difficulties. It obliged him to relinquish the warm, multifarious interests of human life. For these indeed he could substitute holier things; but a more insuperable objection to the theme was, that it involved the representation of a war between the Almighty and his created beings. To the vicissitudes of such a warfare it was impossible to make us attach the same fluctuations of hope and fear, the same curiosity, suspense, and sympathy, which we feel amidst the battles of the Iliad, and which make every brave young spirit long to be in the midst of them. Milton has certainly triumphed over one difficulty of his subject, the paucity and the loneliness of its human agents; for no one in contemplating the garden of Eden would wish to exchange it for a more populous world. His earthly pair could only be represented, during their innocence, as beings of simple enjoyment and negative virtue, with no other passions than the fear of heaven and the love of each other. Yet from these materials what a picture has he drawn of their homage to the Deity, their mutual affection, and the horrors of their alienation! By concentrating all exquisite ideas of external nature in the representation of their abode-by conveying an inspired impression of their spirits and forms, while they first shone under the fresh light of creative heaven-by these powers of description, he links our first parents, in harmonious subordination, to the angelic natures-he supports them in the balance of poetical importance with their divine coadjutors and enemies, and makes them appear at once worthy of the friendship and envy of gods. In the angelic warfare of the poem, Milton has done whatever human genius could accomplish. But, although Satan speaks of having "put to proof his (Maker's) high supremacy, in dubious battle, on the plains of heaven," the expression, though finely characteristic of his blasphemous pride, does not prevent us from feeling that the battle cannot for a moment be dubious. Whilst the powers of description and language are [Book vi. 1. 712. The bow and sword of the Almighty are copied from the Psalms vii. and xlv.] [† In this line we seem to hear a thunder suited both to the scene and the occasion, incomparably more awful than any ever heard on earth. The thunder of Milton is not hurled from the hand, like Homer's, but discharged taxed and exhausted to portray the combat, it is impossible not to feel, with regard to the blessed spirits, a profound and reposing security that they have neither great dangers to fear nor reverses to suffer. At the same time it must be said that, although in the actual contact of the armies the inequality of the strife becomes strongly visible to the imagination, and makes it a contest more of noise than terror; yet, while positive action is suspended, there is a warlike grandeur in the poem, which is nowhere to be paralleled. When Milton's genius dares to invest the Almighty himself with arms, "his bow and thunder," the astonished mind admits the image with a momentary credence.* It is otherwise when we are involved in the circumstantial details of the campaign. We have then leisure to anticipate its only possible issue, and can feel no alarm for any temporary check that may be given to those who fight under the banners of Omnipotence. The warlike part of Paradise Lost was inseparable from its subject. Whether it could have been differently managed, is a problem which our reverence for Milton will scarcely permit us to state. I feel that reverence too strongly to suggest even the possibility that Milton could have improved his poem by having thrown his angelic warfare into more remote perspective; but it seems to me to be most sublime when it is least distinctly brought home to the imagination. What an awful effect has the dim and undefined conception of the conflict, which we gather from the opening of the first book! There the veil of mystery is left undrawn between us and a subject which the powers of description were inadequate to exhibit. The ministers of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled-the thunders had ceased "To bellow through the vast and boundless deep," Par. Lost, Book i. v. 177. (in that line what an image of sound and space is conveyed!)†—and our terrific conception of the past is deepened by its indistinctness. In optics there are some phenomena which are beautifully deceptive at like an arrow: as if jealous for the honour of a true God, the poet disdained to arm him like the God of the heathen.-COWPER.] [Of all the articles of which the dreadful scenery of Milton's hell consists, Scripture furnished him only with a lake of fire and brimstone. Yet, thus slenderly assisted, a certain distance, but which lose their illusive charm on the slightest approach to them that changes the light and position in which they are viewed. Something like this takes place in the phenomena of fancy. The array of the fallen angels in hell-the unfurling of the standard of Satan-and the march of his troops "In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders"-Book i. 1. 550; all this human pomp and circumstance of war-is magic and overwhelming illusion. The imagination is taken by surprise. But the noblest efforts of language are tried with very unequal effect to interest us, in the immediate and close view of the battle itself in the sixth book; and the martial demons, who charmed us in the shades of hell, lose some portion of their sublimity when their artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven. If we call diction the garb of thought, Milton, in his style, may be said to wear the costume of sovereignty. The idioms even of foreign languages contributed to adorn it. He was the most learned of poets; yet his learning interferes not with his substantial English purity. His simplicity is unimpaired by glowing ornament, like the bush in the sacred flame, which burnt, but " not consumed." * was In delineating the blessed spirits, Milton has exhausted all the conceivable variety that could be given to pictures of unshaded sanctity; but it is chiefly in those of the fallen angels that his excellence is conspicuous above every thing ancient or modern. Tasso had, indeed, portrayed an infernal council, and had given the hint to our poet of ascribing the origin of pagan worship to those reprobate spirits. But how poor and squalid in comparison of the Miltonic Pandemonium are the Scyllas, the Cyclopses, and the Chimeras of the Infernal Council of the Jerusalem! Tasso's conclave of fiends is a den of ugly, incongruous monsters. O come strane, o come orribil forme! what a world of wo has he constructed, proved in this single instance, the most creative that ever poet owned.COWPER. The slender materials for Comus and Paradise Regained are alike wonderful, and attest the truth of Cowper's remark.] Stampano alcuni il suol di ferine orme, E'n fronte umana han chiome d' angui attorte; La Gerusalemme, Canto IV. The powers of Milton's hell are godlike shapes and forms. Their appearance dwarfs every other poetical conception, when we turn our dilated eyes from contemplating them. It is not their external attributes alone which expand the imagination, but their souls, which are as colossal as their stature-their "thoughts that wander through eternity"-the pride that burns amid the ruins of their divine natures-and their genius, that feels with the ardour and debates with the eloquence of heaven. The subject of Paradise Lost was the origin of evil-an era in existence-an event more than all others dividing past from future time-an isthmus in the ocean of eternity. The theme was in its nature connected with every thing important in the circumstances of human history; and amid these circumstances, Milton saw that the fables of paganism were too important and poetical to be omitted. As a Christian, he was entitled wholly to neglect them; but as a poet, he chose to treat them, not as dreams of the human mind, but as the delusions of infernal existences. Thus anticipating a beautiful propriety for all classical allusions, thus connecting and reconciling the co-existence of fable and of truth, and thus identifying the fallen angels with the deities of " gay religions, full of pomp and gold," he yoked the heathen mythology in triumph to his subject, and clothed himself in the spoils of superstition. One eminent production of wit, namely, Hudibras, may be said to have sprung out of the Restoration, or at least out of the contempt of fanaticism, which had its triumph in that event; otherwise, the return of royalty [* Our most learned poets were classed by Joseph Warton, a very competent judge, in the following order :1. Milton; 2 Jonson; 3 Gray; 4 Akenside. Milton and Gray were of Cambridge, Ben Johnson was a very short time there, not long enough however to catch much of the learning of the place; but Akenside was of no college -it is believed self-taught.] contributed as little to improve the taste as the morality of the public. The drama degenerated, owing, as we are generally told, to the influence of French literature, although some infection from the Spanish stage might also be taken into the account. Sir William Davenant, who presided over the first revival of the theatre, was a man of cold and didactic spirit; he created an era in the machinery, costume, and ornaments of the stage, but he was only fitted to be its mechanical benefactor. Dryden, who could do even bad things with a good grace, confirmed the taste for rhyming and ranting tragedy. Two beautiful plays of Otway formed an exception to this degeneracy; but Otway was cut off in the spring-tide of his genius, and his early death was, according to every appearance, a heavy loss to our drama. It has been alleged, indeed, in the present day, that Otway's imagination showed no prognostics of great future achievements; but when I remember Venice Preserved, and The Orphan, as the works of a man of thirty, I can treat this opinion no otherwise than to dismiss it as an idle assertion.* Βάσκ ̓ ἴθι, οἶλε ὄνειρε. During the last thirty years of the seventeenth century, Dryden was seldom long absent from the view of the public, and he alternately swayed and humoured its pre dilections. Whatever may be said of his accommodating and fluctuating theories of criticism, his perseverance in training and disciplining his own faculties is entitled to much admiration. He strengthened his mind by action, and fertilized it by production. In his old age he renewed his youth like the eagle; or rather his genius acquired stronger wings than it had ever spread. He rose and fell, it is true, in the course of his poetical career; but upon the whole, it was a career of improvement to the very last. Even in the drama, which was not his natural province, his good sense came at last so far in aid of his deficient sensibility, that he gave up his system of rhyming tragedy, and adopted Shakspeare (in theory at least) for his model. In poetry not belonging to the drama, he was at first an admirer of Cowley, then of Davenant; and ultimately he acquired a manner above the peculiarities of either.‡ The Odes and Fables of his latest volume surpass whatever he had formerly written. He was satirized and abused as well as extolled by his contemporaries; but his genius. was neither to be discouraged by the seve rity, nor spoiled by the favour of criticism. It flourished alike in the sunshine and the storm, and its fruits improved as they multiplied in profusion. When we view him out of the walk of purely original composition, it is not a paradox, that, though he is one [The talents of Otway, in his scenes of passionate affection, rival at least, and sometimes excel, those of Shakspeare. More tears have been shed, probably, for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia, than for those of Juliet and Desdemona.-SIR WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Prose Works, vol. vi. p. 356.] [† Shakspeare died at fifty-two. The average probability of life is twenty years beyond that age, and the probable endurance of the human faculties in their vigour is not a great deal shorter. Chaucer wrote his best poetry after he was sixty; Dryden, when he was seventy. Cowper was also late in his poetical maturity; and Young never wrote any thing that could be called poetry till he was a sexagenarian. Sophocles wrote his "Edipus Coloneus" certainly beyond the age of eighty. But the pride of England, it may be said, died in the prime of life.CAMPEELL, Shakspeare, 8vo, 1833, p. lxv.] [Cowley and Sylvester, he tells us, were the darling writers of his youth; and that Davenant introduced him to the folio of Shakspeare's plays. He lived long enough to dethrone Sylvester, to lessen his esteem for Cowley, and increase his predilection for Shakspeare;-his taste was bettering to the last-but it was long in arriving to maturity. Like Sir Walter Scott, he was nearer forty than thirty before he had distinguished himself-an age at which both Burns and Byron were in their graves.] [I think Dryden's translations from Boccace are the best, at least the most poetical, of his poems. But as a poet, he is no great favourite of mine. I admire his talents and genius highly, but his is not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in Dryden that are essentially poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear. It may seem strange that I do not add to this, great command of language: that he certainly has, and of such language too as it is desirable that a poet should possess, or rather that he should not be without. But it is not language that is, in the highest sense of the word, poetical, being neither of the imagination nor of the passions; I mean the amiable, the ennobling, or the intense passions. I do not mean to say that there is nothing of this in Dryden, but as little I think as is possible, considering how much he has written. You will easily understand my meaning, when I refer to his versi fication of Palamon and Arcite, as contrasted with the language of Chaucer. Dryden had neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of moral dignity. Whenever his language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly upon unpleasing subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crimes of classes of men or of individuals. That his cannot be the language of imagination must have necessarily followed from this,-that there is not a single image from nature in the whole body of his works; and in his translation from Virgil, wherever Virgil can be fairly said to have his eye upon his object, Dryden always spoils the passage. His love is nothing but sensuality and appetite: he had no other notion of the passion.-WORDSWORTHLockart's Life of Scott, vol. ii. p. 287, sec. ed.] of the greatest artists in language, and perhaps the greatest of English translators, he nevertheless attempted one task in which his failure is at least as conspicuous as his success. But that task was the translation of Virgil. And it is not lenity, but absolute justice, that requires us to make a very large and liberal allowance for whatever deficiencies he may show in transfusing into a language less harmonious and flexible than the Latin, the sense of that poet, who in the history of the world, has had no rival in beauty of expression. Dryden renovates Chaucer's thoughts,* and fills up Boccaccio's narrative outline with many improving touches: and though paraphrase suited his free spirit better than translation, yet even in versions of Horace and Juvenal he seizes the classical character of Latin poetry with a boldness and dexterity which are all his own. But it was easier for him to emulate the strength of Juvenal than the serene majesty of Virgil. His translation of Virgil is certainly an inadequate representation of the Roman poet. It is often bold and graceful, and generally idiomatic and easy. But though the spirit of the original is not lost, it is sadly and unequally diffused. Nor is it only in the magic of words, in the exquisite structure and rich economy of expression, that Dryden (as we might expect) falls beneath Virgil, but we too often feel the inequality of his vital sensibility as a poet. Too frequently, when the Roman classic touches the heart, or imbodies to our fancy those noble images to which nothing could be added, and from which nothing can be taken away, we are sensible of the distance between Dryden's talent and Virgil's inspiration. One passage out of many, the representation of Jupiter, in the first book of the Georgics, may show this difference. GEORGICS, lib. i. 1. 328. Ipse Pater, mediâ nimborum in nocte, corusca Fulmina molitur dextrâ: quo maxima motu Terra tremit, fugere feræ, et mortalia corda Per gentes humilis stravit pavor [*True it is, however, that Chaucer evaporated in his hands and that he did greater justice to himself than to his original-that his Tales are rather imitations or adaptations than renovations or translations-that he missed his pathos and description. With Boccaccio he succeeded better-prose he turned into poetry-but what was poetry at the first gained from him no additional graces.] The father of the Gods his glory shrouds, Virgil's three lines and a half might challenge the most sublime pencil of Italy to the same subject. His words are no sooner read than, with the rapidity of light, they collect a picture before the mind which stands confessed in all its parts. There is no interval between the objects as they are presented to our perception. At one and the same moment we behold the form, the uplifted arm, and dazzling thunderbolts of Jove, amidst a night of clouds; the earth trembling, and the wild beasts scudding for shelter-fugere— they have vanished while the poet describes them, and we feel that mortal hearts are laid prostrate with fear, throughout the nation. Dryden, in the translation, has done his best, and some of his lines roll on with spirit and dignity, but the whole description is a process rather than a picture-the instantaneous effect, the electric unity of the original, is lost. Jupiter has leisure to deal out his fiery bolts by fits, while the entrails of the earth shake and her mountains nod, and the flying beasts have time to look out very quietly for lodgings in the forest. The weakness of the two last lines, which stand for the weighty words, "Mortalia corda per gentes humilis stravit pavor," need not be pointed out. I cannot quote this passage without recurring to the recollection, already suggested, that it was Virgil with whom the English translator had to contend. Dryden's admirers might undoubtedly quote many passages much more in his favour; and one passage occurs to me as a striking example of his felicity. In the following lines (with the exception of one) we recognise a great poet, and can scarcely acknowledge that he is translating a greater.† [† He who sits down to Dryden's translation of Virgil, with the original text spread before him, will be at no loss to point out many passages that are faulty, many indifferently understood, many imperfectly translated, some in which dignity is lost, others in which bombast is substituted in its stead. But the unabated vigour and spirit of the version more than overbalance these and all its other deficiencies. A sedulous scholar might often ENEID, lib. xii. 1. 331. Qualis apud gelidi cum flumina concitus Hebri Thus on the banks of Hebrus' freezing flood, If it were asked how far Dryden can strictly be called an inventive poet, his drama certainly would not furnish many instances of characters strongly designed; though his Spanish Friar is by no means an insipid personage in comedy. The contrivance, in The Hind and Panther, of beasts disputing about religion, if it were his own, would do little honour to his ingenuity. The idea, in Absalom and Achitophel, of couching modern characters under Scripture names, was adopted from one of the Puritan writers; approach more nearly to the dead letter of Virgil, and give an exact, distinct, sober-minded idea of the meaning and scope of particular passages. Trapp, Pitt, and others have done so. But the essential spirit of poetry is so volatile, that it escapes during such an operation, like the life of the poor criminal, whom the ancient anatomist is said to have dissected alive, in order to ascertain the seat of the soul. The carcass, indeed, is presented to the English reader, but the animating vigour is no more.SIR WALTER SCOTT, Life of Dryden.] * Intonat.-I follow Wakefield's edition of Virgil in preference to others, which have "increpat." The plan of Absalom and Achitophel was not new to the public. A Catholic poet had, in 1679, paraphrased the scriptural story of Naboth's Vineyard, and applied it to the condemnation of Lord Stafford on account of the Popish Plot. This poem is written in the style of a scriptural allusion; the names and situations of personages in the holy text being applied to those contemporaries to whom the author assigned a place in his piece. Neither was the obvious application of the story of Absalom and Achitophel to the persons of Monmouth and Shaftesbury first made by our poet. A prose paraphrase, published in 1680, had already been composed upon this allusion. But the vigour of the satire, the happy adaptation, not only of the incidents, but of the very names, to the individuals characterized, gave Dryden's poem the full effect of novelty.-SIR WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 208.] The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius seems to have been the power of reasoning, and of expressing the result in appropriate language. .... The best of Dryden's performances in the more pure and chaste style of tragedy are unquestionably Don Sebastian and All for Love. Of these, the former is in the poet's very best manner; exhibiting dramatic persons, consisting of such bold and impetuous characters as he delighted yet there is so much ingenuity evinced in supporting the parallel, and so admirable a gallery of portraits displayed in the work, as to render that circumstance insignificant with regard to its originality.† Nor, though his Fables are borrowed, can we regard him with much less esteem than if he had been their inventor. He is a writer of manly and elastic character. His strong judgment gave force as well as direction to a flexible fancy; and his harmony is generally the echo of solid thoughts. But he was not gifted with intense or lofty sensibility; on the contrary, the grosser any idea is, the happier he seems to expatiate upon it. The transports of the heart, and the deep and varied delineations of the passions, are strangers to his poetry. He could describe character in the abstract, but could not imbody it in the drama, for he entered into character more from clear perception than fervid sympathy. This great high-priest of all the Nine was not a confessor to the finer secrets of the human breast. Had the subject of Eloisa fallen into his hands, he would have left but a coarse draught of her passion. to draw, well-contrasted, forcibly marked, and engaged in an interesting succession of events. To many tempers, the scene between Sebastian and Dorax must appear one of the most moving that ever adorned the British stage. The satirical powers of Dryden were of the highest order. He draws his arrow to the head, and dismisses it straight upon his object of aim. . . . . The occasional poetry of Dryden is marked strongly by masculine character. The epistles vary with the subject; and are light, humorous and satirical, or grave, argumentative, and philosophical, as the case required. .... Few of his elegiac effusions seem prompted by sincere sorrow. That to Oldham may be an exception; but even there he rather strives to do honour to the talents of his departed friend, Νο than to pour out lamentations for his loss. .... author, excepting Pope, has done so much to endenizen the eminent poets of antiquity.-SIR WALTER SCOTT, Life of Dryden.] [ Writing of Pope's Eloisa, Lord Byron says, "The licentiousness of the story was not Pope's-it was a fact. All that it had of gross he has softened;-all that it had of indelicate he has purified;-all that it had of passionate he has beautified;-all that it had of holy he has hallowed. Mr. Campbell has admirably marked this, in a few words, (I quote from memory,) in drawing the distinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing out where Dryden was wanting. 'I fear,' says he, that had the subject of Eloisa fallen into his (Dryden's) hands, that he would have given us but a coarse draught of her passion."" This is very generally admitted-"The love of the senses," writes Sir Walter Scott, "he (Dryden) has in many places expressed in as forcible and dignified colouring as the subject could admit; but of a more moral and sentimental passion he seems to have had little idea, since he frequently substitutes in its place the absurd, unnatural, and fictitious refinements of romance. In short, |