Rev. George Edmundson, M.A., of Middlesex, England, a graduate of Oxford, in a scholarly and painstaking work of two hundred pages, entitled "Milton and Vondel--a Literary Curiosity," next took up the subject, carrying the comparison not only into these two poems, but into all the works of Milton and into several others of Vondel.
Mr. Edmundson also discovered many wonderful coincidences and innumerable parallelisms in phrase and in imagery. Inspired with the motto, _Suum cuique honorem_, he has woven a tissue of most ingenious arguments to prove that Milton borrowed assiduously from the "Lucifer," the "Adam," the "Samson," and other works of Vondel.
Mr. Vance Thompson, in the New York _Musical Courier_ of December 15, 1897, has also added some interesting data to the subject.
With all the conclusions of these gentlemen we are not yet, however, prepared to agree. It is true we have not given the matter the comparative study that they have given it. We would wait, therefore, until we had thought more deeply about it before expressing our final opinion. However, we believe that a critical and impartial comparison of the two masterpieces will neither detract from the glory of Milton nor dim the grandeur of Vondel.
"Lucifer" is not the story "of man's first disobedience," though this is the outcome of the catastrophe. It is the drama of the fall of the angels. Yet man is the one subject of contention. Our first parents are, therefore, kept in the logical background of cause and effect. The creation of Adam, his bliss and his growing eminence, were the prime cause of the angelic conspiracy. The two-fold effect of the revolt was to the rebellious angels loss of Heaven, and to Adam loss of Eden.
Vondel, moreover, follows the doctrines of certain theologians that Christ would have become man even had Adam not sinned. Like Milton, he measures the scene of his heroic action with "the endless radius of infinitude," and by the artful use of terrestrial analogies conveys to the reader that idea of incomprehensible vastness that the transcendent nature of the subject demands. Vondel is, indeed, even more vague; the drama not giving opportunity for detailed description. Both are a wonderful contrast to the minute visual exactness of Dante.