Thy verse created, like thy theme, sublime,
In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme.
THREE Poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn:
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no farther go:
To make a third she joined the former two.
THE GREATEST ENGLISH POETS.
Acted at the Drury-Lane Theatre, April 5, 1750
for the benefit of Milton's grand-daughter.
YE patriot crowds, who burn for England's fame,
Ye nymphs, whose bosoms beat at MILTON's name,
Whose generous zeal, unbought by flattering
rhymes,
Shames the mean pensions of Augustan times;
Immortal patrons of succeeding days,
Attend this prelude of perpetual praise!
Let Wit, condemn'd the feeble war to wage
With close malevolence, or public rage;
Let Study, worn with virtue's fruitless lore,
Behold this Theatre, and grieve no more.
This night, distinguished by your smiles, shall tell,
That never Britain can in vain excel;
The slighted arts futurity shall trust,
BUT MILTON next, with high and haughty stalks, And rising ages hasten to be just.
Unfetter'd, in majestic numbers, walks:
No vulgar hero can his Muse engage,
Nor earth's wide scene confine his hallow'd rage.
Sec! see! he upward springs, and, towering high,
Spurns the dull province of mortality;
Shakes Heaven's eternal throne with dire alarms,
And sets th' Almighty Thunderer in arms!
Whate'er his pen describes I more than see,
Whilst every verse array'd in majesty,
Bold and sublime, my whole attention draws,
And seems above the critic's nicer laws.
How are you struck with terror and delight,
When angel with archangel copes in fight!
When great Messiah's outspread banner shines,
At length our mighty Bard's victorious lays
Fill the loud voice of universal praise;
And baffled Spite, with hopeless anguish dumb,
Yields to renown the centuries to come;
With ardent haste each candidate of fame,
Ambitious, catches at his towering name:
How does the chariot rattle in his lines!
What sound of brazen wheels, with thunder, scare
And stun the reader with the din of war!
With fear my spirits and my blood retire,
To see the seraphs sunk in clouds of fire:
But when, with eager steps, from hence I rise,
And view the first gay scene of Paradise;
What tongue, what words of rapture, can express
A vision so profuse of pleasantness!
ADDRESS TO GREAT BRITAIN.
FROM THOMSON'S SUMMER.
-For lofty sense,
Creative fancy, and inspection keen
Through the deep windings of the human heart,
Is not wild Shakspeare thine and Nature's boast?
la not each great, each amiable, Muse
Of classic ages in thy MILTON met?
A genius universal as his theme;
Astonishing as chaos; as the bloom
Of blowing Eden fair; as Heaven sublime!
He sees,
and pitying sees, vain wealth bestow
Those pageant honours which he scorned below,
While crowds aloft the laureat bust behold,
Or trace his form on circulating gold.
Unknown,-unheeded, long his offspring lay,
And want hung threatening o'er her slow decay.
What though she shine with no Miltonian fire,
No favouring Muse her morning-dreams inspire,
Yet softer claims the melting heart engage,
Her youth laborious, and her blameless age;
Hers the mild merits of domestic life,
The patient sufferer, and the faithful wife.
Thus graced with humble Virtue's native chara,
Her grandsire leaves her in Britannia's arms;
Secure with peace, with competence, to dwell,
While tutelary nations guard her cell.
Yours is the charge, ye fair, ye wise, ye brave!
'Tis yours to crown desert-beyond the grave.
GRAY'S PROGRESS OF POESY.
NOR second HE that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy;
The secrets of th' abyss to spy,
He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light.
Closed his eyes in endless night,
COLLINS'S ODE ON THE POETICAL
HIGH on some cliff, to Heaven up-piled,
Of rude access, of prospect wild,
Where, tangled round the jealous steep,
Strange shades o'erbrow the vallics deep,
And holy Genii guard the rock,
Its glooms embrown, its springs unlock,
While on its rich ambitious head
An Eden, like his own, lies spread;
I view that oak the fancied glades among,
By which as MILTON lay, his evening ear,
From many a cloud that dropp'd ethereal dew,
Nigh sphered in Heaven, its native strains could
On which that ancient trump he reached was hung;
Thither oft his glory greeting,
From Waller's myrtle-shades retreating, With many a vow from Hope's aspiring tongue, My trembling feet his guiding steps pursue; In vain: Such bliss to one alone Of all the sons of Soul was known; And Heaven and Fancy, kindred powers, Have now o'erturn'd th' inspiring bowers, Or curtain'd close such scene from every future view.
MASON'S ODE TO MEMORY. RISE, hallow'd MILTON! rise, and say, How, at thy gloomy close of day;
How, when 'depress'd by age, beset with wrongs;'
When 'fall'n on evil days and evil tongues:'
When Darkness, brooding on thy sight,
Exil'd the sovereign lamp of light:
Say, what could then one cheering hope diffuse?
When God in Eden, o'er her youthful breast Spread with his own right hand Perfection's gor geous vest.
DR. ROBERTS' EPISTLE ON THE ENGLISH POETS.
ADDRESSED TO CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY, ESQ.
POET of other times! to thee I bow
With lowliest reverence. Oft thou tak'st my soul,
And waft'st it by thy potent harmony
To that empyreal mansion, where thine ear
Caught the soft warblings of a seraph's harp,
What time the nightly visitant unlock'd
The gates of Heaven, and to thy mental sight
Display'd celestial scenes. She from thy lyre
With indignation tore the tinkling bells,
And turn'd it to sublimest argument.
COWPER'S TABLE TALK. AGES elaps'd ere Homer's lamp appear'd, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard: To carry Nature lengths unknown before, And give a MILTON birth, ask'd ages more. Thus Genius rose and set at order'd times, And shot a day-spring into distant climes, Ennobling every region that he chose; He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose; And tedious years of gothic darkness pass'd, Emerg'd all splendour in our isle at last. Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main, Then show far off their shining plumes again.
What friends were thine, save Memory and the THE SAME AUTHOR'S TASK, B. III.
Hence the rich spoils thy studious youth Caught from the stores of ancient Truth; Hence all thy busy eye could pleas'd explore, When Rapture led thee to the Latian shore; Each scene that Tiber's bank supplied; that play'd on Arno's side;
Each grace, The tepid gales, through Tuscan glades that fly; 'The blue serene, that spreads Hesperia's sky;
Were still thine own: thy ample mind Each charm receiv'd, retain'd, combin'd. And thence the nightly visitant that came To touch thy bosom with her sacred flame, Recall'd the long-lost beams of grace; That whilom shot from Nature's face,
-PHILOSOPHY, baptized
In the pure fountain of eternal love,
Has eyes indeed; and, viewing all she sees
As meant to indicate à Gop to man,
Gives Him his praise, and forfeits not her own.
Learning has borne such fruit in other days
On all her branches: Piety has found
Friends in the friends of science, and true prayer
Has flow'd from lips wet with Castalian dews.
Such was thy wisdom, Newton, child-like sage
Sagacious reader of the works of God,
And in his word sagacious. Such too, thine,
MILTON, whose genius had angelic wings,
And fed on manna.-
This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherela he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the
serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was, by the cornmand of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, into the great deep. Which action passed over, the poem hertens into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his angels now fallen into Hell, described here, not in the centre, (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certally not yet accursed,) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos. Here Satan, with his angels, lying on the berning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in onder and dignity lay by him: they confer of their miserable fail. catan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the Ribe manner confounded. They rise; their numbers; array of battle; their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining heaven; but tells them lastly of a new world and a new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient Fecy or report in heaven; for that angels were long before this visible creation, was the opinion of many ancient fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises,
ddenly built out of the deep: the infernal peers there sit
Or man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our wo,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook, that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou knowest; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,
And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine; what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell; say first, what cause
Moved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
Th' infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel angels; by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equall'd the Most High
If he opposed; and, with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heav'n, and battle proui,
With vain attempt. Him the almighty power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arins.
Nine times the space that measures day and right
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal: but his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness, and lasting pain,
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate;
At once, as far as angels ken, he views 'The dismal situation waste and wild; A dungeon horrible on all sides round,
Doubted his empire; that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy, and shame beneath
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of goda
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames And this empyreal substance can not fail;
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of wo,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed;
Such place eternal Justice had prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of heav'n,
As from the centre thrice to th' utmost pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and welt'ring by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beelzebub. To whom th' arch enemy,
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage, by force or guile, eternal war,
Irreconcileable to our grand foe,
Who now triumphs, and, in th' excess of joy
Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of Heaven."
So spake th' apostate angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair:
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer.
"O prince, O chief of many throned powers,
That led th' embattled seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heav'n's perpetual King,
And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate;
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
And thence in Heav'n called Satan, with bold words In horrible destruction laid thus low,
Breaking the horrid silence thus began.
As far as the gods and heavenly essences
"If thou beest he; but O how fall'n! how Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains changed
From him, who, in the happy realms of light,
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst out-
Myriads though bright! If he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin! into what pit thou seest,
From what height fall'n; so much the stronger
proved
He with his thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? yet not for those,
Nor what the potent victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory, extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe almighty, since no less
Than such could have o'erpowered such force as
ours)
Have left us in this our spirit and strength entire
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate'er his business be,
Here in the heart of hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy deep;
What can it then avail, though yet we feel
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed Strength undiminished, or eternal being,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook his throne. What tho' the field be lost?
All is not lost; th' unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome,
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power,
Who from the terror of this arm so late
To undergo eternal punishment?"
Whereto with speedy words th' arch fiend replie
"Fall'n Cherub! to be weak is miserable
Doing or suffering; but of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which ofttimes may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see! the angry victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heaven. the sulphurous bail,
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
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 through the vast and boundless deep.
Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn,
Or satiate fury, yield it from our 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 tent
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 wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed, his other parts beside
Prone on the flood, extending long and large,
Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Bareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th' ocean stream:
Him, haply, slumb'ring on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by the side under the lee, while night
Lavests the sea, and wished morn delays:
So stretched out huge in length the arch fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake: nor ever thence
Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs;
That with reiterated crime she might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others; and, enraged, might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown
On man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and
rolled
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
And such appeared in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke: such resting found the
sole
Of unblest fect. Him followed his next mate,
Both glorying to have 'scaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal power.
"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"
Said then the lost archangel, "this the seat
That we must change for Heaven; this mournful
gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so! since he
Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made sa-
preme
Above his equals! Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells. Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor! one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time:
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven..
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: the 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!
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
Th' associates and copartners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on th' oblivious pool
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion; or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in hell?'
So Satan spake, and him Beelezebub
Thus answered. "Leader of those armies bright,
Which but th' Omnipotent none could have foiled!
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edgo
Of battle when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they he
Groveling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
As we erewhile, astounded and amazed;
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height."
He scarce had ceased, when the superior nena Was moving toward the shore: his pond'nu shield
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