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Of true experience, from this great event
With peace and confolation hath difmift,
And calm of mind all paffion fpent.

editions; but the first edition has it rightly, "his fervants," meaning the Chorus and other perfons prefent. NEWTON.

Ver. 1755. acquift] The fame, fays doctor Newton, as acquifition, a word that may be found in Skinner; but which he does not remember to have met with elsewhere. I once thought that Milton adopted it from the Italian acquisto. But I have fince found the word common in our elder writers. Thus, in a Letter of James Howell, dated in 1646, to Mr. E. P. at Paris: "Much notice is taken that you go on there too fast in your acquefts." Fam. Letters, ed. 1737, p. 405. Fanfhaw, in his tranflation of the Lufiad, published in 1655, writes it also acqueft, p. 7. But Heath, in his Chronicle of the Civil Wars, fol. p. 402, writes "his unjuft acquifts." And in Aleyn's poetical Hift. of Henry VII. ed. 1638, p. 130, the word is likewife written acquift. TODD.

Ver. 1757.

With peace and confolation hath difmift,

And calm of mind all passion spent.] This moral leffon in the conclufion is very fine, and excellently fuited to the beginning. For Milton had chofen for the motto to this piece a paffage out of Ariftotle, which may fhow what was his defign in writing this tragedy, and the fense of which he hath expressed in the preface, that "tragedy is of power by raifing pity and fear, or terrour, to purge the mind of thofe and fuch like passions, &c." and he exemplifies it here in Manoah and the Chorus, after their various agitations of paffion, acquiefcing in the divine difpenfations, and thereby inculcating a moft inftructive leffon to thereader. NEWTON.

Samfon Agonifies is the only tragedy that Milton finished, though he sketched out the plans of feveral, and propofed the fubjects of more, in his manufcript preserved in Trinity College, Cambridge. And we may fuppofe that he was determined, to

the choice of this particular fubject, by the fimilitude of his own circumstances to thofe of Samfon blind and among the Philiftines. This I conceive to be the laft of his poetical pieces; and it is written in the very fpirit of the ancients, and equals, if not exceeds, any of the moft perfect tragedies, which were ever exhibited on the Athenian ftage, when Greece was in its glory. As this work was never intended for the stage, the divifion into acts and fcenes is omitted. Bishop Atterbury had an intention of getting Pope to divide it into acts and scenes, and of having it acted at Westminster: but his commitment to the Tower put an end to that defign. It has fince been brought upon the stage in the form of an Oratorio; and Handel's mufick is never employed to greater advantage, than when it is adapted to Milton's words. That great artist has done equal juftice to our author's L'Allegro and Il Penferofo, as if the fame fpirit poffeffed both mafters, and as if the god of Mufick, and of Verfe, was ftill one and the fame. NEWTON.

Samfon Agonistes is but a very indifferent fubject for a dramatick fable. However Milton has made the best of it. He feems to have chofen it for the fake of the fatire on bad wives. WARBURTON.

It would be hardly lefs abfurd to fay, that he chofe the fubject of Paradife Loft for the fake of defcribing a connubial altercation. The nephew of Milton has told us, that he could not afcertain the time when this drama was written; but it probably flowed from the heart of the indignant poet foon after his spirit had been wounded by the calamitous destiny of his friends, to which he alludes with fo much energy and pathos, in the Chorus, v. 652, &c. He did not design the drama for a theatre, nor has it the kind of action requifite for theatrical intereft; but in one point of view the Samfon Agonistes is the most fingularly affecting compofition, that was ever produced by fenfibility of heart and vigour of imagination. To give it this particular effect, we must remember, that the lot of Milton had a marvellous coincidence with that of his hero, in three remarkable points: first (but we should regard this as the most inconfiderable article of refemblance) he had been tormented by a beautiful but difaffectionate and difobedient wife; condly, he had been the great champion of his country, and as fuch the idol of publick admi

ration; lastly, he had fallen from that heighth of unrivalled glory, and had experienced the moft humiliating reverse of fortune. In delineating the greater part of Samfon's fenfations under calamity, he had only to defcribe his own. No dramatift can have ever conformed fo literally as Milton to the Horatian precept; "Si vis me flere, &c." And if, in reading the Samfun Agonistes we obferve how many paffages, expreffed with the most energetick fenfibility, exhibit to our fancy the sufferings and real fentiments of the poet, as well as thofe of his hero, we may derive from this extraordinary compofition a kind of pathetick delight, that no other drama can afford; we may applaud the felicity of genius, that contrived, in this manner, to relieve a heart overburthened with anguish and indignation, and to pay a half-concealed, yet hallowed, tribute to the memories of dear though difhonoured friends, whom the state of the times allowed not the afflicted poet more openly to deplore. HAYLEY.

Dr. Johnson thought differently about this tragedy, written evidently and happily in the ftyle and manner of Æfchylus; and faid, "that it was deficient in both requifites of a true Aristotelick middle. Its intermediate parts have neither caufe nor confequence, neither haften nor retard the catastrophe." To which opinion the judicious Mr. Twining accedes. What Dr. Warburton faid of it is wonderfully ridiculous, that Milton "chose the subject for the fake of the fatire on bad wives;" and that the fubjects of Samfon Agonifles and Paradife Loft were not very different, "the fall of two heroes by a woman." Milton, in this drama, has given an example of every fpecies of mcafure which the English language is capable of exhibiting, not only in the chorufes, but in the dialogue part. The chief parts of the dialogue, (though there is a great variety of measure in the choruses of the Greek tragedy,) are in Iambick verse. I recollect but three places in which hexameter verses are introduced in the Greek tragedies; once in the Trachiniæ, once in the Philoctetes of Sophocles, and once in the Troades of Euripides. Voltaire wrote an opera on this fubject of Samfon, 1732; which was fet to mufick by Rameau, but was never performed; he has inferted chorufes to Venus and Adonis; and the piece finishes by introducing Samfon actually pulling down the temple, on the ftage, and crushing all the affembly, which Milton has Alung into fo fine a narration; and the opera is ended by Samfon's

faying, "J'ai réparé ma honte, & j'expire en vainqueur.” And yet this was the man that dared to deride, the irregularities of Shakspeare. Jos. WARTON.

Of the style of this poem, it is to be obferved that it is often inexact and almost ungrammatical; and of the metre, that it is very licentious: BOTH with design and the most confummate judgement. An irregular conftruction carries with it an air of negli gence, well fuited to this drama; and yet prevents the expreffion from falling into vulgarity: and a looseness of measure gives grace and cafe to the tragick dialogue. But this apology does not extend to fuch inaccuracies in the Mask of Comus; which, as a work of delight and oftentation, fhould have been every where laboured, as indeed for the most part it is, into the ut most polish of style and metre. Milton learnt the fecret he has here fo fuccefsfully practifed from his ftrict attention to the Greek tragedians, efpecially Euripides. The modern criticks of this poet are perpetually tampering with his careless expreffion, careless numbers, &c. unconscious that both were the effect of art. It is on thefe occafions we may apply the obfervation, "It is not Homer nods, but we that dream."

The Samfon Agonistes is, in every view, the most artificial, and highly finished, of all Milton's poetical works. HURD.

Dr. Warton, in a concluding note on Lycidas, affigns to Samfon Agonistes the third place of rank among the poet's works. Lord Monboddo, ftill more enamoured of its excellencies, fays, that it is "the laft and the moft faultlefs, in my judgment, of all Milton's poetical works, if not the fineft." Orig. and Prog. of Language, 2d edit. vol. iii. p. 71. It is certainly, as Mr. Mafon long fince obferved, an excellent piece, to which Pofterity has not yet given its full measure of popular and univerfal fame. Perhaps," fays this judicious writer in a letter to a friend concerning his own impreffive tragedy of Elfrida, "in your clofet, and that of a few more, who unaffectedly admire genuine nature and ancient fimplicity, the Agonifles may hold a distinguished rank. Yet, furely, we cannot fay, in Hamlet's phrafe, that it pleafes the million; it is still caviare to the general." Elfrida, edit. 1752. Lett. ii. p. vi, vii.

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Mr. Penn has printed, in the fecond volume of his valuable "Critical, Poetical, and Dramatick Works, 1798," an abridge

ment of Milton's Samfon; in nearly which form he thinks it might be acted as an interlude, without danger of being ill received. The abridgement is formed with much ingenuity. Yet the claffical reader will not perhaps accede to the abfence of fome fplendid, and fome affecting, paffages. Mr. Penn alfo remarks, that Dr. Johnfon's criticism on this tragedy is fevere only in fuppofing, that it contained no more than the substance of one act; and that, though ftill one of Milton's valuable works, Samfon is inferiour both to Lycidas, and the Allegro and Penferofo. I agree in preferring the earlier poems of Milton to his tragedy But I may be permitted not to fubfcribe to the affertion in Dr. Johnfon's criticism that "nothing paffes between the first act and the laft, that either haftens or delays the death of Samfon;" which, Mr. Cumberland obferves, is not correct. See before, p. 336. On the contrary, I admire the art and judgement with which the poet has delineated the various circumftances that, from the first entrance of Manoah to the last appearance of Samfon, progreffively affect the mind of the hero, and finally produce the refolution which haftens the catastrophe. Samfon, as an oratorio, is divided into three acts: Mr. Penn's abridgement exhibits the length of two.

It has been obferved by Goldfinith, that Samfon is a tragedy without a love-intrigue, as the Athalie of Racine alfo is, which appeared not many years after Samfon; and that Maffei, inftructed by these exainples, has formed his Merope without any amorous plot.

The hiftory of Samfon has often employed the pen of poetry. Mr. Hayley thinks that Milton's Samfon might perhaps be founded on a facred drama of that country, to the poets of which Milton was confeffedly partial; La Rappresentazione di Sansone, per Aleffandro Rofelli; of which there is an edition printed at Florence in 1554, another at the fame place in 1588, and a third at Siena in 1616: but I have not been more fortunate than Mr. Hayley, in endeavouring to procure a copy of this Samfon. The accomplished author of the Historical Memoir on Italian Tragedy, 1799, has fuggefted to me that Milton might have met with more than one Italian drama on this fubject; for, among the Rappresentazioni enumerated by Cionacci, he had obferved a SanJone, from the prologue to which an extract is given;

"A gloria adunche dell' Altitonante,

"E di colui che più che 'l fol rifplende; &c."

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