Mr. Archdeacon Williams, indeed, of the
Edinburgh Academy, has published an _octavo_ opinion upon the case, which
asserts that the moral of the Trojan war was (to borrow a phrase from
children) _tit for tat_. It was a case of retaliation for crimes against
Hellas, committed by Troy in an earlier generation. It may be so; Nemesis
knows best. But this moral, if it concerns the total expedition to the
Troad, cannot concern the 'Iliad,' which does not take up matters from so
early a period, nor go on to the final catastrophe of Ilium.
Now, as to the 'Paradise Lost,' it happens that there is--whether there
ought to be or not--a pure golden moral, distinctly announced, separately
contemplated, and the very weightiest ever uttered by man or realized by
fable. It is a moral rather for the drama of a world than for a human
poem. And this moral is made the more prominent and memorable by the
grandeur of its annunciation. The jewel is not more splendid in itself
than in its setting. Excepting the well-known passage on Athenian oratory
in the 'Paradise Regained,' there is none even in Milton where the
metrical pomp is made so effectually to aid the pomp of the sentiment.
Hearken to the way in which a roll of dactyles is made to settle, like the
swell of the advancing tide, into the long thunder of billows breaking for
leagues against the shore:
'That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence.
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