Mysteries and Moralities which are the earliest existing specimens of the dramatic art in England. For is it not likely that the earliest poets had endeavoured at some rude form of dramatic imitation, like Gammer Gurton's Needle, and The Four P's. of John Heywood?—of which sort of entertainment advantage might have been taken to communicate a knowledge of the truths of religion and philosophy to the vulgar mind. Might it not be reasonably supposed that the monks only made use of the art, thus probably invented by the minstrels, which they converted, not illaudably to their mythical purposes? Or rather has there not always been a mythical school that delighted in dramatic representation of truth philosophical or religious? Hayley, with his accustomed feebleness and elegance, observes, "that enthusiasm was the characteristic of Milton's mind. In politics it made him sometimes too generously credulous, and sometimes too rigorously decisive; but, in poetry, it exalted him to such a degree of excellence as no man has hitherto surpassed." This state of feeling is, however, not at all discoverable in the productions of Shakspere. A German critic attributes Shakspere's "skill in characterisation to a secret irony which is the grave of enthusiasm. Notwithstanding (continues the critic) his power in exciting the most fervent emotions, he manifests in himself the cool indifference of a superior mind, which has run through the whole circle of human existence, and survived feeling."

Ardent by constitution, and a poet by nature, the genial influences of early instruction were not lost on such a mind as Milton's; but were answered by correspondent fruits, the produce of no ungrateful soil. His native aptitude, impregnated with the seeds of knowledge, soon germinated into youthful efflorescence. The juvenile productions of Milton are indicative as well of the natural fertility of the soil, as the excellence of the cultivation. There is no less genius than learning displayed in his "Verses on the Death of a fair Infant dying of a Cough," written at the age of seventeen. Nothing can be more simple than the subject-nothing more elaborate than the execution. It is the language of grief translated into classical allusions. But an intellectual energy pervades and supports the whole; the power of imagination hovers above it, and it is stamped with the express image of the poet's mind. The signet of his genius is upon it; it is sealed with his ideal identity. Elevated to that state of excitement in which poetry lives and breathes, all his classical recollections throng upon him to illustrate and embellish his simple theme. It is in this power of concentration that enthusiasm consists; like all passion, " it draws all things to one end, and makes them serve to one purpose." A classical education has a tendency to produce this habit of mind. The objects of study and models for imitation are proposed as of exclusive excellence, and too frequently, perhaps, as the points of perfection beyond which human intellect would in vain venture to proceed. Thus it is, that the fire is nursed in its earliest elements, not smothered, but concealed, and gathers strength in secrecy to bear the breath of public commotion. Not only, however, does this kind of study nurse the flame, but frequently supplies the spark and provides the fuel. The literature of the ancients is precisely such as is calculated to kindle the finest feelings of pure patriotism and fervent piety, and is especially inflammatory of poetical ambition. Our Milton,

also, had fed upon the Holy Scriptures, and strengthened his affection for them by the study thereof in the original tongues. The sense of difficulty overcome adds to our pleasure, and no doubt increased his in the perusal of the Hebrew books, and led him on to the knowledge of the Rabbinical writings from which he derived so much advantage. Whatever is excellent in the Greek and Roman literature belongs to the Bible in still higher perfection. The knowledge thus acquired, Milton was desirous of turning "to the honour and instruction of his country. For which cause," he says,

"I applied myself to the resolution which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue; not to make verbal curiosities the end-(that were a toilsome vanity)—but to be an interpreter, and relater of the best and sagest things, among mine own citizens throughout this island, in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or Modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above, of being a Christian, might do for mine; not caring to be once named abroad, though, perhaps, I could attain to that, but content with these British islands as my world; whose fortune hath hitherto been, that if the Athenians, as some say, made their small deeds great and renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had her noble achievements made small, by the unskilful handling of monks and mechanics."*

It was happy for Milton that his mind took this extensive range in the pursuit of knowledge and the ends of study, otherwise his enthusiasm might have reduced him to the rank of a pedant or sectarian. But in nothing is he more distinguished from the public writers of his own age than in the free scope which he takes in his subjects and illustrations. In those times, when political and religious ferment was at the highest, he was enabled, by the wider horizon of his intellect, to avoid those errors into which the partizans of sects and systems are perpetually liable to fall. We must not judge of the old puritans by Milton. They were only parts of him, not he of them. Their enthusiasm, directed as it was to the highest object of adoration, and proportionally intense, was intolerant of participation. Not only were diversions "and pastimes, all that is delightful to man," proscribed by them, but the discoveries of science, the productions of art, and the recreations of literature, were regarded with equal jealousy, and stood alike in contrast with the realities of religion as illusory and fictitious ; and for the profane relics of heathen idolaters they had no endurance. But their prejudice was only in proportion to their ignorance; and from the former Milton was preserved by his freedom from the latter. In the light and liberty, as well as the power of knowledge, he saw all things; his visual nerve was purged with euphrasy and rue. And, from the well of life, three drops instilled," prepared his eyes for the prospect of that high hill of speculation whence he had "much to see.” He had experienced the beneficial tendency of these peculiar studies, and attained an insight into, and a feeling for their excellence and beauty. He perceived the dignity of human genius and its works, and their intimate connexion with whatever is sublime in nature or in man, and the highest interests of morality and religion.

Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty.-P. 72, Vol. i, Burnett's

edition.

It would be well if religious men could rise above the narrow limits of their peculiar dogmas, and observe the processes of providence in the general history of the world. They confine their attention too exclusively to its manifestations with respect to the Jewish people. It will be asked, were they not the depositories of the sacred Oracles, and are not in these the mysterious ways of God to men peculiarly justified? Granted: they were his favoured people; "but had he not also regard to the children of the Gentiles? Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes of the Gentiles also." And in the Messiah was to be the desire of all lands, and the hope of many nations. May it not be rationally supposed, that other Countries were also secretly prepared by divine direction, though not by express revelation, for the reception of that truth in which they were intended to participate? The fact is, that all things had been tending from the beginning, for the success of the Christian Revelation, and the mind of man had just arrived at that point of discipline in its probation and progress, which rendered it especially susceptible of the salutary influence of the Gospel. The way of the Lord had been prepared; his path had been made straight.

The Jews appear to have been set apart for the preservation of the idea of the Invisible God, and of all that was especially spiritual, for which the world, then only in its nonage, was not ripe, and a faith in which the unassisted reason and will had not been sufficiently cultivated to maintain. From them the Greeks derived whatever is ideal in literature, philosophy and art; which the Romans endeavoured to embody and reduce to practice, but with imperfect success. The Master spell was wanting. Christianity wound-up the charm.

It was as it were, the manhood of the World, which, uniting together the products of these separate dispensations, took advantage of the mature developement thus gradually produced of all the faculties of the human mind, and obtained over it a universal dominion, equally in the intellect and the senses, as in the reason and the will.

But of this harmony in the dispensations of providence, the puritans had experienced no perception, and their ignorance was equally fatal to their political prudence as to their religious charity. Milton was elevated far above them in both particulars. Though he might not have descended so deeply into the philosophy of History, or achieved so high a reach in speculation, as our remarks imply, yet he had felt the spirit of Truth with which the productions of human genius had been in all ages pervaded; his understanding had been informed by them, and his reason enlightened. He was besides not only a poet but a philosopher, and claimed a wider range of speculation than is proper to a mere religionist. Designed for holy orders, he refused subscription to the articles, and had no inclination for any other profession. "He," says Dr. Newton, "had too free a spirit to be limited and confined, and was for comprehending all sciences, but professing none." This placed him at an immeasurable distance from those with whom he acted, and may serve to account for the apparent neglect with which some of his political and religious writings were received at the time, and into which they afterwards fell. It was not the visionary nature alone of their contents, but their superiority to mere party and sectarian views, that rendered them but of little value with mere partizans and sectarians.

Milton was as far before his own age, as he is, perhaps, behind ours. But it is not on his principles that we have improved, but in our experience of their practical operation. This has enabled us to make allowances of which he foresaw not the necessity, the better to secure the great objects of contention. Moreover, his ideas are not practical but speculative, and were too pure for his own time, and, perhaps, not sufficiently embodied for any; and in his own language we may say of him as he said of Plato, "that he fed his fancy in making many edicts to his airy burgomasters." His conception of a free Commonwealth,"wherein they who are the greatest, are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at their own costs and charges, neglect their own affairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren, live soberly in their families, walk the street as other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, proudly, without adoration,"* would not be likely to square with the feelings of revolutionists, generally ambitious of distinction, however just their cause and patriotic their intentions. To this state of perfect disinterestedness even the best men of our day have not yet arrived, neither is it proper that they should, if their ambition be laudable and its object of public utility, attain to it; and even if they had the wish and the will to profess it both speculatively and practically it would not be permitted by a grateful Commonwealth.

But though the mind of Milton was so much more comprehensive than that of his contemporaries, yet was not his zeal the less warm nor his affection the less intense. In proportion as his ideas were pure and elevated, the more lasting was likely to be his love, and the more sincere his attachment. Visionary he was in expecting to realise his glowing anticipations, and ardent in the cause which he had espoused, but the largeness of his views precluded his enthusiasm from concentrating itself on some petty succedaneum of self-interest and private ambition, to which many great minds, after witnessing the failure and disappointment of their earliest hopes, have been not seldom reduced. He survived the shocks of faction, and remained what he had always been, a rock towering above the surrounding billows, from whose summit the genius of the storm had issued his mandate of wrath to tumultuous elements, but had now left him desolate and disregarded, as if he had contributed nothing to the grandeur of the tempest. Like his own Samson, however, he at last "fulfilled the work for which he was foretold to Israel," and "heroickly finished a life heroick," in the composition of poems in which he was at full liberty to indulge his aspirations after the perfect and permanent, and realised them in works of consummate excellence and unfading beauty.

There are some critics, and many readers, who, judging of works of genius according to their peculiar tastes, alternately exalt one poet at the expence of another, thus covertly giving the preference to their characteristic dispositions, rather than ascertaining on sufficient grounds, the distinctive merits of the authors, on whom they profess to decide. It is well said by Dr. Henry Moore, the Platonist, "The spirit of every poet is not alike, nor his works alike suitable to all dispositions. As

The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth. Vol. ii. p. 596. Burnett's Edition.

Io, the reciter of Homer's verses, professeth himself to be snatched away with an extraordinary fury or extasie at the repeating of Homer's Poesie, but others so little to move him that he could even fall asleep, so that no man is rashly to condemn another man's labour in this kind, because he is not taken with it, as wise or wiser than himself may.-But this is a main piece of idolatry and injustice in the world, that every man would make his private genius an universal god; and would devour all men's apprehensions by his own fire, that glows so hot in him, and (as he thinks) shines so clear."

To correct this propensity our remarks have had an evident tendency, and it would not be absurd to suppose that, under other circumstances, Milton might have written Lear, and Shakspere Paradise Lost. It would be a curious question to enquire what powers, and whether superior in kind or degree, the latter production would require in the poet, that would not be equally necessary in the composition of the former. Curran is said to have been in the habit of amusing his convivial parties with a set speech on the Paradise Lost, in which he pretended to prove that Milton had improperly treated the subject, and with no little triumph proceeded to shew how it should have been conducted. It would be curious to speculate upon the manner in which it might have been executed by Shakspere.

In all that relates to construction, Milton is considered so faultless that it is with considerable risk even a Curran can venture to impute to him any incorrectness. Dr. Johnson thought he had discovered that the Samson Agonistes wanted a middle, and that nothing passes between the first act and the last which either hastens or delays the catastrophe, and, on this supposed discovery, triumphantly exclaimed-"Yet this is the tragedy which ignorance has admired, and bigotry applauded!" Cumberland, however, successfully undertook to demonstrate that every incident tended to promote the proposed result. The measure of verse used in the chorus, once condemned, is now pretty generally approved for a barbaric harmony, that is strictly in accordance with the subject.

Milton was, indeed, particularly careful of symmetry and proportion, requisites to which preceding poets were somewhat inattentive. We shall find it much easier to recollect the order and disposition of the Paradise Lost than of some of Shakspere's plays, though the former be the larger poem. This will be found a good test. They, however, will err grossly, who impute to Shakspere a defect of skill in the construction of his plots; however much they may want a certain mechanical conformity, their organic arrangement, which is determined by the nature of the subject, is always finely preserved. Milton's reverence for antiquity, and desire after perfection, induced him to attempt the union of both excellences. A piece is not unwieldy on account of its length, but of its irregularity-this is the case with Spenser's Fairy Queen. Milton's great work, as Campbell has justly observed, is like a dome whose vast dimensions are at first sight concealed by its excellent symmetry, but which expands on acquaintance. Or, to be with Byron more imaginative, and to compliment at once both reader and poet-the first how highly, the second only adequately-it may likened to the Church of St. Peter's at Rome: