tuled Paradife Loft only a poem, yet calls it himtelf heroick feng. Dryden, petulantly and indecently, denies the heroifm of Adam, becaute he was overcome; but there is no reafon why the hero fhould not be unfortunate, except establifhed practice, fince fuccefs and virtue do not go necellarily together. Cato is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan's authority will not be fuffered by Quintilian to decide. However, if fuccefs be neceflary, Adam's deceiver was at laft crushed; Adam was reftored to his Maker's favour, and therefore may fecurely refume his human rank.

After the fcheme and fabrick of the poem, must be confidered its component parts, the fentiments and the diction.

The fentiments, as expreffive of manners, or appropriated to characters, are, for the greater part, unexceptionably juft.

Splendid paffages, containing leffons of morality, or precepts of prudence, occur feldom. Such is the original formation of this poem, that as it admits no human manners till the Fall, it can give little affiftance

to

to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above fublunary cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of that fortitude, with which Abdiel maintained his fingularity of virtue against the fcorn of multitudes, may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael's reproof of Adam's curiofity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned by Adam, may be confidently oppofed to any rule of life which any poet has delivered.

The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progrefs, are fuch as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials. were fupplied by inceffant study and unlimited curiofity. The heat of Milton's mind might be faid to fublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its groffer parts.

He had confidered creation in its whole extent, and his defcriptions are therefore learned. He had accustomed his imagination to unreftrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extenfive. The characteristick quality of his poem is fublimity. He fomeR 4 times

is the great.

times defcends to the elegant, but his element He can occafionally inveft himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantick loftinefs *. He can please when pleafure is required; but it is his peculiar power to aftonish.

He feems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that Nature had beftowed upon him more bountifully than upon others; the power of difplaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful; he therefore chofe a fubject on which too much could not be faid, on which he might tire his fancy without the cenfure of extravagance.

The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not fatiate his appetite of greatnefs. To paint things as they are, requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's delight was to fport in the wide regions of poffibility; reality was a fcene too narrow for his mind. He fent his faculties out upon difcovery, into worlds where only imagina

* Algarotti terms it gigantefca fublimità Miltoniana. Dr. J.

tion can travel, and delighted to form new modes of exiftence, and furnifh fentiment and action to fuperior beings, to trace the counfels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven.

But he could not be always in other worlds; he muft fometimes revifit earth, and tell of things vifible and known. When he cannot raise wonder by the fublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.

Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his images and descriptions of the fcenes or operations of Nature do not seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness, raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He faw Nature, as Dryden expreffes it, through the fpectacles of books; and on most occasions calls learning to his affiftance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind the vale of Enna, where Proferpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes his way through fighting ele ments, like Argo between the Cyanean rocks, or Ulyffes between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he thunned Charybdis on the larboard. The mythological allufions have been juftly

cenfured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercife of the memory and the fancy.

His fimilies are lefs numerous, and more various, than thofe of his predeceffors. But he does not confine himself within the limits of rigorous comparison: his great excellence is amplitude, and he expands the adventitious image beyond the dimenfions which the occafion required. Thus comparing the fhield of Satan to the orb of the Moon, he crowds the imagination with the difcovery of the telescope, and all the wonders which the telescope difcovers.

Of his moral fentiments it is hardly praife to affirm that they excel thofe of all other poets; for this fuperiority he was indebted to his acquaintance with the facred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting the light of Revelation, were very unfkilful teachers of virtue: their principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable. The reader may rife from their works with a greater

degree