, called the "State of Innocence, or the Fall of
Man." The coldness with which Milton's mighty epic was received upon the
first publication is almost proverbial. The character of the author,
obnoxious for his share in the usurped government; the turn of the
language, so different from that of the age; the seriousness of a
subject so discordant with its lively frivolities--gave to the author's
renown the slowness of growth with the permanency of the oak. Milton's
merit, however, had not escaped the eye of Dryden.[29] He was acquainted
with the author, perhaps even before the Restoration; and who can doubt
Dryden's power of feeling the sublimity of the "Paradise Lost," even had
he himself not assured us, in the prefatory essay to his own piece, that
he accounts it, "undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most noble, and most
sublime poems, which either this age or nation has produced"? We are,
therefore, to seek for the motive which could have induced him, holding
this opinion, "to gild pure gold, and set a perfume on the violet."
Dennis has left a curious record upon this subject:--"Dryden," he
observes, "in his Preface before the 'State of Innocence,' appears to
have been the first, those gentlemen excepted whose verses are before
Milton's poem, who discovered in so public a manner an extraordinary
opinion of Milton's extraordinary merit. And yet Mr. Dryden at that time
knew not half the extent of his excellence, as more than twenty years
afterwards he confessed to me, and is pretty plain from his writing the
'State of Innocence.'" Had he known the full extent of Milton's
excellence, Dennis thought he would not have ventured on this
undertaking, unless he designed to be a foil to him: "but they," he
adds, "who knew Mr. Dryden, know very well, that he was not of a temper
to design to be a foil to any one."[30] We are therefore to conclude,
that it was only the hope of excelling his original, admirable as he
allowed it to be, which impelled Dryden upon this unprofitable and
abortive labour; and we are to examine the improvements which Dryden
seemed to meditate, or, in other words, the differences between his
taste and that of Milton.

And first we may observe, that the difference in their situations
affected their habits of thinking upon poetical subjects. Milton had
retired into solitude, if not into obscurity, relieved from everything
like external agency either influencing his choice of a subject, or his
mode of treating it