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MILTON.
When success seems attainable, diligence is enforced; but when it is admitted that the faculties are suppressed by a cross wind, or a cloudy sky, the day is given up with out resistance; for who can contend with the course of Nature?
From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free. There prevailed in his time an opinion that the world was in its decay, and that we have had the misfortune to be produced in the decrepitude of Nature. It was suspected that the whole creation languished, that neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors, and that every thing was daily sinking by gradual diminution[1]. Milton appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is not
- ↑ This opinion is, with goat eating and ingenuity, refuted in a book now very little known, "An Apology or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World," by Dr. George Hakewill, London, folio, 1635. The first who ventured to propagate it in this country was Dr. Gabriel Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, a man of a versatile temper, and the author of a book entituled, "The Fall of Man, or the Corruption of Nature proved by natural Reason.". Lond. 1616 and 1624, quarto. He was plundered in the Usurpation, turned Roman Catholic, and died in obscurity. Vide Athen. Oxon, vol. I. 727. H.
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