The fongs are vigorous, and full of imagery; but they are harth in their diction, and not very mufical in their numbers.

Throughout the whole, the figures are too bold, and the language too luxuriant for dialogue. It is a drama in the epick ftyle, inelegantly fplendid, and tediously instructive.

The Sonnets were written in different parts of Milton's life, upon different occafions. They deserve not any particular criticifin; for of the best it can only be faid, that they are not bad; and perhaps only the eighth and twenty-firft are truly entitled to this flender commendation. The fabrick of a fonnet, however adapted to the Italian language, has never fucceeded in ours, which, having greater variety of termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.

Those little pieces may be difpatched without much anxiety; a greater work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradife Loft; a poem, which, confidered with respect to defign, may claim the firft place, and

די

with refpect to performance, the fecond, among the productions of the human mind.

manner.

By the general confent of criticks, the firft praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an affemblage of all the powers which are fingly fufficient for other compofitions. Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reafon. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts, and therefore relates fome great event in the most affecting History muft fupply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which he muft improve and exalt by a nobler art, must animate by dramatick energy, and diverfify by retrospection and anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different shades, of vice and virtue; from policy, and the practice of life, he has to learn the dif criminations of character, and the tendency of the paffions, either fingle or combined; and physiology muft fupply him with illuftrations and images. To put thefe materials to poetical ufe, is required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing fic

tion.

tion. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extenfion of his language, diftinguished all the delicacies of phrafe, and all the colours of words, and learned to adjust their different founds to all the varieties of metrical modulation.

Boffu is of opinion that the poet's first work is to find a moral, which his fable is afterwards to illuftrate and establish. This feems to have been the procefs only of Milton; the moral of other poems is incidental and confequent; in Milton's only it is effential and intrinfick. His purpose was the most ufeful and the moft arduous; to vindicate the ways of God to man; to fhew the reasonablenefs of religion, and the neceffity of obedience to the Divine Law.

To convey this moral, there must be a fable, a narration artfully conftructed, fo as to excite curiofity, and furprife expectation. In this part of his work, Milton must be confeffed to have equalled every other poet. He has involved in his account of the Fall of Man the events which preceded, and those that were to follow it: he has interwoven

the

the whole system of theology with fuch pro- priety, that every part appears to be neceffary; and scarcely any recital is wished fhorter for the fake of quickening the progrefs of the main action.

The subject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great importance. That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire. His fubject is the fate of worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion, against the Supreme King, raised by the highest order of created beings; the overthrow of their hoft, and the punishment of their crime; the creation of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their reftoration to hope and peace.

Great events can be haftened or retarded only by perfons of elevated dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton's poem, all other greatness fhrinks away. The weakest of his agets are the higheft and nobleft of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whofe actions the elements con

fented;

fented; on whofe rectitude, or deviation of will, depended the ftate of terreftrial nature, and the condition of all the future inhabitants of the globe.

Of the other agents in the poem, the chief are fuch as it is irreverence to name on flight occafions. The reft were lower powers;

of which the leaft could wield

Thofe elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions;

powers, which only the controul of Omnipotence reftrains from laying creation wafte, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and confufion. To difplay the motives and actions of beings thus fuperiour, fo far as human reafon can examine them, or human imagination represent them, is the talk which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed.

In the examination of epick poems much fpeculation is commonly employed upon the characters. The characters in the Paradife Loft, which admit of examination, are those