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Mr. Richardfon conceives it impoffible that such a work should be fufpended for fix months, or for one. It may go on fafter or flower, but it must go on. By what neceffity it must continually go on, or why it might not be laid afide and refumed, it is not eafy to discover.

This dependance of the foul upon the feasons, thofe temporary and periodical ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I fuppofe, justly be derided as the fumes of vain imagination. Sapiens dominabitur afiris. The author that thinks himfelf weather-bound will find, with a little help from hellebore, that he is only idle or exhausted. But while this notion has poffeffion of the head, it produces the inability which it fuppofes.

Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes; poffunt quia poffe videntur. When fuccefs feems attainable, diligence is enforced; but when it is admitted that the faculties are fuppreffed by a cross wind, or a cloudy sky, the day is given up without refiftance; for who can contend with the courfe of Nature?

From fuch prepoffeffions Milton feems not to have been free. There prevailed in his time an opinion that the world was in its decay, and that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of Nature. It was fufpected that the whole creation languifhed, that neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predeceffors, and that every thing was daily finking in gradual h 4 dimi

diminution. Milton appears to fufpect that fouls partake of the general degeneracy, and is not without fome fear that his book is to be written in an age too late for heroick poefy.

Another opinion wanders about the world, and fometimes finds reception among wife men; an opinion that reftrains the operations of the mind to particular regions, and fuppofes that a lucklefs mortal may be born in a degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit. From this fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he feared left the climate of his country might be too cold for flights of imagination.

He that

Into a mind already occupied by fuch fancies, another not more reasonable might eafily find its way. could fear left his genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might confiftently magnify to himfelf the influences of the feasons, and believe his faculties to be vigorous only half the year.

His fubmiffion to the feasons was at leaft more reasonable than his dread of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general caufes operate uniformly in a general abatement of mental power: if lefs could be performed by the writer, lefs likewife would content the judges of his work. Among this lagging race of frofty grovellers he might ftill have rifen into

eminence by producing fomething which they should not willingly let die. However inferior to the heroes who were born in better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, with the hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of pofterity. He might ftill be the giant of the pygmies, the one-eyed monarch of the blind.

Of his artifices of ftudy, or particular hours of compofition, we have little account, and there was perhaps little to be told. Richardfon, who seems to have been very diligent in his enquiries, but discovers always a wifh to find Milton difcriminated from other men, relates, that he would fometimes lie awake

whole nights, but not a verse could "he

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