What matter where, if I be still the same,

And what I should be, all but less than He

Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."

Perhaps of all the passages in Paradise Lost, the descrip tion of the employments of the angels during the absence of Satan, some of whom, "retreated in a silent valley, sing with notes angelical to many a harp their own heroic deeds and hapless fall by doom of battle," is the most perfect example of mingled pathos and sublimity.

The character which a living poet has given of Spenser would be much more true of Milton:

"Yet not more sweet

Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise;
High Priest of all the Muses' mysteries."

Milton has finely shown the power of discrimination in respect to character in

EVE'S LAMENTATION

ON BEING DRIVEN FROM PARADISE.

"O unexpected stroke, worse than of death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods? where I had hoped to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation and my last

At even, which I bred up with tender hand

From the first opening bud, and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Thee, lastly, nuptial bower, by me adorn'd

With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure

And wild? How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits?"

Adam's reflections on the same mournful occasion are in a different strain, and still finer. After expressing his submission to the will of his Maker, he says,

"This most afflicts me, that departing hence
As from His face I shall be hid, deprived

His bless'd countenance; here I could frequent
With worship place by place where He vouchsafed
Presence divine, and to my sons relate,

On this mount He appear'd, under this tree
Stood visible, among these pines His voice
I heard, here with Him at this fountain talk'd:
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory
Or monument to ages, and thereon

Offer sweet-smelling gums, and fruits, and flowers.
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances, or footstep trace?
For though I fled him angry, yet, recall'd
To life prolong'd and promised race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory, and far off his steps adore."

SECTION III.

SAMUEL BUTLER,
Author of Hudibras.`

Strongly contrasted to Milton in every respect was his contemporary, Samuel Butler (1612-1680), the son of a farmer in Worcestershire, and at all times a poor man, but possessed of a rich fancy and a singular power of witty and pointed expression. His chief work was Hudibras, published in 1663 and subsequent years, a comic poem in shortrhymed couplets, designed to burlesque the characters of the zealously religious and Republican party, which had recently held sway. Notwithstanding the service which he thus performed to the Royalist cause and to Charles II., he was suffered to die in such poverty that the expense of his funeral was defrayed by a friend. In Hudibras, a Republican officer, of the most grotesque figure and accoutrements, is represented as sallying out, like a knight-errant, for the reformation of the state; and his character is thus, in the first place, described:

CHARACTER OF SIR HUDIBRAS.

He was in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in analytic:
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair 'twixt south and southwest side;
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute;

He'd run in debt by disputation,
And pay with ratiocination:
All this by syllogism true,

In mood and figure he would do.
For rhetoric, he could not ope

His mouth, but out there flew a trope;
And when he happen'd to break off
I' th' middle of his speech, or cough,
H' had hard words ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by;
Else when with greatest art he spoke,
You'd think he talk'd like other folk;
For all a rhetorician's rules

Teach nothing but to name his tools.
But when he pleased to show 't, his speech
In loftiness of sound was rich;

A Babylonish dialect,

Which learned pedants much affect;
It was a party-color'd dress

Of patch'd and py-bald languages;
'Twas English, cut on Greek and Latin,
Like fustian, heretofore, on satin.
In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater;
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve by signs and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight,
And wisely tell what hour o' th' day
The clock does strike by algebra.
Beside, he was a shrewd philosopher,
And had read every text and gloss over
Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath,
He understood b' implicit faith;
Whatever sceptic could inquire for,
For every why he had a wherefore;
Knew more than forty of them do,
As far as words and terms could go;
All which he understood by rote,
And, as occasion served, would quote;
No matter whether right or wrong,
They might be either said or sung.

SECTION IV.

YOUNG (1681-1765).

Night Thoughts.

The principal work of Edward Young is the Night Thoughts. This poem, by some critics, has been pronounced mournful, angry, gloomy, and represented as

springing from disappointed ambition rather than from superior sentiments. It is thought, however, to exhibit a wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions-a wildness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odor. He was too fond of antithesis, and often too turgid in his style; yet he paints, with the most lively fancy, the feelings of the heart, the vanity of human things, its fleeting honors and enjoyments, and he presents some of the strongest arguments in support of the immortality of the soul.

The late Joseph Emerson speaks of this work as the dear companion of his early youth, most faithful counselor of his advancing days-a precious, invaluable friend-for more than thirty summers the balm of his sorrows, the pillow of his weary, throbbing head-the sweetener of his sweetest joys. "Dark and dismal, indeed, are many of his pictures; but I think not more so than their originals. If so, we should not blame the painter, but the subjects." But his pictures of redemption are most glorious. "To me, the Night Thoughts is a poem, on the whole, most animating and delightful-amazingly energetic-full of the richest instruction-improving to the mind— much of it worthy of being committed to memorysome faults-some passages unfit to be read-obscure -extravagant-tinged occasionally with flattery."

The work is well adapted for exercising the mind in the process of analysis and criticism,

CONSCIENCE

"Conscience, what art thou? Thou tremendous power!
Who dost inhabit us without our leave;
And act within ourselves, another self,
A master-self, that loves to domineer,

And treat the monarch frankly as the slave:
How dost thou light a torch to distant deeds!
Make the past, present, and the future frown!
How, ever and anon, awake the soul,

As with a peal of thunder, to strange horrors,
In this long restless dream, which idiots hug-
Nay, wise men flatter with the name of life!"

DEATH.

"Why start at death? Where is he? death arrived,
Is past; not come or gone, he's never here.
Ere hope, sensation fails, black boding man
Receives, not suffers death's tremendous blow.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave,
The deep, damp vault, the darkness, and the worm-
These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,
The terrors of the living, not the dead.
Imagination's fool, and error's wretch,

Man makes a death, which nature never made;
Then on the point of his own fancy falls,

And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one."

For another specimen, yet more characteristic of Dr. Young's mind, refer to the chapter on Sublimity in this work.

SECTION V.

OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709–1784).
His Criticisms on Milton.

[Extracted from the North American Review, 1835.]

Dr. Channing has gained great celebrity for his criticism upon Milton, in which he vindicates the latter from the unjust representations of Dr. Johnson, in his "Lives of the Poets." Dr. Johnson has certainly not done justice to Mil

ton;

but this was owing, we think, to his political prejudices, and not, as Dr. Channing intimates, to any want of "enthusiasm, creative imagination, or lofty sentiment." The author of Rasselas, if he had never written another word, would have amply substantiated, by that work only, his claims to the possession of all those faculties in their fullest perfection. But all his other works are marked by the same general characteristics. The Rambler is one perpetual flow of the purest wisdom, embodied in the richest language. It is, from one end to the other, as Cicero says with so much beauty of Aristotle, a river of flowing gold. Why should we find fault with the style, because its merit is not exactly the same with that which we admire in the works of some other great writers? Are there not in the gardens of letters and art, as well as in those of nature, a hundred kinds of beauty, all different, and each equally charming in its own way? For ourselves, we look on Dr. Johnson as the master-mind of the last century. We respect even what we may consider his errors, for they were generally closely connected with the highest virtues. Almost every line that