"Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd
In secret, riding through the air she comes,
Lured by the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon
Ellipses at their charms."
_Paradise Lost_, II. 662.
Again, in Comus:--
"Some say, no evil thing that walks by night,
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time,
No goblin, or swart faery of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity."
How near these passages come to Shakespere, where he touches the same
string! And is it not clear that both poets exulted so in the
_beauty_ born among dark, earthy depths of fear, that they would
have rejected any and every horror which failed to contribute something
to the beautiful? Indeed, it may easily be that such high spirits accept
awful traditions and cruel theologies, merely because they possess a
transmuting touch which gives these things a secret and relative value
not intrinsically theirs; because they find here something to satisfy an
inward demand for immense expansions of thought, a desire for all sorts
of proportioned and balanced extremes. This is no superficial
suggestion, though it may seem so. But in such cases it is not the
positive horror and its direct effect which attract the poet: a deeper
symbolism and an effect both aesthetic and moral recommend the element
to him. With Milton, however, there follows a curious result. He
produces his manufactured myth of Sin and Death and his ludicrous Limbo
of Vanity with a gravity and earnestness as convincing as those which
urge home any part of his theme; yet we are aware that he is only making
poetic pretence of belief; so that a certain distrust of his sincerity
throughout creeps in, as we read.
Pages:
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39