vile and pernicious, if, as is faid, he in private allowed it to be falfe.

The plan of Paradife Loft has this inconvenience, that it comprifes neither human actions nor human manners. The man and woman who act and fuffer, are in a state which no other man or woman can ever know. The reader finds no tranfaction in which he can be engaged; beholds no condition in which he can by any effort of imagination place himself; he has, therefore, little natural curiofity or fympathy.

We all, indeed, feel the effects of Adam's difobedience; we all fin like Adam, and like him muft all bewail our offences; we have reftlefs and infidious enemies in the fallen angels, and

in the bleffed fpirits we have guardians. and friends; in the Redemption of mankind we hope to be included; and in the description of heaven and hell we are furely interested, as we are all to refide hereafter either in the regions of horror or of blifs.

-... But thefe truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to our infancy; they have mingled with our folitary thoughts and familiar converfation, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of life. Being therefore not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in the mind; what we knew before we cannot learn; what is not unexpected cannot surprise.

Of

Of the ideas fuggefted by, thefe awful scenes, from fome we recede with

1

reverence, except when stated hours require their affociation; and from others we fhrink with horror, or admit them only as falutary inflictions, as counterpoifes to our interefts and paffions. Such images rather obftruct the career of fancy than incite it.

Pleafure and terrour are indeed the genuine fources of poetry; but poetical pleasure must be fuch as human imagination can at leaft conceive, and poetical terrour fuch as human ftrength and fortitude may combat. The good and evil of Eternity are too ponderous for the wings of wit; the mind finks under them in paffive helpleffness, content with

04

with calm belief and humble adora

tion.

Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton has undertaken, and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar to himself. Whoever confiders the few radical pofitions which the Scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetick operation he expanded them to fuch extent, and ramified them to fo much variety, reftrained as he was by religious reverence from licentiousness of fiction.

Here is a full display of the united force of ftudy and genius; of a great accumulation of materials, with judge

ment

ment to digeft, and fancy to combine them: Milton was able to felect from nature, or from ftory, from ancient fable, or from modern fcience, whatever could illuftrate or adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind, fermented by study, and fublimed by imagination.

It has been therefore faid, without an indecent hyperbole, by one of his encomiafts, that in reading Paradife Loft we read a book of univerfal knowledge.

But original deficience cannot be fup. plied. The want of human interest is always felt. Paradife Loft is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. Its perufal