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No 101. when his circumstances will enable him to assume the higher distinction.

But the retrospect upon life, which this letter has made necessary, covers me with confusion, and aggravates despair. I cannot but reflect, that among all these characters, I have never assumed that of a Man. Man is a Reasonable Being, which he ceases to be, who disguises his body with ridiculous fopperies, or degrades his mind by detestable brutality. These thoughts would have been of great use to me, if they had occurred seven years ago. If they are of use to you, I hope you will send me a small gratuity for my labour, to alleviate the misery of hunger and nakedness: but, dear sir, let your bounty be speedy, lest I perish before it arrives.

I am your humble servant,

Common side, King's Bench,

Oct. 18, 1753.

NOMENTANUS.

N° 101. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1753.

-Est ubi peccat.

Yet sometimes he mistakes.

TO THE ADVENTURER.

HOR.

SIR,

If we consider the high rank which Milton has de servedly obtained among our few English classics, we cannot wonder at the multitude of commen taries and criticisms of which he has been the subject. To these I have added some miscellaneous

remarks; and if you should at first be inclined to reject them as trifling, you may, perhaps, determine to admit them, when you reflect that they are

new.

The description of Eden in the fourth book of the Paradise Lost, and the battle of the angels in the sixth, are usually selected as the most striking examples of a florid and vigorous imagination: but it requires much greater strength of mind to form an assemblage of natural objects, and range them with propriety and beauty, than to bring together the greatest variety of the most splendid images, without any regard to their use or congruity; as in painting, he who, by the force of his imagination, can delineate a landscape, is deemed a greater master than he, who, by heaping rocks of coral upon tesselated pavements, can only make absurdity splendid, and dispose gaudy colours so as best to set off each other.

"Sapphire fountains that rolling over orient Pearl run Nectar, roses without thorns, trees that bear fruit of Vegetable Gold, and that weep odorous gums and balms,' are easily feigned; but having no relative beauty as pictures of nature, nor any absolute. excellence as derived from truth, they can only please those, who, when they read, exercise no faculty but fancy, and admire because they do not think.

If I shall not be thought to digress wholly from. my subject, I would illustrate this remark, by comparing two passages, written by Milton and Fletcher, on nearly the same subject. The spirit in Comus thus pays his address of thanks to the water, nymph Sabrina:

May thy brimmed waves for this,
Their full tribute never miss,

From a thousand petty rills,
That tumble down the snowy hills:
Summer drought, or singed air,
Never scorch thy tresses fair;
Nor wet October's torrent flood

Thy molten chrystal fill with mud:

Thus far the wishes are most proper for the welfare of a river goddess: the circumstance of summer not scorching her tresses, is highly poetical and elegant: but what follows, though it is pompous and majestic, is unnatural and far fetched;

May thy billows roll ashore

The beryl and the golden ore:
May thy lofty had be crown'd
With many a tow'r and terras round;
And here and the e, thy banks upon,
With groves of my rh and cinnamon!

The circumstance in the third and fourth lines is happily fancied; but what idea can the reader have of an English river rolling Gold and the Beryl ashore, or of groves of Cinnamon growing on its banks? The images in the following passage of Fletcher are all simple and real, all appropriated and strictly natural :

For thy kindness to me shown,
Never from thy banks be blown
Any tree, with windy force,

Cross thy s ream to stop thy course;
May no beast that comes to drink,
With his hors cast down thy brink;
May none that for thy fish do look,
Cut thy banks to dam thy brook;
Barefoot may n neighbour wade
In thy cool streams, wife or maid,
When the spawn on stones do lie,

To wash their hemp, and spoil the fry.

The glaring picture of Paradise is not, in my opinion, so strong an evidence of Milton's force of

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imagination, as his representation of Adam and Eve when they left it, and of the passions with which they were agitated on that event.

Against his battle of the Angels, I have the same objections as against his garden of Eden. He has endeavoured to elevate his combatants, by giving them the enormous stature of giants in romances, books of which he was known to be fond; and the prowess and behaviour of Michael as much resemble the feats of Ariosto's Knight, as his two-handed sword does the weapons of chivalry: I think the sublimity of his genius much more visible in the first appearance of the fallen Angels; the debates of the infernal peers; the passage of Satan through the dominions of Chaos, and his adventure with Sin and Death, the mission of Raphael to Adam; the conversations between Adam and his wife; the creation; the account which Adam gives of his first sensations, and of the approach of Eve from the hand of her CREATOR; the whole behaviour of Adam and Eve after the first transgression; and the prospect of the various states of the world, and history of man exhibited in a vision to Adam.

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In this vision, Milton judiciously represents Adam, as ignorant of what disaster had befallen Abel, when he was murdered by his brother; but during his conversation with Raphael, the poet seems to have forgotten this necessary and natural ignorance of the first man. How was it possible for Adam to discern what the Angel meant by cubic phalanxes, by planets of aspect malign, by encamping on the foughten field, by van and rear, by standards and gonfalons and glittering tissues, by the girding sword, by embattled squadrons, chariots, and flaming aims, and fiery steeds? And although Adam possessed a superior degree of knowledge, yet doubt

less he had not skill enough in chemistry to under. stand Raphael, who informed him, that

-Sulphurous and nitrous foam

They found, they mingled, and with subtle art,
Concocted and Adusted, they reduced

To blackest grain, and into store convey'd.

And, surely, the nature of cannon was not much explained to Adam, who neither knew or wanted the use of iron tools, by telling him, that they resemble the hollow bodies of oak or fir,

With branches lopt, in wood or mountain fell'd.

He that never beheld the brute creation but in its pastimes and sports, must have greatly wondered, when the Angel expressed the flight of the Satanic host, by saying, that they fled

-As a herd

Of goats or timorous flock, together throng'd.

But as there are many exuberances in this poem, there appears to be also some defects. As the serpent was the instrument of the temptation, Milton minutely describes its beauty and allurements: and I have frequently wondered, that he did not, for the same reason, give a more elaborate description of the tree of life; especially as he was remarkable for his knowledge and imitation of the Sacred Writings, and as the following passage in the Revelations afforded him a hint, from which his creative fancy might have worked up a striking picture : In the midst of the street of it, and of either side the river, was there the tree of life; which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every

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