I wish you could be persuaded, sir, to give us an Edition of Milton. NORTH. No. I must not take it out of the Doctor's hands. Then, as to Milton's style. If the Christian Theologian must be held bold who has dared to mix the Delivered Writings with his own Inventions--bold, too, was he, the heir of the mind that was nursed in the Aristotelian Schools, to unite, as he did, on the other hand, the gait of an understanding accomplished in logic, with the spontaneous and unstudied step of Poetry. The style of Milton, gentlemen, has been praised for simplicity; and it is true that the style of the Paradise Lost has often an austere simplicity; but one sort of it you miss--the proper Epic simplicity--that Homeric simplicity of the _Telling_. SEWARD. Perhaps, sir, in such a Poem such simplicity could not be. NORTH. Perhaps not. Homer adds thought to thought, and so builds up. Milton involves thought with thought, and so constructs. Relation is with him argumentative also, and History both Philosophy and Oratory. This was unavoidable. He brought the mind of the latter age to the Form of Composition produced by the primitive time. Again, the style is fitted to the general intention of a Poem essentially didactic and argumentative. Again, the style is personal to himself. He has learnedly availed himself of all antecedent Art--minutely availed himself, yet he is no imitator. The style is like no other--it is intensely and completely original. It expresses himself. Lofty, capacious, acute, luminous, thoroughly disciplined, ratiocinative powers wonderfully blend their action with an imagination of the most delicate and profound sensibility to the beautiful, and of a sublimity that no theme can excel. SEWARD. Lord Bacon, sir, I believe, has defined Poetry, Feigned History--has he not? NORTH. He has--and no wonder that he thought much of "Feigned History"--for he had a view to Epos and Tragedy--the Iliad and Odyssey--the Attic Theatre--the Æneid--Dante--Ariosto--Tasso--the Romances of Chivalry--moreover, the whole Immense Greek Fable, whereof part and parcel remain, but more is perished. Which Fables, you know, existed, and were transmitted in Prose,--that is, by Oral Tradition, in the words of the relator,--long before they came into Homeric Verse--or any verse. He saw, Seward, the Memory of Mankind possessed by two kinds of History, both once alike credited. True History, which remains True History, and Fabulous History, now acknowledged as Poetry only. It is no wonder that _other_ Poetry vanished from importance in his estimation. BULLER. I follow you, sir, with some difficulty. NORTH.