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all Milton's works. His descriptions of nature show a free and bold hand. He has no need of the minute, graphic skill, which we prize in Cowper or Crabbe. With a few strong or delicate touches, he impresses, as it were, his own mind on the scenes which he would describe, and kindles the imagination of the gifted reader to clothe them with the same radiant hues under which they appeared to his own.

This attribute of power is universally felt to characterize Milton. His sublimity is in every man's mouth. Is it felt that his poetry breathes a sensibility and tenderness hardly surpassed by its sublimity? We apprehend that the grandeur of Milton's mind has thrown some shade over his milder beauties; and this it has done, not only by being more striking and imposing, but by the tendency of vast mental energy to give a certain calmness to the expression of tenderness and deep feeling. A great mind is the master of its own enthusiasm, and does

not often break out into those tumults, which pass with many for the signs of profound emotion. Its sensibility, though more intense and enduring, is more selfpossessed, and less perturbed than that of other men, and is therefore less observed and felt, except by those who understand, through their own consciousness, the workings and utterance of genuine feeling. We might quote pages in illustration of the qualities here ascribed to Milton. Turn to Comus, one of his earliest productions. What sensibility breathes in the descriptions of the benighted Lady's singing, by Comus and the Spirit!

COMUS.

Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breath such divine enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence:

How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smil'd! I have oft heard

My mother Circe with the Sirens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,

Culling their potent herbs, and baleful drugs,
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul
And lap it in Elysium; Scylla wept,

And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause:
Yet they in pleasing slumber lulled the sense,
And in sweet madness robbed it of itself;
But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,

I never heard till now.'

Lines 244-264.

SPIRIT.

'At last a soft and solemn breathing sound Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,

And stole upon the air, that even Silence
Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
Deny her nature, and be never more,

Still to be so displaced. I was all ear,

And took in strains that might create a soul

Under the ribs of death.'

Lines 555-563.

In illustration of Milton's tenderness, we open almost at a venture.

will

'Now Morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl, When Adam waked, so customed, for his sleep Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred, And temperate vapours bland, which th' only sound

Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan,
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough; so much the more
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest: He on his side
Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamoured, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice
Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus. Awake,
My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found,
Heav'n's last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake! the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed,
How nature paints her colors, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.'

Par. Lost, b. v. lines 1-25.

'So cheered he his fair spouse, and she was

cheered,

But silently a gentle tear let fall

From either eye, and wiped them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell
Kissed as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that feared to have offended.'
Par. Lost, b.v. lines 129-135.

From this very imperfect view of the qualities of Milton's poetry, we hasten to his great work, Paradise Lost, perhaps the noblest monument of human genius. The two first books, by universal consent, stand preeminent in sublimity. Hell and hell's king have a terrible harmony, and dilate into new grandeur and awfulness, the longer we contemplate them. From one element, solid and liquid fire,' the poet has framed a world of horror and suffering, such as imagination had never traversed. But fiercer flames than those which encompass Satan, burn in his own soul. Revenge, exasperated pride, consuming wrath, ambition, though fallen, yet unconquered by the thunders of the

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