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 How sweetly did they float upon the wings My mother Circe with the Sirens three, Culling their potent herbs, and baleful drugs, And chid her barking waves into attention, 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 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, 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; 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 |