curfew. If the weather drives him home, he fits in a room lighted only by glowing embers; or by a lonely lamp outwatches the North Star, to difcover the habitation of separate fouls, and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or pathetick scenes of tragick and epick poetry. When the morning comes, a morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark tracklefs woods, falls afleep by fome murmuring water, and with melancholy enthusiasm expects fome dream of prognoftication, or fome mufick played by aerial performers.

Both Mirth and Melancholy are folitary, filent inhabitants of the breaft, that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is therefore made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the gaiety from the pleafures of the bottle.

The man of chearfulness, having exhaufted the country, tries what towered cities will afford, and mingles with fcenes of fplendor, gay affemblies, and nuptial feftivities; but he mingles a mere fpectator, as, when the learned comedies of Jonfon, or the wild dramas of Shakspeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.

The penfive man never lofes himself in crowds, but walks the cloifter, or frequents the cathedral, Milton probably had not yet forfaken the Church.

Both his characters delight in mufick; but he feems to think that chearful notes would have obtained from Pluto a complete difmiffion of Eurydice, of whom folemn founds only procured a conditional release.

For

For the old age of Chearfulness he makes no provifion; but Melancholy he conducts with great dignity to the close of life. His Chearfulness is with out levity, and his Penfiveness without afperity.

Through these two poems the images are properly felected, and nicely diftinguifhed; but the colours of the diction feem not fufficiently difcriminated. I know not whether the characters are kept fufficiently apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid that I always meet fome melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble efforts of imagination *.

The greatest of his juvenile performances is the Mafk of Comus, in which may very plainly be disco. vered the dawn or twilight of Paradife Loft. Miltor appears to have formed very early that fyftem of diction, and mode of verfe, which his maturer judgement approved, and from which he never endeavoured nor defired to deviate.

Nor does Comus afford only a fpecimen of his language; it exhibits likewife his power of defcription and his vigour of fentiment, employed in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is rarely found; allufions, images, and de

* Mr. Warton intimates (and there can be little doubt of the truth of his conjecture) that Milton borrowed many of the ima ges in these two fine poems from "Burton's Anatomy of Melan choly," a book published in 1624, and at fundry times fince, abounding in learning, curions information, and pleasantry. Mr. Warton fays, that Milton appears to have been an attentive reader thereof; and to this affertión I add, of my own knowledge, that it was a book that Dr. Johnfon frequently reforted to, as many others have done, for amusement after the fatigue of fudy. H.

fcriptive

fcriptive epithets, embellish almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines, therefore, it may be confidered as worthy of all the admiration with which the votaries have received it.

As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A Masque, in those parts where fupernatural intervention is admitted, muft indeed be given up to all the freaks of imagination, but, fo far as the action is merely human, it ought to be reafona. ble, which can hardly be faid of the conduct of the two brothers; who, when their fifter finks with fatigue in a pathlefs wilderness, wander both away together in fearch of berries too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless Lady to all the fadness and danger of folitude. This however is a defect overbalanced by its convenience.

What deferves more reprehenfion is, that the prologue fpoken in the wild wood by the attendant Spirit is addreffed to the audience; a mode of communication fo contrary to the nature of dramatick representation, that no precedents can fupport it.

The difcourfe of the Spirit is too long; an objection that may be made to almoft all the following fpeeches; they have not the fptitelinefs of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but feem rather declamations deliberately compofed, and formally repeated, on a moral queftion. The auditor therefore liftens as to a lecture, without paffion, without anxiety.

The fong of Comus has airinefs and jollity; but, what may recommend Milton's morals as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are so general,

Ι

that

that they excite no diftinct images of corrupt enjoyment, and take no dangerous hold on the fancy.

The following foliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant, but tedious. The fong must owe much to the voice, if it ever can delight. At laft the Brothers enter, with too much tranquillity; and when they have feared left their fifter fhould be in danger, and hoped that he is not in danger, the Elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the Younger finds how fine it is to be a philofopher.

Then defcends the Spirit in form of a fhepherd; and the Brother, inftead of being in hafte to ask his help, praises his finging, and enquires his business in that place. It is remarkable, that at this interview the Brother is taken with a fhort fit of rhyming. The Spirit relates that the Lady is in the power of Comus; the Brother moralifes again; and the Spi rit makes a long narration, of no use because it is falfe, and therefore unfuitable to a good Being.

In all these parts the language is poetical, and the fentiments are generous; but there is fomething wanting to allure attention.

The dispute between the Lady and Comus is the moft animated and affecting fcene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker reciprocation of objections and replies to invite attention, and detain it.

The fongs are vigorous, and full of imagery; but they are harsh 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

The Sonnets were written in different parts of Mil. ton's life, upon different occafions. They deserve not any particular criticifm; for of the best it can only be faid, that they are not bad; and perhaps only the eighth and twenty-first 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 dispatched without much anxiety; a greater work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradife Loft; a poem, which, confidered with refpect to defign, may claim the first place, and with refpect to performance, the fecond, among the productions of the human mind.

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 moft pleafing precepts, and therefore relates fome great event in the moft affecting manner. History muft fupply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which he muft improve and exalt by a nobler art, muft animate by dramatick energy, and diverfify by retrospection and anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different fhades, of vice and virtue; from policy, and the practice of life, he has to learn the difcriminations of character, and the tendency of the paffions, either fingle or combined; and phyfiology muft fupply him with illuftrations and images. To