It is a token, not only of Milton's, but of Vondel's, indebtedness, that, with Ochino as with them, Beelzebub holds the second place in the council, and even admonishes his leader.

"I fear me," he remarks, "lest when Antichrist shall die, and come down hither to hell, that as he passeth us in wickedness, so he will be above us in dignity." Prescience worthy of him who "In his rising seemed A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care; And princely counsel in his face yet shone." Milton's borrowings, nevertheless, nowise impair his greatness.

The obligation is rather theirs, of whose stores he has condescended to avail himself.

He may be compared to his native country, which, fertile originally in little but enterprise, has made the riches of the earth her own.

He has given her a national epic, inferior to no other, and unlike most others, founded on no merely local circumstance, but such as must find access to every nation acquainted with the most widely-circulated Book in the world.