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Every thing that is truly great and aftonishing, has a place in it. The whole fyftem of the intellectual world; the chaos, and the creation: heaven, earth, and hell; enter into the conftitution of his poem.

Having in the first and fecond books reprefented the infernal world with all its horrors, the thread of his fable naturally leads him into the oppofite regions of blifs and glory.

If Milton's majeffy for fakes him any where, it is ia thofe parts of his poem, where the divine perfons are introduced as fpeakers. One may, I think, obferve, that the author proceeds with a kind of fear and trembling, whilst he defcribes the fentiments of the Almighty. He dares not give his imagination its full play, but chufes to confine himself to fuch thoughts as are drawn from the books of the moft orthodox divines, and to fuch expreffions as may be met with in fcripture. The beauties, therefore, which we are to look for in thefe fpeeches, are not of a poetical nature, nor fo proper to fill the mind with fentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of devotion. The paffions, which they are defigned to raife, are a divine love and religious fear. The particular beauty of the fpeeches in the third book, confits in that shortness and perfpicuity of ftyle, in which the poet has couched the greateft myfteries of christianity, and drawn together, in a regular fcheme, the whole difpenfation of Providence with refpect to man. has reprefented all the abftrufe doctrines of predeftination, free-will and grace, as alfo the great points of incarnation and redemption, which naturally grow up in a poem that treats of the fall of man, with great energy of expreflion, and in a clearer and stronger light than I ever met with in any other writer. As thefe points are dry in themfelves to the generality of readers, the concife and clear manner in which he has treated them, is very much to be admired, as is likewife that particular art which he has made ufe of in the interfperfing of all thofe graces of poetry, which the fubject was apable of receiving

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The furvey of the whole creation, and of every thing that is tranfacted in it, is a profpect worthy of omnifcience; and as much above that, in which Virgil

has drawn his Jupiter, as the chriftian idea of the Supreme Being is more rational and fublime than that of the heathens. The particular objects on which he is defcribed to have caft his eye, are reprefented in the most beautiful and lively manner.

Now had th' Almighty Father from above
From the pure empyrean where he fits

High thron d above all height, bent down his eye,
H's own works and their works at once to view.
About him all the fan&tities of heav'n
Stood thick as ftars, and from his fight receiv'd
Beatitude paft utt'iance on his right
The radiant image of his glory fat,
His only Son. On earth he first beheld
Our two first parents, yet the only two
Of mankind, in the happy garden plac'd,
Reaping inmortal fruits of joy and love;
Uninterrupted joy, unrival'd love,

In blifsful folitude. He then furvey'd
Hell and the gulph between, and Satan there
Coafting the wall of heav'n on this fide night,
In the dun air fublime; and ready now
To ftoop with wearied wings, and willing feet
On the bare outside of this world, that feem'd
Firm land imbofom'd without firmament;
Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.

Him God beholding from his profpect high,
Wherein paft, prefent, future he beholds,
Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake.

Satan's approach to the confines of the creation is finely imaged in the beginning of the speech which immediately follows. The effects of this fpeech in the bleffed fpirits, and in the divine perfon to whom it was addreffed, cannot but fill the mind of the reader with a fecret pleasure and complacency.

Thus while God fpake, ambrofial fragrance fill'd
All heav'n, and in the blessed spirits elect
Senfe of new joy ineffable diffus'd.
Beyond compare the Son of God was feen
Moft glorious; in him all his Father flione

Subftantially exprefs'd; and in his face
Divine compaflion vifibly appear'd,

Love without end, and without measure

grace.

I need not point out the beauty of that circumflance, wherein the whole host of angels are reprefented as ftanding mute; nor fhew how proper the occafion was, to produce fuch a filence in heaven. The clofen this divine colloquy, with the hymn of angels that follows upon it, are fo wonderfully beautiful and poetical, that I fhould not forbear inferting the whole paffage, if the bounds of my paper would give me leave.

No fooner had th' Almighty ceafed, but all
The multitude of angels with a fhout

(Loud as from numbers without number, fweet
As from bleft voices) utt'ring joy, heav'n rung
With jubilee, and loud hofannas fill'd
'Th' eternal regions; &c. &c.

Satan's walk upon the outfide of the univerfe, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but, upon his nearer approach, looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble: as his roaning upon the frontiers of the creation between that mafs of matter, which was wrought into a world, and that fhapeless unformed heap of materials, which ftill lay in chaos and confufion, trikes the imagination with fomething aftonishingly great and wild. I have before fpoken of the limbo of vanity, which the poet places upon this outermoft furface of the univerfe, and fhall here explain myfelf more at large on that, and other parts of the poem, which are of the fame fhadowy nature.

Ariftotle obferves, that the fable of an epic poem fhould abound in circumftances that are both credible and aftonishing; or as the French critics choose to phrafe it, the fable fhould be filled with the probable and the marvellous. This rule is as fine and jult as any in Arifto le's whole art of poetry.

If the fable is only probable, it differs nothing from a true history; if it is only marvellous, it is no better than a romance. The great fecret therefore of heroic poetry is to relate fuch circumftances as may produce

N° 315.. in the reader at the fame time both belief and aftonishment. This is brought to pafs in a well chofen fable, by the account of fuch things as have really happened, or at leat of fuch things as have happened according to the received opinions of mankind. Milton's fable is a mafter-piece of this nature; as the war in heaven, the condition of the fallen angels, the ftate of innocence, the teraptation of the ferpent, and the fall of man, though they are very aftonishing in themfelves, are not only credible, but actual points of fash.

The next method of reconciling miracles with credibility, is by a happy invention of the poet; as in particular, when he introduces agents of a fuperior nature, who are capable of effecting what is wonderful, and what is not to be met with in the ordinary courfe of things. Ulyffes's fhip being turned into a rock, and Eneas's fleet into a fhoal of water-nymphs, though they are very furprising accidents, are nevertheless probable when we are told that they were the gods who thus transformed them. It is this kind of machinery which fills the poems both of Homer and Virgil with fuch circumstances as are wonderful but not impoffible,' and fo frequently produce in the reader the moft pleafing paffion that can rife in the mind of man, which is admiration. If there be any inftance in the Aneid liable to exception upon this account, it is in the beginning of the third book, where Eneas is reprefented as tearing up the myrtle that dropped blood To qualify this wonderful circumftance, Polydorus tells a ftory from the root of the myrtle, that the barbarous inhabitants of the country having pierced him with fpears and arrows, the wood which was left in his body took root in his wounds, and gave birth to that bleeding tree. This circumftance feems to have the marvellous without the probable, because it is reprefented as proceeding from natural caufes, without the interpofition of any god, or other fupernatural power capable of producing it. fpears and arrows grow of themselves without fo much as the modern help of inchantment. If we look into the fiction of Milton's fable, though we find it full of furprising incidents, they are generally fuited to our notions of the things and perfons defcribed, and tempered

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with a due measure of probability. I muft only make an exception to the limbo of vanity, with his episode of Sin and Death, and fome of his imaginary perfons in his chaos. Thefe paffages are aftonishing, but not credible; the reader cannot fo far impofe upon himself as to fee a poffibility in them; they are the defcription of dreams and fhadows, not of things or perfons. I know that many critics look upon the ftories of Circe, Polypheme, the Sirens, nay the whole Odyssey and I'm 1, to be allegories; but allowing this to be true, they are fables, which confidering the opinions of mankind that prevailed in the age of the poet, might poffibly have been according to the letter. The perfons are fuch as might have acted what is afcribed to them, as the circumftances in which they are reprefented, might poffibly have been truths and realities. This appearance of probability is fo abfolutely requifite in the greater kinds of poetry, that Ariftotle obferves the ancient tragic writers made ufe of the names of fuch great men as had actually lived in the world, though the tragedy proceeded upon adventures they were never engaged in, on purpose to make the subject more credible. In a word, befides the hidden meaning of an epic allegory, the plain literal fenfe ought to appear probable. The story fhould be fuch as an ordinary reader may acquiefce in, whatever natural, moral, or political truth may be difcovered in it by men of greater penetration.

Satan, after having long wandered upon the furface, or outmost wall of the univerfe, difcovers at laft a wide gap in it, which led into the creation, and is defcribed as the opening through which the angels pafs to and fro into the lower world, upon their errands to mankind. His fitting upon the brink of this paffage and taking a furvey of the whole face of nature that appeared to him new and fresh in all its beauties, with the fimile illuftrating this circumftance, fills the mind of the reader with as furprifing and glorious an idea as any that arifes in the whole poem. He looks down into that vaft hollow of the univerfe with the eye, or, as Milton calls it in his first book, with the ken of an angel. He furveys all the wonders in this immenfe

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