gination, like Homer, and to produce, at the fame time, a much happier effect on the mind. Has he fucceeded in this glorious idea? Affuredly he has -to please is the end of poetry. Homer pleafes perhaps more univerfally than Milton; but the pleasure that the English poet excites, is more exquifite in its nature, and fuperior in its effect. An eminent painter of France used to fay, that in read. ing Homer he felt his nerves dilated, and he feemed to increase in ftature. Such an ideal effect as Homer, in this example, produced on the body, Milton produces in the fpirit. To a reader who thoroughly relishes the two poems on Paradife, his heart appears to be purified, in proportion to the pleasure he derives from the poet, and his mind to become angelic. Such a taste for Milton is rare, and the reason why it is fo is this:To form it completely, a reader muft poffefs, in fome degree, what was fuperlatively poffeffed by the poet, a mixture of two different fpecies of enthufiafm, the poetical and the religious. To relish Homer, it is fufficient to have a paffion for excellent verfe; but the reader of Milton, who is only a lover of the Mufes, lofes half, and certainly the best half, of that tranfcendent delight which the poems of this divine enthusiast are capable of imparting. A devo. tional taste is as requifite for the full enjoyment of Milton as a taste for poetry; and this remark will fufficiently explain the inconfiftency fo ftriking in the fentiments of many distinguished writers, whe have repeatedly spoken on the great English poetparticularly that inconfiftency, which I partly pro

mised to explain in the judgments of Dryden and Voltaire. These very different men had both a paffion for verse, and both strongly felt the poetical powers of Milton: but Dryden perhaps had not much, and Voltaire had certainly not a particle, of Milton's religious enthusiasm; hence, inftead of being impreffed with the fanctity of his fubject, they fometimes glanced upon it in a ludicrous point of view.

Hence they fometimes fpeak of him as the very prince of poets, and sometimes as a mifguided genius, who has failed to obtain the rank he afpired to in the poetical world. But neither the caprices of conceit, nor the cold aufterity of reafon, can reduce the glory of this pre-eminent bard.—It was in an hour propitious to his renown, that he relinquifhed Arthur and Merlin for Adam and the Angels; and he might fay on the occafion, in the words of his admired Petrarch:

Io benedico il luogo, il tempo, e l'hora

I bless the spot, the feafon, and the hour,

When my presumptuous eyes were fix'd so high,

To say that his poem wants human interest, is only to prove, that he who finds that defect wants the proper fenfibility of man. A work that dif plays at full length, and in the strongest light, the delicious tranquillity of innocence, the tormenting turbulence of guilt, and the confolatory fatisfaction of repentance, has furely abundance of attraction to

awaken

awaken fympathy. The images and sentiments that belong to thefe varying fituations are fo fuited to our mortal existence, that they cannot ceafe to interest, while human nature endures. The human heart, indeed, may be too much depraved, and the human mind may be too licentious, or too gloomy, to have a perfect relish for Milton; but, in honour of his poetry, we may observe, that it has a peculiar tendency to delight and to meliorate thofe characters, in which the feeds of taste and piety have been happily fown by nature. In proportion as the admiration of mankind fhall grow more and more valuable from the progreffive increase of intelligence, of virtue, and of religion, this incomparable poet will be more affectionately ftudied, and more univerfally admired.