Effective Caesuras, or a distinct stop in the middle of a foot, serving to emphasize the idea contained in the portion of the verse preceding the stop, occur in the following lines-101, 201, 375, 775, 944, 946, 1213, 1321, 1371, 1418. The effect is most striking when the caesura recurs in the middle of the first or second foot. Dr. Masson gives a more extended meaning to the Miltonic caesura (vol. i. p. cxxvii.).

A change of metre, meant to indicate contempt, occurs in ll. 298, 775, 1072; or to convey a repulsive idea, in 11. 621-622.

Lastly, Milton, in his prefatory note to Paradise Lost, gives his reasons for the low opinion he had of rhyme as an instrument of verse:-namely, that "it is the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre"; and a thing "to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight." His theory receives practical illustration from the use to which he puts rhyme in Samson Agonistes. In a great number of instances where it occurs, it is meant to convey a feeling of contempt or disesteem for the person or thing referred to, or the thought or sentiment embodied, e.g. 11. 170-5, 297-8, 303-6, 658-9, 668-9, 672-3, 674-5, 688-91, 1010-17, 1031-2, 1841-2, 1053-60, 1525-6. In a few instances the use of rhymes seems to be accidental or, at least, of doubtful import, e.g. ll. 610-1, 615-6, 973-4, 1519-20.

SAMSON AGONISTES.

A DRAMATIC POEM.

THE AUTHOR

JOHN MILTON.

Aristot. Poet. cap. 6. Tpaywdia μíμnois wpážews σrovdaías, etc.— Tragoedia est imitatio actionis seriæ, etc., per misericordiam et metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem.

OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC POEM

CALLED TRAGEDY.

TRAGEDY, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-like passions,—that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion; for So, in physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours. Hence philosophers and other gravest writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illustrate their discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture, 1 Cor. xv. 33; and Paræus, commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole book, as a tragedy, into acts, distinguished each by a Chorus of heavenly harpings and song between. Heretofore men in highest dignity have laboured not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy. Of that honour Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious than before of his attaining to the tyranny. Augustus Cæsar also had begun his Ajax, but, unable to please his own judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinished. Seneca, the philosopher, is by some thought the author of those tragedies (at least the best of them) that go under that name. Gregory Nazianzen, a Father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a tragedy, which he entitled Christ Suffering. This is mentioned to vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day, with other common interludes;