under them in paffive helpleffnefs, content with

calm belief and humble adoration.

Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton has un. dertaken, and performed with pregnancy and vi• gour of mind peculiar to himself. Whoever confiders the few radical pofitions which the Scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetic operation he expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to fo much variety, reftrained as he was by religious reverence from licentioufness of fiction.

Here is a full display of the united force of fludy and genius; of a great accumulation of materials, with judgement to digeft, and fancy to combine them: Milton was able to felect from nature, or from story, from an ancient fable, or from modern fcience, whatever could illuftrate or adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind, fermented by study, and exalted by imagination.

It has been therefore faid, without an indecent hyperbole, by one of his encomiafts, that in reading Paradife Loft we read a book of univerfal knowledge.

But original deficience cannot be fupplied. The want of human intereft is always felt. Paradife Loft is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perufal is a duty ra ther than a pleasure. We read Milton for inftruction, retire harraffed, and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we defert our mafter, and feek for companions.

Another

Another inconvenience of Milton's defign is, that it requires the defcription of what cannot be described, the agency of fpirits. He faw that immateriality fupplied no images, and that he could not fhow angels acting but by inftruments of action; he therefore invested them with form and matter. This, being neceffary, was therefore defenfible; and he fhould have fecured the confiftency of his fyftem, by keeping immateriality out of fight, and enticing his reader to drop it from his thoughts. But he has unhappily perplexed his poetry with his philofophy. His infernal and celeftial powers are fometimes pure fpirit, and sometimes animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the burning marle, he has a body; when, in his paffage between Hell and the new world, he is in danger of finking in the vacuity, and is fupported by a guft of rifing vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad, he feems to be mere fpirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when he ftarts up in his own shape, he has at least a determined form; and when he is brought before Gabriel, he has a fpear and a fhield, which he had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the contending angels are evidently material.

The vulgar inhabitants of Pandæmonium, being incorporeal fpirits, are at large, though without number, in a limited fpace: yet in the battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them, crushed in upon their substance, now grown grofs by finning. This likewife happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown the fooner for their arms, for unarmed they might have evaded by contraction or remove.

eafily as fpirits Even as fpirits

they

they are hardly fpiritual; for contraction and remove are images of matter; but if they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he rides on a fun-beam, iş material; Satan is material when he is afraid of the prowefs of Adam.

The confufion of fpirit and matter, which pervades the whole narration of the war of Heaven, fills it with incongruity; and the book, in which it is related, is, I believe, the favourite of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased.

After the operation of immaterial agents, which cannot be explained, may be confidered that of allegorical perfons, which have no real exiftence. To exalt causes into agents, to inveft abftract ideas with form, and animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry. But fuch airy beings are, for the most part, fuffered only to do their natural office, and retire. Thus Fame tells a tale, and Victory hovers over a general, or perches on a standard; but Fame and Victory can do more. To give them any real employment, or afcribe to them any material agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to fhock the mind by afcribing effects to nonentity. In the Prometheus of Æfchylus, we fee Violence and Strength, and in the Alceftis of Euripides, we fee Death, brought upon the stage, all as active perfons of the drama; but no precedents can justify abfurdity.

Milton's allegory of Sin and Death is undoubtedly faulty. Sin is indeed the mother of Death, and may be allowed to be the portrefs of Hell; but when

they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as real, and when Death offers him battle, the alle gory is broken. That Sin and Death fhould have fhewn the way to Hell, might have been allowed; but they cannot facilitate the paffage by building a bridge, because the difficulty of Satan's paffage is described as real and fenfible, and the bridge ought to be only figurative. The Hell affigned to the rebellious fpirits is defcribed as not lefs local than the refidence of man. It is placed in fome diftant part of space, feparated from the regions of harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but Sin and Death worked up a mole of aggravated foil, cemented with afphaltus; a work too bulky for

ideal architects.

This unfkilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the poem; and to this there was no temptation, but the author's opinion of its beauty.

To the conduct of the narrative fome objection

may be made. Satan is with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradife, and is fuffered to go away unmolefted. The creation of man is reprefented as the confequence of the vacuity left in Heaven by the expulfion of the rebels; yet Satan mentions it as a report rife in Heaven before his departure.

To find fentiments for the ftate of innocence was very difficult; and fomething of anticipation perhaps is now and then difcovered. Adam's discourse of dreams feems not to be the fpeculation of a newcreated being. I know not whether his anfwer to the angel's reproof for curiofity does not want fomething of propriety; it is the fpeech of a man acquainted

I

Some philofophi

quainted with many other men. cal notions, especially when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted. The angel, in a comparison, fpeaks of timorous deer, before deer were yet timorous, and before Adam could underftand the comparison.

Dryden remarks, that Milton has fome flats among his elevations. This is only to fay, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part must be for the fake of others; a palace must have paffages; a poem must have tranfitions. It is no more to be required that wit fhould always be blazing, than that the fun fhould always ftand at noon. In a great work there is a viciffitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a fucceffion of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed fometimes to revifit earth; for what other author ever foared fo high, or fuftained his flight fo long?

Milton, being well verfed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed often from them; and, as every man catches fomething from his companions, his defire of imitating Ariofto's levity has difgraced his work with the Paradife of Fools; a fiction not in itself ill-imagined, but too ludicrous for its place.

His play on words, in which he delights too often ; his equivocations, which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his unneceffary and ungraceful ufe of terms of art; it is not neceffary to mention, because they are eafily remarked, and generally cenfured; and at laft bear fo little proportion to the whole, that they fcarcely deferve the attention of a critick.

VOL. IX.

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Such