Dryden remarks, that Milton has fome flats among his elevations. This is only to say that all the parts are not equal. In every work one part must be for the fake of others; a palace must have pasfages; a poem muft have tranfitions. It is no more to be required that wit fhould always be blazing, than that the fun fhould always ftand at noon. In a great work there is a viciffitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a fucceffion of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed fometimes to revifit earth; for what other author ever foared fo high, or fuftained his flight fo long?

Milton, being well verfed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed often from them; and, as every man learns fomething from his companions, his defire of imitating Ariofto's levity has difgraced his work with the Paradife of Fools; a fiction not in itself ill-imagined, but too ludicrous for its place.

His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his unneceffary and ungraceful ufe of terms of art, it is not neceffary to mention, because they are cafily remarked, and generally cenfured, and at laft bear fo little proportion to the whole, that they fcarcely deferve the attention of a critick.

Such are the faults of that wonderful performance Paradife Loft; which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be confidered not as nice but as dull, as lefs to be cenfured for want of candour than pitied for want of fenfibility.

Of Paradife Regained, the general judgement feems now to be right, that it is in many parts elegant, and every-where inftructive. It was not to be fuppofed that the writer of Paradife Loft could ever write without great effufions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The bafis of Paradife Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never pleafe like an union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this

poem

poem been written not by Milton, but by fome imitator, it would have claimed and received univerfal praise,

If Paradife Regained has been too much depreciated, Samfon Agonifies has in requital been too much admired. It could only be by long prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions of the French and English ftages; and it is only by a blind confidence in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praifed in which the intermediate parts have neither caufe nor confequence, neither haften nor retard the catastrophe.

In this tragedy are however many particular beauties, many juft fentiments and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the attention which a well-connected plan produces.

Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature only in the grofs, and had never ftudied the fhades of character, nor the combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending paffions. He had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which experience must confer. Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of Dic