superstitious. These lines may serve as one instance; and I think he plainly here alludes to the manner of consecrating churches used by archbishop Laud, which was prodigiously clamoured against by people of our author's way of thinking, as superstitious and popish.-THYER. 31 Ver. 843. Wrinkled the face of deluge. The circumstances of this description of the abating of the flood are few, but selected with great judgment, and expressed with no less spirit and beauty. In this respect, it must be owned, Milton greatly excels the Italians, who are generally too prolix in their descriptions, and think they have never said enough while any thing remains unsaid. When once enough is said to excite in the reader's mind a proper idea of what the poet is representing; whatever is added, however beautiful, serves only to tease the fancy, instead of pleasing it; and rather cools, than improves, that glow of pleasure, which arises in the mind upon its first contemplation of any surprising scene of nature well painted out.-THYER. Again I have to observe, that Mr. Addison's remarks upon the book before us are similar to such as are to be found in the notes of subsequent commentators already copied it is probable that the originality lay with Addison, who, not having produced them detached, but as parts of one critique, has given them in a more popular form. Still, when the matter of them is so anticipated, I must forbear to repeat them at length: I shall, however, notice them in a summary way. He observes, that the acceptance of the prayers of Adam and Eve at the beginning of this eleventh book is formed upon that beautiful passage in Holy Writ:-" And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne: and the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God." He then notices the poetical beauty of the vision of the angels to Ezekiel, where “ every one had four faces; all their shape spangled with eyes;" next, the assembly of the angels to hear the judgment passed upon man; then the conference of Adam and Eve, and the subsequent morning notice of the signs of the changes about to take place in all the creation surrounding them. The next striking passage is the description of the appearance of the archangel Michael, sent to expel them from Paradise. Addison gives the full measure of praise to Eve's complaint on receiving the notice that she must quit Paradise; and the more masculine and elevated speech of Adam. The critic then commends that noble part, where the angel leads Adam to the highest mount of Paradise, and lays before him a whole hemisphere, as a proper stage for those visions which were to be represented on it. The image of death in the second vision is represented in all its varieties and attitudes: then, by way of contrast, comes a scene of mirth, love, and jollity. The deluge is drawn with the most powerful and masterly hand. |