In the course of 1673 our author’s pen was engaged in a task, which may be safely condemned as presumptuous, though that pen was Dryden’s.  It was no other than that of new-modelling the “Paradise Lost” of Milton into a dramatic poem, called the “State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man.”  The coldness with which Milton’s mighty epic was received upon the first publication is almost proverbial.  The character of the author, obnoxious for his share in the usurped government; the turn of the language, so different from that of the age; the seriousness of a subject so discordant with its lively frivolities—­gave to the author’s renown the slowness of growth with the permanency of the oak.  Milton’s merit, however, had not escaped the eye of Dryden.[29] He was acquainted with the author, perhaps even before the Restoration; and who can doubt Dryden’s power of feeling the sublimity of the “Paradise Lost,” even had he himself not assured us, in the prefatory essay to his own piece, that he accounts it, “undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems, which either this age or nation has produced”?  We are, therefore, to seek for the motive which could have induced him, holding this opinion, “to gild pure gold, and set a perfume on the violet.”  Dennis has left a curious record upon this subject:—­“Dryden,” he observes, “in his Preface before the ‘State of Innocence,’ appears to have been the first, those gentlemen excepted whose verses are before Milton’s poem, who discovered in so public a manner an extraordinary opinion of Milton’s extraordinary merit.  And yet Mr. Dryden at that time knew not half the extent of his excellence, as more than twenty years afterwards he confessed to me, and is pretty plain from his writing the ‘State of Innocence.’” Had he known the full extent of Milton’s excellence, Dennis thought he would not have ventured on this undertaking, unless he designed to be a foil to him:  “but they,” he adds, “who knew Mr. Dryden, know very well, that he was not of a temper to design to be a foil to any one."[30] We are therefore to conclude, that it was only the hope of excelling his original, admirable as he allowed it to be, which impelled Dryden upon this unprofitable and abortive labour; and we are to examine the improvements which Dryden seemed to meditate, or, in other words, the differences between his taste and that of Milton.

And first we may observe, that the difference in their situations affected their habits of thinking upon poetical subjects.  Milton had retired into solitude, if not into obscurity, relieved from everything like external agency either influencing his choice of a subject, or his mode of treating it; and in consequence, instead of looking abroad to consult the opinion of his age, he appealed only to the judge which heaven had implanted within him, when he was endowed with severity of judgment, and profusion of genius.  But the taste of Dryden was not so independent.  Placed by his very office at the head of what was fashionable in literature, he had to write for those around him, rather than for posterity; was to support a brilliant reputation in the eye of the world; and is frequently found boasting of his intimacy with those who led the taste of the age, and frequently quoting the