ever procured the author's descendants; and to this he who has now
attempted to relate his Life, had the honour of contributing a
Prologue.

In the examination of Milton's poetical works, I shall pay so much
regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his
early pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very
laudable; what he has once written he resolves to preserve, and
gives to the public an unfinished poem which he broke off because he
was "nothing satisfied with what he had done," supposing his readers
less nice than himself. These preludes to his future labours are in
Italian, Latin, and English. Of the Italian I cannot pretend to
speak as a critic; but I have heard them commended by a man well
qualified to decide their merit. The Latin pieces are lusciously
elegant: but the delight which they afford is rather by the
exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the
diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of
invention or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value;
the elegies excel the odes; and some of the exercises on Gunpowder
Treason might have been spared.

The English poems, though they make no promises of "Paradise Lost,"
have this evidence of genius--that they have a cast original and
unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ
from the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are
too often distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of
words are new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets
seem to be laboriously sought, and violently applied.

That in the early parts of his life he wrote with much care appears