told of his harshness to his daughters, and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in oppofition to other accounts, represented him as delicate, though temperate, in his diet.

In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had fo little acquaintance with diverfion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonfon, a man who is to be praised as often as he is named. Of this fum one hundred pounds was placed in the stocks, after fome debate between her and her husband in whofe name it fhould be entered, and the rest augmented their little stock, with which they removed to Iflington. This was the greatest benefaction that Paradife Loft ever procured the author's defcendents; and to this he who has now attempted to relate his Life, had the honour of contributing a Pro logue.

IN the examination of Milton's poetical works, I fhall pay fo much regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable: what he has once written he refolves to preserve, and gives to the publick an unfinished poem, which he broke off because he was nothing fatisfied with what he had done, fuppofing his readers lefs nice

2.

than

than himself. These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English. Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critic; but I have heard them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquifite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention, or vigour of fentiment. They are not all of equal value; the elegies excel the odes; and fome of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason might have been spared.

The English poems, though they make no promifes of Paradife Loft, have this evidence of genius, that they have a caft original and unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence if they differ from the verses of others, they differ for the worfe; for they are too often diftinguished by repulfive harshness ; the combinations of words are new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets feem to be laboriously fought, and violently applied.

That in the early part of his life he wrote with much care appears from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many of his fmaller works are found as they were first written, with the fubfequent corrections. Such reliques fhew how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with.cafe, we may learn first to do with diligence.

Those who admire the beauties of this great poet, fometimes force their own judgement into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselves to think that admira

ble

All that short

ble which is only fingular. compofitions can commonly attain is neatness and elegance. Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of fuavity and foftnefs; he was a Lion that had no skill in dandling the Kid.

One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleafing. What beauty there is, we must therefore feek in the fentiments and images.

It is not to be confidered as the effufion of real paffion; for paffion runs not after remote allufions and obfcure opinions. Paffion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethufe and Mincius, nor tells of rough fatyrs and fauns with cloven beel. Where there is leifure for fiction there is little grief.

In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, eafy, vulgar, and therefore difgufting: whatever images it can fupply, are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces diffatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey that they studied together, it is easy to fuppofe how much he must mifs the companion of his labours, and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be excited by these lines?

We drove a field, and both together heard
What time the grey fly winds her fultry

horn,

Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of

We

We know that they never drove a field, and that they had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is fo uncertain and remote, that it is never fought, because it cannot be known when it is found.

Among the flocks, and copfes, and flowers, appear the heathen deities; Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Æolus, with a long train of mythological imagery, fuch as a College easily fupplies. Nothing can lefs difplay knowledge, or less exercise invention, than to tell how a fhepherd has loft his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his kill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will excite no fympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.

This poem has yet a groffer fault. With thefe trifling fictions are mingled the most awful and facred truths, fuch as ought never to be polluted with fuch irreverend combinations. The fhepherd likewife is now a feeder of fheep, and afterwards an ecclefiaftical paftor, a fuperintendent of a Chriftian flock. Such equivocations are always unskilful, but here they are indecent, and at least approach to impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been confcious.

Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known its author.

Of

Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penferofo, I believe opinion is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to fhew how objects derive their colours from the mind, by reprefenting the operation of the fame things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or upon the fame man as he is differently difpofed; but rather how, among the fucceffive variety of appearances, every difpofition of mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified.

The chearful man hears the lark in the morning; the penfive man hears the nightingale in the evening. The chearful man fees the cock strut, and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks not unseen to obferve the glory of the rifing fun, or liften to the finging milk-maid, and view the labours of the plowman and the mower; then cafts his eyes about him over fcenes of fmiling. plenty, and looks up to the distant tower, the refidence of fome fair inhabitant; thus he pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights himself at night with the fanciful narratives of fuperftitious igno

rance.

The penfive man, at one time, walks unseen to mufe at midnight; and at another hears the fullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he fits in a room lighted only by glowing embers; or by a lonely lamp outwatches 'the North Star, to difcover the habitation of separate fouls, and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or pathetick scenes of tragick and epic poetry.

When