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Milton's allegory of Sin and Death is undoubtedly faulty. Sin is indeed the mother of Death, and may be allowed to be the portrefs of hell; but when they ftop the journey of Satan, a journey described as real, and when Death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. That Sin and Death fhould have fhewn the way to hell might have been allowed; but they cannot facilitate the paffage by building a bridge, because the difficulty of Satan's paffage is described as real and fenfible, and the bridge ought to be only figurative. The hell affigned to the rebellious fpirits is described as not lefs local than the refidence of man. It is placed in fome diftant part of space, feparated from the regions of harmony

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and order by a chaotick wafte and an unoccupied vacuity; but Sin and Death worked up a mile of aggregated foil, cemented with apbaltus; a work too bulky for ideal architects.

This unfkilful allegory appears to me one of the greateft faults of the poem; and to this there was no temptation, but the author's opinion of its beauty.

To the conduct of the narrative fome objections may be made. Satan is with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradife, and is fuffered to go away unmolefted. The creation of man is reprefented as the confequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulfion of the rebels, yet Satan mentions it as a report rife in heaven before his departure.

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To find fentiments for the state of innocence, was very difficult; and fomething of anticipation perhaps is now and then discovered. Adam's difcourfe of dreams feems not to be the fpeculation of a new-created being. I know not whether his answer to the angel's reproof for curiofity does not want fomething of propriety: it is the fpecch of a man acquainted with many other men. Some philofophical notions,, especially when the philofophy is falfe, might have been better omitted. The angel, in a comparison, fpeaks of timorous deer, before deer were yet timorous, and before Adam could understand the compa

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Dryden remarks, that Milton has fome flats among his elevations. This is only to say that all the parts are not equal. In every work one part must be for the fake of others; a palace muft have paffages; a poem must have tranfitions. It is no more to be required that wit fhould always be blazing, than that the fun fhould always stand at noon. great work there is a viciffitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a fucceffion of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the ky, may be allowed fometimes to revifit earth; for what other author ever foared so high, or sustained his flight fo long?

Milton, being well verfed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed often from them; and, as every man learns fomething from his companions, his defire of imitating Ariofto's levity has difgraced his work with the Paradife of Fools; a fiction not in itself ill-ima gined, but too ludicrous for its place.

His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his unneceffary and ungraceful ufe of terms of art, it is not neceffary to mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally cenfured, and at laft bear fo little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely deferve the attention of a critick.

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