Lost, in which Eve addresseth herself to Adam for pardon and peace. At the intercession of his friends, who were present, after a short reluctance, he generously sacrificed all his resentment to her tears:

Soon his heart relented

Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress.

And, after this reunion, so far was he from retaining any unkind memory of the provocations which he had received from her ill conduct, that when the king's cause was entirely suppressed, and her father, who had been active in his loyalty, was exposed to sequestration, Milton received both him and his family to protection, and free entertainment, in his own house, till their affairs were accommodated by his interest in the victorious faction.

A commission to constitute him adjutant-general to Sir William Waller was promised, but soon superseded, by Waller's being laid aside, when his masters thought it proper to new model their army. However, the keenness of his pen had so effectually recommended him to Cromwell's esteem, that when he took the reins of government into his own hand, he advanced him to be Latin secretary, both to himself and the parliament; the former of these preferments he enjoyed both under the usurper and his son, the other until king Charles II. was restored. For some time he had an apartment at Whitehall; but his health requiring a freer accession of air, he was obliged to remove from thence to lodgings which opened into St. James's park. Not long after his settlement there his wife died in child-bed; and much about the time of her death, a gutta serena, which had for several years been gradually increasing, totally extinguished his sight. In this melancholy condition, he was easily prevailed with to think of taking another wife, who was Catherine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock, of Hackney; and she too, in less than a year after their marriage, died in the same unfortunate manner as the former had done; and in his twentythird sonnet he does honour to her memory.

* Book X.

Being a second time a widower, he employed his friend Dr. Paget to make choice of a third consort, on whose recommendation he married Elizabeth, the daughter of Mr. Minshull, a Cheshire gentleman, by whom he had no issue. Three daughters, by his first wife, were then living; the two elder of whom are said to have been very serviceable to him in his studies: for having been instructed to pronounce not only the modern, but also the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, they read in their respective originals, whatever authors he wanted to consult, though they understood but their mother-tongue.

We come now to take a survey of him in that point of view, in which he will be looked upon by all succeeding ages with equal delight and admiration.

An

interval of about twenty years had elapsed sincehe wrote the Masque of Comus, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas, all in such an exquisite strain, that though he had left no other monuments of his genius behind him, his name had been immortal; but neither the infirmities of age and constitution, nor the vicissitudes of fortune, could depress the vigour of his mind, or divert it from executing a design he had long conceived of writing an heroic poem.* The fall of man was a subject that he had some years before fixed on for a tragedy, which he intended to form by the models of antiquity; and some, not without probability, say, the play opened with that speech in the fourth book of Paradise Lost, line 32, which is addressed by Satan to the sun. Were it material, I believe I could produce other passages, which more plainly appear to have been originally intended for the scene: but, whatever truth there may be in this report, it is certain that he did not begin to mould his subject, in the form which it bears now, before he had concluded his controversy with Salmasius and More, when he had wholly lost the use of his eyes, and was forced to employ, in the office of an amanuensis, any friend who accidentally paid him a visit. Yet, under all these discouragements, and various interruptions, in the year 1669 he published his Paradise Lost, the noblest poem (next to those of Ho

• Paradise Lost, Book IX. line 26.

mer and Virgil) that ever the wit of man produced in any age or nation. Need I mention any other evidence of its inestimable worth, than that the finest geniuses who have succeeded him, have ever esteemed it a merit to relish and illustrate its beauties.

And now, perhaps, it may pass for fiction, what with great veracity I affirm to be fact, that Milton, after having with much difficulty prevailed to have this divine poem licensed for the press, could sell the copy for no more than fifteen pounds, the payment of which valuable consideration depended upon the sale of three numerous impressions. So unreasonably may personal prejudice affect the most excellent performances.

About two years after, he published Paradise Regained, but, oh! what a falling off was there!-of which I will say no more, than that there is scarcely a more remarkable instance of the frailty of human reason than our Author gave, in preferring this poem to Paradise Lost.

And thus having attended him to the sixty-sixth year of his age, as closely as such imperfect lights as men of letters and retirement usually leave to guide our inquiry would allow, it now only remains to be recorded, that, in the year 1674, the gout put a period to his life, at Bunhill, near London; from whence his body was conveyed to St. Giles's church, by Cripplegate, where it lies interred in the chancel; and a neat monument has lately been erected to perpetuate his memory.

In his youth he is said to have been extremely handsome; the colour of his hair was a light brown, the symmetry of his features exact, enlivened with an agreeable air, and a beautiful mixture of fair and ruddy. His stature (as we find it measured by himself) did not exceed the middle size, neither too lean nor too corpulent; his limbs were well proportioned, nervous, and active, serviceable in all respects to his exercising the sword, in which he much delighted; and wanted neither skill nor courage to resent an affront from men of the most athletic constitutions. In his diet he was abstemious; not delicate in the choice of his dishes; and strong liquors of all kinds were his aversion. His deportment was erect, open, affable; his conversation easy, cheerful, instructive; his wit, on all occasions at command, facetious, grave, or satirical, as the subject re

quired. His judgment, when disengaged from religious and political speculations, was just and penetrating, his apprehensions quick, his memory tenacious of what he read, his reading only not so extensive as his genius, for that was universal. And having treasured up such immense store of science, perhaps the faculties of his soul grew more vigorous after he was deprived of sight; and his imagination, (naturally sublime, and enlarged by reading romances, of which he was much enamoured in his youth,) when it was wholly abstracted from material objects, was more at liberty to make such amazing excursions into the ideal world, when in composing his divine work he was tempted to range

Beyond the visible diurnal sphere.

With so many accomplishments, not to have had some faults and misfortunes to be laid in the balance with the fame and felicity of writing Paradise Lost, would have been too great a portion for humanity.

ELIJAH FENTON.

CRITICISM ON PARADISE LOST.

BY DR. JOHNSON.

Paradise Lost, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind.

By the general consent of critics, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epic poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason. Epic poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts, and therefore relates some great event in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, must animate by dramatic energy, and diversify by retrospection and anticipation; mo

rality must teach him the exact bounds, and different shades, of vice and virtue; from policy, and the practice of life, he has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with illustrations and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension of his language, distinguished all the delicacies of phrase, and all the colours of words, and learned to adjust their different sounds to all the varieties of metrical modulation.

Bossu is of opinion, that the poet's first work is to find a moral, which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. This seems to have been the process only of Milton: the moral of other poems is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential and intrinsic. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous -to vindicate the ways of God to man; to show the reasonableness of religion, and the necessity of obedience to the divine law.

To convey this moral, there must be a fable, a narration artfully constructed, so as to excite curiosity, and surprise expectation. In this part of his work, Milton must be confessed to have equalled every other poet. He has involved in his account of the fall of man, the events which preceded, and those that were to follow it: he has interwoven the whole system of theology with such propriety, that every part appears to be necessary and scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the sake of quickening the progress of the main action.

The subject of an epic poem is naturally an event of great importance. That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against the supreme King, raised by the highest order of created beings; the overthrow of their host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to hope and peace.

Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated dignity. Before the greatness dis