were placed in the ftocks, after fome debate between her and her husband in whose name it fhould be entered; and the reft augmented their little stock, with which they removed to Iflington. This was the greatest benefaction that Paradife Loft ever procured the author's defcendents; and to this he, who has now attempted to relate his Life, had the honour of contributing a Prologue*.

* Printed in the First Volume of this Collection.

IN the examination of Milton's poetical works, I fhall pay fo much regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early pieces he feems to have had a degree of fondnefs not very laudable; what he has once written he resolves to preferve, and gives to the publick an unfinished poem, which he broke off because he was nothing fatisfied with what he had done, fuppofing his readers lefs nice than himself. These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English. Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critick; but I have heard them commended by a man well qua lified to decide their merit. The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquifite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the har mony of the numbers, than by any power of invention, or vigour of fentiment. They are not all of equal value; the elegies excell the odes; and fome of the exercifes on Gunpowder Treafon might have been spared.

The English poems, though they make no promifes of Paradife Loft, have this evidence of genius, that they have a caft original and unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from verfes of others, they differ for the worfe; for they are too often diftinguished by repulfive harfhnefs; the combination of words are new, but they are not pleafing; the rhymes and epithets feem to be labo rioufly fought, and violently applied.

That

That in the early parts of his life he wrote with much care appears from his manufcripts, happily preferved at Cambridge, in which many of his fmaller works are found as they were firft written, with the fubfequent corrections. Such reliques fhew how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Those who admire the beauties of this great poet fometimes force their own judgement into falfe approbation of his little pieces, and prevail upon them. felves to think that admirable which is only fingular. All that fhort compofitions can commonly attain is neatnefs and elegance. Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of fuavity and foftnefs; he was a Lion that had no fkill in dandling the Kid.

One of the poems on which much praife has been bestowed is Lycidas; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleafing. What beauty there is we must therefore feek in the fentiments and images. It is not to be confidered as the effufion of real paffion; for paffion runs not after remote allufions and obfcure opinions. Paffion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethufe and Mincius, nor tells of rough fatyrs and fauns with cloven heel. Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.

new.

In this poem there is nature, for there is nothing Its form is that of a paftoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore difgufting; whatever images it can fupply are long ago exhaufted; and its inherent improbability always forces diffatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey, that they ftudied

toge

together, it is eafy to fuppofe how much he must mifs the companion of his labours, and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be excited by these lines!

We drove a field, and both together heard

What time the grey fly winds her fultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.

We know that they never drove a field, and that they had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is fo uncertain and remote, that it is never fought because it cannot be known when it is found.

Among the flocks, and copfes, and flowers, appear the Heathen deities; Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Eolus, with a long train of mythological imagery, fuch as a college easily fupplies. Nothing can less display knowledge, or lefs exercife invention, than to tell how a fhepherd has loft his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his skill in piping; and how one god afks another god what is become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will excite no fympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.

This poem has yet a groffer fault. With these trifling fictions are mingled the most awful and facred truths, fuch as ought never to be polluted with fuch irreverend combinations. The fhepherd likewife is now a feeder of fheep, and afterwards an ecclefiaftical paftor, a fuperintendant of a Chriftian flock. Such equivocations are always unskilful, but here they are indecent, and at leaft approach to impiety,

of

of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been confcious.

Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze drives away the eye from nice exami nation. Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known its author.

Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penferofo, I believe, opinion is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The author's defign is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to fhew how objects derive their colours from the mind, by reprefenting the operation of the fame things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or upon the fame man as he is differently difpofed; but rather how, among the fucceffive variety of appearances, every difpofition of mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified.

The chearful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears the nightingale in the evening. The chearful man fees the cock ftrut, and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, not unseen, to observe the glory of the rifing fun, or liften to the finging milk-maid, and view the labours of the plowman and the mower; then cafts his eyes about him over scenes of fmiling plenty, and looks up to the diftant tower, the refidence of fome fair inhabitant; thus he purfues real gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights himfel at night with the fanciful narratives of fuperftitious ignorance.

The penfive man, at one time, walks unfeen to muse at midnight; and at another hears the fullen

cur