Had he lived to
finish his poem in the six remaining legends, it had certainly been
more of a piece; but could not have been perfect, because the model
was not true. But Prince Arthur, or his chief patron Sir Philip
Sidney, whom he intended to make happy by the marriage of his
Gloriana, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and
spirit to accomplish his design. For the rest, his obsolete
language and the ill choice of his stanza are faults but of the
second magnitude; for, notwithstanding the first, he is still
intelligible--at least, after a little practice; and for the last,
he is the more to be admired that, labouring under such a
difficulty, his verses are so numerous, so various and so
harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly imitated, has
surpassed him among the Romans, and only Mr. Waller among the
English.
As for Mr. Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his
subject is not that of an heroic poem, properly so called. His
design is the losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous,
like that of all other epic works; his heavenly machines are many,
and his human persons are but two.
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