APPENDIX.

Singing their great Creator? oft in bands

While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk
With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds,
In full harmonic number join'd, their songs
Divide the night, and lift our thought to heaven.

BOOK IV. 674.

In these lines is represented the gloom of night enlightened by the lustre of the heavenly bodies. This picture, without any attending circumstance, is grand and solemn. The view of the skies by night, the moon moving in the brightness of her course, and all the host of heaven performing their determined round, fill the mind with awe and adoration. But how wonderfully is the sublimity of the scene heightened by the introduction of aerial beings, walking their nightly round, contemplating the heavens, and to the "midnight air, sole, or responsive each to other's note, singing their great Creator." The famous night-scene of Homer, and all the night-scenes ever drawn, are inferior to this.

"But see the angry victor hath recall'd His ministers of vengeance and pursuit, Back to the gates of heaven: the sulphurous hail

Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid

The fiery surge, that from the precipice

H

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Of heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow thro' the vast and boundless deep.
Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from the foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of Desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;
There rest, if any rest can harbour there,
And reassembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.

"Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate
With head uplift above the waves; and eyes
That sparkling blaz'd, his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large
Lay floating many a rood."

The gran

This passage is throughout sublime. deur and correspondent harmony of the numbers are wonderful. No comment is necessary to point out its particular excellence. We see in it all the fallen greatness of " the Arch-angel," and the inventive rebellion of his heart.

APPENDIX.

Though Paradise Regained is eclipsed by the superior lustre of Paradise Lost; yet it contains many eminent beauties. Had it been written by any other pen than Milton's, it would perhaps have been more read, and been more celebrated: But the voice of criticism having ranked it far beneath the other great work of its author, it is now doomed, with Homer's Odyssey, to a partial oblivion. It deserves not this fate; for it is still the strain of Milton, which, like Apollo's lyre, has descended from the heavens. The following passage will shew if these remarks be just. It presents a picture of our Saviour, amid the terrors of the wilderness, still pursued by the temptation and malice of Satan.

"Darkness now rose,

As day-light sunk, and brought in low'ring night
Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,
Privation mere of light and absent day.
Our Saviour meek, and with untroubled mind,
After his airy jaunt, tho' hurry'd sore,
Hungry and cold betook him to his rest,
Wherever, under some concourse of shades

Whose branching arms thick intertwin'd might shield,
From dews and damps of night, his shelter'd head,

But shelter'd slept in vain; for at his head

The tempter watch'd, and soon with ugly dreams

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Disturb'd his sleep; and either tropic now

'Gan thunder, and both ends of heaven the clouds
From many a horrid rift abortive pour'd
Fierce rain with lightning mixt, water with fire
In ruin reconcil'd: Nor slept the winds
Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vex'd wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Tho' rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks
Bow'd their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer: Ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient son of God, yet only stood'st
Unshaken; nor yet staid the terror there,

Infernal ghosts, and hellish furies, round

Environ'd thee, some howl'd, some yell'd, some shriek'd. Some bent at thee their fiery darts; while thou

Sat'st unappall'd in calm and sinless peace.

Thus pass'd the night so foul, till morning fair
Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray;
Who with her radiant fingers still'd the roar

Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the fiend had rais'd

To tempt the son of God with terrors dire.

PAR. REGAINED, B. IV.

Homer, in age and sublimity in action, approaches nearer than any other poet to the inspired writers. Early criticism has frowned upon him in vain. Time has increased the veneration bestowed

APPENDIX.

upon his name. Since he sang to his harp, ages have rolled on; heard his song, and admired. His faults have been called blots in the sun, which can scarcely be discovered amid the continued glory of his beams. From his Iliad it is difficult to select a passage to which preference should be given. The battle of the gods, the interview of Priam and Achilles, the night-scene, the combat of Hector and Ajax, and the apparition of Patroclus, have generally obtained the highest meed of praise. I offer the following passage, which has been less frequently noticed than those which have been mentioned, but which is undoubtedly equal to either of them, in most characteristics of Genius. It is the description of Achilles, after his reconciliation with Agamemnon, preparing for battle,

Full in the midst, high-tow'ring o'er the rest,
His limbs in arms divine Achilles drest;
Arms which the Father of the fire bestowed,
Forg'd on the eternal anvils of the God.
Grief and revenge his furious heart inspire,
His glowing eye-balls roll with living fire.

The silver cuishes first his thighs enfold:
Then o'er his breast was brac'd the hollow gold.
The brazen sword a various baldric ty'd,

That, starr'd with gems, hung glittering at his side;