illustrate or adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge
impregnated his mind, fermented by study and exalted by imagination.

It has been therefore said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one of
his encomiasts, that in reading "Paradise Lost" we read a book of
universal knowledge.

But original deficiency cannot be supplied. The want of human
interest is always felt. "Paradise Lost" is one of the books which
the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again.
None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather
than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed
and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our
master, and seek for companions.

Another inconvenience of Milton's design is, that it requires the
description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. He
saw that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not
show angels acting but by instruments of action; he therefore
invested them with form and matter. This, being necessary, was
therefore defensible; and he should have secured the consistency of
his system, by keeping immateriality out of sight, and enticing his
reader to drop it from his thoughts. But he has unhappily perplexed
his poetry with his philosophy. His infernal and celestial powers
are sometimes pure spirit, and sometimes animated body. When Satan
walks with his lance upon the "burning marl," he has a body; when,
in his passage between hell and the new world, he is in danger of
sinking in the vacuity, and is supported by a gust of rising
vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad, he seems to be
more spirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when he "starts