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CRITIQUE

U PON

MILTON's

PARADISE LOST.

By Mr. ADDISON.

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Cedite Romani Scriptores, cedite Graii.
Give place, ye Roman, and ye Grecian Wits.

Propert.

HERE is nothing in Nature more irk. fome than general Difcourfes, efspecially when they turn chiefly upon Words. For this Reason I fhall wave the Dif cuffion of that Point which was started fome Years fince, Whether Milton's Paradife Loft may be called an Heroic Poem? Those who will not give it that Title, may call it (if they please) a Divine Poem. It will be fufficient to its Perfection, if

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it has in it all the Beauties of the highest kind of Poetry; and as for those who alledge it is not an Heroic Poem, they advance no more to the Diminution of it, than if they should say Adam is not Æneas, nor Eve Helen.

I shall therefore examine it by the Rules of Epic Poetry, and fee whether it falls fhort of the Iliad or Eneid, in the Beauties which are effential to that Kind of Writing. The firft Thing to be confidered in an Epic Poem, is the Fable, which is perfect or imperfect, according as the Action which it relates is more or less fo. This Action fhould have three Qualifications in it. Firft, It should be but One Action. Secondly, It should be an Entire Action ; and Thirdly, It should be a Great Action. To confider the Action of the Iliad, Eneid, and Paradife Loft, in these three feveral Lights. Homer, to preferve the Unity of his Action, haftens into the Midst of Things, as Horace has obferved: Had he gone up to Leda's Egg, or begun much later, even at the Rape of Helen, or the Invefting of Troy, it is manifeft that the Story of the Poem would have been a Series of feveral Actions. He therefore opens his Poem with the Discord of his Princes, and artfully interweaves, in the feveral fucceeding parts of it, an Account of every Thing material which relates to them, and had paffed before this fatal Diffenfion. After the fame Manner, Eneas makes his first Ap. pearance in the Tyrrhene Seas, and within the Sight of Italy, because the Action propofed to be celebrated was that of his fettling himself in Latium. But because it was neceffary for the Reader to know what had happened to him in the taking of Troy, and in the preceding Parts of his Voyage, Virgil makes his Heroe relate it by way of Episode in the fecond and third Books of the Eneid: the Contents of bath which Books come before thofe of the first Book in the Thread of the Story, tho' for preferving of this Unity of Action, they follow it in the Difpq

fition of the Poem. Milton, in Imitation of these two great Poets, opens his Parad fe Loft with an infernal Council plotting the Fall. of Man which is the Action he proposed to celebrate; and as for those Great Actions, the Battle of the Angels, and the Creation of the World, (which preceded in Point of Time, and which, in my Opinion, would have entirely deftroyed the Unity of his Principal Action, had he related them in the fame Order that they happened) he caft them into the fifth, fixth and feventh Books, by way of Epifode to this noble Poem.

Vid. the End of Spectator 327.

ARISTOTLE himself allows, that Homer has nothing to boast of as to the Unity of his Fable, though at the fame time that great Critic and Philofopher endeavours to palliate this Imperfection in the Greek Poet by imputing it in fome Measure to the very Nature of an Epic Poem. Some have been of Opinion, that the Eneid alfo labours in this Particular, and has Episodes which may be looked upon as Excrefcencies rather than as Parts of the Action. On the contrary, the Poem, which we have now under our Confideration, hath no other Epifodes than fuch as naturally arise from the Subject, and yet is filled with fuch a Multitude of aftonishing Incidents, that it gives us at the fame time a Pleafure of the greatest Variety, and of the greatest Simplicity; uniform in its Nature, though diverfified in the Execution.

I must observe also, that as Virgil in the Poem which was defigned to celebrate the Original of the Roman Empire, has defcribed the Birth of its great Rival, the Carthaginian Commonwealth: Milton with the like Art in his Poem on the Fall of Man, has related the Fall of thofe Angels who are his profeffed Enemies. Befide the many other Beauties in fuch an Epifode, its running parallel with the great Action of the Poem, hinders it from breaking the Unity fo much as another Episode would have done, that had not fo great an

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