ance such remarks as might have induced him, had his imagination been less energetic, to relinquish the angels as intractable beings, ill suited to the sphere of poetry. But if his glowing spirit was ever damped for a moment by suggestions of this nature, he was probably re-animated and encouraged by recollecting his respectable old acquaintance, the poets of Italy. He had not only seen the infernal powers occasionally delineated with great majesty and effect in the Jerusalem of Tasso, and Marini's "Slaughter of the Innocents," but he was probably acquainted with an Italian poem, little known in England, and formed expressly on the conflict of the apostate spirits. The work I allude to is, the Angeleida of Erasmo Valvasone, printed at Venice, in 1590. This poet was of a noble family in the Venetian republic; as his health was delicate, he devoted himself to retired study, and cultivated the Muses in his castle of Valvasone. His works are various, and one of his early compositions was honored by the applause of Tasso, His Angeleida consists of three

cantos on the War of Heaven, and is singularly terminated by a sonnet, addressed to the triumphant Archangel Michael. Several. passages in Valvasone induce me to think. that Milton was familiar with his work.I will only transcribe the verses, in which the Italian poet assigns to the infernal powers the invention of artillery:

Di salnitro, e di zolfo oscura polve

Chiude altro in ferro cavo; e poi la tocca
Dietro col foco, e in foco la risolve:

Onde fragoso tuon subito scocca :

Scocca e lampeggia, e una palla volve,

Al cui scontro ogni duro arde e trabocca:

Crudel saetta, ch' imitar s'attenta

L'arme che 'l sommo Dio dal Cielo aventa.

L'Angelo rio, quando a concorrer sorse
Di saper, di bellezza, e di possanza
Con l'eterno fattor, perche s'accorse
Quell' arme non aver, ch' ogni arme avanza,
L'empio ordigno a compor l' animo torse,
Che ferir puo del folgore a sembianza:
E con questo a' di nostri horrido in terra
Tiranno, arma di folgori ogni guerra.

Valvasone acknowledges, in his preface that he had been censured for having spoken" so materially (ragionato cosi materialmente) of angels, who are only spirit. But he defends himself very ably on this point, and mentions with gratitude two excellent critical discourses, written in his vindication by Giovanni Ralli and Ottavio Menini ;there is a third also, according to Quadrio, by Scipione di Manzano, under the name of Olimpo Marcucci, printed at Venice, in 4to, 1594. They all bestow great praise on the author whom they vindicate, who appears to have been a very amiable man, and a poet of considerable powers, though he possessed not the sublimity and the refinement of Milton or Tasso. In his general ideas of poetry he resembled them both; and in his mode of expressing himself, in the preface to his Angeleida, he reminds me very strongly of those passages in the prose works of Milton, where he speaks on the hallowed magnificence of the art. They both considered sacred subjects as peculiarly proper for verse; an idea condemned

by Johnson, who sympathised as little with Milton in his poetic as in his political principles. It was by entertaining ideas of poetry, directly contrary to those of his critic, that Milton rendered himself, in true dignity, the first poet of the world. Nor can we think that dignity in any degree impaired, by discovering that many hints might be suggested to him by various poets, in different languages, who had seized either a part or the whole of his subject before him. On the contrary, the more of these we can discover, and the more we compare them with the English bard, the more reason we shall find to exult in the pre-eminence of his poetical powers. Tasso, in his critical discourses, inculcates a very just maxim concerning the originality of epic poets, which is very applicable to Milton.— "Nuovo sarà il poema, in cui nuova sarà la testura de' nodi, nuove le solutioni, nuovi gli episodi, che per entro vi sono traposti, quantunque la materia fosse notissima, e dagli altri prima trattata; perche la novità

del

poema si considera piuttosto alla forma, che alla materia."

This great writer illustrates his position, that the novelty of a poem is to be estimated more from its form than its subject, by the example of Alamanni, an epic poet of Italy, who lost the praise he might otherwise have acquired, by copying too fondly, under modern names, the incidents of Homer.Milton is of all authors undoubtedly one of the most original, both in thought and expression the language of his greater works is evidently borrowed from no model, but it seems to have great conformity with the precepts which Tasso has delivered in the discourses I have just cited, for the forma tion of an epic style. Yet in criticism, as in politics, Milton was undoubtedly

"Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri.”

He thought on every topic for himself; justly remarking, that "to neglect rules and follow nature, in them that know art and use judgment, is no transgression, but an enriching of art." This excellent maxim