and in the Latin correspondence of Milton, there are words that imply a similarity of sentiment; they both thought there might be a sanctified bitterness, to use an expression of Milton, towards political and religious opponents; yet surely these two devout men were both wrong, and both in some degree unchristian in this principle. To what singular iniquities of judgment such a principle may lead, we might perhaps, have had a most striking, and a double proof, had it been possible for these two energetic writers to exhibit alternately a portrait of each other. Milton, adorned with every graceful endowment, highly and holily accomplished as he was, appears in the dark coloring of Johnson, a most unamiable being; but could he revisit earth in his mortal character, with a wish to retaliate, what a picture might be drawn, by that sublime and offended genius, of the great moralist, who has treated him with such excess of asperity. The passions are powerful colorists, and marvellous adepts in the art of exaggeration; but the portraits executed by love (famous as he is for over

charging them) are infinitely more faithful to nature, than gloomy sketches from the heavy hand of hatred; a passion not to be trusted or indulged even in minds of the highest purity or power; since hatred, tho' it may enter the field of contest nnder the banner of justice, yet generally becomes so blind and outrageous, from the heat of contention, as to execute, in the name of virtue, the worst purposes of vice. Hence arises that species of calumny the most to be regretted, the calumny lavished by men of talents and worth on their equals or superiors, whom they have rashly and blindly hated for a difference of opinion. To such hatred the fervid and opposite characters, who gave rise to this observation, were both more inclined, perhaps, by nature and by habit, than Christianity can allow. The freedom of these remarks on two very great, and equally devout, though different writers, may possibly offend the partizans of both: in that case my consolation will be, that I have endeavoured to speak of them with that temperate, though undaunted sincerity,

which may satisfy the spirit of each in a purer state of existence. There is one characteristic in Milton, which ought to be considered as the chief source of his happiness and his fame; I mean his early and perpetual attachment to religion. It must gratify every christian to reflect, that the man of our country most eminent for energy of mind, for intenseness of application, and for frankness and intrepidity in asserting whatever he believed to be the cause of truth, was so confirmedly devoted to Christianity, that he seems to have made the Bible, not only the rule of his conduct, but the primé director of his genius. His poetry flowed from the scripture, as if his unparalleled poetical powers had been expressly given him by Heaven for the purpose of imparting to religion such lustre as the most splendid of human faculties could bestow. As in the Paradise Lost he seems to emulate the sublimity of Moses and the prophets, it appears to have been his wish, in the Paradise Regained, to copy the sweetness and simplicity of the milder evan

gelists. If the futile remarks that were made upon the latter work, on its first appearance, excited the spleen of the great author, he would probably have felt still more indignant could he have seen the comment of Warburton. That disgusting writer, whose critical dictates form a fantastic medley of arrogance, acuseness, and absurdity, has asserted that the plan of Paradise Regained is very unhappy, and that nothing was easier than to have invented a good one.

Much idle censure seems to have been thrown on more than one of Milton's poe tical works, from want of due attention to the chief aim of the poet:-If we fairly consider it in regard to Paradise Regained, the aim I allude to, as it probably occasioned, will completely justify, the plan which the presumptuous critic has so superciliously condemned. Milton had already executed one extensive divine poem, peculiarly distinguished by richness and sublimity of description; in framing a second, he would naturally wish to vary its effect; to make it

rich in moral sentiment, and sublime in its mode of unfolding the highest wisdom that man can learn ; for this purpose it was necessary to keep all the ornamental parts of the poem in due subordination to the preceptive. This delicate and difficult point is accomplished with such felicity, they are blended together with such exquisite harmony and mutual aid, that instead of arraigning the plan, we might rather doubt if any possible change could improve it; assuredly, there is no poem of epic form, where the sublimest moral instruction is so forcibly and abundantly united to poetical delight the splendour of the poet does not blaze indeed so intensely as in his larger production; here he resembles the Apollo of Ovid, softening his glory in speaking to his son, and avoiding to dazzle the fancy, that he may descend into the heart. His dignity is not impaired by his tenderness. The Paradise Regained is a poem, that deserves to be particularly recommended to ardent and ingenious youth, as it is admirably