molished the images in cathedrals have not always been able to demolish those which were enshrined in their minds. It would not be difficult to show, that in politics the same rule holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied before they can excite strong public feeling. The multitude is more easily interested for the most unmeaning badge, or the most insignificant name, than for the most important principle.

proper to supernatural agents. We feel that we could talk with his ghosts and demons, without any emotions of unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper, and eat heartily in their company His angels are good men with wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly executioners. His dead men are merely living men in strange situations. The scene which passes between the poet and Facinata is justly celebrated. Still, Facinata in the burning tomb is exactly what Facinata would have been at an auto da fé. Nothing can be more touching than the first interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere composure, the lover for whose affections she is grateful, but whose vices she reprobates? The feelings which give the passage its charm would suit the streets of Florence, as well as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory.

From these considerations, we infer, that no poet who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure. Still, however, there was another extreme, which, though far less dangerous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are in a great measure under the control of their opinions. The most exquisite art of a poetical colouring can produce no illusion when it is employed to represent that which is at once The Spirits of Milton are unlike those of perceived to be incongruous and absurd. Mil- almost all other writers. His fiends, in partiton wrote in an age of philosophers and theo-cular, are wonderful creations. They are not logians. It was necessary therefore for him to metaphysical abstractions. They are not abstain from giving such a shock to their un- wicked men. They are not ugly beasts. They derstandings, as might break the charm which have no horns, no tails, none of the fee-fawit was his object to throw over their imagina-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They have just tions. This is the real explanation of the indistinctness and inconsistency with which he has often been reproached. Dr. Johnson acknowledges, that it was absolutely necessary for him to clothe his spirits with material forms. "But," says he, "he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his thoughts." This is easily said; but what if he could not seduce the reader to drop it from his thoughts? What if the contrary opinion had taken so full a possession of the minds of men, as to leave no room even for the quasi-belief which poetry requires? Such we suspect to have been the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the material or the immaterial system.

He therefore took his stand on the debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless by so doing laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetically in the right. This task, which almost any other writer would have found impracticable, was easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed of communicating his meaning circuitously, through a long succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than he expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities which he could not avoid.

Poetry, which relates to the beings of another world, ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque, indeed, beyond any that was ever written. Its effect approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault indeed on the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of his poem, which, as we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. Still it is a fault. His supernatural agents excite interest; but it is not the interest which is

enough in common with human nature to be intelligible to human beings. Their characters are, like their forms, inarked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions and veiled in mysterious gloom.

Perhaps the gods and demons of Eschylus may best bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, as we have remarked, something of the vagueness and tenor of the Oriental character; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance which we generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and colossal. His legends seem to harmonize less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticos, in which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light and Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal granite, in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favourite gods are those of the elder generations, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. He bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also are mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture, He is rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which he possesses, that he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour.

of his release will surely come. But Satan is forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful sereature of another sphere. The might of proscription, facetiously termed the Act of Inhis intellectual nature is victorious over the ex-demnity and Oblivion, had set a mark on the tremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot poor, blind, deserted poet, and held him up by be conceived without horror, he deliberates, name to the hatred of a profligate court and resolves, and even exults. Against the sword an inconstant people! Venal and licentious of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah, scribblers, with just sufficient talent to clothe against the flaming lake and the marl burning the thoughts of a pander in the style of a bellwith solid fire, against the prospect of an eter- man, were now the favourite writers of the Bity of unintermittent misery, his spirit bears sovereign and the public. It was a loathsome up unbroken, resting on its own innate ener-herd-which could be compared to nothing so gies, requiring no support from any thing external, nor even from hope itself!

fitly as to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in ob scene dances. Amidst these his Muse was placed, like the chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene-to be chatted at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rabble of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor pro

To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been attempting to draw between Milten and Dante, we would add, that the poetry of these great men has in a considerable degree taken its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have nothing in common with those modern beggars for fame, who extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced, by exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it would be difficult to name two writers whose works have been more completely,scription, nor neglect, had power to disturb though undesignedly, coloured by their persenal feelings.

retired to his hovel to die!

his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were The character of Milton was peculiarly dis- singularly equable. His temper was serious, únguished by loftiness of thought; that of perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity as it was, when, on the eve of great events, he which is produced by pride struggling with returned from his travels, in the prime of health misery. There is perhaps no work in the and manly beauty, loaded with literary distincworld so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The tions and glowing with patriotic hopes, such melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. it continued to be-when, after having experiIt was not, as far as at this distance of time enced every calamity which is incident to our can be judged, the effect of external circum-nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he stances. It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of the earth nor Hence it was, that though he wrote the the hope of heaven could dispel it. It twined Paradise Lost at a time of life when images every consolation and every pleasure into its of beauty and tenderness are in general beown nature. It resembled that noxious Sardi- ginning to fade, even from those minds in nian soil of which the intense bitterness is said which they have not been effaced by anxiety to have been perceptible even in its honey. and disappointment, he adorned it with all His mind was, in the noble language of the He- that is most lovely and delightful in the phybrew poet, "a land of darkness, as darkness sical and in the moral world. Neither Theoitself, and where the light was as darkness!" critus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more healthThe gloom of his character discolours all the ful sense of the pleasantness of external passions of men and all the face of nature, objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightinof Paradise and the glories of the Eternal gales, the juice of summer fruits, and the Throne! All the portraits of him are singu- coolness of shady fountains. His conception larly characteristic. No person can look on of love unites all the voluptuousness of the the features, noble even to ruggedness, the Oriental harem, and all the gallantry of the dark furrows of the cheek, the haggard and chivalric tournament, with all the pure and woful stare of the eye, the sullen and contemp-quiet affection of an English fireside. His nous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belonged to a man too proud and too sensitive to be happy.

poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairyland, are embosomed in its most rugged and Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortu-bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche. nate in ambition and in love. He had sur- Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of vived his health and his sight, the comforts of Milton may be found in all his works; but it his home and the prosperity of his party. Of is most strongly displayed in the Sonnets. the great men, by whom he had been distin- Those remarkable poems have been underguished at his entrance into life, some had valued by critics, who have not understood been taken away from the evil to come; some their nature. They have no epigrammatic had carried into foreign climates their un-point. There is none of the ingenuity of Fili conquerable hatred of oppression; some were caji in the thought, none of the hard and bril pining in dungeons; and some had poured liant enamel of Petrarch in the style. The VOL. L-2

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are simple but majestic records of the feelings is good; but it breaks off at the most interest

ing crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is very foolish and violent; an most of the later writers who have espouse the same cause, Oldmixon, for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to say the least been more distinguished by zeal than either by candour or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative and the most popular historical works in our language, that of Cla

of the poet; as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been. A victory, an expected attack upon the city, a momentary fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out against one of his books, a dream, which for a short time restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed forever, led him to musings which, without effort, shaped themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style, which charac-rendon, and that of Hume. The former is not terize these little pieces, remind us of the Greek Anthology; or perhaps still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy-the noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse.

The Sonnets are more or less striking, according as the occasions which gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But they are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a parallel. It would indeed be scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences, as to the character of a writer, from passages directly egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguishable in every page, and impart to all his writings, prose and poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness.

only ably written and full of valuable informa tion, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public are still con tented to take their opinions, hated religion so much, that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion-and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the impartiality of a judge,

The public conduct of Milton must be ap proved or condemned, according as the resist ance of the people to Charles I. shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and most important question. We shall not argue it on general grounds, we shall not recur to those primary principles from which the claim of any government to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced; it is a vantageground to which we are entitled; but we will relinquish it. We are, on this point, so confi

to imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to give their antagonist the advantage of sun and wind. We will take the naked, constitutional question. We confidently affirm, that every reason, which can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688, may be urged with at least equal force in favour of what is called the great rebellion.

His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high, and an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of he most memorable eras in the history of man-dent of superiority, that we have no objection. ind; at the very crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes-liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles, which have since worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the oppressors with a strange and unwonted fear!

In one respect only, we think, can the warmest admirers of Charles venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son. He was not, in name and profession, a papist; we say in name and profession, because both Charles himself and his miserable creature, Of those principles, then struggling for their Laud, while they abjured the innocent badges infant existence, Milton was the most devoted of popery, retained all its worst vices, a comand eloquent literary champion. We need plete subjection of reason to authority, a weak not say how much we admire his public con- preference of form to substance, a childish duct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves, passion for mummeries, an idolatrous venera. hat a large portion of his countrymen still tion for the priestly character, and, above all, a think it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, stupid and ferocious intolerance. This, howhas been more discussed, and is less under-ever, we waive. We will concede that Charles stood, than any event in English history. The was a good protestant; but we say that his Roundheads laboured under the disadvantage protestantism does not make the slightest disof which the lion in the fable complained so tinction between his case and that of James. bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies were the painters As a body, they had done their utmost to decry ruin literature; and literature was even as, in the long run, it always is with its mics. The best book, on their side of question, is the charming memoir of Mr uchinson. May's History of the Parliament

The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present year. There em, is a certain class of men, who, while they ne- profess to hold in reverence the great names and great actions of former times, never look at them for any other purpose than in order to ind in them some excuse for existing abuses.

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every venerable precedent, they pass by catholics from the crown, because they thought at is essential, and take only what is acci- them likely to be tyrants. The ground on tal: they keep out of sight what is benefi- which they, in their famous resolution, deal, and hold up to public imitation all that is clared the throne vacant, was this, "that efective. If, in any part of any great exam-James had broken the fundamental laws of the e, there be any thing unsound, these flesh-flies kingdom." Every man, therefore, who ap detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart proves of the Revolution of 1688, must hold spat with a ravenous delight. They cannot that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of alvis prevent the advocates of a good mea-the sovereign justifies resistance. The question from compassing their end; but they feel, then is this: Had Charles I. broken the fundaw their prototype, that mental laws of England?

"Their labours must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil."

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No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his To the blessings which England has de- opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest red from the Revolution these people are royalists, and to the confessions of the king erly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, himself. If there be any historian of any party solemn recognition of popular rights, who has related the events of that reign, the berty, security, toleration, all go for nothing conduct of Charles, from his accession to the with them. One sect there was, which, from meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a fortunate temporary causes, it was thought continued course of oppression and treachery. ecessary to keep under close restraint. One Let those who applaud the Revolution and conart of the empire there was so unhappily cir- demn the rebellion, mention one act of James Samstanced, that at that time its misery was II., to which a parallel is not to be found in the ecessary to our happiness, and its slavery to history of his father. Let them lay their finfreedom! These are the parts of the Re-gers on a single article in the Declaration of lation which the politicians of whom we peak love to contemplate, and which seem to em, not indeed to vindicate, but in some deee to palliate the good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America. They stand forth, zealots for the ctrine of Divine Right, which has now come ck to us, like a thief from transportation, der the alias of Legitimacy. But mention he miseries of Ireland! Then William is a er. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great Then the Revolution is a glorious era! The very same persons, who, in this country, ver omit an opportunity of reviving every ched Jacobite slander respecting the whigs that period, have no sooner crossed St. George's channel, than they begin to fill their But, it is said, why not adopt milder meaampers to the glorious and immortal memory.sures? Why, after the king had consented to They may truly boast that they look not at men so many reforms, and renounced so many op at measures. So that evil be done, they care pressive prerogatives, did the parliament conwho does it-the arbitrary Charles or the tinue to rise in their demands, at the risk of beral William, Ferdinand the catholic or provoking a civil war? The ship-money had Frederick the protestant! On such occasions been given up. The star-chamber had been eir deadliest opponents may reckon upon abolished. Provision had been made for the er candid construction. The bold assertions frequent convocation and secure deliberation. these people have of late impressed a large of parliaments. Why not pursue an end contion of the public with an opinion that fessedly good, by peaceable and regular means? mes II. was expelled simply because he was We recur again to the analogy of the Revolu catholic, and that the Revolution was essen- tion. Why was James driven from the throne! ally a protestant revolution. Why was he not retained upon conditions! He too had offered to call a free parliament, and to submit to its decision all the matters in dispute. Yet we praise our forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and proved tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same principle, and is entitled to the same praise. They could not trust the king. He had no doubt passed salutary laws. But what assurance had they that he would not break them? He had renounced oppressive prerogatives. But where was the security that he would not resume them? They had to

Right, presented by the two Houses to William and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had, according to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed without some unconstitional attack on the freedom of debate. The right of petition was grossly violated. Arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments, were grievances of daily and hourly occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason; if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable.

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Bet this certainly was not the case. Nor any person, who has acquired more knowedge of the history of those times than is to be and in Goldsmith's Abridgment, believe that, James had held his own religious opinions out wishing to make proselytes; or if, hing even to make proselytes, he had conled himself with exerting only his constitual influence for that purpose, the Prince of range would ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own ning. And, if we may believe them, their ility was primarily not to popery, but to ny. They did not drive out a tyrant bee he was a catholic; but they excluded

deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke promises with equal facility, a man whose honour had been a hundred times pawned and never redeemed.

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared for wickedness and impudence to the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. The lords and commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked out. He hesitates; he evades; at last he bargains to give his assent, for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent. The subsidies are voted. But no sooner is the tyrant relieved, than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very act which he had been paid to pass.

accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock the morning! It is to such considerations these, together with his Vandyke dress, handsome face, and his peaked beard, that | owes, we verily believe, most of his populari with the present generation.

For ourselves, we own that we do not unde stand the common phrase-a good man, but bad king. We can as easily conceive a go man and an unnatural father, or a good mi and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in es mating the character of an individual, leat out of our consideration his conduct in th most important of all human relations. if in that relation we find him to have bee selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take th liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of a his temperance at table, and all his regularit at chapel.

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We cannot refrain from adding a few word For more than ten years, the people had respecting a topic on which the defenders o seen the rights, which were theirs by a double Charles are fond of dwelling. It, they say, h claim, by immemorial inheritance and by re- governed his people ill, he at least governe cent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king them after the example of his predecessors. I who had recognised them. At length circum- he violated their privileges, it was because thos stances compelled Charles to summon another privileges had not been accurately defined. N parliament; another chance was given them act of oppression has ever been imputed u for liberty. Were they to throw it away as him which has not a parallel in the annals of they had thrown away the former? Were the Tudors. This point Hume has labourer they again to be cozened by le Roi le veut? with an art which is as discreditable in an his Were they again to advance their money on torical work as it would be admirable in a pledges, which had been forfeited over and forensic address. The answer is short, clear, over again? Were they to lay a second Peti- and decisive. Charles had assented to the tion of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant Petition of Right. He had renounced the op another lavish aid in exchange for another un-pressive powers said to have been exercised meaning ceremony, and then take their departure, till, after ten years' more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly.

by his predecessors, and he had renounced them for money. He was not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against his own recent release.

These arguments are so obvious that it may seem superfluous to dwell upon them. But those who have observed how much the events of that time are misrepresented and misunder stood, will not blame us for stating the case" simply. It is a case of which the simplest

The enemies of the parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take issue on the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies which public commotions necessarily g birth. They bewail the unmerited fate Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of the preachers. Major-generals fleec

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content them-statement is the strongest. selves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James II. no private virtues? Was even Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies, which half the tomb-ing their districts; soldiers revelling on the stones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! -Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood.

spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through the market-place; Fifth-monarchymen shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag;-all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the Great Rebellion.

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath and we are told that he kept his marriage-vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the inost hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates-and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We Be it so. We are not careful to answer in censure him for having violated the articles this matter. These charges, were they infiniteof the Petition of Right, after having, for goodly more important, would not alter our opinion and valuable consideration, promised to ob- of an event, which alone has made us to differ erve them and we are informed that he was from the slaves who crouch beneath the scep