brink of the ludicrous to an observer endowed with small range of sympathy
or intellect. But no man ever found the starry heavens ludicrous, though
many find them dull, and prefer a near view of a brandy flask. So in the
solemn wheelings of the Miltonic movement, Addison could find a sincere
delight. But the sublimities of earthly misery and of human frenzy were
for him a book sealed. Beside all which, Milton, renewed the types of
Grecian beauty as to _form_, whilst Shakspeare, without designing at all
to contradict these types, did so, in effect, by his fidelity to a new
nature, radiating from a Gothic centre.

In the midst, however, of much just feeling, which one could only wish a
little deeper, in the Addisonian papers on 'Paradise Lost,' there are some
gross blunders of criticism, as there are in Dr. Johnson, and from the
self-same cause--an understanding suddenly palsied from defective passion,
A feeble capacity of passion must, upon a question of passion, constitute
a feeble range of intellect. But, after all, the worst thing uttered by
Addison in these papers is, not _against_ Milton, but meant to be
complimentary. Towards enhancing the splendor of the great poem, he tells
us that it is a Grecian palace as to amplitude, symmetry, and
architectural skill: but being in the English language, it is to be
regarded as if built in brick; whereas, had it been so happy as to be
written in Greek, then it would have been a palace built in Parian marble.
Indeed! that's smart--'that's handsome, I calculate.' Yet, before a man
undertakes to sell his mother-tongue, as old pewter trucked against gold,
he should be quite sure of his own metallurgic skill; because else, the
gold may happen to be copper, and the pewter to be silver. Are you quite
sure, my Addison, that you have understood the powers of this language
which you toss away so lightly, as an old tea-kettle? Is it a ruled case
that you have exhausted its resources? Nobody doubts your grace in a
certain line of composition, but it is only one line among many, and it is