ice nodus
Inciderit.

Hor.

Horace advises a Poet to consider thoroughly the Nature and Force of his
Genius. [1] Milton seems to have known perfectly well, wherein his
Strength lay, and has therefore chosen a Subject entirely conformable to
those Talents, of which he was Master. As his Genius was wonderfully
turned to the Sublime, his Subject is the noblest that could have
entered into the Thoughts of Man. Every thing that is truly great and
astonishing, has a place in it. The whole System of the intellectual
World; the Chaos, and the Creation; Heaven, Earth and Hell; enter into
the Constitution of his Poem.

Having in the First and Second Books represented the Infernal World with
all its Horrors, the Thread of his Fable naturally leads him into the
opposite Regions of Bliss and Glory.

If Milton's Majesty forsakes him any where, it is in those Parts of his
Poem, where the Divine Persons are introduced as Speakers. One may, I
think, observe that the Author proceeds with a kind of Fear and
Trembling, whilst he describes the Sentiments of the Almighty. He dares
not give his Imagination its full Play, but chuses to confine himself to
such Thoughts as are drawn from the Books of the most Orthodox Divines,
and to such Expressions as may be met with in Scripture. The Beauties,
therefore, which we are to look for in these Speeches, are not of a
Poetical Nature, nor so proper to fill the Mind with Sentiments of
Grandeur, as with Thoughts of Devotion. The Passions, which they are
designed to raise, are a Divine Love and Religious Fear. The Particular
Beauty of the Speeches in the Third Book, consists in that Shortness and
Perspicuity of Style, in which the Poet has couched the greatest
Mysteries of Christianity, and drawn together, in a regular Scheme, the
whole Dispensation of Providence, with respect to Man. He has
represented all the abstruse Doctrines of Predestination, Free-Will and
Grace, as also the great Points of Incarnation and Redemption, (which
naturally grow up in a Poem that treats of the Fall of Man) with great
Energy of Expression, and in a clearer and stronger Light than I ever
met with in any other Writer. As these Points are dry in themselves to
the generality of Readers, the concise and clear manner in which he has
treated them, is very much to be admired, as is likewise that particular
Art which he has made use of in the interspersing of all those Graces of
Poetry, which the Subject was capable