westward, the Bay of Gibraltar lies beneath our feet; on the opposite side stands the town of Algeciras, and behind it rise the mountains which form a petty branch of the Granada chain, and terminate at the Straits, where they open out towards the Atlantic. Standing on the summit of this pillar of Hercules, we contemplate with pleasure the ancient boundaries of navigation, , one of which we seem to tread beneath our feet. The departed glories of the Mediterranean shores; the present ascendancy of the human mind in Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Russia; and the probable future destinies of the western Continent, rush full upon the mind, and

strongly impress us with the ever changing state of the moral world, the uncertainty of political calculations, and the frailty and vanity of all human life. If we ate upon the southern summit of the rock, these considerations are heightened by the remains of a stone tower, built not long ago by General O'Hara, and meant to overlook the high lands which intercept the distant views of the Atlantic towards Cadiz. But this tower has never been employed; at no great period after its erection it was struck by lightning, and the shattered and early ruins give a double interest to the speculations of the moralist and the philosopher."

CLASSICAL

"T

NO Mr. Addison's remarks on this subject it may not be improper to add, that though our syllables are not strictly reducible to the rules either of Greek or Latin prosody, they are nevertheless all long or short in the judgment of an accurate ear, and that without close attention to syllabic quantity in the construction of our verse, we can give it neither melody nor dignity. Milton, as Mr. Addison observes and proves, deals much in the Iambic and in the Trochee, and occasionally in several other kinds that he specifies; but perhaps the grand secret, to which his verse is principally indebted for its stately movement, is his more frequent use of the Spondee than of any other. The more long syllables there are in a verse, the more the line of it is protracted, and consequently the pace with which it moves is the more majestic. LINE 1. Qf man's first disobedience.

"Man in Paradsie received two injunctions from his Maker, and two only. To keep holy the seventh day, and to abstain from a particular fruit, which, if he eat, he would incur death as the inevitable conse

quence. These were the sole tests of his allegiance; for, created as he was, holy, and in the express image of God, he could have no need of a law written in tables for his direction.

LINE 5. And regain the blissful seat.

"The seat may be poetically said to be regained if the state be so, and that the state of man on earth shall hereafter be Paradisical, seems sufficiently clear from those scripof all things. Neither is it improtures which speak of the restitution bable, that the seat or place itself of Paradise may be eminently distinguished in the economy of that kingdom of universal righteousness, which, according to an opinion aland much countenanced by the ways prevalent among Christians, word of God, shall succeed the present dispensation.

"These are different names, either for the same mountain, or for different parts of it. LINE 8. That shepherd.

"Moses is called a shepherd either literally, because he kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, Exod. 3. 1. or figurately, as in Psalm 77. 20. where it is said that God led his chosen through the wilderness like a flock, by the hand

of Moses and Aaron.

LINE 26. And justify the ways of God

to men.

"Justify them by evincing, that when man by transgression incurred the forfeiture of his blessings, and the displeasure of God, himself only was to blame. God created him for happiness, made him completely happy, furnished him with sufficient means of security, and gave him explicit notice of his only danger. What could he more, unless he had compelled his obedience, which would have been at once to reduce him from the glorious condition of a free agent to that of an animal.

"There is a solemnity of sentiment, as well as majesty of numbers, in the exordium of this noble poem, which in the works of the ancients has no example.

"The sublimest of all subjects was reserved for Milton, and bringing to the contemplation of that subject not only a genius equal to the best of theirs, but a heart also deeply impregnated with the divine truths, which lay before him, it is no wonder that he has produced a composition, on the whole, superior to any that we have received from former ages. But he who addresses himself to the perusal of this work with a mind entirely unaccustomed to serious and spiritual contemplation, unacquainted with the word of God, or prejudiced against it, is

offend him.

"We cannot read this exordium without perceiving that the author possesses more fire than he shews. There is a suppressed force in it, the effect of judgment. His judgment controuls his genius, and his genius reminds us (to use his own beautiful similitude) of

'

A proud steed rein'd, Champing his iron curb." He addresses himself to the performance of great things, but makes no great exertion in doing it; a sure symptom of uncommon vigour.

LINE 27. Say first, for heav'n hides nothing from thy view.

"This inquiry is not only poetically beautiful, like Homer's Iliad, 2. 485, in which he addresses the muses with a similar plea,

Teis yag Deai sate, xaçiçi te, 152 TË BRITË,

or like that of Virgil, who pleads with them in the same manner, En. S. 645.

Et meministis, enim, Divæ, et memorate potestis.

But it has the additional recommendation of the most consummate propriety, and is in fact a prayer for information to the only inspirer able to grant it. Of the manner of man's creation, of his happy condition while innocent, and of the occasion and circumstances of his fall, we could have known nothing but from

the

"Dr. Pearce needed not perhaps to have gone so far as he did in his note on this line for a key to the true meaning of it. A single word in the next verse but one seems sufficiently to explain it the word ambitious. It imports plainly an opposition not of mere enmity, but of enmity that aspired to superiority over the per sou opposed. Satan's aim, therefore, was, in Milton's view of it, to supplant the Most High, and to usurp the supremacy of heaven; and by peers are intended, not only those who aided him in his purpose, but all the angels, as well the faithful as the rebellious.

"This line affording the first instance that occurs in the poem of a y cut from the end of a word that precedes a vowel, it affords also the fittest opportunity to observe, that though elisions of this kind, and many others frequent in Milton's practice, have fallen into disuse, their discontinuance is no advantage. In the ear of a person accustomed to meet them in the Greek and Latin classics, where they abound, they have often an agreeable, and some times a very fine effect. But it is admitted, that discretion and a good taste are requisite to the proper use of them, and that too frequently employed, or unskilfully, they may prove indeed deformities.

LINE 50. Nine times the space, that meas

sures day and night.

enumerating, as he would never cease, the horrors of the scene; deepening them still more and more as he goes, till at last he closes all with that circumstance of most emphatic misery, the immeasurable distance, to which these apostate spirits had fallen from God and the light of heaven. There is a doleful music in the whole passage that fitly accompanies such a subject. LINE 57. Oh how unlike the place, from whence they fell.

"Of all the articles of which the dreadful scenery of Milton's hell consists, Scripture furnished him only with the lake of fire and brimstone. Yet, thus slenderly assisted, what a world of woe has he constructed by the force of an imagination proved in this single instance the most creative, that ever poet owned! LINE 114.

-that were low indeed, That were an ignominy, &c. "To invent speeches for these infernals so well adapted to their character, speeches burning with rage against God, and with disdain and contempt of his power, and to avoid in them all the extreme dan

ger of revolting and shocking the reader past all sufferance, was indeed, as Horace says,-Ire per extentum funem, and evidences the most exquisite address in the author.

LINE 143. But what if He, our conquʼror.

"There is a fine discrimination observable in the respective speeches of Satan and Beelzebub. In those of the former we find that unbroken hardiness of spirit which suits well the character of the arch-fiend, and seducer of all the others; while Beelzebub so speaks as to seem somewhat less obdurate, less a devil than his leader; he is dejected, he desponds, he forecasts the worst,

M

and

LINE 177. To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.

"In this line we seem to hear a thunder suited both to the scene and the occasion, incomparably more awful than any ever heard on earth, and the thunder wing'd with light'ning is highly poetical. It may be observed here, that the thunder of Milton is not hurled from the hand like Homer's, but discharged like an arrow. Thus in Book 6, line 712, the Father ordering forth the Son for the destruction of the rebel angels, says→→→

-bring forth all my warMy bow, and thunder. As if, jealous for the honour of the true God, the poet disdained to arm him like the god of the heathen. So in Psalm 7. v. 12, it is said If he turn not he will wet his sword; he hath bent his bow and made it ready-he ordaineth his against the persecutors.

arrows

"The substance of this ingenious vindication of Milton against the charge of Bentley is taken from a note of Richardson, though by some inadvertence Dr. Newton, who borrows it, has omitted to make the acknowledgment.

LINE 198. With head uplift.

"Milton frequently abridges the participle perfect of its last syllable, by this, and a multitude of such artifices, giving his language an air of novelty.

LINE 202. Created hugest, that swim the ocean stream.

"The author, speaking of a vast creature, speaks in numbers suited to the subject, and gives his line a singular and strange movement, by inserting the word hugest where it may have the clumsiest effect. He

verse,

"What man of true taste would exchange such cumbersome verse, on such an occasion, for the most musical that ever was written. LINE 205. Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam.

"This simile is most happily introduced, and finely chosen by the poet for the relief of his reader, who feels his imagination refreshed by such a sudden removal from scenes of fire to the shores of the ocean. LINE 207. Under the lee.

"Milton, as Dr. Newton here insinuates, has indeed been charged with an affectation of technical terms; but his use of the word lee in this place seems no proof of it. What other word could be have found in our language, by which to express the situation intended; and was not such a word (of maritime use indeed, but almost universally understood in our country) to be preferred to a tedious circumlocution? LINE 215. Heap on himself damnation.

"Here Milton seems to have had in view Romans 2. v. 5.-But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

LINE 241. Not by the suff'rance of supernal power. "To which cause alone the poet himself