3 PARADISE REGAIN'D. I воок BOOK I. Who ere while the happy garden fung, By one man's disobedience loft, now fing Recover'd Paradife to all mankind, Milton's Paradife Regain'd has not met with the approbation that it deferves. It has not the harmony of numbers, the fublimity of thought, and the beauties of diction, which are in Paradife Loft. It is compofed in a lower and lefs ftriking file, a ftile fuited to the fubject. Artful fophiftry, falfe reafoning, fet off in the most fpecious manner, and refuted by the Son of God with ftrong unaffected eloquence, is the peculiar excellence of this poem. Satan there defends a bad caufe with great kill and fubtlety, as one thoroughly verfed in that craft; Qui facere affuerat Candida de nigris, et de can dentibus atra. His character is well drawn. Fortin. 1. I who ere while &c] Milton begins his Paradife Regain'd in the fame manner as the Paradife Loft, firft proposes his fubject, and then invokes the affiftance of the Holy Spirit. The beginning whe By ere while &c is plainly an allufion to the Ille ego qui quondam &c attributed to Virgil: but it doth not therefore follow that Milton had no better tafte than to conceive these lines to be genuin. Their being fo well known to all the learned was reafon fufficient for his imitation of them, as it was for Spenfer's before him: Lo, I the man, whofe Muse whileom did mask, As time her taught, in lowly fhepherds weeds, Am now enforc'd a far unfitter task, For trumpets ftern to change mine oaten reeds &c. 2. By one man's disobedience] The oppofition of one man's disobedience in this verse to one man's obedience in ver. 4. is fomewhat in the ftile and manner of St. Paul. Rom. V. 19. For as by one man's difobedience many were made finners; fo by the obedience of one hall many be made righteous. 3 Recover'd Paradife] It may B 2 feem By one man's firm obedience fully try'd And Eden rais'd in the wafte wilderness. 5 Against the spiritual foe, and brought'ft him thence feem a little odd at first, that Milton fhould impute the recovery of Paradife to this fhort fcene of our Saviour's life upon earth, and not rather extend it to his agony, crucifixion&c;but the reafon no doubt was, that Paradife regain'd by our Saviour's refifting the temptations of Satan might be a better contraft to Paradife loft by our first parents too eafily yielding to the fame feducing Spirit. Befides he might very probably, and indeed very reafonably, be apprehenfive, that a fubject fo extenfive as well as fub. lime might be too great a burden for his declining conftitution, and a task too long for the fhort term of years he could then hope for. Even in his Paradife Loft he expreffes his fears, left he had begun too late, and left an age too late, or cold climate, or years fhould have damp'd his intended wing; and furely he had much greater caufe to dread the fame now, and be very cautious of lanching out too far. Thyer. It is hard to fay whether Milton's wrong notions in divinity led him By to this defective plan; or his fondnefs for the plan influenced those notions. That is whether he indeed fuppofed the redemption of mankind (as he here represents it) was procured by Chriff's triumph over the Devil in the wilderness; or whether he thought that the fcene of the defert oppofed to that of Paradife, and the action of a temptation withstood to a temptation fallen under, made Paradife Regain'd a more regular fequel to Paradife Loft. Or if neither this nor that, whether it was his being tired out with the labor of compofing Paradife Loft made him averfe to another work of length (and then he would never be at a lofs for fanciful reafons to deter min him in the choice of his plan) is very uncertain. All that we can be fure of is, that the plan is a very unhappy one, and defective even in that narrow view of a fequel, for it affords the poet no opportunityofdriving theDevil back again to Hell from his new conquefts in the air. In the mean time nothing II. By proof th' undoubted Son of God, inspire, And unrecorded left through many an age, nothing was easier than to have invented a good one, which fhould end with the refurrection, and comprise these four books, fomewhat contracted, in an episode, for which only the fubject of them is fit. Warburton. 7. And Eden rais'd in the wafte wilderness.] There is, I think, a particular beauty in this line, when one confiders the fine allu fion in it to the curfe brought upon the Paradifiacal earth by the fall of Adam,- -Curfed is the ground for thy fake -Thorns alfo and thiftles fhall it bring forth. Thyer. 8. Thou Spirit who ledit this glarious eremite] The invocation is properly address'd to the Holy Spirit, not only as the infpirer of every good work, but as the leader of our Saviour upon this occafion into the wilderness. For it is faid Mat. IV. 1. Then was Jefus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the Devil. And from the Greek original epnuo; the defert, and spans an inhabitant of the defert, is rightly formed the word 15 Now had the great Proclamer, with a voice More awful than the found of trumpet, cry'd Repentance, and Heav'n's kingdom nigh at hand 20 To all baptis'd: to his great baptifm flock'd With awe the regions round, and with them came From Nazareth the son of Joseph deem'd To the flood Jordan, came as then obfcure, Unmark'd, unknown; but him the Baptist foon 25 Defcry'd, divinely warn'd, and witness bore But this may be thought too distant from the common lection; and a lefs change will effect the cure. Read therefore And all baptiz'd : The prophet preached repentance and the approach of Christ's kingdom, and baptized all, that is multitudes of people, who were difpofed by his preaching to prepare their hearts for that great event, Calton. There is fomething plaufible and ingenious in this emendation: but I conceive the construction to be not |