man acquainted with many other men. Some philofophical notions, especially when the philofophy is falfe, might have been better omitted. The angel, in a comparison, speaks of timorous deer, before deer were yet timorous, and before Adam could understand the comparison.

Dryden remarks, that Milton has fome flats among his elevations. This is only to fay, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part must be for the fake of others; a palace must have paffages; a poem must have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be blazing, than that the fun fhould always ftand at noon. In a great work there is a viciffitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a fucceffion of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the fky, may be allowed fometimes to revifit earth; for what other author ever foared fo high, or fuftained his flight fo long?

Milton, being well verfed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed often from them; and, as every man catches fomething from

from his companions, his defire of imitating Ariofto's levity has difgraced his work with the Paradife of Fools; a fiction not in itself ill-imagined, but too ludicrous for its place.

His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations, which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his unneceffary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not neceffary to mention, because they are eafily remarked, and generally cenfured, and at last bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely deferve the attention of a critick.

Such are the faults of that wonderful performance Paradife Loft; which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be confidered not as nice but as dull, as lefs to be cenfured for want of candour, than pitied for want of fenfibility.

Of Paradife Regained, the general judgement seems now to be right, that it is in many parts elegant, and every-where inftruc tive. It was not to be fuppofed that the writer of Paradife Loft could ever write without great

great effufions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The bafis of Paradife Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please like an union of the narrative and dramatic powers. Had this Had this poem been written not by Milton, but by fome imitator, it would have claimed and received univerfal praise.

If Paradife Regained has been too much depreciated, Sampson Agonistes has in requital been too much admired. It could only be by long prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions of the French and English ftages; and it is only by a blind confidence in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised in which the intermediate parts have neither caufe nor confequence, neither haften nor retard the catastrophe.

In this tragedy are however many particular beauties, many just fentiments and striking lines; but it wants that power of at-. tracting the attention which a well-connected. plan produces,

Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature only in the grofs, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending paffions. He had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must confer.

- Through all his greater works there pre-
vails an uniform peculiarity of Diction, a
mode and cast of expreffion which bears little
resemblance to that of any former writer,
and which is fo far removed from common
ufe, that an unlearned reader, when he first
opens
his book, finds himself surprised by a
new language.

This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton, imputed to his laborious endeavours after words fuitable to the grandeur of his ideas. fays Addifon, funk under him. is, that, both in. profe and

Our language, But the truth verse, he had

formed his style by a perverse and pedantick

VOL. I.

S

principle.

principle. He was defirous to use English words with a foreign idiom. This in all his profe is discovered and condemned; for there judgment operates freely, neither foftened by the beauty, nor awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but fuch is the power of his poetry, that his call is obeyed without refistance, the reader feels himself in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism finks in admiration.

Milton's ftyle was not modified by his fubject what is fhown with greater extent in Paradife Loft, may be found in Comus. One fource of his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets: the disposition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian; per haps fometimes combined with other tongues. Of him, at last, may be faid what Jonfon fays of Spenfe, that he wrote no language, but has formed what Butler calls a Babylanish Dialect, in itself harsh and barbarous, but made by exalted genius, and extensive learning, the vehicle of fo much inftruction and fo much pleasure, that, like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity.

What