which a painter may have conceived respecting
the lachrymal glands, or the circulation of the
blood will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the
blushes of his Aurora. If Shakspeare had
written a book on the motives of human ac-
tions, it is by no means certain that it would
have been a good one. It is extremely impro-ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude
bable that it would have contained half so
much able reasoning on the subject as is to be
found in the "Fable of the Bees." But could
Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he
knew how to resolve characters into their ele-
ments, would he have been able to combine
those elements in such a manner as to make
up a man-a real, living, individual man?

Perhaps no man can be a poet, or can even
enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness
of mind, if any thing which gives so much
pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By
poetry we mean, not of course all writing in
verse, nor even all good writing in verse.
Our definition excludes many metrical compo-
sitions which, on other grounds, deserve the
highest praise. By poetry we mean, the art of
employing words in such a manner as to pro-
duce an illusion on the imagination: the art of
doing by means of words what the painter does
by means of colours. Thus the greatest of
poets has described it, in lines universally ad-
mired for the vigour and felicity of their dic-
tion, and still more valuable on account of the
just notion which they convey of the art in
which he excelled.

"As imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which
he ascribes to the poet--a fine frenzy doubtless,
but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential
to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The
reasonings are just; but the premises are false.
After the first suppositions have been made,
every thing ought to be consistent; but those
first suppositions require a degree of credulity
which almost amounts to a partial and tempo-
rary derangement of the intellect. Hence, of
all people, children are the most imaginative.
They abandon themselves without reserve to
every illusion. Every image which is strongly
presented to their mental eye produces on
them the effect of reality. No man, whatever
his sensibility may be, is ever affected by
Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected by
the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows
that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak,
that there are no wolves in England. Yet in
spite of her knowledge she believes; she
weeps, she trembles; she dares not go into a
dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the
monster at her throat. Such is the despotism
of the imagination over uncultivated minds.

good ones-but little poetry. Men will judge
and compare; but they will not create. They
will talk about the old poets, and comment on
them, and to a certain degree enjoy them.
But they will scarcely be able to conceive the
effect which poetry produced on their ruder
of belief. The Greek Rhapsodists, according to
Plato, could not recite Homer without almost
falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly
feels the scalping-knife while he shouts his
death-song. The power which the ancient
bards of Wales and Germany exercised over
their auditors seems to modern readers almost
miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a
civilized community, and most rare among
those who participate most in its improve-
ments. They linger longest among the pea-
santry.

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the
mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion
on the eye of the body. And, as the magic
lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects
its purpose most completely in a dark age.
As the light of knowledge breaks in upon its
exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty be-
come more and more definite, and the shades
of probability more and more distinct, the
hues and lineaments of the phantoms which it
calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot
unite the incompatible advantages of reality
and deception, the clear discernment of truth
and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction.

He who, in an enlightened and literary
society, aspires to be a great poet, must first
become a little child. He must take to pieces
the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn
much of that knowledge which has perhaps
constituted hitherto his chief title of supe-
riority. His very talents will be a hinderance
to him. His difficulties will be proportioned
to his proficiency in the pursuits which are
fashionable among his contemporaries; and
that proficiency will in general be proportioned
to the vigour and activity of his mind. And
it is well, if, after all his sacrifices and exer-
tions, his works do not resemble a lisping
man, or a modern ruin. We have seen in our
own time, great talents, intense labour, and
long meditation, employed in this struggle
against the spirit of the age, and employed,
we will not say, absolutely in vain, but with
dubious success and feeble applause.

If these reasonings be just, no poet has
ever triumphed over greater difficulties than
Milton. He received a learned education.
He was a profound and elegant classical
scholar: he had studied all the mysteries of
Rabbinical literature: he was intimately ac-
quainted with every language of modern Eu-
rope, from which either pleasure or information
was then to be derived. He was perhaps the
In a rude state of society, men are children only great poet of later times who has been
with a greater variety of ideas. It is there- distinguished by the excellence of his Latin
fore in such a state of society that we may verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely
expect to find the poetical temperament in its of the first order; and his poems in the ancient
highest perfection. In an enlightened age language, though much praised by those who
there will be much intelligence, much science, have never read them, are wretched com
much philosophy, abundance of just classifica- positions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit
tion and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and
eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of

See the Dialogue between Socrates and To

and ingenuity, had little imagination; nor|nected with them. He electrifies the mind indeed do we think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to judge between two Latin styles as an habitual drunkard to set up for a wine

taster.

through conductors. The most unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion; but takes the whole upon himself, and sets his images in so clear a light that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader co-operate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the melody.

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in general as We often hear of the magical influence il suited to the production of vigorous native of poetry. The expression in general means poetry, as the flower-pots of a hot-house to the nothing; but, applied to the writings of Milton, growth of oaks. That the author of the Para- it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like dise Lost should have written the Epistle to an incantation. Its merit lies less in its Manso, was truly wonderful. Never before obvious meaning than in its occult power. were such marked originality and such ex- There would seem, at first sight, to be no more quisite mimicry found together. Indeed, in all in his words than in other words. But they the Latin poems of Milton, the artificial manner | are words of enchantment; no sooner are they indispensable to such works is admirably pre-pronounced than the past is present, and the served, while, at the same time, the richness distant near. New forms of beauty start at of his fancy and the elevation of his sentiments give to them a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from all other writings of the same class. They remind us of the amusements of those angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel:

"About him exercised heroic games

The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads Celestial armory, shield, helm, and spear, Hung bright, with diamond flaming and with gold." We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight of its fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance.

It is not our intention to attempt any thing like a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that style which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism in which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf.

once into existence, and all the burial places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence, substitute one synonyme for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power: and he who should then hope to conjure with it, would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, "Open Wheat," "Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but "Open Sesame!" The miserable failure of Dryden, in his attempt to rewrite some parts of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this.

In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known, or more frequently repeated, than those which are little more than muster rolls of names. They are not always more appropriate or more melodious than other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote period of history. Another places us among the moral scenery and manners of a distant country. A third evokes all the dear classical recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses.

The most striking characteristic of the poetry In none of the works of Milton is his pecuof Milton is the extreme remoteness of the liar manner more happily displayed than in associations, by means of which it acts on the the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossireader. Its effect is produced, not so much ble to conceive that the mechanism of language by what it expresses, as by what it suggests, can be brought to a more exquisite degree of not so much by the ideas which it directly perfection. These poems differ from others conveys, as by other ideas which are con- as ottar of roses differs from ordinary rose

water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture. They are indeed not so much poems, as collections of hints, from cach of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a canto. The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works, which, though of very different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. They are both Lyric poems in the form of Plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter, or the entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was that the tragedies of Byron were his least success ful performances. They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newberry, in which a single movable head goes around twenty different bodies; so that the same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotions.

Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavoured to effect an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek drama, on the model of which the Samson was written, sprung from the Ode. The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of its character. The genius of the greatest of the Athenian dramatists cooperated with the circumstances under which tragedy made its first appearance. Eschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days of Homer; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the following generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus, it should seem that they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Oriental style. And that style, we think, is clearly discernible in the works of Pindar and Eschylas. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, bears a considerable resemblance to some of his dramas. Considered as plays, his works are absurd: considered as choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we examine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous. But, if we forget the characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it has never been

surpassed in energy and magnificence. So phocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it is the similarity not of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes.

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly; much more highly than, in our opinion, he deserved. Indeed, the caresses, which this partiality leads him to bestow on "sad Electra's poet," sometimes reminds us of the beautiful Queen of Fairy-land kissing the long ears of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the Sam son Agonistes. Had he taken Eschylus for his model, he would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it im possible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent, he has failed, as every one must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralize each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of Milton.

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is, certainly, the noblest performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far superior to the Faithful Shepherdess, as the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aver. sion. His Muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry, and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the crucible.

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinc

tion which he neglected in the Samson. He | be compared with the Paradise Lost, is the made it what it ought to be, essentially lyrical, Divine Comedy. The subject of Milton, in and dramatic only in semblance. He has not some points, resembled that of Dante; but he attempted a fruitless struggle against a defect has treated it in a widely different manner. inherent in the nature of that species of com- We cannot, we think, better illustrate our position; and he has, therefore, succeeded, opinion respecting our own great poet, than wherever success was not impossible. The by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan speeches must be read as majestic soliloquies; literature. and he who so reads them will be enraptured The poetry of Milton differs from that of with their eloquence, their sublimity, and their Dante, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed music. The interruptions of the dialogue, from the picture-writing of Mexico. The however, impose a constraint upon the writer, images which Dante employs speak for themand break the illusion of the reader. The selves:-they stand simply for what they are. finest passages are those which are lyric in Those of Milton have a signification which is form as well as in spirit. "I should much often discernible only to the initiated. Their commend," says the excellent Sir Henry Wot- value depends less on what they directly re ton, in a letter to Milton, "the tragical part, if present, than on what they remotely suggest the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain However strange, however grotesque, may be dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, where- the appearance which Dante undertakes to deunto, I most plainly confess to you, I have seen | scribe, he never shrinks from describing it. yet nothing parallel in our language." The He gives us the shape, the colour, the sound, criticism was just. It is when Milton escapes the smell, the taste: he counts the numbers; from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is he measures the size. His similes are the ildischarged from the labour of uniting two in-lustrations of a traveller. Unlike those of other congruous styles, when he is at liberty to in-poets, and especially of Milton, they are introdulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, like his own Good Genius, bursting from the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom and beauty; he seems to cry exultingly,

"Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly, or I can run,"

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to
bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and
to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia,
which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter
through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides.
There are several of the minor poems of
Milton on which we would willingly make a
few remarks. Still more willingly would we
enter into a detailed examination of that ad-
mirable poem, the Paradise Regained, which,
strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned,
except as an instance of the blindness of that
parental affection which men of letters bear
towards the offspring of their intellects. That
Milton was mistaken in preferring this work,
excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we
must readily admit. But we are sure that the
superiority of the Paradise Lost to the Para-
dise Regained is not more decided than the
superiority of the Paradise Regained to every
poem which has since made its appearance.
But our limits prevent us from discussing the
point at length. We hasten on to that extraor-
dinary production, which the general suffrage
of critics has placed in the highest class of
human compositions.

The only poem of modern times which can

"There eternal summer dwells,

And west winds with musky wing,
About the cedared alleys fling
Nard and cassia's baliny smells:
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hue
Than her purfled scarf can show,
And drenches with Elysian dew,
(List, mortais, if your ears be true,)
Beds of hyacinths and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound."

duced in a plain, business-like manner; not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn, not for the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem, but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell, were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the mo nastery of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles!

Now, let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out, huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas; his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. "His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome; and his other limbs were in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him, 'that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach his hair." We are sensible that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Cary's translation is not at hand, and our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning.

Once more, compare the lazar-house, in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost, with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct, but solemn and tremendous imageryDespair hurrying from couch to couch, to mock

ing his dart over them, but in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick, who, between July and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs."

the wretches with his attendance: Death shak- | portion of spirit with which we are best ac quainted? 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 canvass and a box of colours are to be called a painting.

We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is incomparable; and each, we may remark, has, wisely or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and earwitness of that which he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second death; who has read the dusky characters on the portal, within which there is no hope; who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon; who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Diaghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amidas differ from those of Gulliver. The author of Amidas would have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift, the nautical observations, the affected delicacy about names, the official documents transcribed at full length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not shocked at being told that a man who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, now actually resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pigmies and giants, flying islands and philosophizing horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce, for a single moment, a deception on the imagination.

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 principle. 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 innumerable crowd of gods and goddesses. In like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet even these 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 invisibie, attracted few worshippers. A philosopher might admire so noble a conception; but the crowd turned away in disgust from words which presented no image to their minds. It was before Deity, embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, 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 Of all the poets who have introduced into Portico, and the fasces of the lictor, and the their works the agency of supernatural beings, swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante de- dust! Soon after Christianity had achieved its cidedly yields to him. And as this is a point triumph, the principle which had assisted it on which many rash and ill-considered judg-began to corrupt. It became a new paganism ments have been pronounced, we feel inclined Patron saints assumed the offices of household to dwell on it a little longer. The most fatal gods. St. George took the place of Mars. St. error which a poet can possibly commit in the management of his machinery, is that of attempting to philosophize too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these objections, though sauctioned 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

Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. The Virgin Mother and Cicilia succeeded 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 ap. parent and partial success. The men who ae