"stay and depend upon the authority of "example [e].".

tr

And, afterwards, he profeffedly makes his own merit to confift in "an endeavour "to lead truth through unfrequented and "new ways, and from the most remote "fhades; by reprefenting nature, though "not in an affected, yet in an unusual drefs [f]." Thefe were the principles he went upon; let us now attend to the fuccefs of his endeavours.

The METHOD of his work, is defective in many refpects. To inftance in the two following. Obferving the large compafs of the antient epic, for which he faw no caufe in nature, and which, he fuppofed, had been followed merely from a blind deference to the authority of the first model, he refolved to conftruct an heroic poem on the narrower and, as he conceived, jufter plan of the dramatic poets. And, because it was their practice, for the purpose of raising the paffions by a close accelerated plot, and for the convenience

[e] Pref. to GONDIBERT, p. 2. Lond. 1651, 4. [f] Ibid. p. 30.

of

of reprefentation, to conclude their fubject in five acts, he affects to reftrain himself within the fame limits. The event was, that, cutting himself off, by this means, from the opportunity of digreffive ornaments, which contribute fo much to the pomp of the epic poetry; and, what is more effential, from the advantage of the most gradual and circumftantiated narration, which gives an air of truth and reality to the fable; he failed in accomplishing the proper end of this poem, ADMIRATION, produced by a grandeur of defign and variety of important incidents, and fuftained by all the energy and minute particularity of description.

2. It was effential to the antient epos to raise and exalt the fable by the intervention of fupernatural agency. This, again, the poet miftook for the prejudice of the affected imitators of Homer, "who had fo "often led them into heaven and hell, till,

by conversation with gods and ghosts, they fometimes deprive us of those na"tural probabilities in story, which are in"ftructive

"ftructive to human life [g]." Here then he would needs be original; and fo, by recording only the affairs of men, hath fairly omitted a neceffary part of the epic plan, and that which, of all others, had given the greatest state and magnificence to its conftruction. Yet here, to do him juftice, one thing deferves our commendation. It had been the way of the Italian romancers, who were at that time the best poets, to run very much into prodigy and enchantment. "Not only to exceed the

work, but alfo the poffibility of nature, "they would have impenetrable armors, "inchanted castles, invulnerable bodies, "iron men, flying horfes, and a thousand "other fuch things, which are eafily feigned "by them that dare [b]." These conceits, he rightly faw, had too flender a foundation in the serious belief of his age to justify a relation of them; and, had he only dropped thefe, his conduct had been without blame. But, as it is the weakness of human nature, the observation of this

[g] Pref. to GONDIBERT, p. 3. Lond. 1651, 4o°. [b] Answer to the Preface, p. 81.

extreme

extreme determined him to the other, of admitting nothing, however well established in the general opinion, that was fupernatural.

༞!,

And as here he did too much, fo in another refpect it may be obferved he did too little. The romancers, before spoken of, had carried their notions of gallantry in ordinary life as high as they had done those of preternatural agency in their marvellous fictions. Yet here this original genius, who was not to be held by the fhackles of fuperftition, fuffered himself to be entrapped in the filken net of love and bonour; and fo hath adopted, in his draught of characters, that elevation of fentiment which a change of manners could not but difpofe the reader to regard as fantastic in the Gothic romance, at the fame time that he rejected what had the trueft grace in the antient epic, a fober intermixture of religion.

The execution of his poem was answerable to the general method. His SENTIMENTS are frequently forced, and fo tortured by an affectation of wit, that every

stanza

ftanza hath the air of an epigram. And

the EXPRESSION, in which he cloaths them, is fo quaint and figurative, as turns his description almoft into a continued riddle. '

Such was the effect of a studious affectation of originality in a writer who, but for this misconduct, had been in the first rank of our poets. His endeavour was to keep clear of the models, in which his youth had been inftructed, and which he perfectly understood. And in this indeed he fuc ceeded. But the fuccefs loft him the pof feffion of, what his large foul appears to have been full of, a true and permanent glory; which hath ever arifen, and can only arise, from the unambitious fimplicity of Nature, contemplated in her own proper form, or, .by reflexion, in the faithful mir ror of those very models he fo much dreaded.&

In fhort, from what hath been here ad vanced, and especially as confirmed by for uncommon an instance, I think myself en titled to come at once to this general con clufion, which they, who have a compre compre henfive view of the hiftory of letters, in

their