may

be confidently oppofed to any rule of life which any poet has delivered.

The thoughts which are occafionally called forth in the progrefs, are fuch as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials were fupplied by inceffant study and unlimited curiofity. The heat of Milton's mind might be faid to fublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the fpirit of science, unmingled with its groffer parts.

He had confidered creation in its whole extent, and his descriptions are therefore learned. He had accustomed his imagination to unreftrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extensive. The characteristick quality of his poem is fublimity. He sometimes defcends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occasionally inveft himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantick loftiness *. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish.

Algarotti terms it gigantefia fublimità Miltoniana,

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He feems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that Nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others; the power difplaying the vast, illuminating the fplendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful: he therefore, chose a subject on which too much could not be faid, on which he might tire his fancy without the cenfure of extravagance.

The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not fatiate his appetite of greatnefs. To paint things as they are, requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's delight was to fport in the wide regions of pof-'. fibility; reality was a fcene too narrow for his mind. He fent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagina tion can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish fentiment and action to fuperior beings, to trace the counfels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven.

But he could not be always in other worlds he must sometimes revifit earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise wonder by the fublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.

Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his images and defcriptions of the fcenes or operations of Nature do not feem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness, raciness, and energy of immediate observation. He faw Nature, as Dryden expreffes it, through the fpectacles of books; and on moft occafions calls learning to his affiftance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind the vale of Enna, where Proferpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean rocks, or Ulyffes between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned Charybdis on the larboard. The mythological allufions have been juftly cenfured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise of the memory and the fancy. VOL. I.

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His fimilies are lefs numerous, and more various, than thofe of his predeceffors. But he does not confine himself within the limits of rigorous comparison: his great excellence is amplitude, and he expands the adventitious image beyond the dimenfions which the occafion required. Thus, comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the Moon, he crouds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the wonders which the telescope difcovers.

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Of his moral fentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel those of all other poets; for this fuperiority he was indebted to his acquaintance with the facred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting the light of Revelation, were very unfkilful teachers of virtue their principal characters great, but they are not amiable. The reader may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or paffive fortitude, and fometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away few precepts of justice, and none of mercy.

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From the Italian writers it appears, that the advantages of even Chriftian knowledge may be supposed in vain. Ariofto's pravity is generally known; and though the Deliverance of Jerufalem may be confidered as a facred fubject, the poet has been very sparing of moral inftruction.

In Milton every line breathes fanctity of thought, and purity of manners, except when the train of the narration requires the introduction of the rebellious fpirits; and seven they are compelled to acknowledge their fubjection to God, in fuch a manner as excites reverence, and confirms piety.

Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of mankind, vene rable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and amiable after it for repentance and fubmiffion. In their firft ftate their affection is tender without weakness, and their piety fublime without prefumption. When they have finned, they fhew how difcord begins in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how confidence