, that of weakening the effect, and obliterating
the chiselled features of the original. Let a reader take _Paradise
Regained_ not as a theme used as a canvas for poetical embroidery, an
opportunity for an author to show off his powers of writing, but as
a _bona fide_ attempt to impress upon the mind the story of the
Temptation, and he will acknowledge the concealed art of the genuine
epic poet, bent before all things upon telling his tale. It will still
be capable of being alleged that the story told does not interest;
that the composition is dry, hard, barren; the style as of set purpose
divested of the attributes of poetry. It is not necessary indeed that
an epic should be in twelve books; but we do demand in an epic poem
multiplicity of character and variety of incident. In _Paradise
Regained_ there are only two personages, both of whom are
supernatural. Indeed, they can scarcely be called personages; the
poet, in his fidelity to the letter, not having thought fit to open
up the fertile vein of delineation which was afforded by the human
character of Christ. The speakers are no more than the abstract
principles of good and evil, two voices who hold a rhetorical
disputation through four books and two thousand lines.
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