When the morning comes, a morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark trackless woods, falls afleep by fome murmuring water, and with melancholy enthusiasm expects fome dream of prognoftication, or fome mufick played by aerial performers.

Both Mirth and Melancholy are folitary, filent inhabitants of the breast that neither receive nor tranfmit communication; no mention is therefore made of a philofophical friend, or a pleasant companion. Seriousness does not arife from any participation of calamity, nor gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle.

The man of chearfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what towered cities will afford, and mingles with fcenes of fplendor, gay affemblies, and nuptial feftivities; but he mingles a mere fpectator, as when the learned comedies of Jonfon, or the wild dramas of Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.

The penfive man never lofes himself in crowds, but walks the cloifter, or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet forfaken the Church.

Both his characters delight in mufick; but he feems to think that chearful notes would have obtained from Pluto a compleat difmiffion of Eurydice, of whom folemn founds only procured a conditional release.

For the old age of Chearfulness he makes no provifion; but Melancholy he conducts with great dignity to the clofe of life.

Through these two poems the images are properly felected, and nicely diftinguished; but

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the colours of the diction feem not fufficiently difcriminated. His Chearfulness is without levity, and his Pensiveness without asperity. I know not whether the characters are kept fufficiently apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid that I always meet fome melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble efforts of imagination.

The greatest of his juvenile performances is the Mask of Comus; in which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradife Loft. Milton appears to have formed very early that fyftem of diction and mode of verse, which his maturer judgment approved, and from which he never endeavoured nor defired to deviate.

Nor does Comus afford only a fpecimen of his language; it exhibits likewise his power of description, and his vigour of fentiment, employed in the praife and defence of virtue. A work more truely poetical is rarely found; allufions, images, and defcriptive epithets, embellish almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines, therefore, it may be confidered as worthy of all the admiration with which the votaries have received it.

As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A Mafque, in those parts where fupernatural intervention is admitted, muft indeed be given up to all the freaks of imagination; but, fo far as the action is merely human, it ought to be reasonable, which can hardly be faid of the conduct of the two brothers; who, when their fifter finks with fatigue in a pathlefs wilderness, wander both away together in fearch of berries too far to

find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to all the fadness and danger of folitude. This however is a defect over-balanced by its convenience.

What deferves more reprehenfion is, that the prologue spoken in the wild wood by the attendant Spirit is addreffed to the audience; a mode of communication fo contrary to the nature of dramatick reprefentation, that no precedents can support it.

The difcourfe of the Spirit is too long; an objection that may be made to almost all the following speeches: they have not the fpriteliness of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather declamations deliberately compofed, and formally repeated, on a moral queftion. The auditor therefore liftens as to a lecture, without paffion, without anxiety.

The fong of Comus has airinefs and jollity; but, what may recommend Milton's morals as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are fo general, that they excite no diftinct images of corrupt enjoyment, and take no dangerous hold on the fancy.

The following foliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant, but tedious. The fong muft owe much to the voice, if it ever ean delight. At laft the brothers enter, with too much tranquility; and when they have feared left their fifter fhould be in danger, and hoped that the is not in danger, the Elder makes a fpeech in praife of chastity, and the Younger finds how fine it is to be a philofopher.

Then descends the Spirit in form of a fhepherd; and the brother, inftead of being in

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hafte to ask his help, praifes his finging, and enquires his bufinefs in that place. It is remarkable, that at this interview the brother is taken with a fhort fit of rhyming. The Spirit relates that the Lady is in the power of Comus; the brother moralifes again; and the Spirit makes a long narration, of no use because it is falfe, and therefore unsuitable to a good Being.

In all these parts the language is poetical, and the refentments are generous; but there is fomething wanting to allure attention.

The difpute between the Lady and Comus is the most animated and affecting scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker reciprocation of objections and replies to invite attention, and detain it.

The fongs are vigorous, and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.

Throughout the whole, the figures are too bold, and the language too luxuriant for dialogue. It is a drama in the epic stile, inelegantly fplendid, and tedioully inftructive.

The Sonnets were written in different parts of Milton's life, upon different occafions. They deserve not any particular criticism; for of the best it can only be faid, that they are not bad; and perhaps only the eighth and the twenty first are truly entitled to this flender commendation. The fabrick of a fonnet, however adapted to the Italian language, has never fucceeded in ours, which, having greater variety of termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed.

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Those little pieces may be dispatched without much anxiety; a greater work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradife Loft; a poem, which, confidered with refpect to defign, may claim the first place, and with refpect to performance the fecond among the productions of the human mind.

By the general confent of criticks, the firft praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an affemblage of all the powers which are fingly fufficient for other compofitions. Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleafing precepts, and therefore relates fome great event in the most affecting manner. History muft fupply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, animate by dramatick energy, and diverfify by retrofpection and anticipation; morality muft teach him the exact bounds, and different fhades, of vice and virtue: from policy, and the practice of life, he has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the paffions, either fingle our combined; and phyfiology muft fupply him with illuftrations and images. To put these materials to poetical ufe, is required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extenfion of his language, diftinguished all the delicacies of phrafe, and all the colours of words, and learned to adjuft their different founds to all the varieties of metrical modulation.

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