Thrice fugitive about Troy wall, or raga
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd,

Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long
Perplex'd the Greek, and Cytherea's for,

This fubject for heroic fong

Pleas'd me long choofing, and beginning late

Not fedulous by nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only argument

Heroic deem'd, chief mast'ry to diffect,

With long and tedious havoc, fabled knights
In battles feign'd; the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unfung; or to defcribe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, imblazon'd fhields,
Impreffes quaint, caparifons and steeds,
Bafes and tinfel trappings, gorgeous knights
At jouft and torneament; then marshal'd feaft
Serv'd up in hall with fewers and fenefchals ;
The skill of artifice or office mean,

Not that which justly gives heroic name

To perfon or to poem: me of these

Nor skill'd, nor ftudious, higher argument

Remains, fufficient of itself to raise

That name.

Milton feems to have given a purer fignification than we commonly give to the word hero, and to have thought

it might be affigned to any perfon eminent and attractive enough to form a principal figure in a great picture. In truth, when we recollect the etymology which a philofopher and a faint have left us of the term, we cannot admire the propriety of devoting it to illuftrious homicides. Plato derives the Greek word from others, that imply either eloquence or love; and St. Auguftine, from the Grecian name of Juno, or the air, because original heroes were pure departed fpirits, fupposed to refide in that element. In Milton's idea, the ancient heroes of epic poetry feem to have too much refembled the modern great man, according to the delineation of that character in Fielding's exquifite hiftory of Jonathan Wild the Great. Much as the English poet delighted in the poetry of Homer, he appears to have thought, like an American writer of the present age, whofe fervent paffion for the Muses is only inferior to his philanthropy, that the Grecian bard, though celebrated as the prince of moralifts by Horace, and esteemed a teacher of virtue by St. Bafil, has too great a tendency to nourish that fanguinary madness in mankind, which has continually made the earth a theatre of carnage. I am afraid that fome poets and hiftorians may have been a little acceffary to the innumerable maffacres with which men, ambitious of obtaining the title of hero, have defolated the world; and it is certain, that a fevere judge of Homer may, with fome plaufibility, apply to him the reproach that his Agamemnon utters to Achilles :

Ανει

Αιεί γαρ τοι έρις τε φίλη, πολεμοι τε μάχαι τε.

"For all thy pleasure is in ftrife and blood."

Yet a lover of the Grecian bard may obferve, in his defence, that in affigning these words to the leader of his hoft, he shews the pacific propriety of his own sentiments ; and that, however his verses may have inftigated an Alexander to carnage, or prompted the calamitous frequency of war, even this pagan poet, fo famous as the defcriber of battles, detefted the objects of his defcription.

But whatever may be thought of the heathen bard, Milton, to whom a purer religion had given greater purity, and I think greater force of imagination, Milton, from a long survey of human nature, had contracted fuch an abhorrence for the atrocious abfurdity of ordinary war, that his feelings in this point feem to have influenced his epic fancy. He appears to have relinquished common heroes, that he might not cherish the too common characteristic of man-a fanguinary spirit. He afpired to delight the imagination, 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 pleases 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

painter of France used to say, that in reading 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 spirit. 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 tafte for Milton is rare, and the reason why it is fo is this:-To form it completely, a reader must 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 verse; but the reader of Milton, who is only a lover of the Muses, lofes half, and certainly the beft half, of that tranfcendent delight which the poems of this divine enthufiaft are capable of imparting. A devotional taste is as requifite for the full enjoyment of Milton as a tafte for poetry; and this remark will fufficiently explain the inconfiftency so striking in the fentiments of many distinguished writers, who have repeatedly spoken on the great English poet-particularly that inconfiftency, which I partly promised to explain in the judgments of Dryden and Voltaire. Thefe very different men had both a paffion for verse, and both ftrongly felt the poetical powers of Milton but Dryden perhaps had not much, and Voltaire had certainly not a particle, of Milton's religious enthufiafm;

fiafm; hence, inftead of being impreffed with the fanctity of his subject, they fometimes glanced upon it in a ludicrous point of view.

Hence they fometimes fpeak of him as the very prince of poets, and fometimes 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 austerity of reason, can reduce the glory of this pre-eminent bard. It was in an hour propitious to his renown, that he relinquished 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
Che fi alto miraro gli occhi mïei.

I bless the spot, the season, and the hour,

When my presumptuous eyes were fix'd so high.

To say that his poem wants human intereft, is only to prove, that he who finds that defect wants the proper fenfibility of man. A work that displays 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 sympathy. The images and fentiments that belong to these varying fituations are fo fuited to our mortal existence, that they cannot cease to intereft, while human nature endures. The human heart,