short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman,

the philosopher, the glory of English literature, 5 the champion and the martyr of English liberty.

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilized world, his

place has been assigned among the greatest masters 10 of the art. His detractors, however, though out

voted, have not been silenced. There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the poems and to decry

the poet. The works they acknowledge, consid15 ered in themselves, may be classed among the

noblest productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author to rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civiliza

tion, supplied, by their own powers, the want of 20 instruction, and, though destitute of models them

selves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors created; he lived in an enlightened

age; he received a finished education; and we 25 must, therefore, if we would form a just estimate

of his powers, make large deductions in consideration of these advantages.

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever 80 had to struggle with more unfavorable circum

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stances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born “an

age too late.”

For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilization which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple 10 words and vivid impressions.

We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not 15 admire them the more because they have appeared

On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most 20 orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining so

in dark ages.

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them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast

hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits 5 that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to

future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their

pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speed10 ily surpass them in actual attainments. Every

girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man

may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few 15 years to mathematics, learn more than the great

Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation.

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. 20 The progress of refinement rarely supplies these

arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician,

the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the 25 machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose

in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence

the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philo80 sophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical. This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses. Generalization is necessary to the 5 advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse 10 poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyze human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not 15 to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly 20 80 called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived respecting the lachrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of 25 human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could 30 Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those elements

in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, 5 living, individual man?

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure

ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we 10 mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good

writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean

the art of employing words in such a manner 15 as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the

art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors. Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired

for the vigor and felicity of their diction, and still 20 more valuable on account of the just notion which

they convey of the art in which he excelled :

“As imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

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These are the fruits of the “fine frenzy” which he ascribes to the poet,-a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The