schemes of uniting private emolument with public benefit, which have been projected by the ingenuity of a few, and established by the united contributions of many, since the commencement of the present century, not one has been conducted with more ability or success than the County Fire Office, combined with the Provident Life Insurance Office, which was established in the year 1806. The affairs of these two flourishing Companies have, ever since their formation, been conducted by Mr. Beaumont, who is the Managing Director, and whose talents, industry, and perseverance, in this arduous and honourable situation, are too well known to need any mention, and much less to require any panegyric. Since its esta blishment, the County Fire Office has satisfied the claims of more than thirteen hundred sufferers, without a single litigation. This fact speaks volumes, and furnishes an indisputable proof of the candour, liberality, and good sense with which the business of the Office is conducted; and by which its interests are best secured. The Provident Life Insurance Office is not inferior to any similar establishment, in the wisdom and justice of its regulations.

Among the varied labours of Mr. Beaumont, we do not reckon those the least useful which he made some years ago, and which he has since continued, for correcting the numerous abuses of the licensing system, as it is applied to the public houses of the metropolis. Two committees of the House of Commons, which published such able reports on the police of the metropolis, have concurred with Mr. Beaumont in reprobating the arbitrary nature and complicated evils of the licensing sys

tem. But the brewers have such a powerful interest in Parliament, that we cannot, at present, expect their monopoly to be restrained, or their immense gains to be diminished. Mr. Beaumont, however, deserves great praise for having so strenuously combated, and so fearlessly exposed a system so repugnant to the general interest. His noble efforts contributed to bring one notorious licensing justice to trial; and it must increase our veneration for the laws of our country, to reflect that such an infamous trader in human wretchedness had to pay a heavy fine, and to suffer an imprisonment of eighteen months. Mr. Beaumont's literary pro

ductions on this important subject are, "A Private Address to the Magistrates, "Letters on Public House Licensing," "A Letter to Lord Sidmouth," "Substance of a Speech on the Monopoly of Beer," &c.

The philanthropy of Mr. Beaumont, which has branched out into such a variety of useful exertions, was lately occupied in devising plans for preventing the forgery of Bank notes; or at least for rendering it so laborious and expensive, that the difficulty could not be overcome without a union of great skill and large capital. The great temptation to the forgery of Bank notes is the facility of the imitation. The plan of Mr. Beaumont would remove this facility; and if it did not entirely prevent the crime, would greatly reduce the frequency of the commission.

In the course of last year Mr. Beaumont published a work entitled, “ An Essay on Criminal Jurisprudence, with a Draft of a New Penal Code, in which it is attempted to define Crimes and Offences with Clearness and Brevity, to render Penalties Proportionate and Consistent, and to Promote a Speedy and Efficient Administration of Justice." No subject can exceed this in importance; and what Mr. Beaumont has said upon it is well worthy general attention. The treatise itself evinces considerable sagacity of observation, and no common insight into the nature of man. The author tells us in his preface, that the work originated in a project which he has long entertained for forming a settlement in South America, where many of his suffering countrymen might find a refuge from the accumulated calamities by which they are now oppressed. If the political, judicial, and religious system, which Mr. Beaumont has delineated for his new colony, should ever be practically exemplified, it seems likely to be productive of a greater degree of social happiness than has ever been enjoyed in any part of Europe, or under any of the institutions of the old world.

We have thus briefly exhibited a few particulars in the life of Mr. Beaumont; and though we could wish that our details had been more copious, and our information more ample, yet our narrative will prove that the life of Mr. Beaumont, as far as it has hitherto proceeded, has not often been surpassed in activity and usefulness.

"they seem declamations deliberately composed, and formally repeated in a moral question. The auditor, therefore, listens to a lecture, without passion, without anxiety." And again, "in all the parts of Comus, there is something wanting to allure attention. It is tediously instructive." "When the brothers," he says, "have feared lest their sister was in danger, and hoped that she is not in danger, the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher." Of his works, in general, he says, "whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the ima gination but his images and descriptions of the scenes or operations of nature do not seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness, raciness and energy of immediate observation. He saw nature, as Dryden expresses it, "through the spectacle of books;" and, on most occasions calls learning to his assistance." These passages I have quoted from a critic, who formed an idea of Milton's poetic genius very different from mine. Johnson was himself so much imposed upon by popular opinion, (unless, indeed, we suppose, what his character does not authorize us to suppose, that he wanted firmness to oppose himself to it,) that notwithstanding the above remarks which are to be found in different parts of his critique on Milton's works, he still thought Milton the first of poets. His "Paradise Lost," he says, "considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind." And concludes his critique by telling us, that it "is not the greatest of heroic poems only because it is not the first. This is indirectly saying that it is the first. Its being posterior, in point of time, neither adds to, nor takes away from its excellence. Johnson seems to have used this form of expression in imitation of Dacier, who, being asked, whether Homer or Virgil was the greater poet, replied "Homer by a thousand years." Johnson was evidently misguided in his opinion of Milton's poetical genius, by mistaking, as almost all critics have done, those strong powers of imagination, which fill the mind with the airy creations of ideal being, which range at large through

the boundless void of possible existence in search of images which dazzle the understanding by their imaginary lustre, but make no impression upon the heart, for those ardent feelings, that impassioned sensibility, that eager susceptibility of real rather than of imagiary delight, in a word, for that enthusiastic sympathy of the soul, which is instinctively affected by the affections of others, which responds to every impulse, throbs in unison with all the secret harmonies of nature, and catches every impression and consequent emotion which the agency of matter and of mind is calculated to produce. These were feelings which Milton did not possess he was insensible to the finer impressions of nature, and the softer attractions of mind. It required a strong stimulus to affect his heart, but his head required no spur: it was always at work, building castles in the air, which might amuse the fancy, but with which the heart and its affections refused to sympathize. He was more a reasoner than a philosopher, and more a philosopher than a poet. His opinions were all attracted to one common focus, and such as would not quadrate with his theological creed, however they might do honour to reason and philosophy, were dismissed from the community of his fixed principles as impious and profane. No man delighted more in argument and controversy, a proof that he cultivated his intellectual more than his sensitive powers. He boasted of having shortened the life of Salmasius by argument; and from the whole tenor of his life, it is evident that he possessed more of the head than of the heart. The heart, however, is the seat of those affections which constitute a true genius for poetic feeling, so that Milton claims our admiration more as a profound thinker and philosopher than as a poet. Indeed it appears to me, that he acknowledges himself, his incompetency to write on subjects connected with human' passions and feeling, and if he does, the question is decided at once; for it is only in the delineation of the heart and its affections, that we can expect to discover the soul and spirit of poetry. He observes, then, in the beginning of the ninth book of the "Paradise Lost," that the subject of his poem "pleased" him.

Long choosing and beginning tate

Newton, in his commentary on this line, assigns as an excuse for his "long choosing,' "that he was for several years so hotly engaged in the controversies of the times, that he was not at leisure to think of a work of this nature." This defence of his "long choosing" is disproved by Milton's own assertion; for he who is long choosing must of necessity think frequently on the subject which he is choosing so long, for no man can choose without thought and deliberation; and he who is "long" employed in " choosing," must necessarily have leisure to do so. If Milton then devoted the prime of his life to the controversies of his age, if he delighted in these controversies so much as to boast of having put Salmasius to death by argument, if he engaged in them at an early age, and without "long choosing," it is evident that argumentative and discursive subjects were those in which his powers were calculated to distinguish themselves, and that it is here alone we can hope to become acquainted with his genius. He did not begin his Paradise Lost until after his fiftieth year; and the reasons he assigns is, because he was

Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars hitherto the only argument. Heroic deemed

the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung.

Here then we have Milton's own confession that his genius did not qualify him to sing "of wars," which is saying, in other words, that he could not write such a poem as the Iliad or Æneid, because they were subjects founded on human passion. The subject of the "Paradise Lost" then, pleased him only because it had no concern with human passion, which, before his time, was "the only argument heroic deemed,' and which ever will be so. But why is it he prefers to sing of "the better fortitude of patience?" Was it that he deemed it a more poetical subject than the Iliad or Eneid? So he would seem to insinuate himself; but it must be recollected that every writer wishes to justify the propriety of his own choice whenever he deviates from general usage. It is clear, however, that MilEur, Mag. Vol. 81, June 1822.

ton did not select this subject from a belief that it was the most poetical; for if he entertained this belief, he had no occasion to be so long choosing and hesitating about it. His very hesitation, and the advanced age in which he began it, proves that he chose it as a matter of necessity rather than of choice; and this fact is proved by himself, when he admits that he was

Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars hitherto the only argument
Heroic deemed.

It is obvious then that he would indite them if he could, and that his not inditing them arose from his "nature" not being of that mould which was calculated for them, which is saying, in other words, that he had no genius for subjects of the kind. This he confirms immediately after, where he says,

Me of these

Nor skilled nor studious.

If he was not studious of them, he had no natural inclination for them; and it is ridiculous to suppose, that a man has a genius for a subject for which he has no inclination. Milton, then, from the whole character of his writings, and from his own confession, appears evidently to have no genius for subjects founded upon human passion, and consequently not to possess that sort of genius which distinguished the productions of those great masters of the human heart, Homer and Shakspeare. We should admire Milton therefore, not as the first, or the second of poets, because the sphere of poetry in which he took his flight was by no means of the first order, as nothing admits of easier proof, than that passion and not imagination is the soul of poetry. Milton, however, excelled in imagination alone, and in this species of poetry he must undoubtedly be admitted to stand at the head of his class. His intellectual powers, profound reasoning, and expansive view of universal nature, are also of the first order, but this only proves him to be a greater philosopher than a poet.

On a slight view of the subject, it would seem that the powers of imagination, and the philosophic spirit, have no natural alliance with, or rather, that they stand at the greatest possible distance from, each other;-one careering

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