attend the accumulation of the gouty matter, previous to a regular fit, are generally acknowledged. In those habits, in which this disorder is regular, the gouty matter usually accumulates during the summer and autumnal months: the fit generally commences in the winter, and abates as the spring advances. During the continuance of the fit, and for some time after it abates, the spirits of the arthritic are, for the most part, light and cheerful. If this solution be admitted, it will reconcile what Milton told Philips with what he says in his Elegies, which were probably written before he was ever subject to any periodical attacks of the malady in question, where he declares that with the advance of spring he feels the increase of his poetical force-Redeunt in carmina vires; though, probably, he had little meaning when he made use of the expreffion, as it contains nothing more than one of those common-place ideas which one poet adopts from another without thought or inquiry.

The flow sale and tardy reputation of the Paradise Loft have always been mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary fame. Dr. Johnson proves that the cafe has not been truly stated, and that lamentation and wonder have been lavished on an evil that was never felt.

• That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradise Lost received no public acclamations is readily confessed. Wit and literature were on the side of the Court: and who that folicited favour or the fashion would venture to praise the defender of the regicides ? All that he himself could think his due, from evil tongues in evil days, was that reverential filence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be inferred that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired.

• The fale, if it be considered, will justify the Public. Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions. The fale of books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house supplied with a closet of books. Those indeed, who professed learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that middle race of students who read for pleafure or accomplishment, and who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied, from 1623 to 1664, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of Shakespeare, which probably did not together make one thousand copies.

• The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in oppofition to so much recent enmity, and to a style of verfification new to all and disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius. The demand did not immediately encrease; for many more readers than were supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand were sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance: its admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; for the means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its ranks.

• But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the Revolution put an end to the fecrecy of love, and Paradise Lost broke into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.'

Our Author closes his vindication of the public taste with a conjecture that does great credit to his own :

• Fancy, fays he, can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the filent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of fubterraneous current through fear and filence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady confciousness, and waiting, without impatience, the viciffitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation.'

To point out the beauty of the above-quoted passage is certainly needless; an image more exquifitely pleasing can hardly be presented to the mind!

What is faid of Milton's religion is, no doubt, justly founded, and is applicable to many who have not his piety:

He

• He has not associated himself with any denomination of Protestants; we know rather what he was not, than what he was. was not of the church of Rome; he was not of the church of England.

• To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are diftant, and which is animated only by Faith and Hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the falutary infuence of example. Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occafional agency of Providence, yet grew old without any visible worship. In the distribution of his hours, there was no hour of prayer, either folitary, or with his household; omitting public prayers, he omitted all.

• Of this omiflion the reason has been fought, upon a supposition which ought never to be made, that men live with their own appro-. bation, and justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought fuperfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted his reformation.'

Though

Though it be not improbable that Milton's republicanism might be, in fome degree, founded' in petulance, impatient of controul, and pride disdainful of fuperiority, yet he surely was able to give fome better reason for adopting republican principles than that a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would jet up an ordinary commonwealth. Though it be shallow policy, as Dr. Johnfon obferves, ' to suppose money the chief good, and though the fupport and expence of a Court be, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffic, by which money is circulated, without any national impoverishment, yet it is equally true that the extravagance of a Court, by taking from the many to lavish on the few, may be guilty of great national injury.

Through the whole of his narrative Dr. Johnson seems to have no great partiality for Milton as a man: as a poet, however, he is willing to allow him every merit he is entitled to. In the examination of his poetical works he begins with his juvenile productions. The first that offer themselves to him are his Latin pieces. These, says he, are lufcioufly 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.' This character, we apprehend, will generally fuit our modern Latin poetry; but we may particuJarly except ept that noble ode of Mr. Gray's, written at the Grande Chartreufe, and some few others; there are not many of the poemata Anglorum that contain 'much power of invention or vigour of fentiment.

• The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradise Loft, have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence: if they differ from the verses of others, they differ for the worse, 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 smaller works are found as they were first written, with the fubfequent corrections. Such reliques shew how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with ease, we may learn first to do with diligence.

• Those who admire the beauties of this great poet, sometimes force their own judgment into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselves to think that admirable which is only fingular. All that short compositions 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 foftness; he was a Lion that had no skill in dandling the Kid?'

On

On Lycidas his censures are severe, and well enforced: he is of opinion no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known its author. L'Allegro and Il Penserofo are of different estimation. These he acknowledges to be two noble efforts of the imagination. But the greatest of his juvenile performances is the Mask of Comus; ' in which, says the Critic, may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system 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 specimen of his language; it exhibits likewise his power of description, and his vigour of fentiment, employed in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truly poetical is rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive 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.' This deficiency is unfolded in a masterly manner.

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

Of the inconveniency of the fabric of a fonnet many of our writers feem to have been aware, having deviated, and, as we think, judicioufly, from the strict Italian model, by giving to their rhymes a greater liberty of change. But even of the legitimate fonnet we are not without many beautiful examples: no one will doubt this affertion who has read Mr. Warton's.

We are far from thinking the sonnet, especially when emancipated from the unnecessary restraint under which it has hitherto laboured, to be ill adapted to the English language. By uniting the elegance and dignity of the ode with the fimplicity and conciseness of the ancient epigram, it seems to be a species of compofition well fuited to convey effufions of tenderness and affection; such incidental effusions, we mean, as flow not from a confluence of various ideas, but such rather as proceed from a single sentiment.

The Paradife Loft comes next to be examined: ' A Poem, which, confidered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the fecond among the productions productions of the human mind.' Dr. Johnson's criticism on this immortal work extends through fifty pages. To give any adequate idea of it would much exceed our present limits. We cannot, however, resist the temptation of presenting our Readers with one extract from it:

• The thoughts which are occafionally called forth in the progress, are such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by inceffant study and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind might be faid to fublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its groffer parts.

' He had confidered creation in its whole extent, and his descriptions are therefore learned. He had accustomed his imagination to unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extenfive. The characteristic quality of his poem is fublimity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occafionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantic loftiness*. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to attonith.

• He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that Nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful: he therefore chose a subject on which too much could not be faid, on which he might tire his fancy without the cenfure of extravagance.

• The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are, requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of poflibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnith sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven.

• But he could not be always in other worlds: he must sometimes revisit earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise wonder by the fublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.'

The above extract is given, not as having peculiar excellence, but merely as, from its detached nature, it best admitted of selection.

Of this truly excellent analysis and criticism, it is scarcely hyperbolical to affirm that it is executed with all the skill and penetration of Aristotle, and animated and embellished with all the fire of Longinus. It is every way worthy of its fubject : the Paradise Lost is a poem which the mind of Milton only could have produced; the criticisin before us is such as, perhaps, the pen of Johnson only could have written.

[Dr. Johnson's Prefaces will be concluded in our next.]

• Algarotti terms it gigantesca Sublimità Miltoniana.

ART,