in that immense waste of matter. This may perhaps be conformable to the taste of those criticks, who are pleased with nothing in a poet which has not life and manners ascribed to it; but, for my own part, I am pleased most with those paffages in this description which carry in them a greater measure of probability, and are fuch as might poffibly have happened. Of this kind is his first mounting in the smoke that rises from the infernal pit; his falling into a cloud of nitre, and the like combustible materials, that by their explosion still hurried him forward in his voyage; his fpringing upward like a pyramid of fire; with his laborious paffage through that confufion of elements, which the poet calls

"The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave."

them perhaps, like Sin and Death, improper for an epick poem: But he contends that Milton may be allowed to place fuch ima ginary perfons in the regions of Chaos, as Virgil defcribes fimilar beings within the confines of Hell, En. vi. 273-281; a paffage of acknowledged beauty: And it is impoffible, he adds, to be pleafed with Virgil, and to be difpleafed with Milton. In further juftification of Milton, doctor Newton alfo refers to the intro. duction of fimilar fhadowy beings in Seneca, Herc. Fur. 686, in Statius, Theb. vii. 47, in Claudian, In Rufin. i. 30, and in Spenfer, Faer. Qu. ii. vii. 21, &c. To thefe inftances might be added the beautiful personifications of Sackville in the Mirrour for Magiftrates. See Note on Par. Loft, B. xi. 489. In Mafenius's infernal council, Death, Difeafes, Cares, Labour, Grief, Poverty, and Hunger, are perfons. Sarcotis, B. i. But Milton has introduced, with much fublimity, long before this author, many Thadowy beings, in his poem In Quintum Novembris.

The glimmering light which shot into the Chaos from the utmoft verge of the creation, and the distant discovery " of the earth that hung close by the moon, are wonderfully beautiful and poetical.

Horace advises a poet to confider thoroughly the nature and force of his genius. Milton feems to have known perfectly well, wherein his strength lay, and has therefore chosen a subject entirely conformable to those talents, of which he was mafter. As his genius was wonderfully turned to the sublime, his subject is the noblest that could have entered into the thoughts of man. Every thing that is truly great, and aftonishing, has a place in it. The whole system of the intellectual world; the Chaos, and the Creation; Heaven, Earth, and Hell; enter into the constitution of his Poem.

Having in the first and second books reprefented the infernal world with all its horrours ; the thread of his fable naturally leads him into the opposite regions of bliss and glory.

w If Milton's majesty forsakes him any where,

of the earth &c.] This is a miftake, into which Dr. Bentley alfo fell; and is corrected in the Note on v. 1052.

"If Milton's majesty forfakes him any where, &c.] It has been often obferved, that Milton's chief deficiency is in the THIRD BOOK. "The attempt to defcribe God Almighty himself, and to recount dialogues between the Father and the Son," says Dr. Blair, was too bold and arduous; and is that wherein the poet,

it is in those parts of his Poem, where the Divine Perfons are introduced as fpeakers. One may, I think, observe, that the author proceeds with a kind of fear and trembling, whilst he describes the fentiments of the Almighty. He dares not give his imagination its full play, but chooses to confine himself to fuch thoughts as are drawn from the books of the most orthodox divines, and to fuch expreffions as may be met with in Scripture. The beauties, therefore, which we are to look for in these fpeeches, are not of a poetical nature; nor fo proper to fill the mind with fentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of devotion. The paffions, which they are defigned to raife, are a divine love and religious fear. The particular beauty of the fpeeches in the THIRD BOOK, confifts in that fhortness and perfpicuity of style, in which the poet has couched the greatest mysteries of Chriftianity, and drawn together, in a regular scheme, the whole difpenfation of Providence with refpect to Man. He has represented all the abftrufe doctrines of predeftination, free-will, and grace; as alfo the great points of incarnation and redemption, (which naturally grow up in a

as was to have been expected, has been moft unsuccessful."Milton indeed was confcious that he had foared too high; and therefore, with exemplary humility, acknowledges, B. vii. 23.

"Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
"More fafe I fing with mortal voice.”

Poem that treats of the Fall of Man,) with great energy of expreffion, and in a clearer and stronger light than I have ever met with in any other writer. As these points are dry in themselves to the generality of readers, the concise and clear manner, in which he has treated them, is very much to be admired; as is likewise that particular art which he has made ufe of in the in

terfperfing of all those graces of poetry, which the fubject was capable of receiving.

× The furvey of the whole creation, and of every thing that is transacted in it, is a prospect worthy of Omniscience; and as much above that, in which Virgil has drawn his Jupiter, as the Christian idea of the Supreme Being is more rational and fublime than that of the Heathens. The particular objects, on which he is described to have cast his eye, are represented in the most beautiful and lively manner.

Satan's approach to the confines of the creation is finely imaged in the beginning of the speech which immediately follows. The effects of this fpeech in the bleffed Spirits, and in the Divine Perfon to whom it was addreffed, cannot but fill the mind of the reader with a fecret pleafure and complacency.

I need not point out the beauty of that circum

The furvey of the whole creation, &c.] See the Note, B. iii. 56.

stance, wherein the whole host of Angels are reprefented as standing mute; nor fhow how proper the occafion was to produce fuch a filence in Heaven. The clofe of this divine colloquy, and the hymn of angels that follows upon it, are wonderfully beautiful and poetical.

Satan's walk upon the outfide of the universe, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but, upon his nearer approach, looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble: as his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation between that mass of matter, which was wrought into a world, and that shapeless unformed heap of materials, which still lay in chaos and confufion, ftrikes the imagination with fomething astonishingly great and wild. I have before spoken of the Limbo of Vanity, which the poet places upon this outermoft surface of the univerfe; and fhall here explain myself more at large on that, and other parts of the Poem, which are of the fame shadowy nature.

Ariftotle obferves, that the fable of an epick poem should abound in circumftances that are both credible and astonishing; or, as the French criticks choose to phrase it, the fable fhould be filled with the probable and the marvellous. This rule is as fine and just as any in Aristotle's whole art of poetry.

If the fable is only probable, it differs nothing from a true hiftory; if it is only marvellous, it