are hardly fpiritual; for contraction and remove are images of matter; but if they could have escaped without their armour, they might have efcaped from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he rides on a funbeam, is material; Satan is material when he is afraid of the prowess 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 existence. To exalt caufes 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, fu fered only to do their natural office, and retire. Thus Fame tells a tale, and Victory hovers over a general, or perches on a ftandard; but Fame and Victory can do no 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 non-entity. In the Prometheus of Æfchylus, we fee Violence and Strength, and in the Alceftis of Euripides, we fee Death, brought upon the ftage, all as active perfons of the drama; but no precedents can juftify 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

they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as real, and when Death offers him battle, the allegory 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 defcribed 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 some distant part of space, feparated from the regions of harmony and order by a chaotic wafte 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 objections 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 discovered. Adam's difcourfe 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 ac

quainted

quainted with many other men. notions, especially when the

Some philofophical philofophy 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 say, 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 easily 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.

N

Such

Such are the faults of that wonderful performance Paradife Loft; which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be confidered not as nice but as dull, as lefs to be cenfured for want of candour, than pitied for want of fenfibility.

Of Paradife Regained, the general judgement feems now to be right, that it is in many parts elegant, and every where inftructive. It was not to be fuppofed that the writer of Paradife Loft could ever write without great effufions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The bafis of Paradife Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please like an union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this poem been written not by Milton, but by fome imitator, it would have claimed and received univerfal praise.

If Paradife Regained has been too much depreciated, Sampfon Agonistes has in requital been too much admired. It could only be by long prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions of the French and English ftages; and it is only by a blind confidence in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised in which the intermediate parts have neither caufe nor confequence, neither haften nor retard the catastrophe.

In this tragedy are however many particular beauties, many juft fentiments and ftriking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the attention which a well-connected plan produces.

Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature only in the grofs, and

had

had never ftudied the fhades of character, nor the combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending paffions. He had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must confer.

Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of Diction, a mode and caft of expreffion which bears little refemblance to that of any former writer; and which is fo far removed from common ufe, that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself furprised by a new language.

This novelty has been, by thofe who can find nothing wrong in Milton, imputed to his laborious endeavours after words fuitable to the grandeur of his ideas. Our language, fays Addifon, funk under him. But the truth is, that, both in profe and verfe, he had formed his ftyle by a perverfe and pedantick principle. He was defirous to ufe English words with a foreign idiom. This in all his profe is difcovered and condemned; for there judgement operates freely, neither foftened by the beauty, nor awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but fuch is the power of his poetry, that his call is obeyed without refiftance, the reader feels himfelf in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticifm finks in admiration.

Milton's ftyle was not modified by his fubject; what is fhewn with greater extent in Paradife Loft, may be found in Comus. One fource of his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tufcan poets; the difpofition of his words is, I think, frequently Tra

N 2

lian;