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calculated to inspire that spirit of self-command, which is, as Milton esteemed it, the truest heroism, and the triumph of Christianity.

It is not my intention to enter into a critical analysis of the beauties and the blemishes that are visible in the poetry of Milton, because Addison and Johnson have both written admirably on his greatest work; I shall therefore confine myself to a single essay, detached from this narrative, under the title of " Conjectures on the Origin of the Paradise Lost."

I must not, however, omit to speak here, as I have engaged to do, of the character bestowed by Johnson on the principal performance of the poet; the greatest part of that character is, perhaps, the most splendid tribute that was ever paid by one powerful mind to another. Aristotle, Longinus, and Quinctilian, have not spoken of their favorite Homer, with more magnificence of praise; yet the character, taken altogether, is a golden image, that has lower

parts of iron and of clay. The critic seems to prepare a diadem of the richest jewels; he places them, most liberally, on the head of the poet; but in the moment of adjusting his radiant gift, he breathes upon it such a vapour of spleen, as almost annihilates its lustre,

After displaying, in the noblest manner, many of the peculiar excellencies in the poem, he says, "its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure; we read Milton for instruction, retire harrassed and overburthened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions."

Injurious as these remarks are to the poet, let us ascribe them, not to the virulence of intended detraction, but to the want of poetical sensibility in the critic; a want that may be sufficiently proved, by comparing this account of the effect produced by Paradise Lost on his own feelings, with its effect on a spirit truly poetical. That enchanting poem, The Task, very happily fur-..

nishes such an illustration; it is thus, that a mind attuned by nature to poetry, describes the effect in question, as produced even in childhood.

Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms
New to my taste; his Paradise surpass'd
The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue
To speak its excellence: I danc'd for joy.

But the little delight that Johnson confesses himself to have taken in the poetry of Milton was rather his misfortune than his fault; it merits pity more than reproach, as it partly arose from constitutional infelicity, and the very wide difference between the native turn of his mind and that of the poet: never were two spirits less congenial or two Christian scholars, who differed more completely in their sentiments of poetry, politics, and religion. In temperament, as well as in opinions, they were the reverse of each other; the one was sanguine to excess, the other melancholy in the extreme. Milton

"Might sit in the centre and enjoy bright day;"

but Johnson,

"Benighted walk'd under the mid-day sun;
Himself was his own dungeon."

Such was the great contrast between these two extraordinary men, that although they were both equally sincere in their attachment to Christianity, and both distinguished by noble intellectual exertions in the service of mankind, the critic was naturally disqualified from being a fair and a perfect judge of the poet. My regard for a departed and meritorious writer (of great powers, but constitutionally unhappy) is such, that I would rather ascribe to any cause, than to mere envious malignity, his outrages against the glory of Milton, which, from the force and celebrity of the very admirable but too austere work that contains them, it becomes the duty of a more recent biographer to expose.

For example, when Johnson says that Milton" wrote no language, but formed a

Babylonish dialect, harsh and barbarous," though it would be difficult to pronounce a critical censure more bitter or more injurious, we may impute it, not to a malevolent desire of depreciating the poet, but to a natural want of ear for that harmony, which the critic condemns as discord. On this article, the most harmonious of our bards has been very happily vindicated by men of science and taste. Dr. Foster and Lord Monboddo have shewn Milton to be one of the most consummate artificers of language, that ever gave either energy or grace to words; and Mr. Loft, in the preface to his recent edition of Paradise Lost, describes the majestic flow of his numbers with such truth and eloquence, as render ample justice to the insulted dignity of the poet.

The insult, gross as it may be thought, loses much of its force when we recollect the inconsistency of the critic, who, though in his latter work he condemns the language of Milton as harsh and barbarous, had before observed, with more truth in the Rambler, that the poet "excelled as much in

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