, that I shall not need to point the
reader to the places." That avowal may be thought to set aside all
criticism--but not so--for his illustrious editor says, "the probable
motive therefore of this alteration was the wish, so common to genius, to
exert itself upon a subject on which another had already attained
brilliant success; or, as Dryden has termed a similar attempt, the desire
to shoot in the bow of Ulysses." And he adds, that because Milton intended
at first to model his poem into a dramatic form, "Dryden, conscious of his
own powers, and enthusiastically admiring those of Milton, was induced to
make an experiment on the forsaken plan of the blind bard, which, with his
usual rapidity of conception and execution, he completed in the short
space of one month." Wide-encroaching Walter would see nothing far wrong
in Glorious John. It is not "the forsaken plan of the blind bard," nor any
thing in the least like it. They are opposite as any things that "own
antipathy in nature." But this is all mere nonsense. The opera is
disgraceful to Dryden. It proves that he had no understanding of the
"Paradise Lost."

"Ay, you may _tag_ my verses, if you will." But had Milton lived to hear
their taggery, wrathful fire would have been in his eyes.

The opera opens, as we saw, in chaos, the scene sinking into hell, and we
have Lucifer "raising himself on the lake." His exclamatory speech, of
some sixteen lines, on the lake is versified, not in Dryden's best manner,
from that most sublime one of Satan on reaching with Beelzebub the burning
marle, with some additions from Satan's first address to that angel, while
yet they were lying side by side on the fiery flood. To those who have the
First Book of the "Paradise Lost" by heart, this sort of transposition
patchwork cannot but be most offensive. As if to give an air of
originality, where everything is borrowed and blurred, Asmoday in Milton
one of the lowest, is made one of the highest, and is substituted for
Beelzebub--and to him Lucifer most unarchangel-like calls "Ho! Asmoday,
awake!"

Asmoday answers in a short speech, very ill reported, formerly delivered
by Milton's Beelzebub, concluding with a bit absolutely stolen from his
Satan himself! Lucifer then observes to Asmoday, that "our troops, _like
scattered leaves in autumn_, lie!" A poor plagiarism indeed from the
famous description from Milton's own lips, and from Lucifer's incredibly
absurd! Lucifer then announces--