The noble and reverential criticism of Campbell is at once so complete and so condensed, that it will not, we think, be inappropriate to quote some passages of it in this place; nothing can be better or more discriminating:

"Milton has certainly triumphed over one difficulty of his subject, the paucity and the loneliness of its human agents; for no one in contemplating the garden of Eden would wish to exchange it for a more populous world. His earthly pair could only be represented, during their innocence, as beings of simple enjoyment and negative virtue, with no other passions than the fear of Heaven and the love of each other. Yet from these materials what a picture has he drawn of their homage to the Deity, their mutual affection, and the horrors of their alienation! **** "In the angelic warfare of the poem, Milton has done whatever human genius could accomplish. * * * *The warlike part of Paradise Lost' was inseparable from its subject. I feel too strong a reverence for Milton to suggest even the possibility that he could have improved his poem by having thrown his angelic warfare into more remote perspective; but it seems to me to be most sublime when it is least distinctly brought home to the imagination. What an awful effect has the dim and undefined conception of the conflict which we gather from the opening of the First Book! There the ministers of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled—the thunders had ceased

To bellow through the vast and boundless deep ;' and our terrific conception of the past is deepened by its indis

tinctness.

"The array of the fallen angels in hell, the unfurling of the standard of Satan, and the march of his troops; all this human pomp and circumstance of war-all this is magic and overwhelming illusion. The imagination is taken by surprise. But the noblest efforts of language are tried with very unequal effect to interest us in the immediate and close view of the battle itself in the Sixth Book; and the martial demons, who charmed us in the shades of hell, lose some portion of their sublimity when their artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven."

Another circumstance of admirable originality and effect in the supernatural delineations of the 'Paradise Lost' is the singular felicity with which Milton has given variety and interest to the personages of his fallen angels, by considering them as the demons afterwards destined to mislead mankind under the guise of the deities of classical mythology. The idea of the ancient oracles being the inspiration of infernal spirits, permitted for a time to delude the world, is not, it is true, originally Milton's; he found it pervading all the chivalrous and monkish legends of the Middle

Ages; and though many poets have adopted a notion so admirably calculated to communicate poetical effect, and so well uniting Paganism with Christianity, none of them-not even Tasso, or our own Spenser-have made such noble or such frequent use of this powerful means of exciting interest in a Christian work.

6

In the companion work to his immortal epic, in the 'Paradise Regained' the Odyssey' to our Christian Iliad' the first thing that strikes the reader is the unfortunate selection of the subject, and the general inferiority and weaker interest which mark the execution. Neither Milton, nor any human being who ever lived, could have done justice to the only subject worthy of forming a pendant, or complement, to the tale

"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree."

The subject to which we allude is, of course, the Crucifixion of our Saviour-the only event recorded in past, or possible in future times, of an interest sufficiently powerful, universal, and external, to be placed in comparison with the Fall of Man. Much as we may regret that Milton's peculiar and not very well-understood opinions respecting the divine nature of Christ, and the completeness of the sacrifice of the Redemption, induced him to select for the principal action of the 'Paradise Regained,' not the awful consummation of that sacrifice on the Mount of Calvary, but rather a comparatively unimportant incident in the earthly career of the Redeemer- the Temptation in the desert-it may be doubted whether even Milton's sublime genius could have worthily represented to mortal eyes that terrible crisis in the destiny of man. Sublime as were the flights of that eagle genius—and what intellect ever soared

"With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft,"

into the loftiest empyrean of poetry, the unshadowed glory of heaven's eternal atmosphere, the flower-breathing air of primeval Eden, or the "thick darkness" of hell?-it must have flaggedeven that mighty and tireless pinion-in the gloom and thundercloud that veiled the more than human agonies of the Cross!

Of some of the minor works of Milton we have already said a few words. On those which we have left unnoticed it will hardly be necessary to dilate much more. The merit of these productions consists so much more peculiarly in the manner than in the matter, and they derive so much of their charm from their tone and mode of treatment, that a mere analysis would utterly fail in giving any idea of their excellences; while the reader may obtain, from a single perusal of any of them, a much clearer notion of their style than from the most laboured and critical panegyric. They all bear the stamp of the Miltonic mind

fulness, conciseness, a pure and Scriptural severity and dignity, and the most consummate grace and variety of versification.

In 'Samson Agonistes,' Milton has given us in English a perfect Sophoclean tragedy, in which every minutest peculiarity of the Attic scene is so faithfully and exactly reproduced, that a reader unacquainted with the Greek language will form a much more just and correct notion of classical tragedy from reading the 'Samson,' than from studying even the finest and most accurate translations of the great dramas of the Athenian theatre. This may appear extravagant, nay, even paradoxical; but we speak advisedly. The Greek tragedies were grand historical compositions, founded upon the traditional or mythologic legends of the people for whom they were written, and whose religious and patriotic feelings were in the highest degree appealed to by what they considered as a sacred and affecting representation; exactly as the rude audience of the Middle Ages had their sensibilities powerfully excited by the mysteries. The Greek dramas were, in fact, the mysteries and miracle-plays of the Pagan world, and differed from those of the thirteenth century only in their greater polish and refinement as compositions. Now, the legends of classical mythology necessarily affect no less than the stories of the Scripture history; and consequently the 'Samson' (being in all points of structure and arrangement an exact fac-simile of a Greek tragedy) produces upon us, Christians, an effect infinitely more analogous to that made upon an Athenian by a tragedy of Sophocles than could be produced by our reading the best mere translation of a tragedy of Sophocles that the skill of man ever executed.

In Comus' Milton has given us the most perfect and exquisite specimen of a masque, or rather he has given us a kind of ennobled and glorified masque. The refinement, the elegance, the courtly grace and chivalry-all is there; but there is something in 'Comus' better, loftier, and grander than all this-something which no other masques, with all their refined, and scholarlike, and airy elegance, have ever approached—a high and philosophic vein of morality:

"Divine philosophy,

Not harsh and rugged, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute;"

deep and grand thoughts fetched from the exhaustless fountains of the great minds of old-his beloved Plato and the Stagyritethoughts fresh with the immortality of their birthplace.

CHAPTER X.

BUTLER AND DRYDEN.

The Commonwealth and the Restoration-Milton and Butler-Subject and Nature of Hudibras-Hudibras and Don Quixote-State of Society at the Restoration-Butler's Life-John Dryden-French Taste of the Court-Comedies and Rhymed Tragedies-Life and Works of Dryden-Dramas-Annus Mirabilis-Absalom and Achitophel-Religio Laici-Hind and Panther-Dryden's later Works-Translation of Virgil-Odes-Fables-Prefaces and Dedications -Juvenal-Mac Flecknoe.

THE great productions of literature may be looked at under two different aspects or relations. Every illustrious name in letters may be considered as typifying and expressing some great and strongly marked epoch in the history of man in general, and also as the offspring and embodiment of some particular era, or some peculiar state of feeling existing in the nation of which that name is an ornament: that is to say, criticism may be general or particular, cosmopolite or national. Thus Milton, viewed as a colossal intellect, without any reference to his particular century or country, may be looked upon as the type and offspring of the Reformation and of the republican spirit combined; regarded with reference to England and the seventeenth century, he will be found to embody the Commonwealth-that stirring and extraordinary period of British history, when the united influences of those two mighty phenomena were acting on a stage sufficiently limited, and during a period sufficiently short, to enable us to form a clear and well-defined idea of their character. The period at which Milton wrote was, as we have seen, a period of vehement struggle between powerful and opposite principles: and if in the illustrious author of 'Paradise Lost' we find the eloquent assertor of the liberty of the press, and the uncompromising advocate for democratic forms of government, we cannot be surprised if we behold, in the ranks of the royalist party, a mighty champion of monarchy, and an irresistible satirist of the follies and vices of the republicans. This champion, this satirist, is Samuel Butler, perhaps the greatest master who ever lived of the comic or burlesque species of satiric writing-a strange and singular genius, whose powers of ridicule were as incomparable as the story of his life is melancholy. In point of learning, vast, multifarious, and exact, he was no unworthy rival

of Milton in originality of conception and brilliancy of form his work is unequalled; indeed Hudibras' is one of those productions which may be said to stand alone in literature. It is not to be denied that the reputation obtained out of England by this extraordinary work, is by no means commensurate with its real merit as an effort of genius and originality, or with the vast store of wisdom and of wit contained in its pages; nor is it even probable that this indifference to its merits will ever at any future period be less than it has hitherto been, or than it is at present. It arises from a very natural cause. The subject of Butler's satire was too local and temporary to command that degree of attention in other countries, without which the highest powers of humour and imagination will have been exerted in vain. It is undoubtedly true that the vices, the crimes, the follies so pitilessly ridiculed in Hudibras' are common to mankind in almost every state of civilised society; but we must no less remember that some of the more prominent of them never burst forth into so full a bloom of absurdity and extravagance as they did at the memorable epoch of English history which he has caricatured. The Commonwealth and the Protectorate form a revolutionary epoch, and, like all epochs of revolution, were fertile in strong contrasts of political and social physiognomy. Such periods, acting, as they so powerfully do, upon the manners of a people, are admirably suited for the purposes of the satiric poet. At such times the elements of faction, the extravagances of opinion, of sentiment, of manners, of costume, are brought prominently out upon the surface of society, and present themselves, so to say, in a condensed and tangible form, which the satirist has only to copy to produce a vivid and striking picture-fortunate, too, if a future age, free from these violent agitations and strong contrasts, does not charge him with exaggeration, and mistake the grotesque but faithful delineations of his pencil for the sportiveness of caricature. Curious as they are to the moral speculator, and full of matter to the studious searcher into the history of party, the absurdities of that legion of fanatical sects by whom the destinies of England were then swayed are neither sufficiently attractive or picturesque in themselves, nor sufficiently well known to the general European reader, for Butler's admirable pictures of them to be generally studied or understood out of England; for with political satire, no less than political caricature, much of the point of the jest is lost to those who are not able to judge of the likeness. It may be objected that, to the great body of English readers, the very considerable time that has elapsed since the occurrences took place which Butler has ridiculed, and the total disappearance of the things and the men represented in his poem, must have rendered them as strange and almost as unintelligible