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    "It is an easy arKl a pleasant ta , sk to take notice of the many beauties of Milton , which I call universal . But 'tis a ticklish undertaking to point out what v / culd be reputed a fauJt in any other countrv .

    " MMilton breaks the thread of his narration in two manners . The first consists of two or three kinds of prologues , which he premises at the beginning of some books . In one place he expatiates upon his own blindness ; in another he compares his subject ,

    and prefers it to that of the Iliad , and to the common topics of war , which were thought , before him , the only subject fit for epic poetry j and he adds , that he hopes to soar as high as all his predecessors , unless the cold

    climate of England damps his wings . His other way of interrupting his narration , is by some observations which he intersperses now and then , upon some great incident , or some interesting circumstance . Of that kind is his digression on love in the fourth Book .

    Whatever hypocrites austerely talk Defaming as impure , what God declares Pure , and commands to some , leaves free [ to all , Our Maker bids increase : who bids

    ab-[stain But our destroyer , foe to God and men ? Hail wedded love , &c . " As to the first of these two heads , I cannot but own that an author is generally guilty of an unpardonable self-love when he lays aside his

    subject to descant on his own person : but that human frailty is to be forgiven in Milton ; nay , I am pleased with it . He gratifies the curiosity it raises in me about his person . When I admire the author I desire to know something

    of the man ; and he whom all readers would be glad to know , is allowed to speak of himself . But this , however , is a very dangerous example for a genius of an inferior order and is only to be justified by success .

    " As to the second point I am so far from looking on that liberty as a fault , that I think it to be a great beauty . For if morality is the aim of poetry , I do not apprehend why the poet should be forbidden to intersperse

    his descriptions with moral sentences and useful reflections , provided he scatters them , with a sparing hand , and in proper places , either when he wants personages to utter those thoughts , or when their character

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    does not permit them to speak in the behalf of virtue . " I will not dwell upon some small errors of Milton , which are obvious to every reader ; 1 mean some few

    contradictions and those frequent giances at the Heathen Mythology which fault , by the b ye * is so much the more inexcusable in him by his having premised in his first book that those divinities were but devils

    worshipped under different names , which ought to have been a sufficient caution to him not to speak of the rape of Proserpine , of the wedding of Juno and Jupiter , &c . as matters of

    fact . I lay aside likewise his preposterous and awkward jests , his puns , his too familiar expressions , so incon « sistent with the elevation of his genius , and of his subject .

    " To come to more essential points and more liable to be debated , I dare affirm , that the contrivance o £ the Pandemonium would have been entirely disapproved of by criticks like Boileau , Racine , &c . That seat built

    for the parliament of the devils seems very preposterous : since Satan hath summoned them altogether and harrangued them just before in an ample field . The council was necessary , but where it Was to be held 'twas

    very indifferent . The poet seems to delight in building his Pandemonium in Doric order , with friezse and cornice , and a roof of gold . Such a contrivance favours more of the wild fancy of our Father le Moine than of the serious spirit of Milton . But when afterwards the devils turn dwarfs to

    fill their places in the house , as if it was impracticable to build a room large enough to contain them in their natural size ; it is an idle story which would match the most extravagant tales . And to crown all , Satan , and the chief lords preserving their own monstrous forms while the rabble of

    the devils shrink into pigniies heightens the ridicule of the whole contrivance to an unexpressible degree . Methinks the true criterion for discerning what is really ridiculous in an

    epick poem is to examine if the same thing would not fit exactly the mock * heroick . Then I dare say that nothing is so adapted to that ludicrous way of writing as the metamorphoses of the devils into dwarfs . " The fiction of death and sin , seems to have in it some gieat beauties and

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    98 Book-Worm . No . XVIII .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1815, page 98, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1757/page/34/