We have two ideas, which we are anxious to bring under public notice, with regard to Milton. The reader whom Providence shall send us will not measure the value of these ideas (we trust and hope) by their bulk. The reader indeed that great idea!is very often a more important person towards the fortune of an essay than the writer. Even "the prosperity of a jest," as Shakspeare tells us, lies less in its own merit than " in the ear of him that hears it." If he should happen to be unusually obtuse, the wittiest jest perishes-the most pointed is found blunt. So, with regard to books, should the reader on whom we build prove a sandy and treacherous foundation, the whole edifice, " temple and tower," must come to the ground. Should it happen, for instance, that the reader, inflicted upon ourselves for our sins, belongs to that class of people who listen to books in the ratio of their much speaking-find no eloquence in 32mo, and little force of argument except in such a folio as might knock him down upon occasion of his proving restive against its logic-in that case he will despise our present essay. Will despise it? He does despise already: for already he sees that it is short. His contempt is a high à priori contempt: for he measures us by anticipation, and needs to wait for no experience in order to vindicate his sentence against us.

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Yet, in one view, this brevity of an essayist does seem to warrant his reader in some little indignation. We, the writer, expect to bring over the reader to our opinion-else wherefore do we write? But, within so small a compass of ground, is it reasonable to look for such a result? "Bear witness to the presumption of this essay," we hear the reader complaining; "it measures about fourteen inches by twotwenty-eight square inches at the most -and is it within human belief that I, simply as I stand here, shall be converted in so narrow an area? Here am I in a state of nature, as you may say. An acre of sound argument might do something: but here is a man who flatters himself-that, before I am advanced seven inches further in my studies, he is to work a notable change

in my creed. By Castor and Pollux! he must think very superbly of himself, or very meanly of me."

Too true, we reply, too true; but, perhaps, there are faults on both sides. The writer is too peremptory and exacting; the reader is too restive. The writer is too full of his office, which he fancies is that of a teacher or a professor speaking ex cathedra: the rebel. lious reader is oftentimes too deter. mined that he will not learn. The one conceits himself booted and spurred, and mounted on his reader's back, with an express commission for riding him: the other is vicious, apt to bolt out of the course at every opening, and resolute in this point-that he will not be ridden.

There are some, meantime, who take a very different view of the relations existing between those well-known parties to a book writer and reader. So far from regarding the writer as entitled to the homage of his reader, as if he were some feudal superior, they hold him little better than an actor bowing before the reader as his audience. The feudal relation of fealty [fidelitas] may subsist between them, but the places are inverted; the writer is the liegeman-the reader it is who claims to be the sovereign. Our own opinion inclines this way. It is clear that the writer exists for the sake of the reader, not the reader for the sake of the writer. Besides, the writer bears all sorts of characters, whilst the reader universally has credit for the best possible. We have all heard of "the courteous reader," "the candid reader," "the enlightened reader." But which of us ever heard of "the discourteous reader," "the mulish reader," "the barbarous reader?" Doubtless there is no such person. The Goths and Vandals are all confined to the writers. "The reader" - that great character-is ever wise, ever learned, ever courteous. Even in the worst of times, this great man preserved his purity. Even in the tenth and eleventh centuries, which we usually account the very noontide of darkness, he shone like a mould candle amongst basest dips. And perhaps it is our duty to presume all other virtues and graces as no less essential to him than his glorious "candour," his "courtesy," (surpassing that of Sir Gawain,) and his truly "enlightened" understanding. Indeed, we very much question whether a writer, who carries with him a just feeling of his allegiance-a truly loyal writer-can lawfully suppose his sovereign, the reader, peccable or capable of error; and whether there is not even a shade of impiety in conceiving him liable to the affections of sleep, or of yawning. Having thus, upon our knees as it were, done feudal homage to our great suzerain, the reader having propitiated him with Persian adorations and with Phrygian genuflexions, let us now crave leave to convert him a little. Convert him! - that sounds" un peu fort," does it not? No, not at all. A cat may look at a king; and upon this or that out-of-the-way point a writer may presume to be more knowing than his reader-the serf may undertake to convert his lord. The reader is a great being-a great nounsubstantive; but still, like a mere adjective, he is liable to the three degrees of comparison. He may rise above himself he may transcend the ordinary level of readers, however exalted that level be. Being great, he may become greater. Full of light, he may yet labour with a spot or two of darkness. And such a spot we hold the prevalent opinion upon Milton in two particular questions of tastequestions that are not insulated, but diffusive; spreading themselves over the entire surface of the Paradise Lost, and also of the Paradise Regained; insomuch that, if Milton is wrong once, then he is wrong by many scores of times. Nay, which transcends all counting of cases or numerical estimates of error, if, in the separate instances, (be they few or be they many,) he is truly and indeed wrong-then he has erred, not by the case but by the principle; and that is a thousand times worse; for a separate case or instance of error may escape any man -may have been overlooked amongst the press of objects crowding on his eye; or, if not overlooked, if passed deliberately, may plead the ordinary privilege of human frailty. The man erred; and his error terminates in itself. But an error of principle does not terminate in itself; it is a fountain; it is self-diffusive; and it has a life of its own. The faults of a great

man are in any case contagious; they are dazzling and delusive by means of the great man's general example. But his false principles have a worse contagion. They operate not only through the general haze and halo which invests a shining example; but even if transplanted where that example is unknown, they propagate themselves by the vitality inherent in all selfconsistent principles, whether true or false.

Before we notice these two cases in Milton, first of all let us ask-Who and what is Milton? Dr Johnson was furiously incensed with a certain man, by trade an author and manufacturer of books wholesale and retail, for introducing Milton's name into a certain index thus-" Milton, Mr John." That Mister, undoubtedly, was hard to digest. Yet very often it happens to the best of us to men who are far enough from "thinking small beer of themselves," - that about ten o'clock A.M., an official big-wig, sitting at Bow Street, calls upon the man to account for his sprees of the last night, for his feats in knocking down lamp-posts and extinguishing watchmen, by this ugly demand of "Who and what are you, sir?" And perhaps the poor man, sick and penitential for want of soda water, really finds a considerable difficulty in replying satisfactorily to the worthy beek's apostrophe. though, at five o'clock in the evening, should the culprit be returning into the country in the same coach as his awful interrogator, he might be very apt to look fierce, and retort this amiable enquiry, and with equal thirst for knowledge to demand, "D your eyes, if you come to that, who and what are you?" And the beek in his turn, though so apt to indulge his own curiosity at the expense of the public, might find it very difficult to satisfy that of others.

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The same thing happens to authors; and to great authors beyond all others. So accustomed are we to survey a great man through the cloud of years that has gathered round him-so impossible is it to detach him from the pomp and equipage of all who have quoted him, copied him, echoed him, lectured about him, disputed about him, quarreled about him, that in the case of any Anacharsis the Scythian coming amongst us-any savage, that is to say, uninstructed in our literature,