FROM

COWPER'S TABLE TALK.

AGES elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry Nature lengths unknown before,
To give a MILTON birth, ask'd ages more.
Thus Genius rose and set at order'd times,
And shot a day-spring into distant climes,
Ennobling every region that he chose;
He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose ;
And, tedious years of gothic darkness pass'd,
Emerged all splendor in our isle at last.
Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main,
Then show far off their shining plumes again.

FROM

THE SAME AUTHOR'S TASK, B. HI. -PHILOSOPHY, baptized

pure fountain of eternal love,

In the
Has eyes indeed; and, viewing all she sees
As meant to indicate a GOD to man,

Gives HIM his praise, and forfeits not her own.
Learning has borne such fruit in other days
On all her branches: Piety has found
Friends in the friends of science, and true prayer
Has flow'd from lips wet with Castalian dews.
Such was thy wisdom, Newton, childlike sage!
Sagacious reader of the works of God,
And in his word sagacious. Such too thine,
MILTON, whose genius had angelic wings,
And fed on manna.

THE VERSE*.

THE measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin: rhyme being no necessary adjunct, or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre ; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause, therefore, some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works: as have also long since our best English tragedies; as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial, and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables,

* The first edition of Paradise Lost, in 1667, was without this apology for the verse. In 1668, when a new title-page was prefixed to the edition, it was added with the following address of the printer to the reader: "Courteous Reader, there was no Argument at first intended to the Book; but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem rimes not."

† Milton is here thought by Mr. Todd, to mean the tragedies of Shakspeare, which he commends in Il Penseroso as having "ennobled the buskin'd stage."

VOL. I.

K

and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings; a fault avoided by the learned ancients, both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect (though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers), that it is rather to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem, from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.

PARADISE LOST.

BOOK I.

The Argument.

The first Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his Fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of heaven, with all his crew, into the great deep. Which action passed over, the Poem hastens into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his angels now falling into hell; described here, not in the centre (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed), but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos here Satan, with his angels, lying on the burning lake, thunder-struck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion; calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him. They confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions; who lay till then in the same manner confounded. They rise; their numbers; array of battle; their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech; comforts them with hope yet of regaining heaven; but tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in heaven for, that angels were long before this visible creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the deep. The infernal peers there sit in council.

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse! that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd; who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning, how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion-hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song;
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the' Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit! that dost prefer
Before all temples the' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st: Thou from the first
Wast present; and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,
And madest it pregnant: what in me is dark,
Illumine what is low, raise and support;
That, to the highth of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence ;
And justify the ways of God to men.

Say first, for heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of hell; say first, what cause
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favour'd of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?—
The' infernal Serpent: he it was, whose guile,

Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceived

The mother of mankind, what time his pride