phrase, and all the colours of words, and learned to adjust their
different sounds to all the varieties of metrical modulation.

Bossu is of opinion, that the poet's first work is to find a MORAL,
which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish. This
seems to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other
poems is incidental and consequent; in Milton's only it is essential
and intrinsic. His purpose was the most useful and the most
arduous: "to vindicate the ways of God to man;" to show the
reasonableness of religion, and the necessity of obedience to the
Divine Law.

To convey this moral there must be a FABLE, a narration artfully
constructed, so as to excite curiosity and surprise expectation. In
this part of his work Milton must be confessed to have equalled
every other poet. He has involved in his account of the Fall of Man
the events which preceded and those that were to follow it: he has
interwoven the whole system of theology with such propriety, that
every part appears to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is
wished shorter for the sake of quickening the progress of the main
action.

The subject of an epic poem is naturally an event of great
importance. That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the
conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is
the fate of worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth;
rebellion against the Supreme King, raised by the highest order of
created beings; the overthrow of their host, and the punishment of
their crime; the creation of a new race of reasonable creatures;
their original happiness and innocence, their forfeiture of