104 A CRITIQUE ON PARADISE LOST. 



king to judgment, will I summon the subjects of that mighty poet 

 to pass sentence on their sovereign. 



The very awe and reverence with which the world is wont to 

 regard the name and authority of Milton, do but make it the 

 more necessary, that his claim to such tribute should evet and 

 anon be generally examined and decided on ; else is the voice of 

 ages but the voice of one age re-echoed by others ; and the voice 

 of every age but the voice of the few re-echoed by the many. If 

 we have any real respect for the opinion which we pronounce hal- 

 lowed by time, it must arise from the supposition that it is a col- 

 lective judgment the accumulation of many and independent 

 judgments ; for if each age were but mechanically to transmit the 

 sentiments of the preceding upon any subject whatever, those 

 sentiments could never gain in force though they must lose in 

 distinctness and consequent authority. The respect which we 

 pay then to the voice of the past, shows by the principle on which 

 it is founded, our duty as regards the present, and more particu- 

 larly as regards the future. The age which transmits a current 

 opinion without examination, is as the man who signs a bill with- 

 out looking at it, possibly a party to a fraud. " 



He believes it to be an essential quality of poetry, 

 that it raises the ideas, as either in discoursing of in- 

 ferior matters by associating them with superior ; 

 or otherwise by giving an intensity to a common feeling, 

 which thereby becomes sublime. In speaking of a 

 poem, as contradistinguished from poetry, the obser- 

 vations are very similar to those of an Edinburgh 

 reviewer on " Lalla Rookh, " he says 



"But let not the poem be confused with poetry. The poem is 

 the form in which poetry is developed ; and any particular poem 

 is to poetry, what the guinea is to gold. The pure gold is neces- 

 sarily mixed with alloy to be coined into the guinea, and poetry 

 is as necessarily mixed with prose to be developed in the poem : 

 the alloy, however, is only admitted into coin to give consistency 

 to the bullion, by the weight of which its value is judged ; and sn 

 must it be too with the poem. Poetry is indeed of so subtle a nature 

 as to require a very much greater admixture of foreign material 

 in order to mould it into the poem, than gold does to mould it into 

 the guinea ; so much greater as that in no poem shall the poetry 

 the pure poetry bear any assignable proportion to the bulk of 

 of the poem. It is from a neglect of this consideration that so 

 many and such general errors arise among poetical critics. As all 

 is not gold that glitters, so all is not poetry that pleases. In ;i 

 poem we find narration, description, argument, and wit, and be- 

 muse these are found in a poem it is too common among critics 

 to consider them all as poetry, and according to the value of these 



