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PUBLISHERS' NOTICE.

THE very general and high commendation, bestowed by the press and the community upon the American edition of Macaulay's Miscellaneous Writings, has induced the publishers to issue a new and cheap edition embracing the remainder of the articles in the Edinburgh Review, and several articles written and published while the author was at college.

MACAULAY'S MISCELLANIES.

MILTON.*

[EDINBURGHI REVIEW. 1825.]

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ceremonial cleanness which characterizes he
diction of our academical Pharisees. He does
not attempt to polish and brighten his composi
tion into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy.
He does not, in short, sacrifice sense and spirit
to pedantic refinements. The nature of his
subject compelled him to use many words
"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp
But he writes with as much ease and freedora
as if Latin were his mother tongue; and
where he is least happy, his failure seems to
arise from the carelessness of a native, not
from the ignorance of a foreigner. What Den-
ham with great felicity says of Cowley, may be
applied to him. He wears the garb, but not
the clothes, of the ancients.

TOWARDS the close of the year 1823, Mr. Le- | antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the mon, Deputy Keeper of the State Papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of his office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton, while he filled the office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an enves lope, superscribed “To Mr. Skinner, Merchant.” On examination, the large manuscript proved to be the long lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, held the same political opirons with his illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions of the government during that persecution of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it had been found. But whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist, that it is a genuine relic of the great poet.

Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of this task 'in a manner honourable to his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed very easy or elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare merit of really ucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in nis cwn religious opinions, and tolerant towards those of others.

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written-though not exactly in the style of the Prize Essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation of classical

*Joannis Milloni, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi. A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By JOHN MILTON, iranslated from the original by Charles R. Sumner, M A.. &c. &c. 1825.

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Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. He professes to form his system from the Bible alone; and his digest of Scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations.

Some of the heterodox opinions which he avows seem to have excited considerable amazement: particularly his Arianism, and his notions on the subject of polygamy. Yel we can scarcely conceive that any person could have read the Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the former, nor do we think that any reader, acquainted with the history c his life, ought to be much startled at the latter. The opinions which he has expressed respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of mai ter, and the observation of the Sabbath, might we think, have caused more just surprise.

But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book, were it far more or thodox, or far more heretical than it is, would not much edify or corrupt the present genera tion. The men of our time are not to be con verted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this Essay will follow the Defens Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the re markable circumstances attending its publics

don, will secure to it a certain degree of atten- | do not admire them the more because they tion. For a month or two it will occupy a few have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a we hold that the most wonderful and splendid few columns in every magazine; and it will proof of genius is a great poem produced in a then, to borrow the elegant language of the civilized age. We cannot understand why play-bills, be withdrawn, to make room for the those who believe in that most orthodox article forthcoming novelties. of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uni formity of the phenomenon indicates a corres

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and mira-ponding uniformity in the cause. cles of a saint, till they have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors, by exhibiting some relic of him-a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the late interesting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and good man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turn for a 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, the champion and the martyr of English liberty.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improve. ment of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more ir separating and combining 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 it, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the firs* speculators lie under great disaavantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual aɩtainments. Every girl, who has read Mrs. Maicet'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 years to mathematics, learn more than the great New. ton knew after half a century of study and meditation.

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 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, considered 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 civilization, supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though destitute of models them-fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Naselves, 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 must therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions for these advantages.

But it is not thus with music, with painting,. or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. 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 machine of the poet, is best

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavourable circumstances 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 his 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 .ooked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions.

We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, thongh we admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we

tions, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence, the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, 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, a change by which science gains, and poetry loses. Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge, but particularly in 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 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 to dissect. He may believe in a mora, serse, like Shaftesbury. He may refer all human actionз 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 so called. than the notions

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