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that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not show a acting but by instruments of action: he therefore invested them and matter. This, being necessary, was therefore defensible, an have secured the consistency of his system by keeping immater sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from his thoughts." Surely this was quite impossible, for the reason which Johnson himself has given. The imagination, by its natural tendencies, always embodies spirit. Poetry deals in pictures, though not exclusively in pictures. E. B. Upon the interesting topic here thus summarily though satisfactorily disposed of, Macaulay has furnished the following, among other admirable remarks:

The most fatal error which a poet can possibly commit in the management of his machinery, is that of attempting to philosophise too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these objections, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry.

What is spirit? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit with which we are best acquainted? We observe certain phenomena. We cannot explain them into material causes. We therefore infer that there exists something which is not material, but of this something we have no idea. We can define it only by negatives. We can reason about it only by symbols. We use the word but we have no image of the thing; and the business of poetry is with images, and not with words. The poet uses words indeed, but they are merely the instruments of his art, not its objects.) They are the materials which he is to dispose in such a manner as to present a picture to the mental eye. And, if they are not so disposed, they are no more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of canvas and a box of colors are to be called a painting.

Logicians may reason about abstractions, but the great mass of mankind can never feel an interest in them. They must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principles. The first inhabitants of Greece, there is every reason to believe, worshipped one invisible Deity; but the necessity of having something more definite to adore produced, in a few centuries, the innumerale crowd of gods and goddesses. In like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet even they transferred to the sun the worship which, speculatively, they considered due only to the supreme mind. The history of the Jews is the record of a continual struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the

invisible, attracted but few worshippers. A philosopher might admire so ception; but the crowd turned away in disgust from words which

image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in a huwalking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their soms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and the forces of the lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust.

Soon after Christianity had achieved its triumph, the principle which had assisted it began to corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints assumed the offices of household gods. St. George took the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. The virgin Mary and Cecilia succeed to Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial dignity; and the homage of chivalry was blended with that of religion. Reformers have often made a stand against these feelings; but never with more than apparent and partial success. The men who demolished the images in cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those which were enshrined in their minds. It would not be difficult to show that in politics the same rule holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied before they can excite strong public feeling. The multitude is more easily 'interested for the most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the most important principle.

From these considerations, we infer that no poet who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure, still, however, there was another extreme, which, though one less dangerous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are in a great measure under the control of their opinions. The most exquisite art of a poetical coloring can produce no illusion when it is employed to represent that which is at once perceived to be incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and theologians. It was necessary therefore for him to abstain from giving such a shock to their understandings, as might break the charm which it was his object to throw over their imaginations. This is the real explanation of the indistinctness and inconsistency with which he has often been reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary for him to clothe his spirits with material forms. "But," says he, "he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his thoughts." This is easily said; but what if he could not seduce the reader to drop it from his thoughts? What if the contrary opinion had taken so full a possession of the minds of men, as to leave no room even for the quasi-belief which poetry requires? Such we suspect to have been the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on the debateable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, by

so doing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he was p

the right. This task, which almost any other writer would have practicable, was easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed or som municating his meaning circuitously, through a long succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he could not avoid.

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails. They have just enough in common with human nature to be intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions and veiled in mysterious gloom.

PARADISE LOST.

OF man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top

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1. As in the commencement of the Iliad, of the Odyssey, and of the Æneid, so here the subject of the poem is the first announcement that is made, and precedes the verb with which it stands connected, thus giving it due prominence. Besides the plainness and simplicity of the exordium, there is (as Newton has observed) a further beauty in the variety of the numbers, which of themselves charm every reader without any sublimity of thought or pomp of expression; and this variety of the numbers consists chiefly in the pause being so artfully varied that it falls upon a different syllable in almost every line. Thus, in the successive lines it occurs after the words disobedience, tree, world, Eden, us, Muse. In Milton's verse the pause is continually varied according to the sense through all the ten syllables of which it is composed; and to this peculiarity is to be ascribed the surpassing harmony of his numbers.

4. Eden: Here the whole is put for a part. It was the loss of Paradise only, the garden, the most beautiful part of Eden; for after the expulsion of our first parents from Paradise we read of their pursuing their solitary way in Eden, which was an extensive region.

5. Regain, &c.: Compare XII. 463, whence it appears that in the opinion of Milton, after the general conflagration, the whole earth would be formed into another, and more beautiful, Paradise than the one that was lost.

6. Muse: One of those nine imaginary heathen divinities, that were

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning, how the heav'ns and earth

Rose out of Chaos. Or if Sion hill

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Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

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thought to preside over certain arts and sciences, is here, in conformity to classical custom, addressed. Secret top: set apart, interdicted. The Israelites, during the delivery of the law, were not allowed to ascend that mountain.

7. Horeb and Sinai were the names of two contiguous eminences of the same chain of mountains. Compare Exod. iii. 1, with Acts vii. 30.

8. Shepherd: Moses. Exod. iii. 1.

12. Oracle: God's temple; so called from the divine communications which were there granted to men.

15. The Aonian Mount; or Mount Helicon, the fabled residence of the Muses, in Bœotia, the earlier name of which was Aonia. Virgil's Eclog. vi. 65: Georg. iii. 11.

16. Things unattempted: There were but few circumstances upon which Milton could raise his poem, and in everything which he added out of his own invention he was obliged, from the nature of the subject, to proceed with the greatest caution; yet he has filled his story with a surprising number of incidents, which bear so close an analogy with what is delivered in holy writ that it is capable of pleasing the most delicate reader without giving offence to the most scrupulous.-A.

17. Chiefly Thou, O Spirit: Invoking the Muse is commonly a matter of mere form, wherein the (modern) poets neither mean, nor desire to be thought to mean, anything seriously. But the Holy Spirit, here invoked, is too solemn a name to be used insignificantly: and besides, our author, in the be ing of his next work, 'Paradise Regained,' scruples not to say to the sa Divine Person"Inspire

As Thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute."

his address therefore is no mere formality.-HEYLIN.

It is thought by Bp. Newton that the poet is liable to the charge of enthusiasm; having expected from the Divine Spirit a kind and degree of inspira- ` tion similar to that which the writers of the sacred scriptures enjoyed. The

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