cannot be ranked as an epic, as not being full enough of personages or events. At the same time, it is not a drama, as the one transaction of which it consists is narrated to us by the poet, and not performed before us by the only two actors introduced. The bulk of the poem consists of dialogue. It is an astonishing feat of amplification, that more than 2000 lines should have been constructed out of some twenty verses of the synoptical gospels, without our anywhere having the sense of circumlocution and weakened effect, which paraphrases ordinarily produce.

Paradise Regained is undoubtedly inferior in interest to Paradise Lost. This is owing to its exaggerating the defects of the former poem, which were too little action, too few agents, and the superhuman character of those few. The language of the later poem is also less ornate, less charged with subtle suggestion than was that of Paradise Lost. But, though barren of human interest, and denuded of all verbal ornamentation, the patient student of Paradise Regained will find himself impressed by it with a sense of power which awes all the more because it is latent. Phillips tells us that the poet himself 'could not bear with patience' to hear that it was inferior to Paradise Lost. Johnson, with his habitual carelessness, converted this statement into the different one that 'his last poetical offspring was his favourite.' This is not warranted by the authority which Johnson quotes, that of Phillips. But it is remarkable that two poets of the early part of our century, Coleridge and Wordsworth, have each given expression to a similar opinion. Wordsworth says: 'Paradise Regained is the most perfect in execution of anything written by Milton;' Coleridge, that in its kind it is the most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in interest.'

8.

With Samson Agonistes, written 1667, published 1671, Milton closed his authorship as poet. In composing this piece he fulfilled more than one cherished intention. Samson is a drama, and though Milton had, after mature deliberation, chosen the epic form for his chief work, it was not without secretly reserving the intention to repeat the experiment of a drama, in which the Greek model should be even more closely adhered to than in Comus Milton's taste had been offended by the want of art and regularity of the English drama, and he tried to give a specimen of a tragedy in conformity with theseverest type. In Samson not only are the

unities of time and place observed, but dialogue is varied by choral odes; no division of act or scene is made, but the transitions are managed by the intervention of a chorus of compatriots and sympathisers. How much, in composing this piece, Milton's thoughts were occupied with the question of form, is proved by his choosing to preface it by some remarks with a bearing on that point only. He says nothing, in this preface, which could point the references to his own fate and fortunes. The prefatory remarks are apologetic, and explain why he has adopted the dramatic form, in spite of the objection of religious men to the stage, and why he has modelled his drama after the ancients and Italians.

Besides reviving the more correct form of drama, Milton's intention, in Samson, is to offer one which in substance is free from the coarse buffooneries of the Restoration stage. Though taste and friendship both forbade his naming Dryden, or any living dramatist, we see of whom he is thinking, when he 'would vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day, with other common interludes, suffering through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons; which by all judicious hath been counted absurd, and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people.'

Lastly, under the story of Samson, as here presented, the poet has adumbrated his own fate-the splendid promise of his Goddedicated youth, in contrast with the tragic close in blind and forsaken age, poor, despised, and if not a prisoner himself, witness of the captivity of his friends, and the triumph of the Philistine foeall this is distinctly imaged throughout this piece. The resemblance is completed by the scene with Dalila, in which we see how bitter, even at the distance of five and twenty years, is Milton's remembrance of what he suffered in his first marriage with the daughter of a Philistine house. When we remember that the line, 'with fear of change Perplexes monarchs,' in Paradise Lost had staggered a not unfriendly censor, we may wonder that the unmistakable allusion in Samson—

'their carcasses

To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captiv'd;
Or to th' unjust tribunals under change of times
And condemnation of th' ingrateful multitude,'

should have passed unchallenged in 1671.

MARK PATTISON.

VOL. II.

X

AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

[1630; æt. 22.]

What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,

Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving :
And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

L'ALLEGRO.

[1632-4; æt. 24-26.]

Hence, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy! Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-raven sings;

There under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

But come, thou goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth,
With two sister Graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore:
Or whether (as some sager sing)

The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr, with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a-Maying;
There on beds of violets blue,

And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew,

Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,
So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee

Jest, and youthful jollity,

Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,

Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,

Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine:

While the cock, with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:
Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, While the landscape round it measures;

Russet lawns, and fallows grey,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savoury dinner set

Of herbs, and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;