These latter words deserve particular notice. I do not doubt that Milton intended his 'Paradise Lost' as an epic of the first class, and that the poetic dialogue of the 'Book of Job' was his model for the general scheme of his 'Paradise Regained'. Readers would not be disappointed in this latter poem, if they proceeded to a perusal of it with a proper preconception of the kind of interest intended to be excited in that admirable work. In its kind it is the most perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in interest--being in its essence didactic--to that other sort, in which instruction is conveyed more effectively, because less directly, in connection with stronger and more pleasurable emotions, and thereby in a closer affinity with action. But might we not as rationally object to an accomplished woman's conversing, however agreeably, because it has happened that we have received a keener pleasure from her singing to the harp? 'Si genus sit probo et sapienti viro hand indignum, et si poema sit in suo genere perfectum, satis est. Quod si hoc auctor idem altioribus numeris et carmini diviniori ipsum per se divinum superaddiderit, mehercule satis est, et plusquam satis'. [2] I cannot, however, but wish that the answer of Jesus to Satan in the 4th book, (v. 285.)-- Think not but that I know these things; Or think I know them not, Not therefore am I short Of knowing what I ought, &c. had breathed the spirit of Hayley's noble quotation rather than the narrow bigotry of Gregory the Great. The passage is, indeed, excellent, and is partially true; but partial truth is the worst mode of conveying falsehood. Hayley, p. 75. "The sincerest friends of Milton may here agree with Johnson, who speaks of 'his controversial merriment as disgusting'." The man who reads a work meant for immediate effect on one age with the notions and feelings of another, may be a refined gentleman, but must be a sorry critic. He who possesses imagination enough to live with his forefathers, and, leaving comparative reflection for an after moment, to give himself up during the first perusal to the feelings of a contemporary, if not a partizan, will, I dare aver, rarely find any part of Milton's prose works disgusting. (Hayley, p. 104. Hayley is speaking of the passage in Milton's Answer to Icon Basilice, in which he accuses Charles of taking his Prayer in captivity from Pamela's prayer in the 3rd book of Sidney's Arcadia. The passage begins,-- "But this king, not content with that which, although in a thing holy, is no holy theft, to attribute to his own making other men's whole prayers, &c." Symmons' ed. 1806, p. 407.)