parison the greatest artist who has yet employed our language in verse. Dr. Guest says he 'diligently tutored an ear which nature had gifted with delicate sensibility.... His verse almost ever fits the subject, and so insensibly does poetry blend with this -the last beauty of exquisite versification-that the reader may sometimes doubt whether it be the thought itself, or merely the happiness of its expression, which is the source of a gratification so deeply felt.' If the personages in the two poems are unimaginable, and the situations unnatural, the art of exciting poetic emotion by the employment and collocation of words has never been practised by any English writer with such refinement. Single lines are alive with feeling, and there is a long swell which accompanies us even through the tame and dreary flats of the poem, such as the 5th, 6th, and 7th books. 'There are no such vistas and avenues of verse as Milton's. In reading Paradise Lost one has a feeling of spaciousness such as no other poet gives. He showed from the first that larger style which was to be his peculiar distinction. The strain heard in his earlier productions is of a higher mood as regards metrical construction than anything that had thrilled the English ear before, giving no uncertain augury of him who was to show what sonorous metal lay silent, till he touched the keys in the epical organ-pipes of our various language, that have never since felt the strain of such prevailing breath.' (Lowell.) 7. Paradise Regained was written, in whole, or in part, during the poet's retirement to Chalfont S. Giles' from the Great Plague, 1665 -6. Ellwood, Milton's young quaker friend, tells us that he himself was the person who first suggested this subject. But, without questioning the literal exactness of Ellwood's report of his conversation with Milton, it is probable that Milton originally conceived the subject of his great work—the Fall and Recovery of Man-in one, and only when he came to write, found that the two parts of the drama of humanity must be separately treated. He therefore contented himself with a prophetic reference to the recovery, and the Messiah, in an awkward supplement, Book 12 of Paradise Lost. From Ellwood's suggestion, too, Milton has taken no more than the title of his poem. For though he calls it Paradise Regained, the subject of the poem is the Temptation; and this would have been its proper title. It is observed by the critics that the later epic has, in every country, a tendency to pass into the drama. Paradise Regained cannot be ranked as an epic, as not being full enough of personages or events. At the same time, it is not a drama, as the one transaction of which it consists is narrated to us by the poet, and not performed before us by the only two actors introduced. The bulk of the poem consists of dialogue. It is an astonishing feat of amplification, that more than 2000 lines should have been constructed out of some twenty verses of the synoptical gospels, without our anywhere having the sense of circumlocution and weakened effect, which paraphrases ordinarily produce. Paradise Regained is undoubtedly inferior in interest to Paradise Lost. This is owing to its exaggerating the defects of the former poem, which were too little action, too few agents, and the superhuman character of those few. The language of the later poem is also less ornate, less charged with subtle suggestion than was that of Paradise Lost. But, though barren of human interest, and denuded of all verbal ornamentation, the patient student of Paradise Regained will find himself impressed by it with a sense of power which awes all the more because it is latent. Phillips. tells us that the poet himself 'could not bear with patience' to hear that it was inferior to Paradise Lost. Johnson, with his habitual carelessness, converted this statement into the different one that 'his last poetical offspring was his favourite.' This is not warranted by the authority which Johnson quotes, that of Phillips. But it is remarkable that two poets of the early part of our century, Coleridge and Wordsworth, have each given expression to a similar opinion. Wordsworth says: 'Paradise Regained is the most perfect in execution of anything written by Milton;' Coleridge, that in its kind it is the most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in interest.' 8. With Samson Agonistes, written 1667, published 1671, Milton closed his authorship as poet. In composing this piece he fulfilled more than one cherished intention. Samson is a drama, and though Milton had, after mature deliberation, chosen the epic form for his chief work, it was not without secretly reserving the intention to repeat the experiment of a drama, in which the Greek model should be even more closely adhered to than in Comus Milton's taste had been offended by the want of art and regularity of the English drama, and he tried to give a specimen of a tragedy in conformity with the severest type. In Samson not only are the unities of time and place observed, but dialogue is varied by choral odes; no division of act or scene is made, but the transitions are managed by the intervention of a chorus of compatriots and sympathisers. How much, in composing this piece, Milton's thoughts were occupied with the question of form, is proved by his choosing to preface it by some remarks with a bearing on that point only. He says nothing, in this preface, which could point the references to his own fate and fortunes. The prefatory remarks are apologetic, and explain why he has adopted the dramatic form, in spite of the objection of religious men to the stage, and why he has modelled his drama after the ancients and Italians. Besides reviving the more correct form of drama, Milton's intention, in Samson, is to offer one, which in substance is free from the coarse buffooneries of the Restoration stage. Though taste and friendship both forbade his naming Dryden, or any living dramatist, we see of whom he is thinking, when he 'would vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day, with other common interludes, suffering through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons; which by all judicious hath been counted absurd, and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people.' Lastly, under the story of Samson, as here presented, the poet has adumbrated his own fate-the splendid promise of his Goddedicated youth, in contrast with the tragic close in blind and forsaken age, poor, despised, and if not a prisoner himself, witness of the captivity of his friends, and the triumph of the Philistine foeall this is distinctly imaged throughout this piece. The resemblance is completed by the scene with Dalila, in which we see how bitter, even at the distance of five and twenty years, is Milton's remembrance of what he suffered in his first marriage with the daughter of a Philistine house. When we remember that the line, 'with fear of change Perplexes monarchs,' in Paradise Lost had staggered a not unfriendly censor, we may wonder that the unmistakable allusion in Samson— 'their carcasses To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captiv'd; should have passed unchallenged in 1671. VOL. II. X MARK PATTISON. AN EPITAPH ON THE Admirable Dramatic Poet, [1630; æt. 22.] What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones, Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Hast built thyself a livelong monument. For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art, Dost make us marble with too much conceiving : L'ALLEGRO. [1632-4; æt. 24-26.] Hence, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings; There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou goddess fair and free, The frolic wind that breathes the spring, As he met her once a-Maying; And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew, Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair, Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles, Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And in thy right hand lead with thee To live with her, and live with thee, |