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critic fay to the following, in an heroic poem?

"To know, to know no more."

And of

"Planets planet-ftruck.”

But above all

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Deftruction with deftruction to destroy." These few inftances have escaped the penetration of Addison, who has most delightfully difplayed the fhining parts of Miltonian poetry; but I think Pope is a better and keener judge of the glaring faults; and he has, after his ufual manner, expreffed more meaning in three lines, than fome critics would do in thirty pages; and it is under the fanction of fo great a man, that I dare proceed. From him I have taken my text; to which let me advert

"And God the Father turns a School-Divine.”

Read fome of the speeches attributed to him, and you may perhaps think with me, that as Milton was a great logician, and famous difputant; he had perhaps fome celebrated profeffor or moderator of the Divinity-schools in his eye, when he composed these logical, but unpoetical speeches. I do not dislike altogether puns in their proper places; but I think

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they are every way beneath the dignity of the heroic mufe

Milton spent part of his life under the dull reign of bigot James, when quibbles were in high fashion: when the Monarch quibbled from the throne, the Prelate punned from the pulpit, and the Lawyer at the bar. That our inimitable Shakespeare fhould be infected with this vice, in fome of the moft pathetic parts of his Drama, is not very wonderful; fince he converfed very little with the antient claffics. But this circumftance is the more extraordinary, in our English Homer, (if I may fo call him) because he formed his taste upon the model of the Iliad, Æneid, and other epic poems. The Greek epic poet never punned but once in all his poems; and the chafter Roman never.

Milton (in his day, perhaps, mindful of the recent occurrence of the fifth of November) has with fome little propriety made the Devil the inventor of gunpowder; and perhaps he intended to attribute the invention of puns likewise to a diabolical origin. For after the Satanic hofts had, by a kind of gunpowder plot, in fome measure overthrown the Arch-angels,

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by their heavy cannon fhot; they afterwards peppered them with a volley of light-armed puns like fmall fhot. Respecting their nature, fince they were pratifed by Devils, I can only add, they are fo very chara teriftic, they are Devilish bad ones.-Longinus fomewhere advifes, that a critic fhould comment upon a poet, in language like his own. The application is obvious, and I fcreen myself from your refentment by a precedent from fuch respectable authority.

P. S. Milton's fame does not entirely depend upon the Paradise Loft, His Sampfon Agonistes, (a tragedy compofed after the manner of the Grecian dramatists, accompanied with chorus, &c. &c. would not have difgraced the Athenian ftage; his Mask of Comus likewife is exquifitely beautiful. Respecting his Paradife Regain'd, more hereafter; but without noticing his other poetical productions, he had the fingular merit of being one of the best prose writers of his age.

LETTER

LETTER XVI.

REMARKS

ON

4

PARADISE REGAIN'D.

SIR,

OUR correfpondence is fo far like the proceed

YOUR

ings of the High Court of Chancery, that it confifts chiefly of interrogatories. In answer to your laft quere, I do not think quite fo contemptibly of Milton's Paradise Regain'd as you are pleased to conceive. This is a great falling off indeed! The mighty genius of Milton, like the strength of his

The fubject of this little heroic poem (which is fo far perfect, at least according to Aristotle's rules, that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.) is the temptation of Chrift in the wilderness. The spice of time in which the action is included is very short indeed; the whole time that Chrift remained in the wilderness, according to the fcriptural account, is forty days: and the temptation began nearly at the end of these days. The scene is chiefly in the defert, though occafionally it changes to the top of an exceeding high mountain, and to the pinnacle or battlement of the temble in Jerusalem.

"Herculian

1

"Herculean Sampfon," though loft in the general, breaks out again at intervals. The first part of the poem is rather profaic, and in fome parts confifts chiefly of fcriptural narration: and it is here that his poetry fuffers moft from his divinity.

Modo ponit Athenis, would be no bad motto for my defultory epiftles-apropos of Athens!—It is your and my favourite fpot of the whole globe. Read how the poet describes its fituation, edifices, and other diftinguishing circumstances.

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"Where on th' Ægean fhore a city stands,

"Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts

And eloquence; native to famous wits

Or hofpitable, in her fweet recefs

City or fuburbs, ftudious walks and fhades."

You, I know, are much enamoured of the poetical philofophy of Plato-take the poet's own words

"See the olive grove of Academe,

"Plato's retirement; where the attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the fummer long.”

Ariftotle

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