minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power, nothing was too vast; for whose inspection, nothing was too minute. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with Him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority, but his favour; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory that should never fade away! On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language-nobles by right of an earlier creation, and priests, by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged-on whose slightest action, the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events, which short-sighted politicians had ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen and flourished, and decayed. For his sake, the Almighty had proclaimed His will by the pen of the evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the suffering of" the Redeemer. It was into this earnest and stirring age that Milton was cast. It was surrounded by such men and such events that he grew up. He threw his whole soul into the cause of liberty, of religion, of progress, and of spiritual illumination. He imbibed from the Puritans whatever they had that was excellent and godlike; and sought with the earnestness of a prophet, and the zeal of a martyr, to promote the cause of mental, moral, political, and spiritual freedom. These remarks seemed necessary to prepare the way for what I have now to say, my young friends, on the Poetry of Milton. Remember, then, that John Milton was an earnest, a high spirited, an astonishingly learned, and a sublimely devoted man. And bear this in mind, as we proceed to examine some of the peculiarities of his Poetry. The first characteristic of the poetry of Milton that I shall mention is that of Consecratedness. His life was preeminently a consecrated life; and, in his aims as a poet, he had an object worthy of a saint, and verging on that of the ancient prophets and the apostles of the Lamb. He cultivated to the utmost, his vast mental powers, and, having implored Divine assistance, he laid his whole mind and being on the altar of God. Every line seems to have been written as if in the Divine presence. Where his devotion is not expressed in so many words, it is seen and felt to be no less real and earnest. His outward actions sprung from, and were an embodiment and manifestation of his inward sentiments. He commenced and completed all his works in singleness of heart as to the Lord. He avowedly aimed at the glory of God in the good of man. His professed design, for the accomplishment of which he earnestly prayed, in writing his greatest poem, was— "To assert eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to man." The spirit of sanctity reigns and predominates in all his poems. His earliest sonnet is a declaration of his religiously acting, "As ever in his Great Taskmaster's eye." He was endowed with the sublimest genius, and he dedicated that genius to truth, to purity, to freedom, to God. His life-long effort was to bring and preserve his whole soul in a state of complete harmony with the Divine mind. One of his sonnets on his blindness was quoted in my former letter, as evidence of his undauntedness of soul, his calm magnanimity, and his intense love of freedom. I here quote the other as evidence of his consecratedness. He expresses a very lofty idea of the claims of God, and the dignity of his service, whether in active effort, or meek submission and endurance. In either, or both ways, he solemnly resolves faithfully to adhere to duty. ON HIS BLINDNESS. "When I consider how my light is spent, 'Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, Milton's consecratedness of life and purpose gave a union and oneness to his writings. George Gilfillan thus speaks of it: "As St. Peter's in Rome seems one, because it unites, condenses, and records, in all the minutiæ of its fabric and dome, so lofty and proud, that it seems a copy of the sky to which it points, to imitate as well as to adore, so Milton gathers in all the spoils of time, and all the faculties of man, and offers them in one sacrifice, and on one vast altar to Heaven." The second characteristic of his poetry that I shall mention is its Erudition—its amazing display and embodiment of learning. This feature of his poetry has been thus spoken of: "To many he seems only a poet, when in truth he was a profound scholar, a man of vast compass of thought, embued thoroughly with all ancient and modern learning, and able to master, to mould, to impregnate with his own intellectual power, his great and various acquisitions. He travelled over the whole field of knowledge as far as it had been explored. The natural philosophy, ethics, history, theology, of his own and previous times, were familiar to him. His poetry reminds us of the ocean, which adds to its boundlessness contributions from every region under heaven!” Such is the testimony of Dr. Channing in his very admirable Essay on Milton. Professor Wilson observes, that "Milton had unremittingly studied the classical art of poetry, and brought into the service of the solemn undertaking in "Paradise Lost," all the resources of poetical art, which prior ages had placed at his disposal; his learning, from the literature of the world, gathered spoils to hang up in the vast and glorious temple which he dedicated. "Paradise Lost" was to Milton the depository of his life-long studies." His acquaintance with heathen mythology was extensive and accurate. Of that knowledge he made ample and admirable use. On this point, the poet Thomas Campbell, makes the following admirable remarks:"The subject of 'Paradise Lost' was the origin of evil— an era in existence an event more than all others, dividing past from present time-an isthmus in the ocean of eternity. The theme was, in its nature, connected with every thing important in the circumstances of human history; and, amidst these circumstances, Milton saw that the fables of Paganism were too important and poetical to be omitted. As a Christian he was entitled wholly to neglect them; but, as a poet, he chose to treat them, not as dreams of the human mind, but as the delusions of infernal existences. Thus anticipating a beautiful propriety for all classical allusions; thus connecting and reconciling the co-existence of Fable and Truth; and thus identifying the fallen angels with the deities of gay religions full of pomp and gold; he yoked the heathen mythology in triumph to his subject, and clothed himself in the spoils of superstition." Another characteristic of the poetry of Milton, my young friends, is sustained Sublimity. This pervades every thing that emanated from his mind. Whether he wrote prose or poetry, his mind rose, as if by a law of its own nature, to the sublime. "His name is almost identified with sublimity. He is, in truth, the sublimest of men. He rises, not by effort or discipline, but by a native tendency and godlike instinct, to the contemplation of objects of grandeur and awfulness. He always moves with a conscious energy. There is no subject so vast or terrific as to repel or intimidate him. The overwhelming grandeur of a theme kindles and attracts him. With a few strong and delicate touches, he impresses, as it were, his own mind on the scenes which he would describe, and kindles the imagination of the gifted reader, to cloth them with the same radiant hues under which they appeared to himself." An able writer in the "Edinburgh Review" spoke thus of Milton's sublimity-" There is a grandeur of conception in Milton, a breadth of character, and a towering spirit, which stood over his subject from end to end, that we shall scarcely admit to exist in any other poet. He was, in our minds, the greatest epic poet in the world." I will here transcribe one of his early poems as a specimen of sublimity in his early productions: entitled |