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PARADISE REGAIN'D.

I

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 less striking ftile, a ftile fuited to the fubject. Artful fophiftry, false reasoning, fet off in the moft 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 cause with great fkill and fubtlety, as one thoroughly verfed in that craft;

Qui facere affuerat

Candida de nigris, et de candentibus 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; first proposes his fubject, and then invokes the affiftance of the Holy Spirit. The beginning I who

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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 taste than to conceive thefe 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 talk,

For trumpets ftern to change mine oaten reeds &c.

2. By one man's disobedience] The oppofition of one man's disobedience in this verfe to one man's obedience in ver. 4. is fomewhat in the stile 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 shall many be made righteous.

3. Recover'd Paradife] It may

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feem

By one man's firm obedience fully try'd
Through all temptation, and the tempter
In all his wiles, defeated and repuls'd,
And Eden rais'd in the wafte wilderness.

foil'd

Thou Spirit who ledft this glorious eremite

Into the defert, his victorious field,

Against the spiritual foe, and brought'ft him thence

feem a little odd at firft, 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 fublime 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

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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 reprefents it) was procured by Chrift's triumph over the Devil in the wilderness ; or whether he thought that the scene of the defert oppofed to that of Paradife, and the action of 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 determin 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 opportunity of driving the Devil back again to Hell from his new conquefts in the air. In the mean time

nothing

II

By proof th' undoubted Son of God, infpire,
As thou art wont, my prompted fong elfe mute,
And bear through highth or depth of nature's bounds
With profp'rous wing full fumm'd, to tell of deeds
Above heroic, though in fecret done,

And unrecorded left through many an age,
Worthy t' have not remain'd fo long unfung.

nothing was eafier 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 allufion 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 ledft this glorious eremite] The invocation is properly addrefs'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 wildernefs. 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 pn the defert, and ερημιτης an inhabitant of the defert, is rightly formed the word

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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 baptism flock'd With awe the regions round, and with them came From Nazareth the fon of Jofeph deem'd To the flood Jordan, came as then obscure, Unmark'd, unknown; but him the Baptift foon 25 Defcry'd, divinely warn'd, and witness bore

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