anong the productions of the human

mind.

By the general confent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an affemblage of all the powers which are fingly fufficient for other compofi tions. Poetry is the art of uniting plea-fure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reafon. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the moft important truths by the moft pleafing precepts, and therefore relates fome great event in the moft affecting manner. History muft fupply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, animate by dramatick energy, and diver

fify by retrofpection and anticipation; morality muft teach him the exact bounds, and different fhades, of vice and virtue from policy, and the practice of life, he has to learn the difcriminations of character, and the tendency of the paffions, either fingle or combined; and phyfiology muft fupply him. with illuftrations and images. To put thefe materials to poetical ufe, is required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extenfion of his language, diftinguifhed all the delicacies of phrafe, and all the colours of words, and learned to adjust their different founds to all the varieties of metrical modulation.

Boffu

Boffu is of opinion that the poet's first work is to find a moral, which his fable is afterwards to illuftrate and establish. This feems to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems is incidental and confequent; in Milton's only it is effential and intrinfick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous; to vindicate the ways of God to man; to fhew the reafonableness of religion, and the neceffity of obedience to the Divine Law.

To convey this moral there must be a fable, a narration artfully conftructed, fo as to excite curiofity, and furprise expectation. In this part of his work, Milton must be confeffed to have equalled every other poet. He has in

volved in his account of the Fall of Man the events which preceded, and

those that were to follow it: he has interwoven the whole fyftem of theology with fuch propriety, that every part ap. pears to be neceffary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the fakeof quickening the progrefs of the main action.

The fubject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great importance. That of Milton is not the deftruction of a city, the conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire. His fubject is the fate of worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against the Supreme King, raised by the highest order of created beings; the overthrow of their hoft, and the punish

ment

ment of their crime; the creation of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to hope and peace.

Great events can be haftened or retarded only by perfons of elevated dignity. Before the greatnefs difplayed in Milton's poem, all other greatness fhrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the higheft and nobleft of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whofe actions the elements confented; on whofe rectitude, or deviation of will, depended the ftate of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all the future inhabitants of the globe.

Of