ing. For had not this night closed upon his political career, shut out from his view objects of sense, and left his great soul to concentrate its powers in sublime contemplation, and to find utterance only in glowing images of thought, "Paradise Lost," would never have been written. Not that darkness is likely to produce new mental phenomena, or favor a more extended research into physical sciences; but that the absence of sight does aid reflection, concentration, and the imagination, few will deny.

Milton, it is true, like Homer, had collected much of his material of thought, before the loss of his sight. He had visited the classic grounds of Italy, and had seen nature robed in her brightest and richest attire. While a student of Christ's College, he composed many Latin poems, and is said to have been the first Englishman who wrote Latin verse with classical elegance. His "Mask of Comus," "L'Allegro," and "Penseroso," bear the unmistakable impress of true genius; and would have been sufficient to render his name immortal, had he left no other monuments of his greatness. But as stars fade at the approach of morning light, so these recede before the noonday splendor of "Paradise Lost ;" an epic poem only inferior to the

Iliad," in force and heroic fire, and not in profound contemplation. The description of Satan's escape from his dungeon, and ascent through the realm of chaos, up to light, in the second book of this poem, is perhaps one of the loftiest conceptions that ever

sprang from the human intellect. And we are fully persuaded, that, had not the author been surrounded by the hollow darkness which he here describes; and wholly shut in with self and thought, while everduring night kept sentinel without, this scene could never have been rendered so complete. The view presented to Satan, sin and death, on the opening of the infernal gates, set forth in the following, in point of sublimity is certainly without a parallel:

Before their eyes in sudden view appear

The secrets of the hoary deep; a dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,

And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand:

For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,
Strive here for mast'ry, and to battle bring

Their embryon atoms; they around the flag

Of each his faction, in their several clans,
Light-arm'd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow,
Swarm populous, unnumber'd as the sands

Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil,

Levied to side with warring winds, and poise

Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,
He rules a moment; Chaos umpire sits,

And by decision more embroils the fray,

By which he reigns:

Chance governs all.

next him, high arbiter,

Into this wild abyss,

(The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave,)
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mix'd
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
(Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain

His dark materials to create more worlds ;)

Into this wild abyss the wary fiend

Stood on the brink of hell, and look'd a while

Pondering his voyage.

After much difficulty this divine poem was licensed for the press, and published first at London, in 1667. To show how little the age in which Milton lived was worthy of so great a genius, we need only mention that on the completion of this great work, the poet could sell the copy for no more than fifteen pounds, the payment of which depended upon the sale of three large editions; and his widow afterwards sold her claims for eight pounds. Three years after the publication of "Paradise Lost," he published "Samson Agonistes," a tragedy in the purest style of the Greek Drama; and "Paradise Regained," the subject of which is said to have been suggested by the following circumstance: Elwood, a Quaker, who had read "Paradise Lost," in manuscript, on returning it, put this quaint interrogation: "What hast thou to say to Paradise Found?"

We have only farther to mention that, worn out by the gout, our poet paid the debt of nature in 1674, in his sixty-sixth year.

C

The following sublime and affecting production was but lately discovered among the remains of our great epic poet, and is published in the recent Oxford edition of Milton's Works:

I am old and blind!

Men point at me as smitten by God's frown;
Afflicted and deserted of my kind;

Yet I am not cast down.

I am weak, yet strong;

I murmur not that I no longer see;
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong,
Father supreme! to thee.

O, merciful one!

When men are farthest then thou art most near;
When friends pass by me, and my weakness shun,
Thy chariot I hear.

Thy glorious face

Is leaning towards me; and its holy light
Shines in upon my lonely dwelling place—
And there is no more night.

On my bended knee

I recognize thy purpose clearly shown:
My vision thou hast dimm'd, that I may see
Thyself—Thyself alone.

I have nought to fear;

This darkness is the shadow of thy wing;
Beneath it I am almost sacred; here

Can come no evil thing.

O! I seem to stand

Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath been,
Wrapp'd in the radiance of thy sinless land,
Which eye hath never seen.

Visions come and go:

Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng; From angel lips I seem to hear the flow

Of soft and holy song.

Is it nothing now,

When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes?— When airs from paradise refresh my brow

The earth in darkness lies.

In a purer clime

My being fills with rapture-waves of thought
Roll in upon my spirit-strains sublime
Break over me unsought.

Give me now my lyre!

I feel the stirrings of a gift divine:
Within my bosom glows unearthly fire
Lit by no skill of mine.