And ftrode fublime, and pafs'd, with generous rage, The feeble minions of a puny age. From the Poetical Works of William SEE! where the BRITISH HOMER leads To realms unknown to Pagan lays: He chaunts the birth-day of the world, The conflict of Angelick Powers, The joys of Eden's peaceful bowers, When fled the Infernal Hoft, to thundering Chaos hurl'd. Yet, as this deathless fong he breath'd, And to Pofterity bequeath'd The cherish'd hope to Nature dear. No grateful praise his labours cheer'd, No beam beneficent appear'd To penetrate the chilling gloom ;— Ah! what avails that Britain now With fculptur'd laurel decks his brow, And hangs the votive verfe on his unconscious tomb! From Poems and Plays by Mrs. MR. ADDISON'S CRITICISM ON THE PARADISE LOST. Cedite, Romani fcriptores; cedite, Graii. Propert. El. 34. lib. 2. ver. 65. THERE is nothing in nature more irksome than general difcourfes, especially when they turn chiefly upon words. For this reafon I fhall wave the difcuffion of that point which was started some years fince, Whether Milton's Paradife Loft may be called an heroick poem ? Thofe, who will not give it that title, may call it (if they please) a divine poem. It will be fufficient 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 fay Adam is not Æneas, or Eve Helen. I shall therefore examine it by the rules of epick poetry, and fee whether it falls short of the Iliad or Æneid, in the beauties which are effen tial to that kind of writing. The first thing to be confidered in an epick poem, is the FABLE, which is perfect or imperfect, according as the action which it relates is more or lefs fo. This ACTION fhould 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 confider the action of the Iliad, Eneid, and Paradife Loft, in these three feveral lights. Homer, to preferve the unity of his action, haftens into the midst of things; as Horace has obferved. 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 feveral actions. He therefore opens his with the difcord of his princes, and artfully interweaves, in the feveral fucceeding parts of it, an account of every thing material which relates to them, and had paffed before that fatal diffenfion. After the fame manner, Æneas makes his first appearance in the Tyrrhene feas, and within fight of Italy, because the action, proposed to be celebrated, was that of his fettling himself in Latium. But because it was neceffary 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 fecond and third poem books of the Eneid. The contents of both which books come before thofe of the first book in the thread of the story, though, for preserving of this unity of action, they follow it in the difpofition of the poem. Milton, in imitation of these two great poets, opens his Paradife Loft, with an infernal council plotting the Fall of Man; which is the action he proposed to celebrate; and as for thofe 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 fame order that they happened,) he cast them into the fifth, fixth, and feventh books, by way of epifode to this noble Poem.. Ariftotle himself allows, that Homer has nothing to boast of as to the unity of his fable, though at the fame time that great critick and philofopher endeavours to palliate this imperfection in the Greek poet by imputing it, in fome measure, to the very nature of an epick poem. Some have been of opinion, that the Eneid alfo 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 confideration, has no other episodes than fuch as naturally arife from the subject; |