No great genius appears to have made such free and wise use of his reading as Milton has done, and which has led in several instances to an accusation of what some might term plagiarism. We are not certain that Milton, when not yet blind, may not have read some of those obscure modern Latin poets whom Lauder scented out.
[15] Guest's "History of English Rhythms."
[16] This speech, in which Satan appeals to and characterises his Infernals, may be read in Parfait's analysis of the Mystery.--_Hist. du Théâtre François_, i. 79.
[17] _L'Angeleida_ of VALVASONE, the _Adamo_ of ANDREINI, and others.--Hayley's Conjectures on the Origin of "Paradise Lost." See also Tiraboschi, and Ginguéné.
[18] These singular attempts at art may be inspected in above fifty plates, in the Archæologia, vol. xx. We may rejoice at their preservation, for art, even in the attempts of its children, may excite ideas which might not else have occurred to us.
The Anglo-Saxon poetical narrative of "The Exploits of Beowulf" forms a striking contrast with the chronological paraphrase of Cædmon. Its genuine antiquity unquestionably renders it a singular curiosity; but it derives an additional interest from its representation of the primitive simplicity of a Homeric period--the infancy of customs and manners and emotions of that Hero-life, which the Homeric poems first painted for mankind:--that Hero-life of which Macpherson in his Ossian caught but imperfect conceptions from the fragments he may have collected, while he metamorphosed his ideal Celtic heroes into those of the sentimental romance of another age and another race.
The northern hordes under their petty chieftains, cast into a parallel position with those princes of Greece whose realms were provinces, and whose people were tribes, often resembled them in the like circumstances, the like characters, and the like manners. Such were those kinglings who could possess themselves of a territory in a single incursion, and whose younger brothers, stealing out of their lone bays, extended their dominion as "Sea-Kings" on the illimitable ocean.[1] The war-ship and the mead-hall bring us back to that early era of society, when great men knew only to be heroes, flattered by their bards, whose songs are ever the echoes of their age and their patrons.