In this point of view we have always had a sympathy with the Cambridge mathematician who has been so much abused. He said, "After all, 'Paradise Lost' _proves_ nothing"; and various persons of poetical tastes and temperament have been very severe on the prosaic observation. Yet, "after all," he was right: Milton professed to prove something; he was too profound a critic--rather, he had too profound an instinct of those eternal principles of art which criticism tries to state--not to know that on such a subject he must prove something. He professed to deal with the great problem of human destiny: to show why man was created, in what kind of universe he lives, whence he came and whither he goes. He dealt of necessity with the greatest of subjects; he had to sketch the greatest of objects. He was concerned with infinity and eternity even more than with time and sense: he undertook to delineate the ways and consequently the character of Providence, as well as the conduct and the tendencies of man. The essence of success in such an attempt is to satisfy the religious sense of man; to bring home to our hearts what we know to be true; to teach us what we have not seen; to awaken us to what we have forgotten; to remove the "covering" from all people, and the "veil" that is spread over all nations: to give us, in a word, such a conception of things divine and human as we can accept, believe, and trust. The true doctrine of criticism demands what Milton invites,--an examination of the degree in which the great epic attains this aim. And if, in examining it, we find it necessary to use unusual illustrations, and plainer words than are customary, it must be our excuse that we do not think the subject can be made clear without them. The defect of "Paradise Lost" is that, after all, it is founded on a _political_ transaction. The scene is in heaven very early in the history of the universe, before the creation of man or the fall of Satan. We have a description of a court [Book v.]. The angels, "by imperial summons called," appear:-- "Under their hierarchs in orders bright Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced; Standards and gonfalons 'twixt van and rear Stream in the air, and for distinction serve Of hierarchies, or orders, and degrees." To this assemblage "th' Omnipotent" speaks:--