_This Visible Universe_ is represented as built subsequently to, and consequently upon, the Fall of the Angels. You are to imagine this Earth of ours, the Moon, the Sun, the planets, the fixed stars, and the Milky Way—all that sight can reach—as enclosed in a hollow sphere: that is, firmly compacted. Satan alights upon its outside, and walks about it: and it serves to defend this enclosed visible Universe from the inroads of Chaos and primeval darkness. On the Earth, created in all the variety that we behold in it, excepting that the climates are all happy, our Two first Parents live in the Garden of Paradise, planted by God. The unimaginably vast enclosing Sphere hangs by a golden chain from the battlements of Heaven. SEWARD. Yes, sir, Poetry represents:— Things of the Mind by Things of the Body—the Spiritual Kingdom by the Kingdom of Matter, or of the Senses. TALBOYS. So the world of _metaphors_, which express the powers and acts of the mind by organs and actions of the body, or by images from nature. So, expressly, Allegory. NORTH. So, here, Spirits are clothed in visible human form. They walk, they fly with wings. Their disagreeing becomes a War waged with violent weapons. High and Low in space have a moral meaning. So _ocular_ light and darkness. Even the omnipresent God appears as having a local divine residence, and speaks with a voice. The Eternal Eye sees, the Eternal Ear hears. He sits, invisible through brightness, on a Throne. These modes of thinking, or of representing rather, follow our minds. We may, by a great effort of abstraction, throw them off. It is for a moment. They return, and hold habitual dominion in our thoughts. TALBOYS. Milton has boldly given such determinate Shape, as to constitute a seeming reality, without which he would be without power over us—who _know_ by our senses, _feel_ by our senses—_i. e._ habitually attach feelings moved by things inward to things outward; as our love, moved by a soul, to a face. NORTH. It is remarkable that Poetry, which above all human discourse calls out into our Consciousness the Divinity that stirs within us, at the same time casts itself with delight into the Corporeal Senses, as if the two Extremes met, or that either balanced the others. We see a reason in this. Passion cleaves to the perceptions of the Senses. Upon these impressions Imagination still feeds and lives. SEWARD. Moreover, Nature herself shows us Man, now half as the Child, now half as the victim, now half as the victor—of his place. TALBOYS. Therefore, great Poetry, that will most potentially represent Man’s innermost spirit, sets out, often, from his uttermost circumstances. In the Philoctetes, and Œdipus at Colonus, what pains to delineate place!