valry, the well-trod stage, the throngs of knights and barons
bold, the stateliness of feudal castles, the solemnity of mins-
ters, the
pomp of tournaments, the peal of organs, and the
dim religious light of painted windows. Such was the poet
of Lycidas, of Comus, of the Allegro, and the Penseroso, the
two most perfect gems of contemplative lyric poetry of which
Britain has to boast; and yet we see these tastes abandon-
ed or repressed as he advances in life and in party spirit,
till at last he views them only as unnatural corruptions of
primitive liberty and simplicity. Still, with Milton, though
a taint of bigotry pervades his views, everything is pure,
high minded, and disinterested. "Nought he does in
hate, but all in honour." He stands at an immense dis-
tance from the sect to whom he had allied himself, but with
whom, after all, he had little in common. In no one does
poetry more conspicuously appear a part of religion. He
regards it as a sacred trust, not to be sacrificed on the al-
tar of vanity, not to be purchased for a price, not to be ap-
plied to any unworthy or even trifling end.

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision

Telling of things which no gross ear can hear;

Till oft converse with heavenly habitants

Begin to cast a beam on the outer shape,

The unpolluted temple of the mind,

And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence,

Till all be made immortal.

It would be absurd, at the present day, to enter on any formal criticism of his great work of Paradise Lost, the most original, if not the most successful, of modern epics. About no poem perhaps are opinions more agreed; every one feels its sustained loftiness, combined with so much of

tenderness, in the scenes of Eden, but always suggesting the idea of effort and labour,-the wonderful art with which learning itself is rendered poetical in his hands; for even the visions of mythology, and the fantastical traditions of chivalry, are made to heighten the effect of a sacred poem dealing with the mystery of the fall of man ;-and, lastly, the consummate artifice of the versification, which, as Hazlitt remarks, seems to float up and down, as if on wings.

Milton represents the more imposing side of the Puritans, and he is almost the solitary poet of whom they can boast. The other side of their character, their hypocrisy, and their narrow and coarse tastes, are exposed in the merciless and consummately clever Hudibras of Butler. The poem is now, no doubt, in a great measure obsolete, like every application of poetry to the exposure of the peculiarities or vices of a particular age; yet its masculine vigour, its condensation of thought, and its wit, entitle Butler to a very high rank among the broad humourists of poetry.

From the oppressive wit and subtilty of Cowley and his fellows, it is delightful to turn to the manliness, the common sense, the "long-resounding march and energy divine," of Dryden, who marks the point of transition from the metaphysical poetry to the critical. He had himself in youth been strongly influenced by the pervading taste for conceit; and it must be admitted, that in the greater part of his dramatic writings this taint clings to him to the last. As a dramatist, indeed, we can admire in him nothing but the nerve and vigour of his dialogue, and that power of reasoning in verse in which he so much excelled. But in his other works, such as the Absalom and Achitophel, he threw aside this rage for conceits, he was natural,

transparent, vigorous; his illustrations, instead of being sought for, as in the case of Cowley, on account of their remoteness and apparent inaptitude, are such as at once adorn and elucidate, and are felt to be close and familiar without being common. High imagination he did not possess, and for his purpose it was scarcely needed. He has, in fact, scarcely written a line which is pathetic, and few that can be considered sublime. Yet in fancy he was not deficient, for it supplies him with inexhaustible imagery; his Ode shows that he could be raised at times into a true lyrical enthusiasm, whilst his judgment rarely fails him, except, indeed, in those bombastic plays, which he had framed by jumbling together an imbroglio of two inconsistent models, the French school, from which he borrowed his rhymes and his affectation of sentiment, and the Spanish, to which he was indebted for the exaggeration of his passionate scenes, and the complexity of his plots. Had he known nothing of these, and been left to form himself on the model of Spenser and Milton and Shakspeare, and in a less artificial state of society, he might at least have avoided the gross want of nature evinced in these rhyming plays, though we can hardly persuade ourselves that, by any process of tuition, he could ever have become a great dramatist. "The gene

ral soundness and healthfulness of his mental constitution, his information of vast superficies though of small volume, his wit scarcely inferior to that of the most distinguished followers of Donne, his eloquence grave, deliberative, and commanding, could not save him from disgraceful failure as a rival of Shakspeare, but raised him far above the level of Boileau. His command of language was immense. With him died the secret of the old poetical diction of England, the art of producing rich effects by familiar words.

In

the following century it was as completely lost as the Gothic method of painting glass, and was but poorly supplied by the laborious and tesselated imitations of Mason and Gray. On the other hand, he was the first writer under whose skilful management the scientific vocabulary fell into natural and pleasing verse. In this department he succeeded as completely as his contemporary Gibbons succeeded in the similar enterprise of carving the most delicate flowers from heart of oak. The toughest and most knotty parts of language became ductile at his touch. His versification, in the same manner, while it gave the first model of that neatness and precision which the following generation esteemed so highly, exhibited at the same time the last examples of nobleness, freedom, variety of pause, and cadence."

Pope is the last great writer of that school of poetry, the poetry of the intellect, or rather of the intellect mingled with the fancy, which occupies the period from the Restoration to the close of the eighteenth century. In Dryden's satires and miscellaneous poems, we perceive the reasoning poetry brought to its perfection, as far as regards vigour of conception and force of expression. In these respects nothing remained to be added. But Pope possessed that quick tact and intuitive discernment, both of the range and limit of his own powers, and also of the taste of the age, which showed him the solitary direction in which, so far as regarded this philosophic and critical school of poetry, there yet remained an opening for himself. He felt that the qualities of his mind did not fit him to surpass, and scarcely to contend on equal terms, with Dry

1 Edinburgh Review.

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den, so far as regarded grasp or force; but he conceived, that in the way of polish, refinement, grace, and choice of expression, something yet remained to be done, and that that something he was able to afford. Selecting, by a natural preference, themes of a moral and didactic rather than passionate character, adopting the idea that everything should be polished to the highest pitch, and that artifice was the fundamental principle of poetry, that artifice, he thought, could hardly be carried too far; and, accordingly, with Pope we find habitual that attention to words which is only occasional with Dryden. If in Dryden we perceive a tendency to substitute logic and reflection for feeling, to exhibit pictures of conventional and artificial rather than of general nature, and to borrow his illustrations much oftener from science and art than from natural objects, this tendency appears still more decided and uniform in Pope, who is pre-eminently the poet of a period of high intellectual culture and limited poetical sensibilities, the poet who wrought to its last perfection the pure but limited vein which this contemplative and preceptive style of poetry afforded. After Dryden nothing new could have been achieved for this style of poetry, save what has been done by Pope; and what he attempted he perfected.

It is indeed impossible to award to him a rank in poetry of the same kind with that which had been occupied by our Miltons, Spensers, and Shakspeares. In the highest departments of poetry, the epic and dramatic, he has attempted nothing. In the lyrical he has failed. In translation his example has tended to corrupt the national taste, and to substitute a glittering, false, and metaphrastical version for a true translation. His forte is essentially the