When such a being voyages through space it is no hyperbole to compare him to a whole fleet, judiciously shown at such distance as to suppress every minute detail that could diminish the grandeur of the image—­

   “As when far off at sea a fleet descried
    Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
    Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
    Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
    Their spicy drugs:  they on the trading flood,
    Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,
    Ply stemming nightly towards the pole:  so seemed
    Far off the flying Fiend.”

These similes, and an infinity of others, are grander than anything in Homer, who would, however, have equalled them with an equal subject.  Dante’s treatment is altogether different; the microscopic intensity of perception in which he so far surpasses Homer and Milton affords, in our opinion, no adequate compensation for his inferiority in magnificence.  That the theme of “Paradise Lost” should have evoked such grandeur is a sufficient compensation for its incurable flaws and the utter breakdown of its ostensible moral purpose.  There is yet another department of the poem where Milton writes as he could have written on nothing else.  The elements of his under-world are comparatively simple, fire and darkness, fallen angels now huddled thick as leaves in Vallombrosa; anon,

“A forest huge of spears and thronging helms,”

charming their painful steps over the burning marl by

            “The Dorian mood
    Of flutes and soft recorders;”

the dazzling magnificence of Pandemonium; the ineffable welter of Chaos; proudly eminent over all like a tower, the colossal personality of Satan.  The description of Paradise and the story of Creation, if making less demand on the poet’s creative power, required greater resources of knowledge, and more consummate skill in combination.  Nature must yield up her treasures, whatever of fair and stately the animal and vegetable kingdoms can afford must be brought together, blended in gorgeous masses or marshalled in infinite procession.  Here Milton is as profuse as he has hitherto been severe, and with good cause; it is possible to make Hell too repulsive for art, it is not possible to make Eden too enchanting.  In his descriptions of the former the effect is produced by a perpetual succession of isolated images of awful majesty; in his Paradise and Creation the universal landscape is bathed in a general atmosphere of lustrous splendour.  This portion of his work is accordingly less great in detached passages, but is little inferior in general greatness.  No less an authority than Tennyson, indeed, expresses a preference for the “bowery loneliness” of Eden over the “Titan angels” of the “deep-domed Empyrean.”  If this only means that Milton’s Eden is finer than his war in heaven, we must concur; but if a wider application be intended, it does seem to us that his Pandemonium exalts him to a greater height above every other poet than his Paradise exalts him above his predecessor, and in some measure, his exemplar, Spenser.