The personal habits of Junius were somewhat peculiar; to his last days he was unrelentingly busied in pursuits of philology, of which, he has left to the Bodleian such monuments of his gigantic industry. Junius was such a rigid economist of time, that every hour was allotted to its separate work; each day was the repetition of the former, and on a system he avoided all visitors. Such a man could not have submitted to the reckless loss of many a golden day, in hammering at the obscure sense of the Saxon monk, which the critics find by his own printed text he could not always master; nor is it more likely that Milton himself could have sustained his poetic excitement through the tedious progress of a verbal or cursory paraphrase of Scripture history by this Gothic bard. At that day even Junius could not have discovered those "elastic rhythms," which solicit the ear of a more modern Saxon scholar in his studies of Cædmon,[15] but which we entirely owe to the skill, and punctuation, and accentuation of the recent editor, Mr. Thorpe. Be it also observed, that Milton published his "Paradise Lost" in the lifetime of Junius, the only judge who could have convicted the bard who had daringly proposed -----------to pursue Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme-- of concealing what he had silently appropriated. There are so many probabilities against the single possibility of Milton having had any knowledge of Cædmon, that we must decide by the numerical force of our own suggestions. The startling similarities which have led away critical judgments, if calmly scrutinised, may be found to be those apparent resemblances or coincidences which poets drawing from the same source would fall into. There is a French mystery of "The Conception," where the scene is hell; Lucifer appeals to its inmates in a long address. This Satan of "The Conception" strikingly reminds us of the Prince of Darkness of Milton, and indeed has many creative touches; and had it been written after the work of Milton, it might have seemed a parody.[16] Similarity and coincidence do not necessarily prove identity and imitation. Nor is the singular theme of "the Rebellion of the Angels" peculiar to either poet, since those who never heard of the Saxon monk have constructed whole poems and dramas on the celestial revolt.[17] We may be little interested to learn, among all the dubious inquiries of "the origin of 'Paradise Lost,'" whether a vast poem, the most elaborate in its parts, and the most perfect in its completion--a work, in the words of the great artist-- ------who knows how long Before had been contriving?--P. L., ix. 138. was or could be derived from any obscure source. The interval between excellence and mediocrity removes all connexion; it is that between incurable impotence and genial creation. A great poet can never be essentially indebted even to his prototype.