ton was greatly indebted for the plan and some prominent features of the Paradise Lost. Yet it has been a pleasant, and more profitable task, to discover by personal research, and by aid of the research of others, those parts of classical authors a familiar acquaintance with which has enabled the learned poet so wonderfully to enrich and adorn his beautiful production. These classic gems of thought and expression have been introduced in the notes, only for the gratification of those persons who are able to appreciate the language of the Roman and Grecian poets; and who may have a taste for observing the coincidences between their language and that of the great master of English verse.

Not long before the composition of Paradise Lost, Milton thus speaks of the qualifications which he regarded as requisite and which he hoped to employ in preparing it: "A work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapors of wine; nor to be obtained of dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs."

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• This, I am convinced,' says Sir E. B. already quoted, is the true origin of Paradise Lost. Shakspeare's originality might be still more. impugned, if an anticipation of hints and similar stories were to be taken as proof of plagiarism. In many of the dramatist's most beautiful plays the whole tale is borrowed; but Shakspeare and Milton turn brass into gold. This sort of passage hunting has been carried a great deal too far, and has disgusted and repelled the reader of feeling and taste. The novelty is in the raciness, the life, the force, the just association, the probability, the truth; that which is striking because it is extravagant is a false novelty. He who borrows to make patches is a plagiarist; but what patch is there in Milton? All is interwoven and forms part of one web. No doubt the holy bard was always intent upon sacred poetry, and drew his principal inspirations from Scripture. This distinguishes his style and spirit from all other

poets; and gives him a solemnity which has not been surpassed, save in the book whence welled that inspiration.'

The Editor is fully aware of the boldness of the attempt to furnish a full commentary on such a poem as this: he is also painfully sensible that much higher qualifications than he possesses could profitably and honorably be laid out in the undertaking. He has long wondered, and regretted, that such an edition of Paradise Lost, as the American public needs, has not been furnished; and in the absence of a better, he offers this edition, as adapted, in his humble opinion, to render a most desirable and profitable service to the reading community, while it may contribute, as he hopes, to bring this poem from the state of unmerited neglect into which it has fallen, and cause it to be more generally read and studied, for the cultivation of a literary taste and for the expansion of the intellectual and moral powers.

Ours is an age in which the best writings of the seventeenth century have been generally republished, and thus have been put upon a new career of fame and usefulness. Shakspeare has had, for more than half a century, his learned annotators, without whose aid large portions of his plays would be nearly unintelligible. He has been honored with public lectures also, to illustrate his genius, and to bring to view his masterly sketches of the human heart and manners. There have recently started up public readers also, by whose popular exertions he has been brought into more general admiration. It seems to be full time that a higher appreciation of the great epic of Milton than has hitherto prevailed among us, and that a more extended usefulness also, should be secured to it, by the publication of critical and explanatory notes, such as the circumstances of the reading class obviously require.

Ever valuable will it be, for its varied learning, for its exquisite beauties of poetic diction and measure; for its classical, scientific and scriptural allusions; for its graphic delineations of the domestic state and its duties; for its adaptation, when duly explained and understood, to enlarge the intellect, to entertain the imagination, to improve literary taste, and cultivate the social and the devout affections; for its grand account of creation, providence, and redemption, embracing a

most beautiful narrative and explanation of some of the most interest ing events connected with the history of our race. Nor should mention be omitted, of those excellent counsels, and maxims of conduct which it so frequently suggests, conveyed in language too appropriate and beautiful to be easily erased from the memory, or carelessly disregarded.

In conclusion, we may confidently adopt the words of Brydges, who has said, that to study Milton's poetry is not merely the delight of every accomplished mind, but it is a duty. He who is not conversant with it, cannot conceive how far the genius of the Muse can go. The bard, whatever might have been his inborn genius, could never have attained this height of argument and execution but by a life of laborious and holy preparation; a constant conversance with the ideas suggested by the sacred writings; the habitual resolve to lift his mind and heart above earthly thoughts; the incessant exercise of all the strongest faculties of the intellect; retirement, temperance, courage, hope, faith. He had all the aids of learning; all the fruit of all the wisdom of ages; all the effect of all that poetic genius, and all that philosophy had achieved. His poetry is pure majesty; the sober strength, the wisdom from above, that instructs and awes. It speaks as an oracle; not with a mortal voice. And indeed, it will not be too much to say, that of all uninspired writings, Milton's are the most worthy of profound study by all minds which would know the creativeness, the splendor, the learning, the eloquence, the wisdom, to which the human intellect can attain.

NOTE. The names of the authors most frequently quoted will be indicated simply by the initial letters: those authors are Addison, Newton, E. Brydges, Todd, Hume, Kitto, Richardson, Thyer, Stebbing and Pearce. The Introductory Remarks upon the several Books are, generally, those found in Sir Egerton Brydges' edition, with the omission of such remarks as were deemed either incorrect, or of little interest and importance.

THIS First Book proposes, first, in brief, the whole subject, Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, into the great deep. Which action passed over, the poem hastens into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell, described here, not in the centre (for Heaven and Earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos: here Satan with his Angels lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him; they confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded: they rise; their numbers, array of battle, their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterward in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in Heaven; for that Angels were long before this visible creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the deep: the infernal peers there sit in council.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

THIS BOOK on the whole is so perfect from beginning to end, that it would be difficult to find a single superfluous passage. The matter, the illustrations and the allusions, are historically, naturally, and philosophically true. The learning is of every extent and diversity; recondite, classical, scientific, antiquarian. But the most surprising thing is, the manner in which he vivifies every topic he touches: he gives life and picturesqueness to the driest catalogue of buried names, personal or geographical. They who bring no learning, yet feel themselves charmed by sounds and epithets which give a vague pleasure, and stir up the imagination into an indistinct emotion.

Poetical imagination is the power, not only of conceiving, but of creating embodied illustrations of abstract truths, which are sublime, or pathetic, or beautiful; but those ideas, which Milton has embodied, no imagination but his own would have dared to attempt; none else would have risen to the height of this great argument. Every one else would have fallen short of it, and degraded it.

Among the miraculous acquirements of Milton, was his deep and familiar intimacy with all classical and all chivalrous literature; the amalgamation in his mind of all the philosophy and all the sublime and ornamental literature of the ancients, and all the abstruse, the laborious, the immature learning of those who again drew off the mantle of time from the ancient treasures of genius, and mingled with them their own crude conceptions and fantastic theories. He extracted from this mine all that would aid the imagination without shocking the reason. He never rejected philosophy; but where it was fabulous, only offered it as ornament.

In Milton's language though there is internal force and splendor, there is outward plainness. Common readers think that it sounds and looks like prose. This is one of its attractions; while all that is stilted, and decorated, and affected, soon fatigues and satiates

Johnson says that "an inconvenience of Milton's design is, that it requires the description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. He saw