tempted, by one common interest, to enter into a confederacy together; and how properly Sin is made the portress of Hell, and the only Being that can open the gates to that world of

tortures.

The descriptive part of this allegory is likewise very strong, and full of sublime ideas. The figure of Death, the regal crown upon his head, the menace of Satan, his advancing to the combat, the outcry at his birth, are circumstances too noble to be passed over in silence, and extremely suitable to this King of Terrours. I need not mention the justness of thought, which is observed in the generation of these several symbolical persons; that Sin was produced upon the first revolt of Satan, that Death appeared soon after he was cast into Hell, and that the terrours of conscience were conceived at the gate of this place of torments. The description of the gates is very poetical, as the opening of them is full of Milton's spirit.

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In Satan's voyage through the Chaos there are several imaginary persons described, as residing in that immense waste of matter. This may perhaps be conformable to the taste of those criticks, who are pleased with nothing in a poet which has not life and manners ascribed to it; but, for my own part, I am pleased most with those passages in this description which carry in them a greater measure of probability, and are such as might possibly have happened. Of this kind is his first mounting in the smoke that rises from the infernal pit; his falling into a cloud

the portress of Hell,] See the Note on B. ii. 746. TODD.

several imaginary persons &c.] Dr. Newton has observed that Addison seems to disapprove of these fictitious beings, thinking them perhaps, like Sin and Death, improper for an epick poem: But he contends that Milton may be allowed to place such imaginary persons in the regions of Chaos, as Virgil describes similar beings within the confines of Hell, Æn. vi. 273-281; a passage of acknowledged beauty: And it is impossible, he adds, to be pleased with Virgil, and to be displeased with Milton. In further justification of Milton, doctor Newton also refers to the introduction of similar shadowy beings in Seneca, Herc. Fur. 686, in Statius, Theb. vii. 47, in Claudian, In Rufin. i. 30, and in Spenser, Faer. Qu. ii. vii. 21, &c. To these instances might be added the beautiful personifications of Sackville in the Mirrour for Magistrates. See Note on Par. Lost, B. xi. 489. In Masenius's infernal council, Death, Diseases, Cares, Labour, Grief, Poverty, and Hunger, are persons. Sarcotis, B. i. But Milton has introduced, with much sublimity, long before this author, many shadowy beings, in his poem In Quintum Novembris. TODd.

of nitre, and the like combustible materials, that by their explosion still hurried him forward in his voyage; his springing upward like a pyramid of fire; with his laborious passage through that confusion of elements, which the poet calls

"The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave."

The glimmering light which shot into the Chaos from the utmost verge of the creation, and the distant discovery" of the earth that hung close by the moon, are wonderfully beautiful and poetical.—

Horace advises a poet to consider thoroughly the nature and force of his genius. Milton seems to have known perfectly well, wherein his strength lay, and has therefore chosen a subject entirely conformable to those talents, of which he was master. As his genius was wonderfully turned to the sublime, his subject is the noblest that could have entered into the thoughts of man. Every thing that is truly great, and astonishing, has a place in it. The whole system of the intellectual world; the Chaos, and the Creation; Heaven, Earth, and Hell; enter into the constitution of his Poem.

Having in the first and second books represented the infernal world with all its horrours; the thread of his fable naturally leads him into the opposite regions of bliss and glory.

* If Milton's majesty forsakes him any where, it is in those parts of his Poem, where the Divine Persons are introduced as speakers. One may, I think, observe, that the author proceeds with a kind of fear and trembling, whilst he describes the sentiments of the Almighty. He dares not give his imagination its full play, but chooses to confine himself to such thoughts as are

" of the earth &c.] This is a mistake, into which Dr. Bentley also fell; and is corrected in the Note on v. 1052. TODD.

It has been often observed, "The attempt to describe

* If Milton's majesty forsakes him any where, &c.] that Milton's chief deficiency is in the THIRD BOOK. God Almighty himself, and to recount dialogues between the Father and the Son," says Dr. Blair, "was too bold and arduous; and is that wherein the poet, as was to have been expected, has been most unsuccessful."-Milton indeed was conscious that he had soared too high; and therefore, with exemplary humility, acknowledges, B. vii. 23.

drawn from the books of the most orthodox divines, and to such expressions as may be met with in Scripture. The beauties, therefore, which we are to look for in these speeches, are not of a poetical nature; nor so proper to fill the mind with sentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of devotion. The passions, which they are designed to raise, are a divine love and religious fear. The particular beauty of the speeches in the THIRD BOOK, Consists in that shortness and perspicuity of style, in which the poet has couched the greatest mysteries of Christianity, and drawn together, in a regular scheme, the whole dispensation of Providence with respect to Man. He has represented all the abstruse doctrines of predestination, free-will, and grace; as also the great points of incarnation and redemption, (which naturally grow up in a Poem that treats of the Fall of Man,) with great energy of expression, and in a clearer and stronger light than I have ever met with in any other writer. As these points are dry in themselves to the generality of readers, the concise and clear manner, in which he has treated them, is very much to be admired; as is likewise that particular art which he has made use of in the interspersing of all those graces of poetry, which the subject was capable of receiving.

The survey of the whole creation, and of every thing that is transacted in it, is a prospect worthy of Omniscience; and as much above that, in which Virgil has drawn his Jupiter, as the Christian idea of the Supreme Being is more rational and sublime than that of the Heathens. The particular objects on which he is described to have cast his eye, are represented in the most beautiful and lively manner.

Satan's approach to the confines of the creation is finely imaged in the beginning of the speech which immediately follows. The effects of this speech in the blessed Spirits, and in the Divine Person to whom it was addressed, cannot but fill the mind of the reader with a secret pleasure and complacency.

I need not point out the beauty of that circumstance, wherein the whole host of Angels are represented as standing mute; nor show how proper the occasion was to produce such a silence in Heaven. The close of this divine colloquy, and the hymn of angels which follows upon it, are wonderfully beautiful and poetical.

Satan's walk upon the outside of the universe, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but, upon his nearer approach, looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble : as his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation between that mass of matter, which was wrought into a world, and that shapeless unformed heap of materials, which still lay in chaos and confusion, strikes the imagination with something astonishingly great and wild. I have before spoken of the Limbo of Vanity, which the poet places upon this outermost surface of the universe; and shall here explain myself more at large on that, and other parts of the Poem, which are of the same shadowy nature.

Aristotle observes, that the fable of an epick poem should abound in circumstances that are both credible and astonishing; or, as the French criticks choose to phrase it, the fable should be filled with the probable and the marvellous. This rule is as fine and just as any in Aristotle's whole art of poetry.

If the fable is only probable, it differs nothing from a true history; if it is only marvellous, it is no better than a romance. The great secret, therefore, of heroick poetry is to relate such circumstances as may produce in the reader at the same time both belief and astonishment. This is brought to pass, in a well chosen fable, by the account of such things as have really happened, or at least of such things as have happened according to the received opinions of mankind. Milton's fable is a master-piece of this nature; as the War in Heaven, the Condition of the fallen Angels, the State of Innocence, the Temptation of the Serpent, and the Fall of Man, though they are very astonishing in themselves, are not only credible, but actual points of faith.

The next method of reconciling miracles with credibility, is by a happy invention of the poet; as, in particular, when he introduces agents of a superiour nature, who are capable of effecting what is wonderful, and what is not to be met with in the ordinary course of things. Ulysses's ship being turned into a rock, and Æneas's fleet into a shoal of water-nymphs, though they are very surprising accidents, are nevertheless probable when we are told that they were the gods who thus transformed them. It is this kind of machinery which fills the poems both of Homer and Virgil with such circumstances as are wonderful, but not impossible; and so frequently produce in the reader the most pleasing passion

that can rise in the mind of man, which is admiration. If there be any instance in the Æneid liable to exception upon this account, it is in the beginning of the third book, where Æneas is represented as tearing up the myrtle that dropped blood. To qualify this wonderful circumstance, Polydorus tells a story from the root of the myrtle; that, the barbarous inhabitants of the country having pierced him with spears and arrows, the wood which was left in his body took root in his wounds, and gave birth to that bleeding tree. This circumstance seems to have the marvellous without the probable, because it is represented as proceeding from natural causes, without the interposition of any god, or other supernatural power capable of producing it. The. spears and arrows grow of themselves without so much as the modern help of an enchantment. If we look into the fiction of Milton's fable, though we find it full of surprising incidents, they are generally suited to our notions of the things and persons described, and tempered with a due measure of probability. I must only make an exception to the Limbo of Vanity, with his episode of Sin and Death, and some of the imaginary persons in his Chaos. These passages are astonishing, but not credible; the reader cannot so far impose upon himself as to see a possibility in them; they are the description of dreams and shadows, not of things or persons. I know that many criticks look upon the stories of Circe, Polypheme, the Syrens, nay the whole Odyssey and Iliad, to be allegories; but, allowing this to be true, they are fables; which, considering the opinions of mankind that prevailed in the age of the poet, might possibly have been according to the letter. The persons are such as might have acted what is ascribed to them; as the circumstances, in which they are represented, might possibly have been truth and realities. This appearance of probability is so absolutely requisite in the greater kinds of poetry, that Aristotle observes, the ancient tragick writers made use of the names of such great men as had actually lived in the world, though the tragedy proceeded upon adventures they were never engaged in; on purpose to make the subject more credible. In a word, besides the hidden meaning of an epick allegory, the plain literal sense ought to appear probable. The story should be such as an ordinary reader may acquiesce in, whatever natural, moral, or