Smooth on the tongue difcours'd, pleafing to th' ear, 480 Her dictates from thy mouth? most men admire Suffers the hypocrite or atheous priest To whom our Saviour with unalter'd brow, Permiffion from above; thou canst not more. 490 495 He publican principles at the Refto- faying of Medea. Ov. Met. VII. ration? 482. Thyer. moft men admire Virtue, who follow not her lore:] Imitated from the well known 20. Video meliora, proboque;, Deteriora fequor. 497.-and He added not; and Satan bowing low His gray diffimulation, disappear'd Into thin air diffus'd: for now began Night with her fullen wings to double-shade 500 The defert; fowls in their clay nefts were couch'd; And now wild beafts came forth the woods to roam. 497.and Satan bowing low His gray diffimulation,] An expreffion this, which your little word-catching critics will very probably cenfure, but readers of true tate admire. It is a true inftance of the feliciter audet. There is another of the fame kind in this book, where the poet fays, fpeaking of the angelic quire, ver. 170. - and in celeftial measures mov'd, Circling the throne and finging, while the hand Sung with the voice. disappear'd Thyer. 498. Into thin air diffus'd:] So Virgil of Mercury. Æn. IV. 278. Et procul in tenuem ex oculis evanuit auram. 500. to double-fbade The defert;] He has expreffed the fame thought elsewhere, In double night of darkness, and of fhades. And the reader will naturally obferve, how properly the images are taken from the place, where the fcene is laid. It is not a defcription of night at large, but of a night in the defert: and as Mr. Thyer fays, is very short, tho' poetical. The reafon no doubt was, because the poet had before labor'd this fcene to the utmost perfection in his Paradise Loft. The end of the First Book. PARADISE REGAIN'D. MEAN EAN while the new-baptiz'd, who yet re- At Jordan with the Baptift, and had feen 1. Mean while the new-baptiz'd, &c.] The greateft and indeed jufteft objection to this poem is the narrowness of its plan, which being confin'd to that fingle fcene of our Saviour's life on earth, his temptation in the defert, has too much fameness in it, too much of the reasoning, and too little of the defcriptive part, a defect moft certainly in an epic poem, which ought to confift of a proper and happy mixture of the inftructive and the delightful. Milton was himself, no doubt, fenfible of this imperfection, and has therefore very judiciously contriv'd and introduc'd all the little digreffions that could with any fort of propriety connect with his fubject, in order to relieve and refresh the reader's attention. The following converfation betwixt Andrew and Simon upon the miffing of our Saviour fo long, with the Virgin's reflections on the fame occafion, and And the council of the Devils how beft to attack their enemy, are inftances of this fort, and both very happily executed in their respective ways. The language of the former is not glaring and impaffion'd, but cool and unaffected, correfponding moft exactly to the humble pious character of the fpeakers. That of the latter is full of energy and majefty, and not a whit inferior to their moft fpirited fpeeches in the Paradife Loft. This may be given as one proof out of many others, that, if the Paradife Regain'd is inferior, as indeed I think it must be allow'd to be, to the Paradife Loft, it cannot juftly be imputed, as fome would have it, to any decay of Milton's genius, but to his being cramp'd down by a more barren and contracted fubje&t. in Thyer. 4. Jefus Meffiah Son of God declar'd,] This is a great mistake the poet. All that the people E 2 could |