particular paper. I have in the next place spoke of the censures which our author may incur under each of these heads, which I have confined to two papers, though I might have enlarged the number if I had been disposed to dwell on so ungrateful a subject. I believe, however, that the severest reader will not find any little fault in heroic poetry, which this author has fallen into, that does not come under one of those heads among which I have distributed his several blemishes. After having thus treated at large of Paradise Lost, I could not think it sufficient to have celebrated this poem in the whole without descending to particulars. I have therefore bestowed a paper upon each book, and endeavoured not only to prove that the poem is beautiful in general, but to point out its particular beauties; and, to determine wherein they consist, I have endeavoured to show how some passages are beautiful by being sublime, others by being soft, others by being natural; which of them are recommended by the passion, which by the moral, which by the sentiment, and which by the expression. I have likewise endeavoured to show how the genius of the poet shines by a happy invention, a distant allusion, or a judicious imitation; how he has copied or improved Homer or Virgil, and raises his own imaginations by the use which he has made of several poetical passages in Scripture. I might have inserted also several passages in Tasso, which our author has imitated: but, as I do not look upon Tasso to be a sufficient voucher, I would not perplex my reader with such quotations as might do more honour to the Italian than to the English poet. In short, I have endeavoured to particularise those innumerable kinds of beauty which it would be tedious to recapitulate, but which are essential to po etry, and which may be met with in the works of this great author. Had I thought, at my first engaging in this design, that it would have led me to so great length, I believe I should never have entered upon it; but the kind reception which it has met with among those whose judginent I have a value for, as well as the uncommon demands which my bookseller tells me have been made for these particular discourses, give me no reason to repent of the pains I have been at in composing them. No 370. MONDAY, MAY 5, 1712. L. Tolus mundus agit histrionem. -All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. SHAKSPEARE MANY of my fair readers, as well as very gay and well-received persons of the other sex, are extremely perplexed at the Latin sentences at the head of my speculations. I do not know whether I ought not to indulge them with translations of each of them however, I have to-day taken down from the top of the stage in Drury-lane a bit of Latin which often stands in their view, and signifies, that The whole world acts the player.' It is certain that if we look all round us, and behold the different employments of mankind, you hardly see one who is not, as the player is, in an assumed character. The lawyer who is vehement and loud in a cause wherein he knows he has not the truth of the question on his side, is a player as to the personated part, but incomparably meaner than he as to the prostitution of himself for hire; because the pleader's falsehood introduces injustice; the player feigns for no other end but to divert or instruct you. The to supply this natural defect in his subject. Accordingly he leaves the adversary of mankind, in the last view which he gives of him, under the lowest state of mortification and disappointment. We see him chewing ashes, groveling in the dust, and loaden with supernumerary pains and torments. On the contrary, our two first parents are comforted by dreams and visions, cheered with promises of salva tion, and in a manner raised to a greater happiness than that which they had forfeited. In short, Satan is represented miserable in the height of his triumphs, and Adam triumphant in the height of mi sery. Milton's poem ends very nobly. The last speeches of Adam and the archangel are full of moral and instructive sentiments. The sleep that fell upon Eve, and the effects it had in quieting the disorders of her mind, produces the same kind of consolation in the reader, who cannot peruse the last beautiful speech, which is ascribed to the mother of mankind, without a secret pleasure and satisfaction: Whence thou return'st, and whither went'st, I know; Which he hath sent propitious, some great good In me is no delay with thee to go, : Is to stay here; without thee here to stay, The following lines, which conclude the poem, rise in a most glorious blaze of poetical images and expressions, Heliodorus in the Ethiopics acquaints us, that the motion of the gods differs from that of mortals, as the former do not stir their feet, nor proceed step by step, but slide over the surface of the earth by an uniform swimming of the whole body. The reader may observe with how poetical a description Milton has attributed the same kind of motion to the angels who were to take possession of Paradise: So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard Ris'n from a river, o'er the marish glides, The author helped his invention in the following passage, by reflecting on the behaviour of the angel who in holy writ has the conduct of Lot and his family. The circumstances drawn from that relation are very gracefully made use of on this occa sion: In either hand the hast'ning angel caught The scene which our first parents are surprised with, upon their looking back on Paradise, wonderfully strikes the reader's imagination, as nothing can be more natural than the tears they shed on that occasion: They looking back, all th' eastern side beheld Wav'd over by that flaming brand, the gate Their place of rest, and Providence their guide." If I might presume to offer at the smallest afteration in this divine work, I should think the poem would end better with the passage here quoted, than with the two verses which follow: • They hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow, These two verses, though they have their beauty, fall very much below the foregoing passage, and renew in the mind of the reader that anguish which was pretty well laid by that consideration : The world was all before them, where to choose The number of books in Paradise Lost is equal to those of the Æneid. Our author in his first edition had divided his poem into ten books, but afterwards broke the seventh and the eleventh each of them into two different books, by the help of some small additions. This second division was made with great judgment, as any one may see who will be at the pains of examining it. It was not done for the sake of such a chimerical beauty as that of resembling Virgil in this particular, but for the more just and regular disposition of this great work. Those who have read Bossu, and many of the critics who have written since his time, will not pardon me if I do not find out the particular moral which is inculcated in Paradise Lost. Though I can by no means think, with the last-mentioned French author, that an epic writer first of all pitches upon a certain moral, as the ground-work and foundation |