do not earn enough to pay for the caloric that burns them; mingles love and lust; loses sight of the distinctions between the moral and the intellectual, and ends his medley with the triumph of sensibility over reason and the endevilment of God Almighty.
Suppose proclamation were made for a great congress in Pandemonium. The infernal palace of Dis is lighted with the lurid flames; the hissing of the serpents, the wail of the lost, and the surging of the liquid lake ceases for the occasion. Suddenly the smoke of the pit clears away, the seats of the Satanic senators are revealed, and the roll is called. Sheva, the black destroyer of Ind, answers for himself and queen; Prometheus, the Titanic heaven-hater, and Demiurgus, the gnostic world-king of evil, are there! The arch-fiend of the Mysteries exalts his horn, and stamps with his iron hoof! The three-faced Emperor of Dante, with his mouthful of sinners, sends a tempest from his mighty wings to announce his presence! The leering Mephistopheles swaggers to his seat with a devil-may-care air! And Lucifer, Moloch, and Belial, and Beelzebub, and all the devils of romance, tradition, and history, fill the hall. But the great leader appears not yet! Suspense reigns in the abyss! Far off his coming shines! And Satan, the self-elected king of all, strides proudly to the highest seat! Then go up the shouts which shake hell's concave!
No caucus for speaker is needed now. No wrangle for the premiership; for no voice is heard till the ruined archangel has first spoken and commanded. He overtops them all, even as Jove the gods of Olympus, "in mien and gesture proudly eminent!"
Other languages have had worse specimens of depravity in their literature than ours. France, in her licentiousness, Germany, in her skepticism, Italy, in her abandonment, have more of the elements of positive evil; but it was reserved for the English muse to produce this unrivalled genius of evil; and while we deplore that industry intellect, and will are associated with so much badness, yet, thanks to John Milton, the freeman of English intellect, at once heroic and holy, he has created an impassable gulf between evil and good, and testing human action by these most radical distinctions, sings a "Paradise Regained" from the thraldom of Satan!
Thus much for our analysis of the Satanic element of literature.
