quiet home. He felt a fraternal relationship to the entire universe. On the banks of the majestic river, immersed in the solitary grove, or by the shores of the interminable ocean, he was conscious of being in the presence of his great spiritual Father. In company with the material world he never felt alone, in solitude at home he communed with invisible beings. He saw poetry in every object, and he heard music in every sound. The sublime anthems which perpetually ring through the heavens, the earth and seas, were sweetly attuned to his own poetic nature. The beauty, the force, the overwhelming pathos of that passage in the fifth book of "Paradise Lost," where he summons all nature to chant the Creator's praise, are but a genuine echo of the sentiment and feeling of his own great spirit. We cannot resist the temptation to transcribe a portion of these incomparable lines. After an address to the Deity, and a call on the angels to "speak" forth their "choral symphonies," he proceeds

Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,

If better thou belong not to the dawn,

Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere,
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.
Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul,
Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st
And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fall'st.
Moon! that now meet'st the orient Sun, now fli'st
With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies,
And ye five other wandering fires that move
In mystic dance, not without song, resound
His praise, who out of darkness called up light.

Air, and ye elements, the eldest birth

Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle multiform, and mix

And nourish all things, let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.

Ye mists and exhalations that now rise

From hill or steaming lake, dusky or grey,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's Great Author rise-
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling, still advance his praise.
His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
With every plant, in sight of worship wave.
Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Join voices; all ye living souls; ye birds
That singing up to heaven's gate ascend,

Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk
The earth, that stately tread or lowly creep-
Witness if I be silent, morn or even,

To hill or valley, fountain, or fresh shade,

Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.

Milton seemed to be allied to the universe by the ties of a close and peculiar relationship.

It has, however, been said that his descriptions of nature have more

"Paradise Lost." Book v., p. 87.

the appearance of book-knowledge than of that pure experimental feeling, that genuine life and freshness of portraiture, which are the result of direct contact and intimate communion with the material world. We are inclined to think that Milton's loss of the sense of sight has originated this prejudice. It is very much to be questioned whether, had he not been visited by this misfortune, the objection would ever have been heard, or, at least, repeated. He could not see, and therefore it is argued he could not correctly paint. But it should be remembered that nature was not entirely a sealed book to the blind bard. He could still read many of her immortal characters. He could taste her sweets, and hear her sounds, and enjoy her fragrance, and drink in her balmy breezes Nor was Milton blind from his youth. He had seen the world, not only socially but physically, long before the light of day for ever closed upon him. Not only was he familiar with the scenery of England, but his eyes had roved over a large portion of the Italian, peninsular, and other continental nations. He had seen the wonders of mountainous Switzerland, and surveyed the magnificent range of the Appennines; he had been in the neighbourhood of Vesuvius, and watched the waves rolling from the Mediterranean to wash the shores of Venice; he had looked on the bright blue skies, the rich landscapes, the fruitful groves, and the luxuriant herbage of a southern latitude; and it should not be forgotten that the destruction of his visual organs does not imply the destruction of those refined impressions, those exquisite mental sensations, he had previously been the subject of. The influences arising out of his communion with nature had left deep traces in his mind, and the loss of sight appeared only to fix them the more indelibly. The pensive murmurings of the running stream, the joyous notes of birds, the efflorescence arising from a flower-bespangled earth, the lowing of cattle, the gentle breath of zephyrs, the rolling current of rivers, seemed to call up in his mind, with the freshness and beauty of former days, ten thousand thrilling associations. If the eye was deprived of its power of communicating with the mind, the "inner man was not shut out from the bright scenes and lovely symphonies of creation. He had made his observations; he had received his deep impressions; he had gathered his funds of knowledge before he committed to immortality his inimitable verse. Listen to his account of original Paradise. After encircling the garden with a "verderous wall," he sings

And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue,
Appeared. with gay enamelled colours mixed,
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow

When God hath showered the earth; so lovely seemed

That landscape. And of pure-now purer, air

Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires

Vernal delight and joy, able to drive

All sadness but despair; now gentle gales,

Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense

Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those baliny spoils.

Thus was this place,

A happy rural seat of various view:

Groves, whose rich trees wept odorous gums of balm ;
Others, whose fruit burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable Hesperian fables, true,

If true, here only, and of delicious taste.
Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap

Of some irriguous valley spread her store-
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn or rose.
Another side, umbraguous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purpling grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant.

The birds their choir apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,

Knit with the graces and the hours in dance,
Led on the eternal spring.*

These passages scarcely look as if Milton had only studied nature through the medium of books. For natural beauty and faithful portraiture where shall we find them excelled? Thomson abounds in the beautiful, but he never seems to shower it down upon us in such rich profusion. Milton, in his luxuriance of thought and expression, appears to place us in the midst of the sweetest scenes in nature. He makes us familiar with "showers of roses," " green banks,” “smooth_lakes,” "clouds that shed May flowers," "soft showers," the "breath of morn,"

the " gems of heaven," the " starry train of night," "the moon in clouded majesty, throwing o'er the earth her silvery mantle," and a thousand other interesting scenes and pleasant places, which, being clothed in chaste and softened expression, never fail to kindle the imagination and captivate the heart. If ever poet was free from stiffness and formality; if ever poet was removed from appearances of a copyist; if ever poet was capable of calling up the dearest recollections; if ever poet could touch the finer strings of the human heart; if ever poet could display the beautiful; if ever poet could picture the sublime -that poet was unquestionably John Milton.

From what we have now said it will be evident that we do not regard Milton great simply in one direction. He had a versatility of genius which we look for in vain in most of our poets. Shakspeare excepted, where do we find his equal in varied endowments? In mirth and gaiety, and perhaps in invention, Shakspeare is his superior, but in all the elements of sublimity Milton must bear the palm; while in describing the beautiful, in illuminating the splendid, and in picturing the pathetic, he is in no way his inferior. Milton is not only distinguished by variety of poetic gifts, but as a writer of prose. His works on the Church question are not only extraordinary for their vigour, but for their severe logical reasoning; and, though they may to general readers at times appear dry and obscure, it is often the consequence of overloaded thought, the parenthetical phraseology which that overloading almost necessitated, the frequency of involutions thus induced, and the variety of illustration and imagery which abounds in almost every sentence. Milton could ascend to heaven, and show you celestial abodes and spiritual existences, or he could descend to hell, and give you a sight of

"Paradise Lost." Book iv., pp. 163, 4-0.

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its infernals, with all their concomitant horribleness. The demon passions of wounded pride, of savage hate, of cool revenge, or of sullen melancholy, are deliniated as successfully as are the innocence of meekness, the purity of love, the dignity of humility, the guilelessness of youth, the yearnings of benevolence, and the wrongs of suffering worth. He sang of burning cherubim and fluttering insects, of suns, and stars, and creeping reptiles, of heaven's gates "on golden hinges turning," of hell's doors, which "grate harsh thunder;" of choiring angels, of despairing devils, of spiritual beauty and of moral death. It would be folly to attempt to introduce examples of this diversity of talent in our limited space. No image, perhaps, is so striking as that of Satan. This awful yet grand conception seldom fails to make an enduring impression, and the vast ocean of solid liquid fire" is fitly represented as the archfiend's abode. The picture is a mighty effort of genius. The very attempt would seem to hurl defiance at any mind but Milton's. In boldness of conception it reminds one of an immense island, floating and rolling in the great Pacific. But there is the absence of that horror in the scene, of that disappointed pride and hate, and savage despair, in the Prince of Hell, and of those ocean waves of burning sulphur in the boiling element, which in Milton overwhelm the imagination and sicken the heart. In Satan's breast burns a volcano of passions, which are still more terrible than his terrible abode. The "liquid" ocean of fire was an effort which none will easily surpass; but the creation of its inhabitant was the crowning image. His eyes blazed" fire; his other parts, "prone" on "the flood, extended long and large, lay floating many a rood." Then he makes the monster demon to 66 rear " his

huge stature "from off the pool," when

on each hand the flames

Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll'd
In billows, leave i'th midst a horrid vale.*

But we have not space for citations. From scenes like these Milton goes with infinite ease and grace to the lovely ones of paradise and heaven. Nothing appeared to make him shrink. That which would

have appalled ordinary men only nerved his arm with strength and fired his soul with courage. The grandeur of the theme never oppressed his intellect; it just gave him an opportunity, in which he rejoiced, to exert his all but superhuman energies. When about to grapple with some great idea or to create some magnificent image, he seems to throw aside the imperfect physical organisation of a fallen humanity, and, with complete success, to deal with scenes and objects beyond the power of ordinary mortals. Milton is, in truth, the sublimest of poets; and, while he stands alone in sublimity, there are few who have courted the Muses with equal success in other departments of poesy.

Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature conld no further go:
To make a third she joined the other two. +

We have many great poets, but only one Milton. Pope interests, Dryden excites, Thomson pleases, but Milton astounds. Pope is elegant,

*"Paradise Lost." Book i. + Dryden on Milton.

Dryden splendid, Thomson chaste; but with all this Milton unites the tender and the sublime. Pope analyses and refines: Dryden satirises and portrays, Thomson inspires and exhilirates, but Milton comes with a stately march that at once charms and awes us.

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Milton had a secret impression that the seasons exerted a considerable influence on his poetic efforts. "The poetic vein," he stated, " never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal;" and Mr. Gilfillan affirms that peculiarly happy moments of great literary men are a mark of the true genius. "Such a one," he says, "is possessed by an influence which, like the wind, bloweth where it listeth:comes he knows not whence, and goes he knows not whither." The genius appears, in truth, at times to be subject to a kind of inspiration; as if some superior being was breathing, in him and through him, to the souls of the morally and spiritually dead. Throughout the whole of his "Life of Milton," Dr. Johnson has indulged in a strain of ill-tempered petulancy. He allows no opportunity to slip of administering a thrust. His high Churchism in religion, no less than his high Toryism in polities, not only threw him out of patience with our bard, but made him incapable of appreciating several of his higher merits. When he relates the above peculiarity of Milton, he pours forth upon him his biting satire. He says such notions “ may justly be derided as the fumes of a vain imagination;" and adds, amongst other things, that the author that thinks himself weather-bound will find, with a little help from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted." This, we think, is sufficiently severe on the part of the Doctor, but we wonder he allowed his prejudices to prevent his recollection that peculiarity of climate has no small influence on the physical organisation; and, as the mind can only act through the bodily organs, he should have remembered that the value of its efforts, especially in peculiar constitutions, must be regulated by their healthy or unhealthy condition. There is certainly nothing very novel in the notion that the winter months are more favourable to composition than those of summer. In winter there is less liability to lassitude, less chances of interruption, and less to invite you abroad. So that what Johnson was pleased to call the fumes of a vain imagination," or the result of" idleness," might be the legitimate effect of natural and uncontrollable causes. Johnson was scarcely likely to estimate justly the character of Milton. Their peculiar habits and their widely different mental constitutions would incapacitate Johnson. Milton was an intellectual giant, so was Johnson; but they belonged to two different orders. Milton loved nature; Johnson loved society. Milton found refreshment after his toils in company with the organ; Johnson preferred a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Milton communed with the invisible world; Johnson preferred the buzz and bustle of Fleet-street. Johnson had little taste for the more refined pleasures, nor did he care much for rural scenes, nor for contemplation of the sublime outstretchings of nature. His greatness lay in his capacity for looking into the depths of human nature, for bringing out its motives, exposing the hidden springs of human action, and in supplying graphic pictures of human life. We are delighted with Johnson in these respects more than with any other writer. He seemed to know all about our poor human nature. We are not ignorant of his bigotry and his strong prejudices; but his majestic air, his stately march, his

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