take up again. None ever wished it longer СНАР. I. than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than Of improved a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, P ception. retire harassed and over-burdened, and look elsewhere for recreation*! If we dip into the Iliad, we are immediately borne along by the enthusiastic vehemence of the poet's diction, as it were by a torrent; and even in the Odyssey, the Æneid, or Jerusalem, we glide down the stream without labour or effort; but, in the Paradise Lost, we are perpetually tugging at the oar; and though we discover, at every turn, what fills us with astonishment and delight, the discovery is, nevertheless, a work of toil and exertion consequently we can only enjoy it, when the powers of attention are fresh and vigorous; no man ever flying to the Paradise Lost, as he does to the works of other great epic poets, as a refuge from lassitude or dejection. Yet surely the first and most essential merit of poetry is to be pleasing-to exhilarate and exalt the spirits by brilliant imagery and enthusiastic sentiment, rather than to overawe and depress by gloomy grandeur and sour morality. "On peut être à la fois et pompeux et plaisant, Et je hais un sublime ennuyeux et pesant." 29. This great defect, the want of the power to please and amuse, I cannot but think as *Life of Milton. CHAP. Of improved much owing to the nature of his versification, as to that of his subject: for we feel no such lassitude or depression from the same subjects, when treated by Tasso or Vida; though, except in the lightness and elasticity of their versification, we cannot but allow that Milton has treated them more poetically, as well as more properly. In the scenes, too, of Paradise, and the loves of Adam and Eve, Milton's imagery is gay and beautiful, and his sentiments warm and rapturous; but, nevertheless, that very irregularity of the pauses, which certain critics have so much commended, gives the character of prose to his verse, and deprives it of all that fire and enthusiasm of expression, which Pope has happily preserved in his translation of the corresponding passages of the Iliad. But come, so well refreshed, now let us play, PARADISE LOST, ix. 1026. These softer moments, let delight employ, When first entranced in Cranäe's isle I lay, Adam's argument, in this case, is certainly more pointed and logical, than that of the young Trojan; but pointed and logical argument is not what the case required. The rapturous glow of enthusiastic passion, with which the latter addresses his mistress, would have much more influence upon the affections of an amorous lady, though it may be less satisfactory to the understanding of a learned critic. The language of Homer and of Pope is such as Paris might have really used, and used with effect; but had he made love to Helen in the language of Milton, Menelaus might have trusted him with perfect security. In such passages, as the following, the admirers of the irregular variety of Miltonic pauses, will find some difficulty in discovering any thing like verse; since even scanning the syllables upon their fingers will scarcely enable them to measure the lines. "To whom the angel. Therefore what he gives, whose praise be ever sung, to man, in part spiritual, may, of purest spirits, be found no ungrateful food: and, food alike, those pure intelligential substances require, as doth your rational; and both contain, within them, every lower faculty of sense, whereby CHAP. I. Of improved Perception. CHAP. Of improved they hear, see, smell, touch, taste; tasting concoct, digest assimilate, and corporeal to incorporeal turn.” Here are ten lines taken from one of the most admired books of the poem: but it appears to me (perhaps for want of taste and discernment) that any ten lines transcribed from his history of the Heptarchy, might with equal propriety be ranked with poetry *. That they may be excused, however, in a long work, on account of the beauties, by which they are counterbalanced, I readily admit; "sed emendata videri, Pulchráque, et exactis minimùm distantia, miror." 30. The blank verse of Thomson and Cowper is much more strictly verse than that of Milton: but the complete failure of the latter in his translation of the Iliad is at least a presumptive proof that this species of verse is not suited to such compositions: for when Cowper has failed, The ancients seem to have had much more nice and accurate powers of discrimination in verse than we have. "In versu quidem theatra tota exclamant, si fit una syllaba aut brevior aut longior. Nec vero multitudo pedes novit, nec ullos numeros tenet; nec illud, quod offendit, aut cur, aut in quo offendat, intelligit: et tamen omnium longitudinum, et brevitatum in sonis, sicut acutarum graviumque vocum judicium ipsa natura in auribus nostris collocavit."-Cic. de Orator. The most learned and refined of a modern audience show no such quickness of perception or nicety of judg ment. who shall hope to succeed? The case is, that where it is not stiffened and elevated by some peculiar dignity and elevation of subject, as in the more splendid parts of the Paradise Lost, it requires so many inversions and transpositions to keep it out of prose, as render it quite unsuitable to the enthusiastic spirit, and glowing simplicity of heroic narrative, which is perfect only "cum ita structa verba sunt, ut numerus non quæsitus sed secutus esse videatur -quod indicat non ingratam negligentiam, de re hominis magis quam de verbis laborantis." CIC. Orator. 31. Not, however, that I would wholly exclude from poetry, or even from animated prose, what are, according to our idiom, inversions and transpositions: for, in many instances, such a collocation of the words is the natural and original order of speech; and when we address the imagination or the passions, the natural and original order will be found the most impressive, though it may differ from that established by ordinary use. To explain this, I shall take the liberty of quoting the words of one of the latest and ablest writers upon philosophical criticism; whose words, in this instance, cannot be altered without being injured. 32. "Let us figure to ourselves," says Dr. Blair * a savage, who beholds some object, * Lect. vii. CHAP. I. Of improved |