Such are the agonies into which we throw ourselves about trifles—our rage and disappointment at want of success in any favourite pursuit, and, our neglect of the means to ensure it. A Frenchman, under the penalty of half the chagrin at failure, would take just twice the pains and consideration to avoid it: but our morbid eagerness and blundering impetuosity, together with a certain _concreteness_ of imagination which prevents our dividing any operation into steps and stages, defeat the very end we have in view. The worst of these wilful mischiefs of our own making is, that they admit of no relief or intermission. Natural calamities or great griefs, as we do not bring them upon ourselves, so they find a seasonable respite in tears or resignation, or in some alleviating contrast or reflection: but pride scorns all alliance with natural frailty or indulgence; our wilful purposes regard every relaxation or moment’s ease as a compromise of their very essence, which consists in violence and effort: they turn away from whatever might afford diversion or solace, and goad us on to exertions as painful as they are unavailable, and with no other companion than remorse,—the most intolerable of all inmates of the breast; for it is constantly urging us to retrieve our peace of mind by an impossibility—the undoing of what is past. One of the chief traits of sublimity in Milton’s character of Satan is this dreadful display of unrelenting pride and self-will—the sense of suffering joined with the sense of power and ‘courage never to submit or yield’—and the aggravation of the original purpose of lofty ambition and opposition to the Almighty, with the total overthrow and signal punishment,—which ought to be reasons for its relinquishment. ‘His thoughts burn like a hell within him!’ but he gives them ‘neither truce nor rest,’ and will not even sue for mercy. This kind of sublimity must be thrown away upon the French critic, who would only think Satan a very ridiculous old gentleman for adhering so obstinately to his original pretensions, and not making the most of circumstances, and giving in his resignation to the ruling party! When Buonaparte fell, an English editor (of virulent memory) exhausted a great number of the finest passages in _Paradise Lost_, in applying them to his ill-fated ambition. This was an equal compliment to the poet and the conqueror: to the last, for having realized a conception of himself in the mind of his enemies on a par with the most stupendous creations of imagination; to the first, for having embodied in fiction what bore so strong a resemblance to, and was constantly brought to mind by, the fearful and imposing reality! But to return to our subject.