The appearance of Torquato's "Rinaldo" was not only the dawn of his own day of glory, but the dawn of a new day in the literature of his country. The age of absolute romance was succeeded by one of transition in public taste, during which what was most truly wonderful and meritoriously captivating in the wild fictions of knight-errantry was engrafted upon a stock of classical invention, design, and execution. This was in fact the nearest recurrence that could be made in epic poetry to the models of the ancients,--for the mythological machinery of Greece and Rome could not again be revived in poetry any more than in religion; Jupiter could never again resume his thunder and his throne; Neptune his trident; Pallas her ægis, or Venus her cestus; nor could the supernatural interposition of the supreme God, the agency of angels and sainted spirits, or of Saturn and his legions, be extensively employed (without constructive irreverence, not to say rank blasphemy) as auxiliaries in heroic fable, disguised as true history, or true history disguised as heroic fable. Tasso, Marino, Camoëns, and Milton have indeed presumed upon the perilous experiment of enlisting the armies of heaven and hell in conflict with each other, and intermeddling with earthly affairs; yet, with the exception of our countryman--and he would be a bold critic who should dare to arraign him for impiety in the use of what nothing but the most signal, unexampled, and inimitable felicity of success could justify,--it may be added, that he would be a critic not less bold, who, as a believer in the Christian faith, should venture to defend even Milton to the extent in which he has exercised this questionable, though hitherto unlitigated, license of fiction;--with the exception of our countryman, the authors aforenamed have, for the most part, grievously miscarried in the management of their agents of this class, whether good or evil, these being among the most indifferent and ineffective personages in their respective poems. Epic poetry, indeed, either upon classic or romantic precedent, may be said to have become extinct from the time of Tasso. "Paradise Lost" cannot be classed with either; he having achieved the only work of the kind, which, being neither the one nor the other, but combining the merits of each, touched the point beyond which improvement could not be carried. He may be said to have lived in the last age in which supernatural agents and miraculous interventions could be successfully introduced into narrative verse, as being consistent with popular credulity or superstitious belief--an absolutely indispensable requisite for the employment of such means to illustrate human affairs. For example, a poem equal to Homers or Ariosto's, written now on the plan, and with the gods of the one or the enchantments of the other, would be insufferable: no power of genius could create an interest in behalf of Apollo and Venus, no longer believed in by the poet or by his readers; nor would the achievements of giants and witches, if celebrated by one born in this "age of reason," find mercy from criticism, or indulgence even from the vulgar students of our _penny_ literature. Monk Lewis's Tales of Wonder, and the monstrosities of the German drama, have been long ago forgotten; the "Michael Scott" of the great minstrel "of that ilk!" alone keeps his ground; but all the other preternatural machines of the same creative hand would have perished utterly, had they not been associated with records of the doings and sufferings of beings of flesh and blood like ourselves, though existing in a state of semi-barbarous society exceedingly different from our own.