Had Milton taken a subject less divine, a subject from uninspired history, I doubt if he would have executed it with equal success. His own conceptions were too elevated to enter with minuteness into inferior characters: he knew not the feebler passions and little windings of the human heart: he could not draw the vast variety of man's obliquities, like Shakspeare. Whatever we are accustomed to admire in the best of other poets, sinks into paleness and insignificance before the splendour and sublimity of Milton.

But minor poets often fail, not only from want of native force, but because they propose to themselves false objects of excellence: they substitute perverse inventiveness for genuine creation; and too often describe and copy, when they ought to invent. The poet should turn spirituality into imagery; but it must not be mere body, it must have life, and thought, and soul. Milton has given something of material shape to the airy beings of a higher sphere, but he has never divested them of the bright and indefinable radiance of divinity.

There can be no unity in the description of inanimate nature, or in what is didactic; consequently there can be no perfect invention: it is only therefore in the epic or the dramatic that there can be poetry of the primary class: this will exelude from the first class many of the celebrated poets of our own country.

Looking to human agency, who has constructed with us a long and well-combined narrative of imaginary characters! If this merely human creation be difficult, what has Milton performed? How comparatively easy is it to personify and delineate the diversity in the moral and intellectual characters of mankind,-to put it in action amid the scenes of human life, and to show human passions in conflict ! yet how rarely have even these powers been exhibited !

The true poet must create: he must leave artists to illustrate and adorn. Whoever employs himself much in the mechanism of composition, must be deficient in enthusiasm and warmth; he must feel no inspiration. Language will come of course to him who thinks profoundly, feels deeply, and sees with imaginative brightness. What is brilliant in itself, requires no ornament of paint and colours.

To study Milton's poetry is not merely the delight of every accomplished mind, but it is a duty. He who is not conversant with it, cannot conceive how far the genius of the Muse can go. They who have no mirror in their minds to receive and reflect, may be but slightly and dimly touched; but they must let the rays shine upon them, even as the sun falls upon the barren rocks; at some happy moment they may be benefited by the genial beams.

Here are none of the frivolous idlenesses; the wanton sports of imagination; the false voluptuousness; the whimsical fictions; the affected pathos; the sickly whinings; the forced deliriums; the raptures of extravagant words; the feigned melancholy; the morbid musings; the dreamy mistiness of unmeaning verbiage; the echoes of echoes of artificial sounds. All is pure majesty; the sober strength, the wisdom from above, that instructs and awes. It speaks as an oracle,—not with a mortal voice.

The bard, whatever might have been his inborn genius, could never have attained this height of argument and execution but by a life of laborious and holy preparation;-a constant conversance with the ideas suggested by the Sacred Writings; the habitual resolve to lift his mind and heart above earthly thoughts; the incessant exercise of all the strongest faculties of the intellect; retirement, temperance, courage, hope, faith.

He had all the aids of learning; all the fruit of all the wisdom of ages; all the effect of all that poetic genius, and all that philosophy had achieved: all were infused and mingled up in his mind with his own native growth. Had his learning been heaped on a mind of less native splendour, it could have produced none of these results: it fell upon a fire, which bore it up into a golden and ethereal flame. While the gigantic productions of such a mind were in progress, the poet must have felt strong consolations for all his misfortunes, privations, and dangers; but not unmixed, it appears, with some regrets and some complainings. This last we must infer from the passages in "Samson Agonistes," already noticed.

Whoever is powerful in virtuous faculties, and exercises them as he ought, must necessarily feel a great and proud delight from the exertion; but in the noble employment of the mind there is unmingled delight: hours become like minutes, and days like hours. Sitting in the humble porch of his humble house, blind, poor,

meanly clad, unattended, how great must Milton have felt above all kings and conquerors of the earth, above the possessors of the wealth of the world, the inhabitants of marble palaces and golden saloons! He knew his own dignity; and it was among his glories that he knew it. He never shrunk from the assertion of his own ascendency. It did not lower his self-esteem to hear the popular shouts bestowed on his inferiors,-on Waller, and Cowley, and Denham, and the wits that basked in the sunshine of the Court, while he was neglected, and his sublime strains unfelt and untasted he knew the day would come when all that was wise and great must acknowledge his supremacy.

Perhaps self-confidence was among his leading traits: if he had been deficient in this quality he would never have performed what he did. It may produce rashness; where there is innate strength it will produce success. Temerity is better than a chilling and helpless fear; to have power, and not to know it, is worse perhaps than not to have it: whoever depends on the opinions of others, and cannot assert his own cause, is almost sure to be crushed.

Nothing is more useful in literary biography than to endeavour to ascertain by what means others have attained extraordinary excellence: there must always be a concurrence of causes, of which some may perhaps be accidental: the inborn gift is first, and indispensable; but encouragement, discipline, and toil, are also necessary. It is clear that Milton showed the superiority of his endowments at ten years old; and all other concurrences would have done nothing without these.

Can any case be shown where true genius did not exhibit itself in early childhood? It appears to me very improbable. I know no ascertained case. An extreme sensibility is a primary ingredient: this must show itself early. Sometimes common observers have mistaken the symptoms of genius; but this does not alter the case. Vulgar censors often take the appearances of genius in childhood for folly; as has been so beautifully described by Beattie, in " Young Edwin."

CHAPTER XIX.

RECAPITULATION OF MILTON'S PERSONAL CHARACTER.

I KNOW not that much can be added to the traits of Milton's character which I have already given. As in almost all cases of great genius, there is a consonance in the qualities of the poetry and the poet. Grandeur, inflexibility, sternness, originality, naked force, all true splendour, or strength, arises from internal conviction or belief. The poet was never compliant to the ways of the world: from his very childhood he kept himself aloof: he nursed his visions in solitude, and soothed his haughty hopes of future loftiness of fame by lonely musing: the ideal world in which his mind lived would not coalesce with the rude concourse of mankind.

As to his own purity and sanctity of soul, the declarations and enthusiastic apostrophes in his own prose writings render it impossible to doubt it: he made them in the hearing of his most bitter enemies,-public enemies through all Europe,rendered furious by a common cause, in which all the principles of ancient institutions were involved. The extent to which he carried his arguments appears to me wrong, and I cannot deem his conclusions other than harsh and vindictive; but, as I have said before, I do not think that tenderness of feeling was his distinction. His gigantic heart was not easily melted into tears: he knew how to paint rebellious angels, mighty even in their defeat.

All his excitements were intellectual: his thoughts were compound: but it is surprising how a mind habituated for twenty years to the coarse routine of public business could at once throw it all off, and produce a poetical texture so closewrought, and of such unmingled majesty. Plain as the style is, it never sinks into colloquiality or the language of business: he had kept his genius aloof from his daily occupation, and suffered not the world to blow or breathe upon it.

In the commencement of the ninth book of the "Paradise Lost" the poet speaks of his subject as more heroic than the subjects of the Iliad and Æneid :

If answerable style I can obtain

Of my celestial patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,

And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires

Easy my unpremeditated verse,

Since first this subject for heroic song

Pleased me, long chusing and beginning late;
Not sedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deem'd.

So before, in book vii., addressing himself to his Muse Urania, he says:—
Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute: though fall'n on evil days,
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues ;
In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round,
And solitude: yet not alone, while thou
Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east. Still govern thou my song,
Urania: and fit audience find, though few.

That his inward light became more radiant from his outward darkness I cannot doubt. This he expresses himself in the sublime opening of his third book :Thee I revisit safe,

And feel thy sovereign vital lamp: but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt,
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill;
Smit with the love of sacred song. But chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,

Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget

Those other two equall'd with me in fate,
So were I equall'd with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of eve or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off; and for the book of knowledge fair
Presented with an universal blank

Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

So much the rather thou, celestial light,

Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell

Of things invisible to mortal sight.

There is nothing in all the materials of biography more applicable to an author's character than this affecting and majestic burst of egotism: though it will be repeated in the poetry, I should consider myself worse than tasteless if I omitted to insert it here.

If we do not dwell on these parts of the poet's thoughts and feelings, we pass over his principal and most exalted traits. The metrical writer, whose life is not a poem, is of an inferior class, and a mere poetical artist. No assumed character, -nothing, which does not proceed from "a believing mind," (to use_Collins's expression,) will be efficient. Milton, while he was composing "Paradise Lost," battled with the angels, and lived in the garden of Eden. While he was dictating the passages I have cited, how unutterably grand must have been the exaltation of his mind!

Great pains have been taken to discover what is called the origin of "Paradise Lost." Such conjectures may amuse the curious in bibliography; for higher purposes they are but empty trifles. The great number of authors, to whom it is pretended to track the poet, is alone a proof how little certainty there is in such researches. It appears to me that these critics mistake the nature of originality. It is not so much in the novelty of the ingredients, as in their selection and new combinations, that originality consists.

In confirmation of what the poet has said of his "long chusing, and beginning late," he thus expresses himself in his second book of the "Reformation of Church Government," in 1641:

"Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him towards the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of some rhyming parasite; nor to be obtained of dame Memory and her siren daughters; but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs."

I am convinced that this is the only true account of the origin of "Paradise Lost." Shakspeare's originality might be still more impugned, if an anticipation of hints and similar stories were to be taken as proof of plagiarism. In many of the dramatist's most beautiful plays the whole tale is borrowed, as for instance, "Romeo and Juliet" from Luigi da Porto: but Shakspeare and Milton turn brass into gold. This sort of passage-hunting has been carried a great deal too far, and has disgusted and repelled the reader of feeling and taste. The novelty is in the raciness, the life, the force, the just association, the probability, the truth; that which is striking because it is extravagant, is a false novelty. He who borrows to make patches is a plagiarist; but what patch is there in Milton? All is interwoven, and forms part of one web.

No doubt, the holy bard was always intent upon sacred poetry, and drew his principal inspirations from Scripture. This distinguishes his style and spirit from those of all other poets; and gives him a solemnity which has not been surpassed save in the Book whence welled that inspiration.

The poem is one which could not have been produced solely by the genius of Milton, without the addition of an equal extent and depth of learning, and an equal labour of reflection. Neither Shakspeare, nor Spenser, nor any other great poet, of any country, could have produced it. It is never an effusion. I conjecture that it was produced slowly, after long musing on each passage; though he hints otherwise himself. It has always a great compression. Perhaps its perpetual allusions to all past literature and history are sometimes carried a little too far for the popular reader; and the latinised style requires to be read with the attention due to an ancient classic.

Probably all the author's diversified mental faculties and acquirements worked together in the production of almost every portion of this majestic edifice. There is nothing of mere simple imagination in any part: all is moral, didactic, wise, sublime, as well as creative and visionary.

All language appears diluted in every other poet, compared with Milton's: it has few transpositions; and is never guilty of flowery ornaments, which vulgar taste mistakes for poetical richness. Serious, profound, devoted, gigantic in conception, and sublime in words, he speaks as an inspired emanation of a higher state of being! There is a sombre awe in him, to which we listen as to an oracle. He dictates and imposes a force of authority, which we dare not question. We tremble while we believe. In the Life which I have thus attempted of the most sublime of all English authors, it has not been my purpose to be minute, and to collect together all which had been previously told of the great poet.

It has seemed to me on the present occasion even judicious to adhere to the leading features only; and to give them, not from the representations of others, but from my own feelings, reflections and convictions. I am afraid that there are many who admire Milton, principally, if not solely, upon the force of authority. All

the admiration I have myself expressed is strictly sincere: I have uttered no affected raptures; and I have not spoken but from the unchanging opinion of a long and studious life.

To have given novelty to a subject so often treated, would be almost a hopeless wish. In stating the dry facts of such a topic there can be little variety of expression: but I have rather relied upon the force of opinions and comments, than of facts already known of the justness and taste of these, and of the manner in which they are expressed, others must judge the quality on which I rely is their sincerity. I have not been pleading as a plausible advocate for one whom I have undertaken the task of praising: the difficulty has not been in finding pleas for admiration, but in finding language adequate to the demands for which excellence gave occasion. The personal character of the poet should be all along concurrent with the genius of his poetry. From his very childhood he was a worshipper of the Muse Urania. It has been unfortunate for Milton that his most popular biographer should be Johnson, whose Memoir is written in such a deliberate spirit of detraction as to fix on the writer a certain degree of moral turpitude. As a critic he has here shown extreme insensibility and want of taste, except on the "Paradise Lost," of which his eulogy, though strongly expressed, is, as I shall attempt to prove, little more in substance than a copy from Addison.

He who criticised Milton with the most congenial spirit was Thomas Warton. Hayley had an amiable enthusiasm ; but his style was languid, diffuse, and often sickly, full of colloquial and feminine superlatives; such as "most affectionate ""most tender"-"most afflicting." Hayley was full of elegant erudition, but he had no imagination: Bishop Newton was classical, but feeble and unoriginal: Bentley and Warburton were acute but fantastic. It is hardly necessary to characterise minor annotators.

CHAPTER XX.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE CRITICISMS ON "PARADISE LOST," BY ADDISON AND JOHNSON.

THE two grand criticisms on the "Paradise Lost" are those of Addison and Johnson. Whatever praise Johnson may have obtained for what he has written on this subject, a strict examination will show that he owes entirely to his predecessor: all is drawn from Addison. It is true, that he has clothed it in his own diction; and that it had passed through the ordeal of his own mind, so as not to be reproduced identical; but yet precisely similar: it has a more compressed contexture; and more point, which is taken for more force.

Both critics consider this divine poem under the four heads of fable, characters, sentiments, and language; and both concur in all the necessary requisites of each, and that Milton has fulfilled them all. As an epitome of Addison, that which Johnson has written is valuable; as an original, it has no merit at all. In one nspect it is more adapted to modern taste; that it less often insists on bringing those questions to the standard models of Homer and Virgil; which, however excellent, must be now admitted to be sometimes arbitrary : in general, however, they are founded on reason, and therefore indispensable.

As greatness is the first quality, the superiority of Milton's fable to those of Homer and Virgil cannot be disputed: nor is his manner of conducting it less skilful and perfect; having unity, always going forward to its end, and never interrupted by irrelevant episodes. The vastness of the invention of the outline, when little could be drawn from tradition, history, or observation, is stupendous.

The characters are equally out of the conception of mere human musing. The delineation of Satan, and the other Fallen Angels, would have appeared to any other mind but Milton's beyond the reach of human ability. The ideas of Adam and Eve before the Fall might not appear so utterly hopeless: but as they then partook of divinity, nothing but the boldest imagination could have ventured upon the subject.

The sentiments appropriate to such characters could only be supplied by a genius partaking of an inspiration above humanity. The grandeur of thought must have been incessant, and liable to no depressions: the imagination of many may be strong enough to invent and communicate the workings of human passions and