a second 'shy'
at your pretty Indian pocket-handkerchief, so as to convince you, on
cooler reflection, that he does not _always_ miss. Thirdly--Mr. Landor
leaves it doubtful what verses those are of Wordsworth's which celebrate
the power 'of the Pagan creed;' whether that sonnet in which Wordsworth
wishes to exchange for glimpses of human life, _then and in those
circumstances_, 'forlorn,' the sight
'----Of Proteus coming from the sea,
And hear old Triton wind his wreathed horn;'
whether this, or the passage on the Greek mythology in 'The Excursion.'
Whichever he means, I am the last man to deny that it is beautiful, and
especially if he means the latter. But it is no presumption to deny firmly
Mr. Landor's assertion, that these are 'the best verses Wordsworth ever
wrote.' Bless the man!
'There are a thousand such elsewhere,
As worthy of your wonder:'--
Elsewhere, I mean, in Wordsworth's poems. In reality it is
_impossible_ that these should be the best; for even if, in the
executive part, they were so, which is not the case, the very nature of
the thought, of the feeling, and of the relation, which binds it to the
general theme, and the nature of that theme itself, forbid the possibility
of merits so high. The whole movement of the feeling is fanciful: it
neither appeals to what is deepest in human sensibilities, nor is meant to
do so. The result, indeed, serves only to show Mr. Landor's slender
acquaintance with Wordsworth. And what is worse than being slenderly
acquainted, he is erroneously acquainted even with these two short
breathings from the Wordsworthian shell. He mistakes the logic. Wordsworth
does not celebrate any power at all in Paganism. Old Triton indeed! he's
little better, in respect of the terrific, than a mail-coach guard, nor
half as good, if you allow the guard his official seat, a coal-black
night, lamps blazing back upon his royal scarlet, and his blunderbuss
correctly slung. Triton would not stay, I engage, for a second look at the
old Portsmouth mail, as once I knew it. But, alas! better things than ever
stood on Triton's pins are now as little able to stand up for themselves,
or to startle the silent fields in darkness, with the sudden flash of
their glory--gone before it had fall come--as Triton is to play the
Freyschutz chorus on his humbug of a horn. But the logic of Wordsworth is
this--not that the Greek mythology is potent; on the contrary, that it is
weaker than cowslip tea, and would not agitate the nerves of a hen
sparrow; but that, weak as it is--nay, by means of that very weakness--it
does but the better serve to measure the weakness of something which
_he_ thinks yet weaker--viz. the death-like torpor of London society
in 1808, benumbed by conventional apathy and worldliness--
'Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.'
This seems a digression from Milton, who is properly the subject of this
colloquy. But, luckily, it is not one of _my_ sins. Mr. Landor is lord
within the house of his own book; he pays all accounts whatever; and
readers that have either a bill, or bill of exceptions, to tender against
the concern, must draw upon _him_. To Milton he returns upon a very
dangerous topic indeed--viz. the structure of his blank verse. I know of
none that is so trying to a wary man's nerves. You might as well tax
Mozart with harshness in the divinest passages of 'Don Giovanni,' as
Milton with any such offence against metrical science. Be assured, it is
yourself that do not read with understanding, not Milton that by
possibility can be found deaf to the demands of perfect harmony. You are
tempted, after walking round a line threescore times, to exclaim at last--
'Well, if the Fiend himself should rise up before me at this very moment,
in this very study of mine, and say that no screw was loose in that line,
then would I reply--'Sir, with submission, you are----.' 'What!' suppose
the Fiend suddenly to demand in thunder; 'what am I?' 'Horribly wrong,'
you wish exceedingly to say; but, recollecting that some people are
choleric in argument, you confine yourself to the polite answer-'That,
with deference to his better education, you conceive him to lie;'--that's
a bad word to drop your voice upon in talking with a fiend, and you hasten
to add--'under a slight, a _very_ slight mistake.' Ay, you might venture
on that opinion with a fiend. But how if an angel should undertake the
case? And angelic was the ear of Milton. Many are the _prima facie_
anomalous lines in Milton; many are the suspicious lines, which in many a
book I have seen many a critic peering into, with eyes made up for
mischief, yet with a misgiving that all was not quite safe, very much
like an old raven looking down a marrow-bone. In fact, such is the
metrical skill of the man, and such the perfection of his metrical
sensibility, that, on any attempt to take liberties with a passage of his,
you feel as when coming, in a forest, upon what seems a dead lion; perhaps
he may _not_ be dead, but only sleeping; nay, perhaps he may _not_ be
sleeping, but only shamming. And you have a jealousy, as to Milton, even
in the most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that, after all, there
may be a plot in it. You may be put down with shame by some man reading
the line otherwise, reading it with a different emphasis, a different
caesura, or perhaps a different suspension of the voice, so as to bring
out a new and self-justifying effect. It must be added, that, in
reviewing Milton's metre, it is quite necessary to have such books as
'Nare's English Orthoepy' (_in a late edition_), and others of that
class, lying on the table; because the accentuation of Milton's age was,
in many words, entirely different from ours. And Mr. Landor is not free
from some suspicion of inattention as to this point. Over and above his
accentual difference, the practice of our elder dramatists in the
resolution of the final _tion_ (which now is uniformly pronounced
_shon_), will be found exceedingly important to the appreciation of a
writer's verse. Contribution, which now is necessarily pronounced as a
word of four syllables, would then, in verse, have five, being read into
con-tri-bu-ce-on. Many readers will recollect another word, which for
years brought John Kemble into hot water with the pit of Drury Lane. It
was the plural of the word ache. This is generally made a dissyllable by
the Elizabethan dramatists; it occurs in the 'Tempest.' Prospero says--
'I'll fill thy bones with aches.'
What follows, which I do not remember _literatim_, is such metrically
as to _require_ two syllables for aches. But how, then, was this to
be pronounced? Kemble thought _akies_ would sound ludicrous; _aitches_
therefore he called it: and always the pit howled like a famished
_menagerie_, as they did also when he chose (and he constantly chose) to
pronounce _beard_ like _bird_. Many of these niceties must be known,
before a critic can ever allow _himself_ to believe that he is right in
_obelizing_, or in marking with so much as a ? any verse whatever of
Milton's. And there are some of these niceties, I am satisfied, not even
yet fully investigated.
It is, however, to be borne in mind, after all allowances and provisional
reservations have been made that Bentley's hypothesis (injudiciously as it
was managed by that great scholar) has really a truth of fact to stand
upon. Not only must Milton have composed his three greatest poems, the two
'Paradises, and the 'Samson,' in a state of blindness--but subsequently,
in the correction of the proofs, he must have suffered still more from
this conflict with darkness and, consequently, from this dependence upon
careless readers. This is Bentley's case: as lawyers say: 'My lord, that
is my case.' It is possible enough to write correctly in the dark, as I
myself often do, when losing or missing my lucifers--which, like some
elder lucifers, are always rebelliously straying into place where they
_can_ have no business. But it is quite impossible to _correct a proof_ in
the dark. At least, if there _is_ such an art, it must be a section of the
black art. Bentley gained from Pope that admirable epithet of _slashing,
['the ribbalds--from slashing Bentley down to piddling Theobalds_,' i.e.
_Tibbulds_ as it was pronounced], altogether from his edition of the
'Paradise Lost.' This the doctor founded on his own hypothesis as to the
advantage taken of Milton's blindness; and corresponding was the havoc
which he made of the text. In fact, on the really just allegation that
Milton must have used the services of an amanuensis; and the plausible one
that this amanuensis, being often weary of his task, would be likely to
neglect punctilious accuracy; and the most improbable allegation that this
weary person would also be very conceited, and add much rubbish of his
own; Bentley resigned himself luxuriously, without the whisper of a
scruple, to his own sense of what was or was not poetic, which sense
happened to be that of the adder for music. The deaf adder heareth not
though the musician charm ever so wisely. No scholarship, which so far
beyond other men Bentley had, could gain him the imaginative sensibility
which, in a degree so far beyond average men, he wanted. Consequently, the
world never before beheld such a scene of massacre as his 'Paradise Lost'
exhibited. He laid himself down to his work of extermination like the
brawniest of reapers going in steadily with his sickle, coat stripped off,
and shirt sleeves tucked up, to deal with an acre of barley. One duty, and
no other, rested upon _his_ conscience; one voice he heard--Slash away,
and hew down the rotten growths of this abominable amanuensis. The carnage
was like that after a pitched battle. The very finest passages in every
book of the poem were marked by italics, as dedicated to fire and
slaughter. 'Slashing Dick' went through the whole forest, like a woodman
marking with white paint the giant trees that must all come down in a
month or so. And one naturally reverts to a passage in the poem itself,
where God the Father is supposed to say to his Filial assessor on the
heavenly throne, when marking the desolating progress of Sin and Death,--
'See with what havoc these fell dogs advance
To ravage this fair world.'
But still this inhuman extravagance of Bentley, in following out his
hypothesis, does not exonerate _us_ from bearing in mind so much
truth as that hypothesis really must have had, from the pitiable
difficulties of the great poet's situation.
My own opinion, therefore, upon the line, for instance, from 'Paradise
Regained,' which Mr. Landor appears to have indicated for the reader's
amazement, viz.:--
'As well might recommend
_Such solitude before choicest society_,'
is--that it escaped revision from some accident calling off the ear of
Milton whilst in the act of having the proof read to him. Mr. Landor
silently prints it in italics, without assigning his objection; but, of
course that objection must be--that the line has one foot too much. It is
an Alexandrine, such as Dryden scattered so profusely, without asking
himself why; but which Milton never tolerates except in the choruses of
the Samson.
'_Not difficult, if thou hearken to me_'--
is one of the lines which Mr. Landor thinks that 'no authority will
reconcile' to our ears. I think otherwise. The caesura is meant to fall
not with the comma after _difficult _, but after _thou_; and there is a
most effective and grand suspension intended. It is Satan who speaks--
Satan in the wilderness; and he marks, as he wishes to mark, the
tremendous opposition of attitude between the two parties to the
temptation.
'Not difficult if thou----'
there let the reader pause, as if pulling up suddenly four horses in
harness, and throwing them on their haunches--not difficult if thou (in
some mysterious sense the son of God); and then, as with a burst of
thunder, again giving the reins to your _quadriga_,
'----hearken to me:'
that is, to me, that am the Prince of the Air, and able to perform all my
promises for those that hearken to any temptations.
Two lines are cited under the same ban of irreconcilability to our ears,
but on a very different plea. The first of these lines is--
'_Launcelot, or Pellias, or Pellinore;_'