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lious fpirits is described as not less local than the refidence of man. It is placed in fome distant part of space, feparated from the regions of harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but Sin and Death worked up a mole of aggravated foil, cemented with afphaltus; a work too bulky for ideal architects.

This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the poem; and to this there was no temptation, but the author's opinion of its beauty.

To the conduct of the narrative fome objection may be made. Satan is with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradife, and is fuffered to go away unmolested. The creation of man is represented as the confequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulfion of the rebels; yet Satan mentions it as a report rife in heaven before his departure.

To find fentiments for the ftate of innocence, was very difficult; and fomething of anticipation perhaps is now and then difcoS 3 vered.

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vered. Adam's difcourfe of dreams feems not to be the fpeculation of a new-created being. I know not whether his answer to the angel's reproof for curiofity does not want fomething of propriety; it is the fpeech of a man acquainted with many other men. Some philofophical notions, especially when the philosophy is falfe, might have been better omitted. The angel, in a comparison, fpeaks of timorous deer, before deer were yet timorous, and before Adam could understand the comparison.

Dryden remarks, that Milton has fome flats among his elevations. This is only to fay, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part must be for the fake of others; a palace must have paffages; a poem must have tranfitions. It is no more to be required that wit fhould always be blazing, than that the fun fhould always ftand at noon. In a great work there is a viciffitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a fucceffion of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the fky, may be allowed fometimes to revifit earth; for what other author ever foared fo high, or sustained his flight fo long?

Milton,

Milton, being well verfed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed often from them; and, as every man catches fomething from his companions, his defire of imitating Ariofto's levity has difgraced his work with the Paradife of Fools; a fiction not in itself ill-imagined, but too ludicrous for its place.

His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations, which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his unneceffary and ungraceful use of terms of art; it is not neceffary to mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally cenfured, and at last bear fo little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely deferve the attention of a critick.

Such are the faults of that wonderful performance Paradife Loft; which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be confidered not as nice but as dull, as lefs to be cenfured for want of candour, than pitied for want of fenfibility.

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Of Paradife Regained, the general judgement feems now to be right, that it is in many parts elegant, and every-where inftructive. It was not to be fuppofed that the writer of Paradife Loft could ever write without great effufions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The bafis of Paradife Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please like an union of the narrative and dramatic powers. Had this poem been written not by Milton, but by fome imitator, it would have claimed and received univerfal praise.

If Paradife Regained has been too much depreciated, Sampson Agonifies 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 French and English ftages; 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 caufe nor confequence, neither haften nor retard the catastrophe.

In this tragedy are however many particular beauties, many juft fentiments and strik ing lines; but it wants that 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 ftudied the shades of character, nor the combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending paffions. 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.

Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of Diction, a mode and cast of expreffion which bears little resemblance to that of any former writer, and which is fo far removed from common ufe, that an unlearned reader, when he firft opens his book, finds himself furprised by a new language.

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