mene carrying off the three-headed dog of hell. Similar marvellous narratives formed the subject of two of the lost plays of Æschylus and the soul of his grand tragedy, the sublimest effort of the Greeian tragic muse, is the man-loving and Jove-despising Prometheus, with his will of adamant, unmoved amidst the thunders and lightnings of Almighy wrath!
We find the prototype of Milton's Satan in this sullen and implacable hater of heaven. Eschylus had a genius for painting with a terrible grace. He delighted to represent those old demi-gods—those dark powers of primitive nature, who, warring against the divine order, had been driven into Tartarus, beneath a better-regulated world. The emperor among Titans, even as Satan among the fallen angels, was Prometheus, half-fiend, yet benefactor of the creature, though invincible in his endless hatred of the Creator, The Titan suffers, with what a hopeless agony! yet proud above all pain—chained to the naked rock on the shore of the encircling ocean, conscious that he holds the secret on which rests the Almighy's throne; and whether silent in the energy of his will, or giving it expression to the condoling sea-nymphs and the wandering Io; and at last, when still leaving the throats of Jove, and amidst the storms of his unappeasable vengeance, he is swallowed up in the chaotic abyss, still defiant, still exultant!
Some have found in this demi-Satan a prototype of the sacrifice of the Savior. Prometheus suffered to give man perfection; in this be was like our Savior. But he did this contrary to the will of the Omnipotent; and here the comparison fails. In one case the throes of nature were sympathetic with the sacrifice of Deity. In the other, they wore Heaven's implements of torture! The resemblance between the chained Titan and the fallen son of the morning is so striking that Milton must have taken it as his model of Satanic intellectual energy.
The spirit of the Prometheus may be found burking in nearly every mythology and religion.
Although the province of the devil was well defined and limited In the Christian dispensation, yet even in its earlier literature we find a sect, who, having taken Prometheus as a type, erected a throne on
