throughout this work, thrown the ornaments of poetry on the side of error: whether it was that he thought great truths best expressed in å grave, unaffected style; or intended to suggest this fine moral to the reader;—that simple naked truth will always be an overmatch for falsehood, though recommended by the gayest rhetoric, and adorned with the most bewitching colours." As to the inferiority of Grecian literature to the songs of Sion, Newton observes, that Milton was of this opinion, not only in the decline of life, but likewise in his earlier days, as appears from the Preface to his second book of 'The Reason of Church Government:'-" Or if occasion shall lead to imitate those magnific Odes and Hymns wherein Pindarus and Callimachus are in most things worthy, some others in their frame judicious, in their matter most an end faulty. But those frequent songs throughout the law and prophets beyond all these, not in their divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition, may be easily made appear over all the kinds of lyric poesy to be incomparable." On this note Warton makes the following comment :— "But Milton now appears to have imbibed so strong a tincture of fanaticism, as to decry all human compositions and profane subjects. In the context he speaks with absolute contempt, even in a critical view; and a general disapprobation of the Greek odes and hymns. (Read ver. 343 to ver. 348.) Undoubtedly these were Milton's own sentiments, though delivered in an assumed character. Even in his own person he had long before given the substance of the context, as cited by Dr. Newton: it must, however, be observed, that Christ is here answering Satan's speech, and counteracting his exquisite panegyric on the philosophers, poets, and orators of Athens: yet at the same time, I can conceive that Satan's speech, which here he means to confute, and which no man was more able to write than himself, came from the heart.* The writers of dialogue in feigned characters have great advantage." The chief purpose for which I have introduced this criticism here, is this, that the reader may not look for what are thought the common ornaments or spells of poetry he must look for stern truths; for sublime sentiments; for a naked grandeur of imagery; for an absence of all the rhetorical flourishes of literary composition; for the dictates of a lofty and divine virtue; for a bold and gigantic dispersion of the veil from the delusions of human vanity; for the blaze of an Evil Spirit eclipsed by the splendour of a Good and Divine Spirit, illumined by the lamp of Heaven. But though a great part of the poem is intellectual and argumentative, another large portion is full of grand or beautiful imagery: the description of the wilderness at the opening abounds with sublime scenery: the picture of the storm at the close of the last book, with the bright morning which succeeded, may vie with any of the noblest passages in the 'Paradise Lost:' perhaps in expression, while it loses nothing of grandeur, it is more polished than any other to be found. Milton intended this poem as the brief or didactic epic, of which he considered the book of Job to be a model, such as he notices in the second book of his 'Reason of Church Government.' "Milton," says Hayley, "had already executed one extensive divine poem, peculiarly distinguished by richness and sublimity of description: in *Surely there is here something of inconsistency in -Warton. framing a second, he naturally wished 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 an epic form, where the sublimest moral is so forcibly and abundantly united to poetical delight: the splendour of the poem 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." In another place, Hayley, having spoken of the "uncommon energy and felicity of composition in Milton's two poems, however different in design, dimension, and effect," adds,-"to censure the 'Paradise Regained,' because it does not more resemble the 'Paradise Lost,' is hardly less absurd, than it would be to condemn the moon for not being a sun; instead of admiring the two different luminaries, and feeling that both the greater and the less are equally the work of the same divine and inimitable Power." "Yet this is the poem," says Dunster, "from which the ardent admirers of Milton's other works turn, as from a cold, uninteresting composition, the produce of his dotage, of a palsied hand, no longer able to hold the pencil of poetry." The origin of this poem is attributed to the suggestion of Ellwood, the quaker. Milton had lent this friend, in 1665, his 'Paradise Lost,' then completed in manuscript, at Chalfont, St. Giles'; desiring him to peruse it at his leisure, and give his judgment of it;-" which I modestly but freely told him," says Ellwood, in his Life of Himself; "and, after some farther discourse of it, I pleasantly said to him, "Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?' He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse; then broke off that discourse, and fell upon another subject." When Ellwood afterwards waited on him in London, Milton showed him his Paradise Regained;' and, in a pleasant tone, said to him,-" This is owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of." Milton, in the opening of this poem, speaking of his Muse, as prompted to tell of deeds Above heroick, considers the subject of it, as well as of 'Paradise Lost,' to be of much greater dignity and difficulty than the argument of Homer and Virgil. But the difference here is, as Richardson observes, that he confines himself "to nature's bounds;" not as in the Paradise Lost,' where he soars "above the visible diurnal sphere:" and so far Paradise Regained' is less poetical, because it is less imaginative. "Paradise Regained' has not met with the approbation that it deserves," says Jortin: "it has not the harmony of numbers, the sublimity of thought, and the beauties of diction, which are in Paradise Lost:' it is composed in a lower and less striking style ;—a style suited to the subject. Artful sophistry, false reasoning, set off in the most specious manner, and refuted by the Son of God |