"I acknowledge it," said I, "but is it as just as it is grand? _Le vrai est le seul beau._ Is it a fair and direct opposition between mind and matter? The poet could not have expressed the image more nobly, but might he not, out of the abundant treasures of his opulent mind have chosen it with more felicity? Is an act of murder, even of an usurper, as happily contrasted with the organization of matter, as the other beautiful instances I named, and which he goes on to select? The superiority of mental beauty is the point he is establishing, and his elaborate preparation leads you to expect all his other instances to be drawn from pure mental excellence. His other exemplifications are general, this is particular. They are a class, this is only a variety. I question if Milton, who was at least as ardent a champion for liberty, and as much of a party-man as Akenside, would have used this illustration. Milton, though he often insinuates a political stroke in his great poem, always, I think, generalizes. Whatever had been his principles, or at whatever period he had written, I question, when he wanted to describe the overthrow of authority by the rebel angels, if he would have illustrated it by Cromwell's seizing the mace, or the decapitation of Charles. Much less, if he would have selected those two instances as the triumph of mind over matter." "But," said Sir John, "you forget that Akenside professedly adopts the language of Cicero in his second Philippic." He then read the note beginning with, Caesare interfecto, etc. "True," said I; "I am not arguing the matter as a point of fact, but as a point of just application. I pass over the comparison of Brutus with Jove, which by the way would have become Tully better than Akenside, but which Tully would have perhaps thought too bold. Cicero adorns his oration with this magnificent description. He relates it as an event, the other uses it as an illustration of that to which I humbly conceive it does not exactly apply. The orator paints the violent death of a hero; the poet adopts the description of the violent death, or rather of the stroke which caused it, to illustrate the perfection of intellectual grandeur. After all, it is as much a party question as a poetical one. A question on which the critic will be apt to be guided in his decision by his politics rather than by his taste. The splendor of the passage, however, will inevitably dazzle the feeling reader, till it produce the common effect of excessive brightness, that of somewhat blinding the beholder." CHAPTER IX.