AN ORIGINAL AND EXHAUSTIVE COMMENTARY ON CREATION AND PROVIDENCE ALIKE BY AN OCTOGENARIAN LAYMAN EDITED BY HENRY WALTER THOMSON, Esq. LONDON JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET 1883 [All rights reserved] ADVERTISEMENT. THE writer's appetite for reflection, fed, as it has been, by the weakness of his eyes as against artificial light, has, at this last moment, suggested, and that in the case of a literally blind poet, an unique parallelism, of which neither pride ab intra nor vanity ab extra has hitherto dreamt. Promptly applying to this instance the unfailing test of induction, he sees that Milton symmetrises the initiation of his "Paradise Lost" in 1662 and the completion of his "Paradise Regained" in 1666 respectively with 1883, as the current epoch of Emmanuel's chain, and with 1887, as the multifariously specific culmination of Enoch's,-the common interval being 221 years or 13 times 17. May not, then, the writer, at least from his own point of view, identify the touching invocation of "what in me is dark illumine," with its naturally maturing fulfilment? Meanwhile, to moderate the immeasurable distance between the two analogues, he cheerfully concedes, with regard to the workmanship, an infinitely loftier superiority than what he may venture to claim on the score of material, whether backwards beyond the very germ of chaos or forwards to the consummation of all things. Even here, however, has not this advantage, such as it is, been more than neutralised by Milton's other productions as distinguished from his sacred epics, notably through his eleven years of the Latin Secretaryship of the Commonwealth as already the unquestioned and unquestionable arbitress of Europe? To wind up, then, the boundless contrast, since Emmanuel, in these degenerate days, can no longer address the nations of the continent in Rome's still imperial dialect, the writer will so far relax the foreign incidence of his copyright as to facilitate, to the utmost, the commensurability of his volume as well with the peoples all round as with the ages themselves, past, present and future. A. O. L. April 30, 1883. |