but speaking our language, and feeling an interest in our great men-a man could hardly believe at first how perplexed he would feel how utterly at a loss for any adequate answer to this question, suddenly proposed "Who and what was Milton?" That is to say, what is the place which he fills in his own vernacular literature? what station does he hold in universal literature?

We, if abruptly called upon in that summary fashion to convey a commensurate idea of Milton, one which might at once correspond to his pretensions, and yet be readily intelligible to the savage, should answer perhaps thus:-Milton is not an author amongst authors, not a poet amongst poets, but a power amongst powers; and the Paradise Lost is not a book amongst books, not a poem among poems, but a central force amongst forces. Let us explain. There is this great distinction amongst books: some, though possibly the best in their class, are still no more than books-not indispensable, not incapable of supplementary representation by other books. If they had never been_if their place had continued for ages unfilled not the less, upon a sufficient excitement arising, there would always have been found the ability, either directly to fill up the vacancy, or at least to meet the same passion virtually, though by a work differing in form. Thus, supposing Butler to have died in youth, and the Hudibras to have been intercepted by his premature death, still the ludicrous aspects of the Parliamentary war, and its fighting saints, were too striking to have perished. If not in a narrative form, the case would have come forward in the drama. Puritanical sanctity, in collision with the ordinary interests of life, and with its militant propensities, offered too striking a field for the Satiric Muse, in any case, to have passed in total neglect. The impulse was too strong for repression-it was a volcanic agency, that, by some opening or other, must have worked a way for itself to the upper air. Yet Butler was a most original poet, and a creator within his own province. But, like many another original mind, there is little doubt that he quelled and repressed, by his own excellence, other minds of the same cast. Mere despair of excelling him, so far as not, after

all, to seem imitators, drove back others who would have pressed into that arena, if not already brilliantly filled. Butler failing, there would have been another Butler, either in the same or in some analogous form.

But, with regard to Milton and the Miltonic power, the case is far otherwise. If the man had failed, the power would have failed. In that mode of power which he wielded, the function was exhausted in the man species was identified with the individual-the poetry was incarnated in the poet.

Let it be remembered, that, of all powers which act upon man through his intellectual nature, the very rarest is that which we moderns call the Sublime. The Grecians had apparently no word for it, unless it were that which they meant by το οίκωδες : for ύψος was a comprehensive expression for all qualities which gave a character of grace or animation to the composition, such even as were philosophically opposed to the sublime. In the Roman poetry, and especially in Lucan, at times also Juvenal, there is an exhibition of a moral sublime, perfectly distinct from any thing known to the Greek poetry. The delineations of republican grandeur, as expressing itself through the principal leaders in the Roman camps, or the trampling under foot of ordinary superstitions, as given in the reasons assigned to Labienus for passing the oracle of the Lybian Jupiter unconsulted, are in a style to which there is nothing corresponding in the whole Grecian literature, nor would they have been comprehensible to an Athenian. The famous line-" Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris," and the brief review of such questions as might be worthy of an oracular god, with the summary declaration, that every one of those points we know already by the light of nature, and could not know them better though Jupiter Ammon himself were to impress them on our attention

"Scimus, et hæc nobis non altius inseret Ammon:"

all this is truly Roman in its subli mity; and so exclusively Roman, that there, and not in poets like the Augustan, expressly modelling their poems on Grecian types, ought the Roman mind to be studied.

On the other hand, for that species of the sublime which does not rest purely and merely on moral energies, but on a synthesis between man and nature-for what may properly be called the Ethico-physical Sublime-there is but one great model surviving in the Greek poetry, viz. the gigantic drama of the Prometheus crucified on Mount Elborus. And this drama differs so much from every thing else, even in the poetry of Eschylus, as the mythus itself differs so much from all the rest of the Grecian mythology (belonging apparently to an age and a people more gloomy, austere, and nearer to the incunabula mundi, than those which bred the gay and sunny superstitions of Greece,) that much curiosity and speculation have naturally gathered round the subject of late years. Laying this one insulated case apart, and considering that the Hebrew poetry of Isaiah and Ezekiel, as having the benefit of inspiration, does not lie within the just limits of competition, we may affirm that there is no human compo. sition which can be challenged as constitutionally sublime-sublime equally by its conception and by its execution, or as uniformly sublime from first to last, excepting the Paradise Lost. In Milton only, first and last, is the power of the sublime revealed. In Milton only does this great agency blaze and glow as a furnace kept up to a white heat-without intermission and with out collapse.

If, therefore, Milton occupies this unique position-and let the reader question himself closely whether he can cite any other book than the Paradise Lost, as continuously sublime, or sublime even by its prevailing character-in that case there is a peculiarity of importance investing that one book which belongs to no other; and it must be important to dissipate any erroneous notions which affect the integrity of that book's estimation. Now, there are two notions countenanced by Addison and by Dr Johnson, which tend greatly to disparage the character of its composition. If the two critics, one friendly, the other very malignant, but both meaning to be just, have in reality built upon sound principles, or at least upon a sound appreciation of Milton's principles in that case there is a mortal taint diffused over the whole of the Paradise Lost: for not a single book is clear of one or other of the two errors which they charge upon him.

We will briefly state the objections, and then as briefly reply to them, by exposing the true philosophy of Milton's practice. For we are very sure that, in doing as he did, this mighty poet was governed by no carelessness or oversight, (as is imagined,) but by a most refined theory of poetic effects.

I. The first of these two charges respects a supposed pedantry, or too ambitiousa display oferudition. Itissurprising to us that such an objection should have occurred to any man; both because, after all, the quantity of learning cannot be great for which any poem can find an opening; and because, in any poem burning with concentrated fire, like the Miltonic, the passion becomes a law to itself, and will not receive into connexion with itself any parts so deficient in harmony, as a cold ostentation of learned illustrations must always have been found. Still, it is alleged that such words as frieze, architrave, cornice, zenith, &c., are words of art, out of place amongst the primitive simplicities of Paradise, and at war with Mil. ton's purpose of exhibiting the Paradisaical state.

Now, here is displayed broadly the very perfection of ignorance, as mea. sured against the very perfection of what may be called poetic science. We will lay open the true purpose of Milton, by a single illustration. In describing impressive scenery, as occurring in a hilly or a woody country, every body must have noticed the habit which young ladies have of using the word amphitheatre: "amphitheatre of woods"" amphitheatre of hills,"these are their constant expressions. Why? Is it because the word amphitheatre is a Grecian word? We question if one young lady in twenty knows that it is; and very certain we are that no word would recommend itself to her use by that origin, if she happened to be aware of it. The reason lurks here:-in the word theatre, is contained an evanescent image of a great audience of a populous multitude. Now, this image-half withdrawn, half flashed upon the eye and combined with the word hills or forests, is thrown into powerful collision with the silence of hills with the solitude of forests; each image, from reciprocal contradiction, brightens and vivifies the other. The two images act, and react, by strong repulsion and antagonism.

This principle we might exemplify, and explain at great length; but we impose a law of severe brevity upon ourselves. And we have said enough. Out of this one principle of subtle and lurking antagonism, may be explained every thing which has been denounced under the idea of pedantry in Milton. It is the key to all that lavish pomp of art and knowledge which is sometimes put forward by Milton in situations of intense solitude, and in the bosom of primitive nature-as, for example, in the Eden of his great poem, and in the Wilderness of his Paradise Regained. The shadowy exhibition of a regal banquet in the desert, draws out and stimulates the sense of its utter solitude and remotion from men or cities. The images of architectural splendour, suddenly raised in the very centre of Paradise, as vanishing shows by the wand of a magician, bring into powerful relief the depth of silence, and the unpopulous solitude which possess this sanctuary of man whilst yet happy and innocent. Paradise could not, in any other way, or by any artifice less profound, have been made to give up its essential and differential characteristics in a form palpable to the imagination. As a place of rest, it was necessary that it should be placed in close collision with the unresting strife of cities; as a place of solitude, with the image of tumultuous crowds; as the centre of mere natural beauty in its gorgeous prime, with the images of elaborate architecture and of human workmanship; as a place of perfect innocence in seclusion, that it should be exhibited as the antagonist pole to the sin and misery of social man.

Such is the covert philosophy which governs Milton's practice, and which might be illustrated by many scores of passages from both the Paradise Lost and the Paradise Regained.* In fact, a volume might be composed on this

one chapter. And yet, from the blindness or inconsiderate examination of his critics, this latent wisdom -this cryptical science of poetic effects in the mighty poet, has been misinterpreted, and set down to the account of defective skill, or even of puerile ostentation.

II. The second great charge against Milton is, primâ facie, even more difficult to meet. It is the charge of having blended the Pagan and Christian forms. The great realities of angels and archangels are continually combined into the same groups with the fabulous impersonations of the Greek mythology. Eve is interlinked in comparisons with Pandora; sometimes again with Eurynome. Those impersonations, however, may be thought to have something of allegoric meaning in their conceptions, which in a measure corrects this Paganism of the idea. But Eve is also compared with Ceres, with Hebe, and other fixed forms of Pagan superstition. Other allusions to the Greek mythologic forms, or direct combination of them with the real existences of the Christian heavens, might be produced by scores, were it not that we decline to swell our paper beyond the necessity of the case. Now, surely this at least is an error. Can there be any answer to this?

At one time we were ourselves inclined to fear that Milton had been here caught tripping. In this instance, at least, he seems to be in error. But there is no trusting to appearances. In meditating upon the question, we happened to remember that the most colossal and Miltonic of painters had fallen into the very same fault, if fault it were. In his Last Judgment, Michael Angelo has introduced the Pagan deities in connexion with the hierarchy of the Christian heavens. Now, it is very true that one great man cannot palliate the error of an

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other great man, by committing the same error himself. But, though it cannot avail as an excuse, such a conformity of ideas serves as a summons to a much more vigilant examination of the case than might else be instituted. One man might err from inadvertency; but that two, and both men trained to habits of constant meditation, should fall into the same error- makes the marvel tenfold greater.

Now we confess that, as to Michael Angelo, we do not pretend to assign the precise key to the practice which he adopted. And to our feelings, after all that might be said in apology, there still remains an impression of incongruity in the visual exhibition and direct juxtaposition of the two orders of supernatural existence so potently repelting each other. But, as regards Milton, the justification is complete; it rests upon the following principle: In all other parts of Christianity, the two orders of superior beings, the Christian heaven and the Pagan pantheon, are felt to be incongruous

not as the pure opposed to the impure, (for, if that were the reason, then the Christian fiends should be incongruous with the angels, which they are not,)but as the unreal opposed to the real. In all the hands of other poets, we feel that Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, are not merely impure conceptions, but that they are baseless conceptions, phantoms of air, nonentities; and there is much the same objection, in point of just taste, to the combination

of such fabulous beings in the same groups with glorified saints and angels, as there is to the combination, by a painter or a sculptor, of real fleshand-blood creatures with allegoric abstractions.

This is the objection to such combination in all other poets. But this objection does not apply to Milton : it glances past him; and for the following reason: Milton has himself laid an early foundation for his introduc tion of the Pagan pantheon into Christian groups: -the false gods of the heathen world were, according to Milton, the fallen angels. They are not false, therefore, in the sense of being unreal, baseless, and having a merely fantastical existence, like our European fairies, but as having drawn aside mankind from a pure worship. As ruined angels under other names, they are no less real than the faithful and loyal angels of the Christian heavens. And in that one difference of the Miltonic creed, which the poet has brought pointedly and elaborately under his reader's notice by his matchless catalogue of the rebellious angels, and of their Pagan transformations in the very first book of the Paradise Lost, is laid beforehand the amplest foundation for his subsequent practice; and at the same time, therefore, the amplest answer to the charge preferred against him by Dr Johnson, and by so many other critics who had not sufficiently penetrated the latent theory on which he acted.

SOME time has now passed since the publication of the former volumes of this ingenious and amusing performer's life. The two volumes now before us bring it to the close, and thus enable his countrymen to have a full view of his career.

Mathews was certainly a man of very remarkable ingenuity. Comparison is the only standard which we can adopt in matters of this kind, and he is immeasurably above the Dibdins, Stevenses, and the crowd of reciters and givers of imitations during the last fifty years. These volumes are often laudatory beyond all bounds; for some of his performances were intolerably trainant, and the more he laboured the less the audience smiled. But it must be acknowledged that this was the fault much more of the compilers of the recitations, clever as they sometimes were, than of the reciter. His imitations deserved a higher name than mimiery; they were always dexterous, often happy, and sometimes even refined.

In 1818, Mathews commenced his provincial ramblings once more. It is curious, that though his biographer sighs profusely, and he groans perpetually, over those travels, which they both pronounce the hardship of hard. ships, he was, somehow or other, constantly on the road. It is good philosophy to believe, that there are no effects without causes; and the unquestionable cause of this effect was, that the actor liked to be on the road, and the biographer had no possible objection to his being on it as much as he liked. We cannot discover a single instance in which the love of a quiet life prevailed over the charms of a country trip, or in which the pleasant sufferer was not permitted to run round half the empire for a "couple of nights," wherever he could be called by a speculating manager, or had a hope of swelling his banker's book by an additional guinea. In this we do not make the slightest objection to the better half or the worse. It was the business of both to make money when they could; we object only to the

sentimentality, to the contempt of money, in the midst of as eager a pursuit of it as we ever happen to have seen recorded; and to the lamentation over calamities which were encountered in spite of weekly experience, and which an offer from a manager at the Scilly Isles, or at the North Pole, would evidently have wiped clean from the complainant's brain, though it might have left the story among the treasures of his memorandum-book.

Soon after Mathews's partial retirement from his engagement with Arnold, he set out on a tour of the country towns, a tour which, notwithstanding all his deprecation, he volunteered to the last hour of his life. One of his letters from Liverpool in 1818, gives an account, in his whimsical style, of the difficulties always thrown by fate or fortune in his way.

"We drove on to Coventry that night -got up early, to be ready for the Liverpool mail at eight it arrived. Sent up to know if there was a place. Man returned-Yes, sir, one place outside. Sent my portmanteau-gobbled breakfast-presently saw man return with my portmanteau. Smelt a misery-bookkeeper had just discovered that the place had been promised to a gentleman the night before. No other coach to Liverpool that day. Set off on a mere scent of a coach to Birmingham, per gig-tired horse-eighteen miles-drove very fast to get there by twelve. Heard there was no coach till four-obliged to make up my mind to go by that. Gobbled up my dinner to be ready. Went to the coachoffice at four-told London coach was not come in, and the other could not start till half an hour after its arrival. Went at five-not arrived-fidgetsincreased-promised to arrive at nine next morning. Did not believe that-saw two hours fast adding to that-anticipated alarm of Liverpool managers-rehearsal dismissed. At last coach arrived, and at half-past six I was turned off.

"I was told the coach was later by two hours than ever known. Found it was licensed to carry six inside, and travelled all night. Saw 'two women with a child