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I

Milton's Paradife Regain'd has not met with the approbation that it deferves. It has not the harmony of numbers, the fublimity of thought, and the beauties of diction, which are in Paradise Loft. It is compofed in a lower and less ftriking stile, a ftile fuited to the fubject. Artful fophiftry, falfe reafoning, fet off in the moft fpecious manner, and refuted by the Son of God with ftrong unaffected eloquence, is the peculiar excellence of this poem. Satan there defends a bad caufe with great skill and subtlety, as one thoroughly versed in that craft;

Qui facere affuerat
Candida de nigris, et de can-

dentibus atra.

His character is well drawn. Fortin.

1. I who ere while &c] Milton begins his Paradife Regain'd in the fame manner as the Paradife Loft; first proposes his fubject, and then invokes the affiftance of the Holy Spirit. The beginning I who ere

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while &c is plainly an allufion to the Ille ego qui quondam &c attributed to Virgil: but it doth not therefore follow, that Milton had no better tafte than to conceive these lines to be genuin. Their being fo well known to all the learned was reafon fufficient for his imitation of them, as it was for Spenfer's before him :

Lo, I the man, whofe Mufe whileom did mask,

As time her taught, in lowly fhepherds weeds,

Am now enforc'd a far unfitter task,

For trumpets ftern to change mine oaten reeds &c.

2. By one man's disobedience] The oppofition of one man's disobedience in this verse to one man's obedience in ver. 4. is fomewhat in the ftile and manner of St. Paul. Rom. V. 19. For as by one man's disobedience many were made finners; fo by the obedience of one fall many be made righteous.

3. Recover'd Paradife] It may

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feem

feem a little odd at firft, that Milton fhould impute the recovery of Paradife to this fhort fcene of our Saviour's life upon earth, and not rather extend it to his agony, crucifixion &c; but the reafon no doubt was, that Paradife regain'd by our Saviour's refifting the temptations of Satan might be a better contraft to Paradife loft by our first parents too eafily yielding to the fame feducing Spirit. Befides he might very probably, and indeed very reafonably, be apprehenfive, that a fubject fo extensive as well as fublime might be too great a burden for his declining conftitution, and a task too long for the fhort term of years he could then hope for. Even in his Paradife Loft he expreffes his fears, left he had begun too late, and left an age too late, or cold climate, or years fould have damp'd his intended wing; and furely he had much greater caufe to dread the fame now, and be very cautious of Janching out too far.

Thyer.

It is hard to fay whether Milton's wrong notions in divinity led him

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to this defective plan; or his fondnefs for the plan influenced those notions. That is whether he indeed fuppofed the redemption of mankind (as he here reprefents it) was procured by Chrift's triumph over the Devil in the wilderness; or whether he thought that the fcene of the defert opposed to that of Paradife, and the action of a temptation withstood to a temptation fallen under, made Paradife Regain'd a more regular fequel to Paradife Loft. Or if neither this nor that, whether it was his being tired out with the labor of compofing Paradife Loft made him averfe to another work of length (and then he would never be at a lofs for fanciful reafons to determin him in the choice of his plan) is very uncertain. All that we can be fure of is, that the plan is a very unhappy one, and defective even in that narrow view of a fequel, for it affords the poet no opportunity of driving the Devil back again to Hell from his new conquefts in the air. In the mean time

nothing