"Thee, lastly, nuptial bow'r, by me adorn'd
"With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
"How shall I part, and whither wander down
"Into a lower world, to this obscure

"And wild? how shall we breathe in other air
"Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits ?"

The last Episode, too, of the Angel's showing Adam the fate of his posterity, is happily imagin ed; but, in many places, the execution is languid.

Milton's language and versification have high merit. His style is full of majesty, and wonderfully adapted to his subject. His blank verse is harmonious and diversified, and affords the most complete example of the elevation, which our language is capable of attaining by the force of numbers. It does not flow like the French verse, in tame, regular, and uniform melody, which soon tires the ear; but is sometimes smooth and flowing, sometimes rough; varied in its cadence, and intermixed with discords, so as to suit the strength and freedom of Epic composi tion. Neglected and Prosaic lines, indeed, we sometimes meet with; but in a work so long, and in the main so harmonious, these may be forgiven.

On the whole, Paradise lost is a poem that abounds with beauties of every kind, and that justly entitles its Author to a degree of fame not inferior to any Poet; though it must be also admitted to have many inequalities. It is the lot of almost every high and daring genius, not to be uniform and correct. Milton is too frequently theological and metaphysical; sometimes harsh in his language; often too technical in his words, and affectedly ostentatious of his learning.

Many of his faults must be attributed to the pedantry of the age in which he lived. He discovers a vigor, a grasp of genius equal to every thing that is great; if at some times he falls much below himself, at other times he rises above every poet of the ancient or modern world.

CHAP. CIII.

Of Shakespeare.

THE character which Dryden has drawn of Shakespeare, is not only just, but uncommonly elegant and happy. "He was the man, who of all modern, and perhaps ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes any thing, you may then see it; you feel it too. They who accuse him of wanting learning, give him the greatest commendation. He was naturally learned. He needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature. He looked inward, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike. Were he so, I should do him injury, to compare him to the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches;his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him.

Great he may be justly called, as the extent and force of his natural genius both for Tragedy

and Comedy, are altogether unrivalled. But, at the same time, it is a genius shooting wild; deficient in just taste, and altogether unassisted by knowledge or art. Long has he been idolized by the British nation; much has been said, and much has been written concerning him; Criti cism has been drawn to the very dregs, in commentaries upon his words and witticisms; and yet it remains, to this day, in doubt, whether his beauties or his faults be greatest. Admirable scenes, and passages without number, there are in his Plays; passages beyond what are to be found in any other Dramatic Writer; but there is hardly any one of his plays which can be called altogether a good one, or which can be read with uninterrupted pleasure from beginning to end. Besides extreme irregularities in conduct, and grotesque mixtures of serious and comic in one piece, we are often interrupted by unnatural thoughts, harsh expressions, a certain obscure bombast, and a play upon words, which he is fond of pursuing; and these interruptions to our pleasure too frequently occur, on occasions when we would least wish to meet with them. All these faults, however, Shakespeare redeems by two of the greatest excellencies which any tragic Poet can possess, his lively and diversified paintings of character; his strong and natural expressions of passion. These are his two chief vir tues; on these his merit rests. Notwithstanding his many absurdities, all the while we are reading his plays, we find ourselves in the midst of our fellows; we meet with men vulgar perhaps in their manners, coarse or harsh in their sentiments, but still they are men; they speak

with human voices, and are actuated by human passions; we are interested in what they say or do, because we feel that they are of the same nature with ourselves. It is therefore no matter of wonder, that from the more polished and regular, but more cold and artificial performances of other poets, the public should return with pleasure to such warm and genuine representations of human nature. Shakespeare possesses likewise the merit of having created for himself, a sort of world of preternatural beings. His witches, ghosts, fairies, and spirits of all kinds, are described with such circumstances of awful and mysterious solemnity, and speak a language so peculiar to themselves, as strongly to affect the imagination. His two master-pieces, and in which the strength of his genius chiefly appears, are Othello and Macbeth.

With regard to his historical plays, they are, properly speaking, neither Tragedies nor Comedies; but a peculiar species of Dramatic Entertainment, calculated to describe the manners of the times of which he treats, to exhibit the principal characters, and to fix our imagination on the most interesting events and revolutions of our country.

CHAP. CIV.

Of Sculpture, Architecture, Statuary, Painting, and Engraving.

OUR sepulchral monuments, at the close of the last century, were mere masonry, and exe

cuted in a very bad taste. The excellent carv. ings of Gibbons in wood excepted, we had properly no sculpture. Kneller, our only painter of any eminence, was a foreigner, and employed himself chiefly on portraits. Rysbrach, Scheemaker, and Roubiliac, who have since adorned Westminster-Abbey with many sculptured monuments worthy of ancient Greece, also were foreigners.

We were more fortunate in native architects. Inigo Jones found a successor not unworthy of himself in Sir Christopher Wren, rendered immortal by the plan of St. Paul's and St. Stephen's Walbroke, to say nothing of his other great designs, of Greenwich Hospital, or the Palace of Hampton Court. Wren was succeeded by the classical lord Burlington, a liberal patron of the arts, and no contemptible professor, and by the ponderous but inventive Kent; whose plan of Holkam, the seat of the earl of Leicester, in Norfolk, and his temple of Venus in Stowe Gardens, if he had designed nothing else, would entitle him to a distinguished rank among modern architects. But Kent has been greatly exceeded, as an architect, by Sir William Chambers, Wyat, Adam, and others, who have adorned the capital and every part of the kingdom with edifices in the purest taste of antiquity, who have united elegance with conveniency, and lightness with solidity. Nor should Milne be forgot, to whom we are indebted for Blackfriars-bridge,. a work to which antiquity can afford no parallel. We have at present native statuaries of considerable merit. But Bacon and Nollikens have yet produced nothing equal to the Hercules, of