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of this place of torments. The description of the gates is very poetical, as the opening of them is full of Milton's spirit.

On a sudden open fly

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She open'd, but to shut

Excell'd her power; the gates wide open stood,
That with extended wings a banner'd host
Under spread ensigns marching might pass through
With horse and chariots rank'd in loose array;
So wide they stood, and like a furnace mouth
Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame.

In Satan's voyage through the Chaos, there are several imaginary persons described, as residing in that immense waste of matter. This may perhaps be conformable to the taste of those critics who are pleased with nothing in a poet which has not life and manners ascribed to it; but for my own part I am pleased most with those passages in this description which carry in them a greater measure of probability, and are such as might possibly have happened. Of this kind is his first mounting in the smoke, that rises from the infernal pit, his falling into a cloud of nitre, and the like combustible materials, that by their explosion still hurried him forward in his voyage; his springing upward like a pyramid of fire, with his laborious passage through that confusion of elements, which the poet calls

The womb of nature and perhaps her grave.

The glimmering light which shot into the Chaos from the utmost verge of the creation, with the distant discovery of the earth that hung close by the moon,' are wonderfully beautiful and poetical.

a

By the moon,] Mr. Addison mistakes the sense of this Dr. Newton's note on the place.

passage.-See

No. 315. SATURDAY, MARCH 1.

Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus
Inciderit

HOR.

HORACE advises a poet to consider thoroughly the nature and force of his genius. Milton seems to have known perfectly well wherein his strength lay, and has therefore chosen a subject entirely conformable to those talents of which he was master. As his genius was wonderfully turned to the sublime, his subject is the noblest that could have entered into the thoughts of man. Every thing that is truly great and astonishing has a place in it. The whole system of the intellectual world; the Chaos, and the creation; heaven, earth, and hell; enter into the constitution of his poem.

Having in the first and second book represented the infernal world with all its horrors, the thread of his fable naturally leads him into the opposite regions of bliss and glory.

If Milton's majesty forsakes him any where, it is in those parts of his poem, where the divine persons are introduced as speakers. One may, I think, observe that the author proceeds with a kind of fear and trembling, whilst he describes the sentiments of the Almighty. He dares not give his imagination its full play, but chuses to confine himself to such thoughts as are drawn from the books of the most orthodox divines, and to such expressions as may be met with in scripture. The beauties, therefore, which we are to look for in these speeches, are not of a poetical nature, nor so proper to fill the mind with sentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of devotion. The passions, which they are designed to raise, are a divine love and religious fear. The particular beauty of the speeches in the third book consists in that shortness and perspicuity of style, in which the poet has couched the greatest mysteries of christianity,

and drawn together, in a regular scheme, the whole dispensation of Providence, with respect to man. He has represented all the abstruse doctrines of predestination, free-will, and grace, as also the great points of the incarnation and redemption, (which naturally grow up in a poem that treats of the fall of man,) with great energy of expression, and in a clearer and stronger light than ever I met with in any other writer. As these points are dry in themselves to the generality of readers, the concise and clear manner in which he has treated them is very much to be admired, as is likewise that particular art which he has made use of, in the interspersing of all those graces of poetry, which the subject was capable of receiving.

The survey of the whole creation, and of every thing that is transacted in it, is a prospect worthy of omniscience; and as much above that, in whicha Virgil has drawn his Jupiter, as the christian idea of the Supreme Being is more rational and sublime than that of the heathens. The particular objects on which he is described to have cast his eye, are represented in the most beautiful and lively manner.

Now had th' Almighty father from above,
From the pure empyrean where he sits

High thron'd above all height, bent down his eye,
His own works and their works at once to view.

About him all the sanctities of heaven

Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv'd
Beatitude past utterance: on his right
The radiant image of his glory sat,
His only Son; on earth he first beheld
Our two first parents, yet the only two
Of mankind, in the happy garden plac'd,
Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,
Uninterrupted joy, unrivall'd love,
In blissful solitude; he then survey'd
Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there
Coasting the wall of heav'n on this side night,
In the dun air sublime, and ready now
To stoop with wearied wings and willing feet
On the bare outside of this world, that seem'd

* In which] In what? prospect, or survey: but how could Jupiter be

drawn in either? The expression is, plainly, inaccurate.

Firm land imbosom'd without firmament,
Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.
Him God beholding from his prospect high,
Wherein past, present, future, he beholds,
Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake.

Satan's approach to the confines of the creation, is finely imaged in the beginning of the speech which immediately follows. The effects of this speech in the blessed spirits, and in the divine person to whom it was addressed, cannot but fill the mind of the reader with a secret pleasure and complacency.

Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill'd
All Heav'n, and in the blessed spirits elect
Sense of new joy ineffable diffus'd!
Beyond compare the Son of God was seen
Most glorious, in him all his father shone
Substantially express'd, and in his face.
Divine compassion visibly appear'd,

Love without end, and without measure grace.

I need not point out the beauty of that circumstance, wherein the whole host of angels are represented as standing mute; nor show how proper the occasion was to produce such a silence in heaven. The close of this divine colloquy, with the hymn of angels that follows upon it, are so wonderfully beautiful and poetical, that I should not forbear inserting the whole passage, if the bounds of my paper would give me leave.

No sooner had th' Almighty ceas'd, but all
The multitudes of Angels with a shout,
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet

As from blest voices, utt'ring joy, heav'n guns A-L
With Jubilee, and loud Hosanna's fill'd

Th' eternal regions; &c.

Satan's walk upon the outside of the universe, which, at a distance, appeared to him of a globular form, but, upon his nearer approach, looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble. As his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation, between that mass of matter, which was wrought into a world, and that shapeless unformed heap of materials, which still lay in chaos and confusion, strikes the imagination with something asto

nishingly great and wild. I have before spoken of the Limbo of Vanity, which the poet places upon this uttermost surface of the universe, and shall here explain myself more at large on that, and other parts of the poem, which are of the same shadowy nature.

Aristotle observes, that the fable in an epic poem should abound in circumstances that are both credible and astonishing; or, as the French critics chuse to phrase it, the fable should be filled with the probable and the marvellous. This rule is as fine and just as any in Aristotle's whole Art of Poetry.

If the fable is only probable, it differs nothing from a true history; if it is only marvellous, it is no better than a romance. The great secret, therefore, of heroic poetry, is to relate such circumstances, as may produce in the reader at the same time both belief and astonishment. This is brought to pass in a well-chosen fable, by the account of such things as have really happened, or at least of such things as have happened according to the received opinions of mankind. Milton's fable is a master-piece of this nature; as the war in Heaven, the condition of the fallen angels, the state of innocence, the temptation of the serpent, and the fall of man, though they are very astonishing in themselves, are not only credible, but actual points of faith.

The next method of reconciling miracles with credibility, is by a happy invention of the poet; as in particular, when he introduces agents of a superior nature, who are capable of effecting what is wonderful, and what is not to be met with in the ordinary course of things. Ulysses's ship being turned into a rock, and. Æneas's fleet into a shoal of water-nymphs, though they are very surprising accidents, are nevertheless probable, when we are told that they were the gods who thus transformed them. It is this kind of machinery which fills the poems both of Homer and Virgil with such cir cumstances as are wonderful, but not impossible, and so frequently produce in the reader the most pleasing passion that can rise in the mind of man, which is admiration. If there be any instance in the Æneid liable to

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