ascribes a short part to him in his Iliad; but we must consider, that, though we now regard such a person as entirely fhadowy and unsubstantial, the Heathens made ftatues of him, placed him in their temples, and looked upon him as a real deity. When Homer makes use of other fuch allegorical perfons, it is only in short expreffions, which convey an ordinary thought to the mind in the most pleasing manner, and may rather be looked upon as poetical phrases, than allegorical defcriptions. Instead of telling us that men naturally fly when they are terrified, he introduces the perfons of Flight and Fear, who, he tells us, are infeparable companions. Inftead of faying that the time was come when Apollo ought to have received his recompence, he tells us, that the Hours brought him his reward. Instead of defcribing the effects which Minerva's Ægis produced in battle, he tells us that the brims of it were encompaffed by Terrour, Rout, Difcord, Fury, Purfuit, Maffacre, and Death. In the fame figure of fpeaking, he represents Victory as following Diomedes; Difcord as the mother of funerals and mourning; Venus as dreffed by the Graces; Bellona as wearing terrour and consternation like a garment. I might give several other instances out of Homer, as well as a great many out of Virgil. Milton has likewise very often made use of the fame way of speaking, as where he tells us, that Victory fat on the right hand of the Meffiah, when he marched forth against the rebel Angels; that, at the rising of the fun, the Hours unbarred the gates of light; that Discord was the daughter of Sin. Of the fame nature are thofe expreffions, where, defcribing the finging of the nightingale, he adds, "Silence was pleafed ;" and, upon the Meffiah's bidding peace to the chaos, "Confufion heard his voice." I might add innumerable instances of our poet's writing in this beautiful figure. It is plain that these I have mentioned, in which perfons of an imaginary nature are introduced, are such short allegories as are not defigned to be taken in the literal fenfe, but only to convey particular circumftances to the reader, after an unusual and entertaining manner. But when fuch perfons are introduced as principal actors, and engaged in a series of adventures, they take too much upon them; and are by no means proper for an heroick poem, which ought to appear credible in its principal parts. I cannot forbear therefore thinking that Sin and Death are as improper agents in a work of this na с are as improper agents in a work of this nature, &c.] Yet, as doctor Newton has obferved, " Milton may rather be justified for introducing fuch imaginary beings as Sin and Death, because a great part of his Poem lies in the invifible world, and fuch fic. titious beings may better have a place there; and the actions of Sin and Death are at least as probable as thofe afcribed to the ture, as Strength and Neceffity in one of the tragedies of Æfchylus, who reprefented those two perfons nailing down Prometheus to a rock; for which he has been justly cenfured by the greatest criticks. I do not know any imaginary perfon made use of in a more fublime manner of thinking than that in one of the prophets, who, defcribing God as defcending from Heaven and vifiting the fins of mankind, adds that dreadful circumstance," Before him went the Peftilence." It is certain, this imaginary perfon might have been described in all her purple fpots. The Fever might have marched before her, Pain might have stood at her right hand, Phrenzy on her left, and Death in her rear. She might have been introduced as gliding down from the tail of a comet, or darted from the earth in a flash of lightning: She might have tainted the atmosphere with her breath; the very glaring of her eyes might have fcattered infection. But I good or evil Angels. Befides, as Milton's fubject neceffarily admitted fo few real perfons, he was in a manner obliged to fupply that defect by introducing imaginary ones; and the characters of Sin and Death are perfectly agreeable to the hints and sketches, which are given of them in Scripture. The Scripture had made perfons of them before in feveral places; only the Scripture has reprefented them as I may fay in miniature, and he has drawn. them in their full length and proportions," He has also exactly followed the genealogy of Sin and Death, as defcribed by St. James. See the Note on Par. Loft, B. ii. 648. The Poem, therefore, may be confidered as free from the imperfection with which it has been charged. See alfo before, p. 89. believe every reader will think, that in fuch fublime writings the mentioning of her, as it is done in Scripture, has fomething in it more juft, as well as great, than all that the most fanciful poet could have bestowed upon her in the richnefs of his imagination. Milton has shown a wonderful art in defcribing that variety of paffions, which arose in our firft parents upon the breach of the commandment that had been given them. We see them gradually paffing from the triumph of their guilt through remorse, shame, despair, contrition, prayer, and hope, to a perfect and complete repentance. At the end of the tenth book they are represented as proftrating themselves upon the ground, and watering the earth with their tears: To which the poet joins this beautiful circumstance, that they offered up their penitential prayers, on the very place where their Judge appeared to them when he pronounced their fentence. There is a beauty of the fame kind in a tragedy of Sophocles, where Oedipus, after having put out his own eyes, instead of breaking his neck from the palace-battlements, (which furnishes fo elegant an entertainment for our English audience,) defires that he may be conducted to mount Citharon, in order to end his life in that very place where he was exposed in his infancy, and where he should then have died, had the will of his parents been executed. As the author never fails to give a poetical turn to his fentiments, he defcribes in the beginning of the ELEVENTH BOOK the acceptance which these their prayers met with, in a short allegory, formed upon that beautiful paffage in Holy Writ: "And another Angel came and flood at the altar, having a golden cenfer; and there was given unto him much incenfe, that he should offer it with the prayers of all faints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne: And the fmoke of the incenfe, which came with the prayers of the faints, afcended up before God." We have the fame thought expreffed a second time in the interceffion of the Meffiah, which is conceived in very emphatical fentiments and expreffions. Among the poetical parts of Scripture, which Milton has fo finely wrought into this part of his narration, I muft not omit that wherein Ezekiel, speaking of the Angels who appeared to him in a vifion, adds, that " every one had four faces, and that their whole bodies, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, were full of eyes round about."- "The cohort bright "Of watchful Cherubim; four faces each "Had, like a double Janus, all their shape |