and his conceptions therefore were extenfive. The characteristick quality of is fublimity. He fometimes. his poem defcends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occafionally inveft himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantick loftinefs. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish. He feems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that Nature had beftowed upon him more bountifully than upon others; the power of displaying the vaft, illuminating the fplendid, en * niana. Algarotti terms it gigantesca fublimità Milto forcing forcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful: he therefore chose a subject on which too much could not be faid, on which he might tire his fancy without the cenfure of extravagance.. The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not fatiate his appetite of greatnefs. To paint things as they are, requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of poffibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He fent his faculties out upon difcovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish fentiment and action to fuperior beings, to trace the counfels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven. But he could not be always in other worlds: he must sometimes revifit earth, and tell of things vifible and known. When he cannot raife wonder by the fublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility. Whatever be his fubject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his images and defcriptions of the scenes or operations of Nature do not feem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness, raciness, and energy of immediate obfervation. He faw Nature, as Dryden expreffes it, through the Spectacles of books; and on moft moft occafions calls learning to his affiftance. The garden of Eden brings to his mind the vale of Enna, where Proferpine was gathering flowers. Satan makes his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the Cyanean rocks, or Ulyffes between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he fhunned Charybdis on the larboard. The mythological allufions have been justly cenfured, as not being always ufed with notice of their vanity; but they contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise of the memory and the fancy. His fimilies are lefs numerous, and more various, than thofe of his predeceffors. But he does not confine him felf felf within the limits of rigorous com : parison his great excellence is ampli tude, and he expands the adventitious image beyond the dimenfions which the occafion required. Thus, comparing the fhield of Satan to the orb of the Moon, he crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the wonders which the telescope difco vers. Of his moral fentiments it is hardly praife to affirm that they excel those of all other poets; for this fuperiority he was indebted to his acquaintance with the facred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting the light of Revelation, were very unfkilful teachers of virtue: their principal characters may be great, but |