compofitions can commonly attain is neatness and elegance. Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of fuavity and foftnefs; he was a Lion that had no fkill in dandling the Kid.

One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleafing. What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the fentiments and images. It is not to be confidered as the effufion of real paffion; for paffion runs not after remote allufions and obfcure opinions. Paffion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethufe and Mincius, nor tells of rough fatyrs and fauns with cloven beel. Where there is leifure for fiction there is little grief.

In this poem there is no nature, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, eafy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can fupply are long age exhaufted; and its inherent improbability always forces diffatisfaction on the mind. When

When Cowley tells of Hervey, that they ftudied together, it is eafy to fuppofe how much he must miss the companion of his labours, and the partner of his discoveries; but what, image of tenderness can be excited by these lines!

We drove a field, and both together heard What time the grey fly winds her fultry horn, Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.

We know that they never drove a field, and that they had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the reprefentation may be allegorical, the true meaning is fo uncertain and remote, that it is never fought because it cannot be known when it is found.

Among the flocks, and copfes, and flowers, appear the heathen deities; Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Æolus, with a long train of mythological imagery, fuch as a College eafily fupplies. Nothing can lefs difplay knowledge, or lefs exercife inventions, than to tell how a fhepherd has loft his companion, and muft now feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his skill in piping; and how one god afks another god what is become of Lycidas,

Q 2

cidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will excite no fympathy; he who thus praifes will confer no honour.

This poem has yet a groffer fault. With these trifling fictions are mingled the most awful and facred truths, such as ought never to be polluted with fuch irreverend combinations. The fhepherd likewife is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclefiaftical pastor, a fuperintendant of a Chriftian flock. Such equivocations are always unfkilful; but here they are indecent, and at least approach to impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been confcious.

Such is the power of reputation juftly acquired, that its blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleafure, had he not known its author.

Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penferofo, I believe opinion is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleafure. The author's defign is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to fhew how ob

jects

gay

jects derive their colours from the mind, by representing the operation of the fame things upon the and the melancholy temper, or upon the fame man as he is differently dif posed; but rather how, among the fucceffive variety of appearances, every difpofition of mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified.

The chearful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears the nightingale in the evening. The chearful man fees the cock ftrut, and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, not unseen, to obferve the glory of the rifing fun, or liften to the finging milk-maid, and view the labours of the plowman and the mower; then cafts his eyes about him over fcenes of fmiling plenty, and looks up to the diftant tower, the refidence of fome fair inhabitant; thus he pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights himself at night with the fanciful narratives of fuperftitious igno

rance.

The penfive man, at one time, walks unfeen to mufe at midnight; and at another hears

the fullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he fits in a room lighted only by glow. ing embers; or by a lonely lamp outwatches the North Star, to discover the habitation of feparate fouls, and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or pathetic fcenes of tragick and epick poetry. When the morning comes, a morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark trackless woods, falls afleep by fome murmuring water, and with melancholy enthufiafm expects fome dream of prognostication, or fome mufick played by aerial performers.

Both Mirth and Melancholy are folitary, filent inhabitants of the breast, that neither receive nor tranfmit communication; no mention is therefore made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The seriousness does not arife from any participation of calamity, nor the gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle.

The man of chearfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what towered cities will afford, and mingles with fcenes of fplendor gay affemblies and nuptial feftivities; but he min

gles