Spenser, on the contrary, is very apt to pry into mysteries which do not belong to the Muses. Milton’s voluptuousness is not lascivious or sensual. He describes beautiful objects for their own sakes. Spenser has an eye to the consequences, and steeps everything in pleasure, often not of the purest kind. The want of passion has been brought as an objection against Milton, and his _Adam_ and _Eve_ have been considered as rather insipid personages, wrapped up in one another, and who excite but little sympathy in any one else. We do not feel this objection ourselves: we are content to be spectators in such scenes, without any other excitement. In general, the interest in Milton is essentially epic, and not dramatic; and the difference between the epic and the dramatic is this, that in the former the imagination produces the passion, and in the latter the passion produces the imagination. The interest of epic poetry arises from the contemplation of certain objects in themselves grand and beautiful: the interest of dramatic poetry from sympathy with the passions and pursuits of others; that is, from the practical relations of certain persons to certain objects, as depending on accident or will. The Pyramids of Egypt are epic objects; the imagination of them is necessarily attended with passion; but they have no dramatic interest, till circumstances connect them with some human catastrophe. Now, a poem might be constructed almost entirely of such images, of the highest intellectual passion, with little dramatic interest; and it is in this way that Milton has in a great measure constructed his poem. That is not its fault, but its excellence. The fault is in those who have no idea but of one kind of interest. But this question would lead to a longer discussion than we have room for at present. We shall conclude these extracts from Milton with two passages, which have always appeared to us to be highly affecting, and to contain a fine discrimination of character: ‘O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death! Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades, Fit haunt of Gods? Where I had hope to spend, Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day That must be mortal to us both? O flowers, That never will in other climate grow, My early visitation and my last At even, which I bred up with tender hand From the first opening bud, and gave ye names, Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank Your tribes, and water from th’ ambrosial fount? Thee, lastly, nuptial bow’r, by me adorn’d With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee How shall I part, and whither wander down Into a lower world, to this obscure And wild? how shall we breathe in other air Less pure, accustom’d to immortal fruits?’