If 'Paradise Regained' has been too much depreciated, 'Samson Agonistes' has, in requital, been too much admired. It could only be by long prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions of the 5 French and English stages; and it is only by a blind confidence in the reputation of Milton that a drama can be praised in which the intermediate parts have neither cause nor conquence, neither hasten nor retard the catastrophe.

In this tragedy are, however, many particular beauties, 10 many just sentiments and striking lines; but it wants the power of attracting the attention which a well connected plan produces.

Milton would not have excelled in dramatic writing; he knew_human nature only in the gross, and had never studied 15 the shades of character, nor the combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. He had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must confer.

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Through all his greater works there prevails a uniform peculiarity of diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to that of any former writer; and which is so far removed from common use, that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself surprised 25 by a new language.

This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton, imputed to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur of his ideas. Our language,' says Addison,' sank under him.' But the truth is, that, both 30 in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a perverse and pedantic principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom. This, in all his prose, is discovered

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and condemned; for there judgment operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry, that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels himself in 5 captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks in admiration.

Milton's style was not modified by his subject; what is shown with greater extent in 'Paradise Lost' may be found in 'Comus.' One source of his peculiarity was his familiarity Io with the Tuscan poets; the disposition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps sometimes combined with other tongues. Of him, at last, may be said what Jonson says of Spenser, that 'he wrote no language,' but has formed what Butler calls a 'Babylonish dialect,' in itself harsh and 15 barbarous, but made by exalted genius and extensive learning the vehicle of so much instruction and so much pleasure, that, like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity.

Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of copiousness and variety. He was master of his 20 language in its full extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that from his book alone the Art of English Poetry might be learned.

After his diction something must be said of his versification. The measure, he says, 'is the English heroic verse without 25 rhyme. Of this mode he had many examples among the Italians, and some in his own country. The Earl of Surrey is said to have translated one of Virgil's books without rhyme; and, beside our tragedies, a few short poems had appeared in blank verse, particularly one tending to reconcile the nation. 30 to Raleigh's wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh himself. These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much influenced Milton, who more probably took his hint from Trissino's 'Italia Liberata'; and, finding

blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous of persuading himself that it is better.

'Rhyme,' he says, and says truly, 'is no necessary adjunct of true poetry.' But, perhaps, of poetry, as a mental operation, metre or music is no necessary adjunct: it is, however, 5 by the music of metre that poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and, in languages melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another; where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help 10 is necessary. The music of the English heroic line strikes the ear so faintly, that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every line co-operate together; this co-operation can only be obtained by the preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system of sounds; and this distinct- 15 ness is obtained and preserved by the artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive 20 where the lines end or begin. Blank verse,' said an ingenious critic, 'seems to be verse only to the eye.'

Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared but where the subject is able to support itself. Blank verse 25 makes some approach to that which is called the 'lapidary style'; has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and therefore tires by long continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its 30 defence has been confuted by the ear.

But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer;

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for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to 5 rhyme.

The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said to have contrived the structure of an epic poem, and therefore owes reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations must be indebted for 10 the art of poetical narration, for the texture of the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the borrowers from Homer, Milton is perhaps the least indebted. He was naturally a thinker for himself, confident 15 of his own abilities, and disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors 20 might be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of support. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness, but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for whatever is arduous, and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems, only 25 because it is not the first.

NOTES.

P. 1, 1. 6. Elijah Fenton (d. 1730), author of the play of 'Mariamne,' one of Pope's assistants in translating the Odyssey, and editor of the poems of Waller and Milton. His biography is the thirtieth in Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets.' Johnson there terms Fenton's life of Milton 'a short and elegant account of Milton's life, written at once with tenderness and integrity. Other biographies of Milton made use of by Johnson were the following: that by Anthony Wood in 'Athenae Oxonienses,' published in 1691-2; a life by Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, prefixed to the 'Letters of State written by Mr. John Milton,' published in 1694; the life of Milton by John Toland, 1698; Jonathan Richardson's 'Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Paradise Lost, with a life of the author,' 1734; the life of Milton by Thomas Birch, prefixed to his edition of Milton's Prose Works, 1738, and that by Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol, prefixed to Milton's Poems 1749-52. Wood's account of Milton's life was based on notes supplied him by John Aubrey, the Antiquary, which have since been published (Letters written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and Lives of Eminent Men, by John Aubrey. 1813. Vol. II. pt. ii. 439–450).

1. 11. This account of Milton's descent is derived from Phillips and Aubrey. No trace of the existence of any such family of Miltons has been discovered, either at Great Milton near Thame, in Oxfordshire, or at Milton near Abingdon, in Berkshire. (Masson, Life of Milton, i. 10.)

1. 14. Milton's grandfather seems to have been a certain Richard Milton of Stanton St. John's, about six miles from Oxford. Richard Milton was a substantial yeoman living on the borders of Shotover Forest, but does not appear to