Milton, diminish in some degree the honour of our country?

The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of
verbal inaccuracies; which Bentley, perhaps better skilled in
grammar and poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them,
and which he imputed to the obtrusions of a reviser, whom the
author's blindness obliged him to employ; a supposition rash and
groundless, if he thought it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as
is said, he in private allowed it to be false.

The plan of "Paradise Lost" has this inconvenience, that it
comprises neither human actions nor human manners. The man and
woman who act and suffer are in a state which no other man or woman
can ever know. The reader finds no transaction in which he can be
engaged--beholds no condition in which he can by any effort of
imagination place himself; he has, therefore, little natural
curiosity or sympathy.

We all, indeed, feel the effects of Adam's disobedience; we all sin
like Adam, and like him must all bewail our offences; we have
restless and insidious enemies in the fallen angels, and in the
blessed spirits we have guardians and friends; in the redemption of
mankind we hope to be included; in the description of heaven and
hell we are surely interested, as we are all to reside hereafter
either in the regions of horror or bliss.

But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught
to our infancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and
familiar conversations, and are habitually interwoven with the whole
texture of life. Being therefore not new, they raise no