find? 45 Where could'st thou words of such a compass Whence furnish such a vast expence of mind? Just Heaven thee, like Tiresias, to requite, Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight. Well might'st thou scorn thy readers to allure With tinkling rhime, of thy own sense secure; While the Town-Bays writes all the while and spells, And, like a pack-horse, tires without his bells: Their fancies like our bushy points appear; The poets tag them, we for fashion wear. Ver. 42. 50 expence of mind?] In some modern editions of Milton, expence has here been converted into expanse. TODD. Ver. 46. With tinkling rhime,] So, in Ben Jonson's Mask, The Fortunate Isles, a question is asked respecting Skogan, the jester! The answer is, "But wrote he like a gentleman?" "In rime! fine tickling rime! and flowand verse!" Milton thus ridicules rhyme in calling it the "jingling sound of like endings." TODD. Ver. 49. like our bushy points appear; The poets tag them,] Richardson says, "It was the fashion in those days to wear much ribbon, which some adorn'd with tags of metal at the end," Life of Milton, p. cxx. Points are said to have been metal hooks, fastened to the hose or breeches, which had no opening or buttons; and going into straps or eyes fixed to the doublet, to have thus kept the hose from falling down. See Steevens's Shakspeare, edit. 1793, vol. iv. 27. And Minsheu's Guide into Tongues, 1627. V. Point. It is related by Aubrey, in his MS. Life of Milton, that "John Dryden, Esq. Poet Laureat, who very much admired him, went to him to have leave to put his Paradise Lost into a Dramatick I too, transported by the mode, offend, And, while I meant to praise thee, must commend. Thy verse created, like thy theme, sublime, In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhime. ANDREW MARVELL. Poem. Milton received him very civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tagge his verses." TODD. Ver. 51. I too, transported by the mode, offend, And, while I meant to praise thee, must commend.] This is the true reading. Fenton, in his edition of Paradise Lost in 1725, thought proper to transpose the rhymes; and he has been followed by Tonson's editions of 1727, 1730, 1738, and 1746. The errour is adopted also in Vernor's edition of 1789, and in Wilkin's of 1794. A Dublin edition of 1748, and an Edinburgh edition of 1779, read the same. It' has been ingeniously observed, that Marvell very artfully here shows us the inconvenience of rhyme, in telling us that he designed to praise Milton, but now can do no more than commend him; because he is tied down by the rhyme, and only the worst of these two words will answer to offend. See Preface to Sighs on the death of Queen Anne, in imitation of Milton, Lond. 1719," 8vo. p. xiv. TODD. 66 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON PARADISE LOST. BY ADDISON. Cedite, Romani scriptores; cedite, Graii. THERE is nothing in nature more irksome than general discourses, especially when they turn chiefly upon words. For this reason I shall wave the discussion of that point which was started some years since, Whether Milton's Paradise Lost may be called an heroick poem? Those, who will not give it that title, may call it (if they please) a divine poem. It will be sufficient to its perfection, if it has in it all the beauties of the highest kind of poetry; and as for those who allege it is not an heroick poem, they advance no more to the diminution of it, than if they should say Adam is not Æneas, or Eve Helen. I shall therefore examine it by the rules of epick poetry, and see whether it falls short of the Iliad or Æneid, in the beauties which are essential to that kind of writing. The first thing to be considered in an epick poem is the FABLE, which is perfect or imperfect, according as the action which it relates is more or less so. This ACTION should have three qualifications in it. First, it should be but one action. Secondly, it should be an entire action. Thirdly, it should be a great action. To consider the action of the Iliad, Eneid, and Paradise Lost, in these three several lights. Homer, to preserve the unity of his action, hastens into the midst of things; as Horace has observed. Had he gone up to Leda's egg, or begun much later, even at the rape of Helen, or the investing of Troy; it is manifest, that the story of the poem would have been a series of several actions. He therefore opens his poem with the discord of his princes, and artfully interweaves, in the several succeeding parts of it, an account of every thing material which relates to them, and had passed before that fatal dissension. After the same manner, Eneas makes his first appearance in the Tyrrhene seas, and within sight of Italy, because the action proposed to be celebrated, was that of his settling himself in Latium. But because it was necessary for the reader to know what had happened to him in the taking of Troy, and in the preceding parts of his voyage, Virgil makes his hero relate it by way of episode, in the second and third books of the Eneid. The contents of both which books come before those of the first book in the thread of the story, though, for preserving of this unity of action, they follow it in the disposition of the poem. Milton, in imitation of these two great poets, opens his Paradise Lost, with an infernal council plotting the Fall of Man; which is the action he proposed to celebrate; and as for those great actions, which preceded in point of time, the battle of the angels, and the creation of the world, (which would have entirely destroyed the unity of his principal action, had he related them in the same order that they happened,) he cast them into the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, by way of episode to this noble Poem. Aristotle himself allows, that Homer has nothing to boast of as to the unity of his fable, though at the same time that greatcritick and philosopher endeavours to palliate this imperfection in the Greek poet by imputing it, in some measure, to the very nature of an epick poem. Some have been of opinion, that the Eneid also labours in this particular, and has episodes which may be looked upon as excrescences rather than as parts of the action. On the contrary, the Poem, which we have now under our consideration, has no other episodes than such as naturally arise from the subject; and yet is filled with such a multitude of astonishing incidents, that it gives us at the same time a pleasure of the greatest variety, and of the greatest simplicity; uniform in its nature, though diversified in the execution. I must observe also, that, as Virgil, in the poem which was designed to celebrate the original of the Roman empire, has described the birth of its great rival, the Carthaginian commonwealth; Milton, with the like art in his Poem on the Fall of Man, has related the Fall of those Angels who are his professed enemies. Besides the many other beauties in such an episode, its running parallel with the great action of the poem hinders it from breaking the unity so much as another episode would have done, that had not so great an affinity with the principal subject. In short, this is the same kind of beauty which the criticks admire in the Spanish Friar, or the Double Discovery, where the two different plots look like counter-parts and copies of one another. The second qualification required in the action of an epick poem, is, that it should be an entire action. An action is entire when it is complete in all its parts; or, as Aristotle describes it, when it consists of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Nothing should go before it, be intermixed with it, or follow after it, that is not related to it. As, on the contrary, no single step should be omitted in that just and regular process, which it must be supposed to take from its original to its consummation. Thus we see the anger of Achilles in its birth, its continuance, and effects; and Æneas's settlement in Italy, carried on through all the oppositions in his way to it both by sea and land. The action in Milton excels (I think) both the former in this particular: We see it contrived in Hell, executed upon Earth, and punished by Heaven. The parts of it are told in the most distinct manner, and grow out of one another in the most natural order. The third qualification of an epick poem is its Greatness. The anger of Achilles was of such consequence, that it embroiled the kings of Greece, destroyed the heroes of Asia, and engaged all the gods in factions. Eneas's settlement in Italy produced the Cæsars, and gave birth to the Roman empire. Milton's subject was still greater than either of the former; it does not determine the fate of single persons or nations, but of a whole species. The united Powers of Hell are joined together for the destruction of mankind, which they effected in part, and would have completed, had not Omnipotence itself interposed. The principal |