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Such are the faults of that wonderful performance Paradife Loft; which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be confidered not as nice but as dull, as lefs to be cenfured for want of candour than pitied for want of fenfibility.

Of Paradife Regained, the general judgement feems now to be right, that it is in many parts elegant, and every-where inftructive. It was not to be fuppofed that the writer of Paradife Loft could ever write without great effufions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The bafis of Paradife Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please like an union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this

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poem been written not by Milton, but by fome imitator, it would have claimed and received univerfal praife.

If Paradife Regained has been too much depreciated, Samfon Agonifes has in requital been too much admired. It could only be by long prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions of the French and English ftages; and it is only by a blind confidence in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised in which the intermediate parts have neither caufe nor confequence, neither haften nor retard the catastrophe.

In this tragedy are however many particular beauties, many juft fentiments and ftriking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the attention which a well-connected plan produces.

Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature only in the grofs, and had never ftudied the fhades of character, nor the combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending paffions. He had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience muft confer. Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of Dic

tion, a mode and caft of expreffion which bears little refemblance to that of any former writer, and which is fo far removed from common ufe, that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself furprised by a new language.

This novelty has been, by thofe who can find nothing wrong in Milton, imputed to his laborious endeavours after words fuitable to the grandeur of his ideas. Cur language, fays Addifon, funk under him. But the truth is, that, both in profe and verfe, he had formed his ftile by a perverfe and pedantick principle. He was defirous to ufe English words with a foreign idiom. This in all his profe is discovered and condemned; for there

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Siena fafgement operates freely, neither kheed by the beauty nor awed by the Eignly of 1is thoughts; but fuch is the power of his poetry, that his call · is obered without reffance, the reader feels Kimzialf in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism finks in edinirati.

Milton's file was not modified by his fabject: what is fhown with greater extent in Faradi è Le, may be found in Comar. One fource of his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets: the difpofition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps fometimes combined with other tongues. Of him, at laft, may be faid what Jonfon fays of Spenfer, that he wrote no

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