Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/255

Rh should have shewn the way to hell, might have been allowed; but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, be cause the difficulty of Satan's passage is described as real and sensible, and the bridge ought to be only figurative. The hell as signed to the rebellious spirits is described as not less local than the residence of man. It is placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but Sin and Death worked up a mole of aggravated soil, cemented with asphaltus; a work too bulky for ideal architects.

This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the poem; and to this there was no temptation, but the author's opinion of its beauty.

To the conduct of the narrative some objection may be made. Satan is with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is suffered to go away unmolested. The creation of man is represented as the consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of the rebels; yet Satan mentions it as a report rife in heaven before his departure. Rh