This excellent maxim infured to him the exercife and the independence of his own elevated mind. There is frequent allufion to the works of antiquity in Milton, yet no poet, perhaps, who revered the ancients with fuch affectionate enthusiasm, has copied them fo little. This was partly owing to the creative opulence of his own genius, and partly to his having fixed on a fubject fo different from those of Homer and Virgil, that he may be faid to have accomplished a revolution in poetry, and to have purified and extended the empire of the epic muse. One of the chief motives that induced his imagination to defert its early favorite Arthur, and attach itself to our first parents, is partly explained in those admirable verses of the ninth book, where the poet mentions the choice of his own fubject, contrafted with those of his illuftrious predeceffors:

Argument

Not lefs, but more heroic, than the wrath
Of ftern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall, or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd,
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that fo long
Perplex'd the Greek, and Cytherea's son.

This fubject for heroic fong

Pleas'd me long chufing, and beginning late;

Not fedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deem'd, chief maft'ry to diffect,
With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights
In battles feign'd; the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unfung; or to defcribe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazon'd shields,
Impreffes quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinfel trappings, gorgeous knights
At jouft and torneament; then marshal'd feaft
Serv'd up in hall with fewers and fenefchals;
The skill of artifice or office mean,

Not that which juftly gives heroic name
To perfon or to poem me of these
Nor skill'd, nor ftudious, higher argument
Remains, fufficient of itself to raise

That name.

Milton feems to have given a purer fignifica tion, than we commonly give to the word hero, and to have thought it might be affigned to any person eminent and attractive enough to form a principal figure in a great picture. In truth when we recollect the etymology which a philofopher and a faint have left us of the term, we cannot admire the propriety of devoting it to illuftrious homicides. Plato derives the Greek word from others, that imply either eloquence or love; and St. Auguftine, from the Grecian name of Juno, or the air, because original heroes were pure departed fpirits supposed to refide in that element. In Milton's idea, the ancient

heroes

heroes of epic poetry feem to have too much refembled the modern great man, according to the delineation of that character in Fielding's exquifite history of Jonathan Wild the Great. Much as the English poet delighted in the poetry of Homer, he appears to have thought, like an American wri ter of the prefent age, whofe fervent paffion for the Muses is only inferior to his philantropy, that the Grecian bard, though celebrated as the prince of moralifts by Horace, and esteemed a teacher of virtue by St. Bafil, has too great a tendency to nourish that fanguinary madness in mankind which has continually made the earth a theatre of carnage. I am afraid that fome poets and hiflorians may have been a little acceffary to the innumerable maffacres with which men, ambitious of obtaining the title of hero, have defolated the world; and it is certain, that a fevere judge of Homer may, with some plaufibility apply to him the reproach that his Agamemnon utters to Achilles :

Αιει γαρ τοι έρις τε φίλη, πολεμοι τε μάχαι τε.

For all thy pleasure is in ftrife and blood. Yet a lover of the Grecian bard may observe, in his defence, that in affigning these words to the leader of his hoft, he fhows the pacific propriety of his own sentiments; and that, however his verses may have inftigated an Alexander to carnage, or prompted the calamitous frequency of war, even this pagan poet, fo famous as the defcriber of battles, detefted the objects of his description.

:

But whatever may be thought of the heathen bard, Milton, to whom a purer religion had given greater purity, and I think greater force of imagination, Milton, from a long furvey of human nature, had contracted fuch an abhorrence for the atrocious abfurdity of ordinary war, that his feelings in this point feem to have influenced his epic fancy. He appears to have relinquished common heroes, that he might not cherish the too common characteristic of man-a fanguinary fpirit. He afpired to delight the imagination, like Homer, and to produce, at the fame time, a much happier effect on the mind. Has he fucceeded in this glorious idea? Affuredly he has to please is the end of poetry. Homer pleases perhaps more univerfally than Milton; but the pleasure that the English poet excites, is more exquifite in its nature, and superior in its effect. An eminent painter of France used to fay, that in reading Homer he felt his nerves dilated, and he seemed to increase in ftature. Such an ideal effect as Homer, in this example, produced on the body, Milton produces in the fpirit. To a reader who thoroughly relishes the two poems on Paradise, his heart appears to be purified, in proportion to the pleasure he derives from the poet, and his mind to become angelic. Such a tafte for Milton is rare, and the reason why it is fo is this: To form it completely, a reader muft poffefs, in fome degree, what was fuperlatively poffeffed by the poet, a mixture of two different fpecies

OF THE PARADISE LOST.

315

of enthusiasm, the poetical and the religious. To relish Homer, it is fufficient to have a paffion for excellent verfe; but the reader of Milton, who is only a lover of the Mufes, lofes half, and certainly the best half, of that tranfcendent delight which the poems of this divine enthusiast are capable of imparting. A devotional tafte is as requifite for the full enjoyment of Milton as a tafte for poetry; and this remark will fufficiently explain the inconfiftency fo ftriking in the fentiments of many diftinguished writers, who have repeatedly spoken on the great English poetparticularly that inconfiftency, which I partly promised to explain in the judgments of Dryden and Voltaire. These very different men had both a paffion for verse, and both ftrongly felt the poetical powers of Milton: but Dryden per-. haps had not much, and Voltaire had certainly not a particle, of Milton's religious enthusiasm; hence, instead of being impreffed with the fanctity of his fubject, they fometimes glanced upon it in a ludicrous point of view.

Hence they fometimes fpeak of him as the very prince of poets, and fometimes as a mifguided genius, who has failed to obtain the rank he af pired, to in the poetical world. But neither the caprices of conceit, nor the cold aufterity of reafon, can reduce the glory of this pre-eminent bard. It was in an hour propitious to his renown, that he relinquifhed Arthur and Merlin for Adam and the Angels; and he might say on the occafion, in the words of his admired Petrarch.

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