Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/558

552  burning incense to the English poets, and carrying back to Holland memories, and, alas! imitations of the great John Donne. Such a poet as Hooft, kindred in so many ways to Milton's own youth, divided as it was between Puritanism and the worship of beauty, between pietism and sensuous paganism, cannot but have attracted his learned and curious mind. Hence, one may well believe that immediately on the publication of Vondel's "Lucifer" a copy found its way to Milton; it may have been one of the last books he read with his own laded eyes. Four years afterwards — that is in 1658 — he is supposed to have commenced "Paradise Lost," and in 1667, thirteen years later than the Dutch drama, it saw the light.

We all know that, in the great English epic, the fall of the angels forms a vast episode in the story of the fall of man. In "Lucifer," the angels fill the foreground, and man is secondary and out of sight. The scene of the Dutch drama is laid in heaven itself, and never leaves it. Above, just beyond our vision, God remains apart, ineffable; below, the new-created human couple walk their paradise; but we never trespass on the domain of either. The persons are all angels, and when the curtain rises they are all blessed and serene. This apparent serenity, however, is the mask of a suspicion that has hardly ripened into ill-feeling. Belzebub and Belial are discovered in conversation when the drama opens; and we learn from the first that Apollyon has been sent by Lucifer, the stadholder of the states of Heaven, to make a closer investigation of Adam's bliss, and the condition in which God has placed him. Belial, leaning from the sheer heights, sees Apollyon rising from circle to circle, outspeeding the wind, and leaving a track of splendor behind him. He soars into the blue hyaline of heaven, while the celestial spheres almost pause upon their courses as they lean to gaze upon his countenance; he seems to them no angel, but a flying fire. At last, like a star, he alights on the rim of heaven, and bears in his hand a golden branch. Belzebub praises the blossom and fruit of this branch in very luscious alexandrines; its golden leaves are studded with aerial dew, and between them the jocund fruit glows with crimson and with gold. It would be a pity to rend it with the hands; the very sight of it fascinates the mouth. If such fruits can be eaten in Eden, the bliss of angels must give way to men. To this light hyperbole Apollyon responds eagerly and seriously, and his listeners are roused to enquire in what this felicity of man consists. He gives a very spirited and poetical account of his journey to the earth, and a vivid but rather rococo description of the wonders and beauties of the earthly paradise, which he praises as far more varied and exquisite than the heavenly. He passes to the subject most interesting to his hearers — the nature and functions of the inhabitants of this garden. It seems that at the moment that he fluttered on wide pinions over Eden, Adam was giving names to all the animals. Griffins and eagles were obedient to this man, and dragons and behemoth, and even leviathan, while the trees and bushes rang with melody. But of all marvels this has amazed him most, that the two inmates of the garden have power subtly to weave together body and soul, and create double angels, out of the same clay-flesh and bones. It is for this purpose, no doubt, that God has just made these two strange creatures, that he may reap from them a rich harvest of souls. Apollyon watches, with an agony of jealousy and longing, their joyous dalliance; and at last, with infinite pain, tears himself away from a scene in which he can have no part. But of all the beauties and wonders, he praises woman most, and grows so ecstatic that he declares, —

