And drop down clouds of flowers? Did'st not thou bow Long might he look, and look, and long in vain, Might load his harvest in an empty wain, And beat the woods to find the poor oak's hungry grain. The effect of the address of Justice is given with great sublimity : She ended, and the heavenly Hierarchies The earth, and her firm basis quite in sunder, Flam'd all in just revenge, and mighty thunder, Heaven stole itself from earth by clouds that moisten'd under. The awful grandeur of celestial indignation seems to lift itself up in the majesty of these lines. The sudden preparation of the heavenly warriors, the clangor of arms and the uprising of the Deity himself, are splendid images, which are known to the reader of Paradise Lost not to have escaped the notice of Milton. The pause at the beginning of the stanza is a note of solemn preparation. The reappearance of Mercy in the midst of darkness and tumult is very picturesque; her face soon glimmers through, and paints the clouds with beauty As when the cheerful sun, elamping wide, Wrapt in a sable cloud from mortal eyes But soon as he again deshadow'd is, So Mercy once again herself displays, Out from her sister's cloud, and open lays Those sunshine looks whose beams would dim a thousand days. The poct then describes the charms of Mercy in verses sparkling as the "discoloured plumes" of the graces that attend upon her. His "golden phrases flie" in a stream of "choicest rhetorie." The gentleness of Mercy is contrasted with the haggard wretchedness of Repentance: Deeply, alas, impassioned she stood, To see a flaming brand toss'd up from hell, Crouching upon the ground in sackloth trust, The reader may remember the picture of Remorse in the introduction to the Mirrour for Magistrates: And first within the porch and jaws of hell, Fletcher wanted the energy of Sackville's iron pen. The impersonations of Dread, Revenge, Misery, and Death, placed by that writer in the Porch of Hell, have never been surpassed. They stand out in the ghastly reality of life, and fill the mind with a solemn visionary terror. When Mercy beheld the wretched form of Repentance sitting in "a dark valley" she sent to comfort her one of her loveliest attendants, "smiling Eirene*,' That a garland wears Of gilded olive on her fairer hairs. There is one exquisite line in the 82nd stanza, in allusion to the shepherds at the nativity: And them to guide unto their Master's home, The first canto concludes thus : Bring, bring, ye Graces, all your silver flaskets, So down she let her eyelids fall, to shine So beautifully does the poet strew with flowers the path of the infant Jesus. The second canto, Christ's Victorie on Earth, opens with the temptation of our Saviour in the wilderness. The fanciful prettiness of Fletcher contrasts upleasingly with the calm and dignified narrative of Milton, who, without departing from the text of Scripture, where it is said, Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, has invested it with a poetical character. Fletcher's picture of our Saviour upon "a grassy hillock laid," with "woody primroses befreckled," does not impress us like Milton's description of Him, who the "better to converse with solitude," entered the bordering desert wild, And with dark shades and rocks environ'd round, • Peace. + Mercy.. pursued "his holy meditations." desert dwells around us! The silence of the In the representation of our Lord's personal appearance Fletcher has manifested a still greater absence of judgment; it is principally formed from the Canticles, and in a style of fantastical colouring, peculiarly displeasing in a sacred poem. The author might, however, have pleaded the prevalent taste of the age in extenuation. Two nights the Saviour has passed in "the silent wilderness," making "the ground his bed, and his moist pillow grass," when he discovers afar off an old palmer, "come footing slowly," who entreats him to bless his lowly roof with his presence. Milton concurred with Fletcher in concealing the Prince of Darkness under the form of an aged man. This similitude appears to have been generally adopted. In La Vita et Passione di Christo, published at Venice in 1518, a wooden cut is prefixed to the Temptation, in which Satan is represented as an old ⚫man with a long beard, offering bread to our Lord. In Vischer's cuts to the Bible, as noticed by Thyer, the teinpter is an aged man, and Mr. Dunster has pointed out the same circumstance in the painting of the Temptation by Salvator Rosa*. They wander along together until they arrive at a dismal abode, the Cave of Despair E'er long they came near to a baleful bower, That gaping stood, all comers to devour, The ground no herbs but venomous did bear, • See Todd's Works of Milton, v. 4, preliminary observations, p. 18. Upon the roof the bird of sorrow sat, Th' unblessed house; there, on a craggy stone, Sunk in his skull, his starry eyes did glow, That made him deadly look, their glimpse did show His clothes were ragged clouts, with thorns pinn'd fast ; A thousand wild Chimeras would him cast: Some winged fury, straight the hasty foot, Eager to fly, cannot pluck up its root: The voice dies in the tongue, and mouth gapes without boot. And ever as he crept would squint aside, And then, alas! he should in chains for ever bide! The most material features of this description, remarks Mr. Headley*, are taken from Spenser's Fairy Queen, lib. i., canto 9, st. 33, 36. This, he adds, is a curious Select Specimens, vol. i. p. 81. |