Page:The Lusiad (Camões, tr. Mickle, 1791), Volume 1.djvu/316

 and the human affections than a Burleigh. In ancient Greece, the works of Homer were called the lesson reaped from thence. Poetry and Gaming, which usually go together, are alike in this too, that they seldom bring any advantage but to those who have nothing else to live on. Men of estates almost constantly go away losers; and 'tis well if they escape at a cheaper rate, than their whole estates, or the greatest part of them. If therefore you would not have your son the fiddle to every jovial company, without whom the sparks could not relish their wine, nor know how to pass an afternoon idly; if you would not have him to waste his time and estate to divert others, and contemn the dirty acres left him by his ancestors, I do not think you will much care he should be a poet."

This ignorance of poetry is even worse than the Dutch idea of it. But this, and his opinion of Blackmore, fully prove, that Locke, however great in other respects, knew no difference between a Shakespeare, that unequalled philosopher of the passions, and the dullest Grub-street plodder; between a Milton and the tavern rhymers of the days of the second Charles. But Milton's knowledge of the affections discovered in the cultivation of the Muses an use of the first importance. A taste formed by the great poetry, he esteems as the ultimate refinement of the understanding. "This (says he, in his Tractate on the Education of Youth) would make them soon perceive, what despicable creatures our common rhymers and play writers be; and shew them what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human things. From hence, and not till now, will be the right season of forming them to be able writers and composers in every excellent matter... whether they be to speak in parliament or council, honour and attention would be waiting on their lips. There would then also appear in pulpits other visages, other gestures, and stuff otherwise wrought, than what we now sit under."——Milton evidently alludes to the general dulness of the furious sectaries of his own time. The furious bigots of every sect have been as remarkable for their inelegance as for their rage. And the cultivation of polite literature has ever been found the best preventive of gloomy enthusiasm, and religious intolerance. In Milton, and every great poet, the poet and sublime philosopher are united, though Milton was perhaps the only man of his age, who perceived this union or sameness of character. Lord Clarendon seems to have considered poetry merely as a puerile sing-song. Waller, he says, addicted himself to poetry at thirty, the time when others leave it off. Nor was Charles or