lent critical difcourfes, written in his vindication by Giovanni Ralli and Ottavio Menini ;-there is a third alfo, according to Quadrio, by Scipione, di Manzano, under the name of Olimpo Marcucci, printed at Venice, in 4to, 1594. They all bestow great praife on the author whom they vindicate, who appears to have been a very amiable man, and a poet of confiderable powers, though he poffeffed not the fublimity and the refinement of Milton or Taffo. In his general ideas of poetry he resembled them both; and in his mode of expreffing himself, in the preface to his Angeleida, he reminds me very ftrongly of those paffages in the profe works of Milton, where he speaks on the hallowed magnificence of the art. They both confidered facred fubjects as peculiarly proper for verfe; an idea condemned by Johnson, who fympathifed as little with Milton in his poetic as in his political principles. It was by entertaining ideas of poetry, directly contrary to those of his critic, that Milton rendered himself, in true dignity, the first poet of the world. [Nor can we think that dignity in any degree impaired, by discovering that many hints might be fuggefted to him by various poets, in different languages, who had feized either a part or the whole of his fubject before him. On the contrary, the more of these we can difcover, and the more we compare them with the English bard, the more reason we shall find to exult in the pre-eminence of his poetical powers. Taffo, in his critical difcourfes, inculcates a very juft maxim concerning the originality of epic poets, which is very applicable to Milton.-"Nuovo "farà "farà il poema, in cui nuova fara la teftura de "nodi, nuove le folutioni, nuovi gli epifodi, che per entro vi fono trapofti, quantunque la matéria "foffe notiffima, e dagli altri prima trattala; perche "la novita del poema fi confidera piuttosto alla "forma, che alla materia." This great writer illuftrates his pofition, that the novelty of a poem is to be estimated more from its form than its fubject, by the example of Alamanni, an epic poet of Italy, who lost the paradise he might otherwife have acquired, by copying too fondly, under modern names, the incidents of Homèr.— Milton is of all authors undoubtedly one of the most original, both in thought and expreffion: the language of his greater works is evidently borrowed from no model, but it feems to have great conformity with the precepts which Taffo has delivered in the discourses I have just cited, for the formation of an epic ftyle. Yet in criticism, as in politics, Milton was undoubtedly "Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri.” He thought on every topic for himself; juftly remarking, that " to neglect rules and follow nature, "in them that know art and ufe judgment, is no tranfgreffion, but an enriching of art." This ex cellent maxim infured to him the exercife and the independence of his own elevated mind. There is frequent allufion to the works of antiquity in Milton, yet no poet, perhaps, who revered the ancients with fuch affectionate enthufiafm, has copied them fo fo little. This was partly owing to the creative opulence of his own genius, and partly to his having fixed on a subject so different from those of Homer and Virgil, that he may be faid to have accomplished a revolution in poetry, and to have purified and extended the empire of the epic mufe. One of the chief motives that induced his imagination to defert its early favourite Arthur, and attach itself to our first parents, is partly explained in those admirable verses of the ninth book, where the poet mentions the choice of his own subject, contrafted with those of his illuftrious predeceffors: Not lefs, but more heroic, than the wrath This fubject for heroic fong Pleas'd me long choofing, and beginning late; Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deem'd, chief mast'ry to diffect, With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights Serv'd Serv'd up in hall with fewers and fenefchals; That name. Milton feems to have given a purer fignification than we commonly give to the word hero, and to have thought it might be affigned to any perfon eminent and attractive enough to form a principal figure in a great picture. In truth, when we recollect the etymology which a philofopher and a faint have left us of the term, we cannot admire the propriety of devoting it to illuftrious homicides. Plato derives the Greek word from others, that imply either eloquence or love; and St. Augustine, from the Grecian name of Juno, or the air, because original heroes were pure departed fpirits, fuppofed to refide in that element. In Milton's idea, the ancient heroes of epic poetry feem to have too much resembled the modern great man, according to the delineation of that character in Fielding's exquifite hiftory of Jonathan Wild the Great. Much as the English poet delighted in the poetry of Homer, he appears to have thought, like an American writer of the prefent age, whofe fervent paffion for the Mufes is only inferior to his philanthropy, that the Grecian bard, though celebrated as the prince of moralifts by Horace, and efteemed a teacher of virtue by St. Bafil, has too great a ten dency dency to nourish that fanguinary madness in mankind, which has continually made the earth a theatre of carnage. I am afraid that fome poets and hiftorians may have been a little acceffary to the innumerable maffacres with which men, ambitious of obtaining the title of hero, have defolated the world 1; and it is certain, that a fevere judge of Homer may, with fome plaufibility, apply to him the reproach that his Agamemnon utters to Achilles : Διει γαρ τοι έρις τε φίλη, πολεμοι τε μάχαι τε. "For all thy pleasure is in ftrife and blood." Yet a lover of the Grecian bard may obferve, in his defence, that in affigning these words to the leader of his hoft, he fhews the pacific propriety of his own fentiments; and that, however his verfes may have inftigated an Alexander to carnage, or prompted the calamitous frequency of war, even this pagan poet, fo famous as the describer of battles, detefted the objects of his defcription. ་ But whatever may be thought of the heathen bard, Milton, to whom a purer religion had given greater purity, and I think greater force of imagination, Milton, from a long furvey of human nature, had contracted fuch an abhorrence for the atrocious abfurdity of ordinary war, that his feelings in this point feem to have influenced his epic fancy. He appears to have relinquished common heroes, that he might not cherish the too common characteristic of mana fanguinary fpirit. He afpired to delight the ima gination, |