of Dante and Rabelais, in his own mind. If he had been only half what he was, he would perhaps have appeared greater. The natural ease and indifference of his temper made him sometimes less scrupulous than he might have been. He is relaxed and careless in critical places; he is in earnest throughout only in Timon, Macbeth, and Lear. Again, he had no models of acknowledged excellence constantly in view to stimulate his efforts, and, by all that appears, no love of fame. He wrote for the "great, vulgar and the small," in his time, not for posterity. If Queen Elizabeth and the maids of honour laughed heartily at his worst jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery were silent at his best passages, he went home satisfied, and slept the next night well. He did not trouble himself about Voltaire's criticisms. He was willing to take advantage of the ignorance of the age in many things; and if his plays pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. His very facility of production would make him set less value on his own excellences, and not care to distinguish nicely between what he did well or ill. His blunders in chronology and geography do not amount to above half a dozen, and they are offences against chronology and geography, not against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in setting them at defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so great a man. His barbarisms were those of his age. His genius was his own. He had no objection to float down with the stream of common taste and opinion: he rose above it by his own buoyancy, and an impulse which he could not keep under, in spite of himself or others, and "his delights did show most dolphin-like."

He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy; and his tragedies are better than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy. His female characters, which have been found fault with as insipid, are the finest in the world. Lastly, Shakspeare was the least of a coxcomb of any one that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.

Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and an indifference to personal reputation; he had none of the bigotry of his age, and his political prejudices were not very strong. In these respects, as well as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to Milton. Milton's works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses; a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect commonwealth; and he seized the pen with a hand just warm from the touch of the ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its character into his imagination; so that he devotes himself with the same sense of duty to the cultivation of his genius, as he did to the exercise of virtue, or the good of his country. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the prophet, vied with each other in his breast. His mind appears to have held equal communion with the inspired writers, and with the bards and sages of ancient Greece and Rome ;

"Blind Thamyris, and blind Mœonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old."

He had a high standard, with which he was always comparing himself, nothing short of which could satisfy his jealous ambition.

Sad task, yet argument

Not less, but more heroic, than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued,
If answerable still, I can obtain.

Unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my extended wing."

He thought of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about him. He lived apart, in the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully excluding from his mind whatever might distract its purposes or alloy its purity, or damp its zeal. "With darkness and with dangers compassed round," he had the mighty models of antiquity always present to his thoughts, and determined to raise a monument of equal height and glory, "piling up every stone of lustre from the brook," for the delight and wonder of posterity. He had girded himself up, and, as it were, sanctified his genius to this service from his youth. "For after," he says, "I had from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, been exercised to the tongues, and some sciences, as my age could suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, it was found that whether aught was imposed upon me by them, or betaken to of my own choice, the style, by certain

vital signs it had, was likely to live; but much latelier, in the
private academies of Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I
had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout, met
with acceptance above what was looked for; I began thus far
to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home,
and not less to an inward prompting which now grew daily
upon me, that by labour and intense study (which I take to be
my portion in this life,) joined with the strong propensity of na-
ture, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times
as they should not willingly let it die. The accomplishment
of these intentions, which have lived within me ever since I
could conceive myself anything worth to my country, lies not
but in a power above man's to promise; but that none hath by
more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied
spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as
life and free leisure will extend. Neither do I think it shame to
covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet,
I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am
now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of
youth or the vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste
from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a
rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame
Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that
eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar,
to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases: to this must
be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and
insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. Although
it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand;
but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small
willingness I endured to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes
than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with
cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of
noises and hoarse disputes, from beholding the bright counte-
nance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."
So that of Spenser :

"The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,
And is with child of glorious great intent,

Can never rest until it forth have brought
The eternal brood of glory excellent."

Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a severe examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to leave nothing undone which it was in his power to do. He always labours, and almost always succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest things in the world, and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies his subject to the utmost: he surrounds it with every possible association of beauty or grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or physical. He refines on his descriptions of beauty; loading sweets on sweets, till the sense aches at them; and raises his images of terror to a gigantic elevation, that "makes Ossa like a wart." In Milton, there is always an appearance of effort: in Shakspeare, scarcely any.

Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly distinct from every other writer. He is a writer of centos, and yet in originality scarcely inferior to Homer. The power of his mind is stamped on every line. The fervour of his imagination melts down and renders malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory materials. In reading his works, we feel ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it approaches to others, becomes more distinct from them. The quantity of art in him shows the strength of his genius: the weight of his intellectual obligations would have oppressed any other writer. Milton's learning has all the effect of intuition. He describes objects, of which he could only have read in books, with the vividness of actual observation. His imagination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as pictures.

"Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams."

The word lucid here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the most perfect landscape.

And again:

"As when a vulture on Imaus bred,

Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,

vital signs it had, was likely to live; but much latelier, in the
private academies of Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I
had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout, met
with acceptance above what was looked for; I began thus far
to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home,
and not less to an inward prompting which now grew daily
upon me, that by labour and intense study (which I take to be
my portion in this life,) joined with the strong propensity of na-
ture, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times
as they should not willingly let it die. The accomplishment
of these intentions, which have lived within me ever since I
could conceive myself anything worth to my country, lies not
but in a power above man's to promise; but that none hath by
more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied
spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as
life and free leisure will extend. Neither do I think it shame to
covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet,
I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am
now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of
youth or the vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste
from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a
rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame
Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that
eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar,
to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases: to this must
be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and
insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. Although
it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand ;
but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small
willingness I endured to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes
than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with
cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of
noises and hoarse disputes, from beholding the bright counte-
nance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."
So that of Spenser :

"The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,
And is with child of glorious great intent,