But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother tongue; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the clothes of the ancients. of the interest, transient as it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a saint, until they have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same prinThroughout the volume are discern- ciple, we intend to take advantage of ible the traces of a powerful and inde- the late interesting discovery, and, pendent mind, emancipated from the while this memorial of a great and good influence of authority, and devoted to man is still in the hands of all, to say the search of truth. Milton professes something of his moral and intellectual to form his system from the Bible alone; qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will and his digest of scriptural texts is cer- the severest of our readers blame us tainly among the best that have ap-if, on an occasion like the present, we peared. But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations. statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and the martyr of English liberty. turn for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all Some of the heterodox doctrines love and reverence, the genius and virwhich he avows seemed to have ex-tues of John Milton, the poet, the cited considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism, and his theory on the subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could have read the Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the former; nor do we think that any reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought to be much startled at the latter. The opinions which he has expressed respect-ever, though outvoted, have not been ing the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more just surprise. But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its publication, will secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then, to borrow the elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn to make room for the forthcoming novelties. We wish however to avail ourselves It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilised world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the art. His detractors, how silenced. There are many critics, and We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been | years to mathematics, learn more than born" an age too late." For this no- the great Newton knew after half a tion Johnson has thought fit to make century of study and meditation. him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilisation which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particu the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagina-lar images to general terms. Hence tion which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phænomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses. Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensible to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able rea It is soning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living, individual man? there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes ; she weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. In a rude state of society men are Perhaps no person can be a poet, or children with a greater variety of ideas. can even enjoy poetry, without a cer- It is therefore in such a state of society tain unsoundness of mind, if any thing that we may expect to find the poetical which gives so much pleasure ought to temperament in its highest perfection. be called unsoundness. By poetry we In an enlightened age there will be mean not all writing in verse, nor even much intelligence, much science, much all good writing in verse. Our de- philosophy, abundance of just classififinition excludes many metrical com- cation and subtle analysis, abundance positions which, on other grounds, de-of wit and eloquence, abundance of serve the highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the great-enjoy them. But they will scarcely be est of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled: "As the imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name." verses, and even of good ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain degree able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of bclief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their auThese are the fruits of the "fine ditors seems to modern readers almost frenzy" which he ascribes to the poet, miraculous. Such feelings are very - a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a rare in a civilised community, and most frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to rare among those who participate most poetry; but it is the truth of madness. in its improvements. They linger The reasonings are just; but the pre-longest among the peasantry. mises are false. After the first suppo- Poetry produces an illusion on the sitions have been made, every thing eye of the mind, as a magic lantern ought to be consistent; but those first produces an illusion on the eye of the suppositions require a degree of credu- body. And, as the magic lantern acts lity which almost amounts to a partial best in a dark room, poetry effects its and temporary derangement of the in-purpose most completely in a dark age. tellect. Hence of all people children As the light of knowledge breaks in are the most imaginative. They aban- upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of don themselves without reserve to every certainty become more and more deillusion. Every image which is strongly finite and the shades of probability more presented to their mental eye produces and more distinct, the hues and lineaon them the effect of reality. No man, ments of the phantoms which the poct whatever his sensibility may be, is ever calls up grow fainter and fainter. We affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little cannot unite the incompatible advangirl is affected by the story of poor Redtages of reality and deception, the clear Riding-hood. She knows that it is all discernment of truth and the exquisite false, that wolves cannot speak, that enjoyment of fiction. He who, in an enlightened and lite- | imitation of that which elsewhere may rary society, aspires to be a great poet, be found in healthful and spontaneous must first become a little child. He perfection. The soils on which this must take to pieces the whole web of rarity flourishes are in general as ill his mind. He must unlearn much of suited to the production of vigorous that knowledge which has perhaps con-native poetry as the flower-pots of a stituted hitherto his chief title to supe-hot-house to the growth of oaks. That riority. His very talents will be a the author of the Paradise Lost should hindrance to him. His difficulties will have written the Epistle to Manso was be proportioned to his proficiency in truly wonderful. Never before were the pursuits which are fashionable such marked originality and such examong his contemporaries; and that quisite mimicry found together. Inproficiency will in general be propor- deed in all the Latin poems of Milton tioned to the vigour and activity of his the artificial manner indispensable to mind. And it is well if, after all his such works is admirably preserved, sacrifices and exertions, his works do while, at the same time, his genius gives not resemble a lisping man or a modern to them a peculiar charm, an air of ruin. We have seen in our own time nobleness and freedom, which distingreat talents, intense labour, and long guishes them from all other writings of meditation, employed in this struggle the same class. They remind us of the against the spirit of the age, and em- amusements of those angelic warriors ployed, we will not say absolutely in who composed the cohort of Gabriel: vain, but with dubious success and "About him exercised heroic games feeble applause. The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. Ile received a learned education: he was a profound and elegant classical scholar: he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature: he was intimately acquainted with every language of modern Europe, from which either pleasure or information was then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order; and his poems in the ancient language, though much praised by those who have never read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination: nor indeed do we think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin styles as a habitual drunkard to set up for a winetaster. Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly, Celestial armoury, shield, helm, and spear, Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance. It is not our intention to attempt any thing like a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style, which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the har vest is so abundant that the negligent | radise Lost, is a remarkable instance of search of a straggling gleaner may be this. rewarded with a sheaf. In support of these observations we The most striking characteristic of may remark, that scarcely any passages the poetry of Milton is the extreme re- in the poems of Milton are more gemoteness of the associations by means nerally known or more frequently reof which it acts on the reader. Its ef-peated than those which are little more fect is produced, not so much by what than muster-rolls of names. They are it expresses, as by what it suggests; not always more appropriate or more not so much by the ideas which it di- melodious than other names. But they rectly conveys, as by other ideas which are charmed names. Every one of are connected with them. He electri- them is the first link in a long chain of fies the mind through conductors. associated ideas. Like the dwellingThe most unimaginative man must un-place of our infancy revisited in manderstand the Iliad. Homer gives him hood, like the song of our country no choice, and requires from him no heard in a strange land, they produce exertion, but takes the whole upon him- upon us an effect wholly independent self, and sets the images in so clear a of their intrinsic value. One transports light, that it is impossible to be blind us back to a remote period of history. to them. The works of Milton cannot Another places us among the novel be comprehended or enjoyed, unless scenes and manners of a distant region. the mind of the reader co-operate with A third evokes all the dear classical that of the writer. He does not paint recollections of childhood, the schoola finished picture, or play for a mere room, the dog-eared Virgil, the holipassive listener. He sketches, and day, and the prize. A fourth brings leaves others to fill up the outline. He before us the splendid phantoms of strikes the key-note, and expects his chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, hearer to make out the melody. the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses. We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing: but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an in- In none of the works of Milton is his cantation. Its merit lies less in its ob- peculiar manner more happily displayed vious meaning than in its occult power. than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. There would seem, at first sight, to be It is impossible to conceive that the no more in his words than in other mechanism of language can be brought words. But they are words of en- to a more exquisite degree of perfecchantment. No sooner are they pro- tion. These poems differ from others, nounced, than the past is present and as atar of roses differs from ordinary the distant near. New forms of beauty rose water, the close packed essence start at once into existence, and all the from the thin diluted mixture. They burial places of the memory give up are indeed not so much poems, as coltheir dead. Change the structure of lections of hints, from each of which the sentence; substitute one synonyme the reader is to make out a poem for for another, and the whole effect is de- himself. Every epithet is a text for a stroyed. The spell loses its power; stanza. and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, "Open Wheat," "Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but " Open Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate into his own diction some parts of the Pa The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, though of very different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to |