nerals and mourning; Venus as dressed by the Graces; Bellona as wearing Terror and Consternation like a garment. I might give several other instances out of Homer, as well as a great many out of Virgil. Milton has likewise very often made use of the same way of speaking, as where he tells us, that Victory sat on the right hand of the Messiah when he marched forth against the rebel angels; that at the rising of the sun the Hours unbarred the gates of light; that Discord was the daughter of Sin. Of the same nature are those expressions where, describing the singing of the nightingale, he adds, Silence was pleased:' and upon the Messiah's bidding peace to the chaos, 'Confusion heard his voice.' I might add innumerable instances of our poet's writing in this beautiful figure. It is plain that these I have mentioned, in which persons of an imaginary nature are introduced, are such short allegories as are not designed to be taken in the literal sense, but only to convey particular circumstances to the reader, after an unusual and entertaining manner. But when such persons are introduced as principal actors, and engaged in a series of adventures, they take too much upon them, and are by no means proper for a heroic poem, which ought to appear credible in its principal parts. I cannot forbear therefore thinking that Sin and Death are as improper agents in a work of this nature, as Strength and Necessity in one of the tragedies of Eschylus, who represented those two persons nailing down Prometheus to a rock, for which he has been justly censured by the greatest critics. I do not know any imaginary person made use of in a more sublime manner of thinking than that in one of the prophets, who, describing God as descending from heaven, and visiting the sins of mankind, adds that dreadful dreadful circumstance, Before him went the PestiJence. It is certain this imaginary person might have been described in all her purple spots. The Fever might have marched before her, Pain might have stood at her right hand, Phrensy on her left, and Death in her rear. She might have been introduced as gliding down from the tail of a comet, or darted upon the earth in a flash of lightning. She might have tainted the atmosphere with her breath; the very glaring of her eyes might have scattered infection. But I believe every reader will think, that in such sublime writings the mentioning of her, as it is done in Scripture, has something in it more just, as well as great, than all that the most fanciful poet could have bestowed upon her in the richness of his imagination. CRITIQUE ON MILTON'S PARADISE LOST. No. 363. MILTON has shown a wonderful art in describing that variety of passions which arise in our first parents upon the breach of the commandment that had been given them. We see them gradually passing from the triumph of their guilt, through remorse, shame, depair, contrition, piaver and hope, to a perfect and complete repentance. At the end of the tenth book they are represented as prostrating themselves upon the ground, and watering the earth with their tears ; to which the poet joins this beautiful circumstance, that they offered up their penitential prayers on the very place where their judge appeared to them when he pronounced their anteace: -Thry, forthwith to the place Pufore Before him reverent, and both confess'd Humbly their faults, and pardon begg'd, with tears There is a beauty of the same kind in a tragedy of Sophocles, where Oedipus, after having put out his own eyes, instead of breaking his neck from the palace-battlements (which furnishes so elegant an entertainment for our English audience), desires that he may be conducted to mount Citharon, in order to end h's life in that very place where he was exposed in his infancy, and where he should then have died had the will of his parents been executed. As the author never fails to give a poetical turn to his sentiments, he describes, in the beginning of this book, the acceptance which these their prayers met with in a short allegory, formed upon that beautiful passage in holy writ: And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne: and the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God.' -To heav'n their prayers Flew up, nor miss'd the way, by envious winds We have the same thought expressed a second time in the intercession of the Messiah, which is conceived in very emphatical sentiments and expressions. Among Livelier than Meliberan, or the grain Eve's complaint, upon hearing that she was to be removed from the garden of Paradise, is wonderfully beautiful. The sentiments are not only proper to the subject, but have something in them particularly soft and womanish. • Must I then leave thee, Paradise? thus leave At even, which 1 bred up with tender hand And wild? How shall we breathe in other air Less pure, accustomi'd to immortal fruits ?' Adam's speech abounds with thoughts which are equally moving, but of a more masculine and clevated turn. Nothing can be conceived more sublime and poetical than the following passage in it: This most afflicts me, that departing hence His blessed count'nance: here I could. frequent, On this mount he appear'd; under this tree I heard; here with him at this fountain talk'd: Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone Or monument to ages, and thereon Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flow'rs. The angel afterwards leads Adam to the highest mount of Paradise, and lays before him a whole hemisphere, as a proper stage for those visions which were represented to be on it. I have before observed how the plan of Milton's poem is in many particulars greater than that of the Iliad or Æneid. Virgil's hero, in the last of these poems, is entertained with a sight of all those who are to descend from him; but though that episode is justly admired, as one of the noblest designs in the whole Æneid, every one must allow that this of Milton is of a much higher nature. Adam's vision is not confined to any particular tribe of mankind, but extends to the whole species. In this great review which Adam takes of all his sons and daughters, the first objects he is presented |