Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ... NOTES. NOTES. 1 1 ff. The announcement of these papers was made by Addison at the close of Spectator, No. 262, Dec. 31, 1711, in the following words: "As the first place among our English poets is due to Milton, and as I have drawn more quotations out of him than from any other, I shall enter into a regular criticism upon his Paradise Lost, which I shall publish every Saturday till I have given my thoughts upon that poem. I shall not, however, presume to impose upon others my own particular judgment on this author, but only deliver it as my private opinion Criticism is of a very large extent, and every particular master in this art has his favorite passages in an author, which do not equally strike the best judges. It will be sufficient for me if I discover many beauties or imperfections which others have not attended to, and I should be very glad to see any of our eminent writers publish their discoveries on the same subject. In short, I would always be understood to write my papers of criticism in the spirit which Horace has expressed in those two famous lines: Si quid novisti rectius istis Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum. 'If you have made any better remarks of your own, communicate them with candor; if not, make use of these I present you with.'" Though Addison thus ranked Milton as the first of English poets, he gives Shakespeare a position in the first rank of great geniuses and Milton in the second (Spectator, No. 160, Sept. 3, 1711): "There is another kind of great geniuses which I shall place in a second class, not as I think them inferior to the first, but only for distinction's sake, as they are of a different kind. This second class of great geniuses are those that have formed themselves by rules, and submitted the...
