and the passage is manifestly a first study of more than one of the scenes and actors in the war of angels, and the model of that "chariot of Paternal Deity" which bore Messiah to the battle, when "under his burning wheels The steadfast empyrean shook throughout, O'er shields, and helms, and helmed heads he rode That wish'd the mountains now might be again PARADISE LOST, Book VI. The most readable, and the least antiquated in subject and handling, of Milton's prose works, is entitled—“ Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England." The occasion was this: the presbyterian party in the commonwealth having planted themselves in that power from which they had uprooted both the monarch and the nobles, became as tenacious of continuing the bondage of the press, as they had been indignant against the yoke when it was found galling and intolerable to themselves. This is probably the most complete and perfect oration in our language, a few only of Burke's masterpieces being so successfully elaborated as to stand in competition with it. Between the eloquence of Milton and that of the "old man eloquent," whom the French Revolution did not indeed destroy, but converted into a prophet as inspired as Cassandra, and by the multitude as little regarded when he gave note of evil tidings, there is considerable resemblance. The characteristics of both are intellectual strength, exuberant imagination, and impassioned utterance; while the style of each is marked by implicated sentences, with frequent parenthetic clauses breaking out, as through safety-valves of over-pressed thought, into additional illustration, or matter unexpected by the reader, and apparently unpremeditated by the writer himself. This specimen of Milton's rhetorical power as an advocate presents a galaxy of current thought, thick sown with stars, clustered or single, of every lustre, hue, and magnitude. Argument, illustration, fancy, wit, sarcasm, and noble sentiment, are here so closely arrayed, arranged, and concatenated, as are not often found in Milton himself; while the temper of the whole-except in a few passing strokes at the prelates-is not only blameless, but commendable. The theme is magnificent-the vindication of man's prerogative on earth above the brutes that perish his realm of reason, and his sovereignty of speech. No brief quotations can give a just idea of the force and authority of plain truths, with which the undaunted republican addresses the rulers of his own party, when they were meditating to impose on the people whom their prowess in the field had set free, the most hateful of all tyrannies, the enslavement of the press. "Give me," he exclaims, "the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely, above all liberties." This treatise exemplifies all the excellencies of Milton's manner, with fewer of its perplexities of syntax, and encumbrances of phrase; whereas, on other occasions, his sentences, in verse as well as in prose, too often resemble trees so loaded with fruit, that their branches are bent down to the ground, and sometimes even trail along it; while the symmetry and grace of his finest periods are disfigured by lumbering parentheses. In many passages of his polemics, there is an intensity of eloquence that seems to fuse the multitude of his thoughts, and send them, glowing white, from the crucible of his mind into the mind of the reader, scarcely able to contain them in the mould of his narrower conception. We find also an impetuosity and impatience in Milton's prose which never occurs in his verse. The vehemence of his argument, whether as an advocate or an accuser, carries him out of himself, in acrimonious invective or rapturous panegyric. There are poets and orators who have power so to possess the faculties of their audiences, that, while under the spell, the voice of no other charmer can affect them, charm he never so wisely. Milton was one of these, but he must be deeply studied at first, and then the larger the draughts, the more inspiring they become, from the inexhaustible fountain of his soul-a soul that transfuses itself for a while through our own, as the oracle of old is said to have inspired the Pythoness. In poetry, his genius never flares out into excess, though often, as already intimated, it does so in prose. Yet how far more commanding is the splendour, fixed in a star, than that which vanishes in the meteor, though the latter may strike with more startling amaze at the moment. And how much more glorious is the wonder-working power of a sovereign intelligence, when under control, and doing without violence whatever it will, than when, rabid with rage, it falls, though in thunderbolts, from "the highest heaven of invention," to the gross regions of earthly passion. One paragraph from this brave defence of that which is itself the defence of all other liberties, the liberty of the press, shall be offered in proof of the marvellous excellence here ascribed to that treatise: "I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves, as well as men; and thereafter to confine in prison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are. Nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously pro ductive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. "And yet, on the other hand, unless weariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burthen to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no age can restore a life whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for want of which whole nations fare worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men ;-how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and, if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself,-slays an immortality rather than a life.” Turning to those compositions on which his fame irremovably rests, it seems strange that, as already stated, it was not till Milton had fought his way through middle life, in state controversies-when old, and blind, and poor, his genius, at length (to accommodate a magnificent figure of his own,) "mewing," like "an eagle, her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam" of sacred inspiration-"purging and unscaling her longabused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance," soared "with no middle flight above the Eonian mount," while she "pursued, to the height of (her) great argument, things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme," and nobly dared to "assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men." PARADISE LOST, Book 1. The Latin poems of Milton were, for the most part, the proofs of the early products of his learning, rather than the precocious evidence of his genius. They gained him, however, no small reputation, both at home and abroad, among scholars. These, with some maturer fruits of the same hot-house culture, are still reprinted in his collected pieces, but command little attention, except as curiosities of literature. Nor are they much better known, even in the English version, from the kindred pen of Cowper. Like all his poems, they abound in classical allusions and mythological embellishments, which (particularly the latter) are sometimes strangely, not to say profanely, blended with scriptural truths and Christian subjects. In these juvenile essays, Milton's views of picturesque nature are more general than accurate, and more classical than just like the ideal of beauty in sculpture, his poetical beauty is equally the offspring of imagination; delighting the eye, indeed, and filling the mind, but seldom touching the heart with the force or reality of truth. A man born blind might, from verbal precedents (in ancient authors especially,) have written all the descriptive passages in these compositions. The earliest original poem in his own tongue, which has been perserved, bears the simple and affecting titleOn the Death of a fair Infant, dying of a Cough. She was the daughter of his sister, whom he thus apostrophizes in the first lines: "O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted! A flower as fair as she, and one that will not fade so timelessly, has the poet planted on her grave, in this affec |