A MASK. BY JOHN MILTON. ADAPTED FOR THEATRICAL REPRESENTATION, AS PERFORMED FIRST AT THE THEATRE-ROYAL, COVENT-GARDEN, IN THE YEAR 1744. REGULATED FROM THE PROMPT-BOOK, "The Lines distinguished by inverted Commas, are omitted in the Representation." LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETORS, M DCC XCV, THE BIOGRAPHER TO THE WORLD. IT may be necessary exactly to state what are the pretensions specifically, of the brief BIOGRAPHY prefixed to these Volumes :-that expectation may not be disappointed, and that blame may not be imputed to him for amissions of what were by no means comprehended in his plan. All that is here to be sought, is a concise characteristic SKETCH of the Author, to whose play it is prefixed. ANECDOTES that are entirely new, can scarcely be hoped for at this period. Most of these Lives have been narrated in various forms, with minuteness of research, and length of detail. The confined space that can here be allotted, rather prescribes selection from what is known already, than research after novelties to swell the amount. If, multum in parvo, much in a narrow compass, be found; if the philosophising spirit of Biography render character more perspicuous, and peculiarities prominent; if, exemplifying upon habits and manners, a lesson neither inelegant nor tedious be offered to leisure and curiosity; if the errors of the mind be in any degree corrected and reformed, and the social propensities of mankind strengthened and extended; I have my wish. THE BIOGRAPHER. JOHN MILTON. To write at this time the life of an Author like the Poet abovementioned, would be superfluous and impertinent.-Every circumstance that attended him is so generally known; his admirers have so minutely recorded his excellencies, and his enemies have taken the same kind of care of his failings, that little more is left for us than to consider him in the particular province of a DRAMATIC POET. MILTON appears to have been but slenderly gifted for the effects of Tragedy-His powers inclined little to the pathetic, though EURIPIDES was his favourite author. The other grand principle of tragic effort seemed as little within his attainment.-The terror that his conception would excite is rendered less vivid by the solemn prolongation of his periods, and the concatenation of his lines. The nervous brevity of Shakspere he admired, but he did not imitate. His two dramatic poems, exquisite as they are, considered as the vehicles of florid imagination and elegant expression, are nevertheless utterly remote from modern sentiment and modern language. There is little to regret that, following the obvious bias of his mind, he soared into the epic field of unbounded invention, and permitted the Drama of his country, gothic and barbarous as he deemed it, to remain without a contest in those hands to which NATURE seemed to have consigned the portraiture of MANNERS and of Man. י It Fortune is frequently favourable in the arrangement of events: an escape from the enthusiasm of his politics might have rendered the great MILTON an uncouth Historian, and an unsuccessful Dramatist. The extent of his attainments made him little doubtful of their capabilities. was the most felicitous circumstance of his life, that abandoning the DRAMA religiously, and History from calamity, he fixed upon a Theme of such exquisite beauty as enabled him to bear the evils of blindness and adversity, soothed by the nightly harmonies of heaven, and sustained unfaulteringly by the holy fervour of inspired POESY. |