poem. In the Paradise Lost, he is a giant tossing mountains to heaven with far seen struggle, and in evident trial of strength. In the Paradise Regained, he is a giant gently putting his foot on a rock, and leaving a mark inimitable, indelible, visible to all after time. His Samson Agonistes, too, accomplishes great effects by a very small apparent expenditure of means. Even as the Hero has his limbs fettered, has Milton cramped himself with the Aristotelian unities. Samson, however, says— 66 'My heels are fettered, but my fist is free." And so Milton's genius asserts itself in spite of the unities. If shaven of his giant locks, they have yet, like the Danite's, begun to grow. There is no luxuriance in this poem; it is throughout severe, sculptural, and stands up before you like a statue, bloodless and blind. A deep gloom hangs over its story, and the peevishness of its Hero is only compensated by his power. Samson is Milton in a hard Hebrew form. The fair vesture of youth and hope is for ever gone from his limbs, the hair of his head is shorn, he is clad in "filthy garments,' forsaken, blind, carelessly diffused; but his courage, pride, patriotism, and devotion, are still extant, and ready to reassert themselves once more to avenge the loss of his two eyes. His hand has few flowers in it, it strains rather at the pillars, and uses them as the instruments of its terrible concentrated force. His spirit is that of Abimelech, when he cried to his armour-bearer, "Say not a woman slew me." Samson must die, with a city of enemies dragged down to death above him, and give to suicide for once a patriotic dignity and a sacramental consecration. The scenes with Delilah and Harapah are amazingly spirited and dramatic, although coarser in style than Milton's wont. The choruses rise sometimes to Grecian grandeur of lyric thought, and sink more frequently into Grecian intricacy of measure. Altogether, you believe with trembling in the power of this poem. It is no Hymettus humming with bees, and blushing with flowers; it is a Sinai, bared in the wrath of Heaven, hanging over your head, and threatening to crush wonder out of you rather than to awaken warm and willing admiration. Time would fail us to speak, as they deserve, of Comus, that finest compound of the pastoral and the play, with its high moralisings and Shaksperean imagery; of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, with their delicious contrast and dancing measures; of the Hymn on Christ's Nativity, which, slow and solemn as a charmed river, moves around the awful sanctities of its theme; of Lycidas, wailing so melodiously over "That fatal and perfidious bark, Built in the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark, Which laid so low that sacred head of thine;" of the Sonnets, rising in climax, from the rugged simplicity of those of Cyriack Skinner, up to the grand swelling peal (as of a Sonnet soaring out of itself into some higher form of verse) of that On the late Massacre in Piemont; or of his graceful Greek, Italian, and Latin verses and versicles. We have not said enough to exhaust our own admiration, but we have pointed again-with however feeble a finger-to fountains of song which no impurity defiles, and which are as fresh and full this hour as when they were first opened by the hand of the Master-spirit. " Blessings be with him, and eternal praise!" XIII. To Mr H. Lawes, on the Publishing his Airs XIV. On the Religious Memory of Mrs Catherine Thomson XV. To the Lord General Fairfax XVI. To the Lord General Cromwell XVII. To Sir Henry Vane the Younger Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakspeare On the University Carrier, who Sickened in the time of |