Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850

pondent into a simple "&c." Now, if HERMES, instead of referring to a stale review for a comparison between Vondel's tragedy and the Paradise Lost, without showing by any proof that Milton's justly renowned epic {508} is indeed superior to this, one of the Dutch poet's masterpiece--if HERMES, being, as I conclude from his own words, conversant with the language of our Shakspeare, had taken pains to read Lucifer, he would not have repeated a statement unfavourable to Vondel's poetical genius. I, for my part, will not hazard a judgment on poems so different and yet so alike, I will not sneer at Milton's demon-gods of Olympus, nor laugh at "their artillery discharged in the daylight of heaven;" for such instances of bad taste are to be considered as clouds setting off the glories of the whole; but this I will say, that Vondel wrote his Lucifer in 1654, the sixty-seventh of his life, while Milton's Paradise Lost was composed four