_, x. 508) of the demons into serpents, who hiss their
Prince on his return from his embassy. Here it is not, I think,
so much the unnatural character of the incident itself, as its
gratuitousness which offends. It does not help us to conceive the
situation. A suggestion of Chateaubriand may therefore go some way
towards reconciling the reader even to this caprice of imagination.
It indicates, he says, the degradation of Satan, who, from the superb
Intelligence of the early scenes of the poem, is become at its close a
hideous reptile. He has not triumphed, but has failed, and is degraded
into the old dragon, who haunts among the damned. The braising of his
head has already commenced.
The bridge, again, which Sin and Death construct (_Paradise Lost_, x.
300), leading from the mouth of hell to the wall of the world, has a
chilling effect upon the imagination of a modern reader. It does not
assist the conception of the cosmical system which we accept in the
earlier books. This clumsy fiction seems more at home in the grotesque
and lawless mythology of the Turks, or in the Persian poet Sadi, who
is said by Marmontel to have adopted it from the Turk.
Pages:
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283