y feels and acknowledges the necessity of
detecting crimes, yet scarce any degree of virtue or reputation is able
to secure an informer from publick hatred. The learned world has always
admitted the usefulness of critical disquisitions, yet he that attempts
to show, however modestly, the failures of a celebrated writer, shall
surely irritate his admirers, and incur the imputation of envy,
captiousness, and malignity.

With this danger full in my view, I shall proceed to examine the
sentiments of Milton's tragedy, which, though much less liable to
censure than the disposition of his plan, are, like those of other
writers, sometimes exposed to just exceptions for want of care, or want
of discernment.

Sentiments are proper and improper as they consist more or less with the
character and circumstances of the person to whom they are attributed,
with the rules of the composition in which they are found, or with the
settled and unalterable nature of things.

It is common among the tragick poets to introduce their persons alluding
to events or opinions, of which they could not possibly have any
knowledge. The barbarians of remote or newly discovered regions often
display their skill in European learning. The god of love is mentioned
in Tamerlane with all the familiarity of a Roman epigrammatist; and a
late writer has put Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood
into the mouth of a Turkish statesman, who lived near two centuries
before it was known even to philosophers or anatomists.

Milton's learning, which acquainted him with the manners of the ancient
eastern nations, and his invention, which required no assistance from
the common cant of poetry, have preserved him from frequent outrages of
local or chronological propriety. Yet he has mentioned Chalybean steel,
of which it is not very likely that his chorus should have heard, and
has made Alp the general name of a mountain, in a region where the Alps
could scarcely be known:

No medicinal liquor can assuage,
Nor breath of cooling air from snowy Alp.

He has taught Samson the tales of Circe, and the Syrens, at which he
apparently hints in his colloquy with Dalila:

--I know thy trains,
Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;
Thy fair _enchanted cup_, and _warbling charms_
No more on me have pow'r.

But the grossest errour of this kind is the solemn introduction of the
Phoenix in the last scene; which is faulty, not only as it is
incon