The Adamus exul of Grotius; or The Prototype of Paradise Lost — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 PROLEGOMENA.: Greece and Rome, were much engaged in the severe defence of their faith, by forcible dialectics and practical arts, but these did not hinder them from doing justice to thé poetic splendors of Christianity. Among the Christian fathers who arrayed the fall of Adam with poetical imagery, was St. Avitus, early in the sixth century. He wrote a poem, in three parts, entitled “De Origine Mundi, de Originalt Peccato, and de Sententid Dei.” The learned M. Guizot has lately brought these compositions into notice, and instituted a parallel between them and Milton’s “ Paradise Lost,” which he thinks in some measure derived from them. In ‘ Blackwood's Magazine” for March, 1838, this question is discussed with much ingenuity and eandour. The classic genius of the gentiles was yet more successful in investing these sublime doctrines of theology, so far as they understood them, by the aid of vague traditions, with the pomp of enthusiastic fancy, and the ornament of dazzling verse. It is no less profitable than pleasing to ob- serve the progress of these traditions as they came into the hands of the gentile bards, dim and confused, and thence issued forth clad in the gorgeous apparel of fiction, passion, and rhapsody. These grand themes of poetic genius continued to sow the seeds of future song in the mystical dramas and romantic legends connected with the initiations of the middle ages; and though long bewailed as dead and extinct, that seed retained an essential vitality not to be destroyed by’ violence, barbarism, or ignorance. It sprang up like a strong plant with the revival of letters, and with the outburst of universal reformation. It would be idle to notice very particularly the earliest compositions in the classical or modern Janguages relating to the fall of man. The first Latin poem of note on this subject, is the Protogonus of Anysius, a tragedy ; the hero of whichis Adam. This was published in 1535, in quarto, and was very celebrated in its day, though now little known. The next writer of eminence on the same topic, was Zieglerus, who wrote two Latin tragedies, Protoplastis and Samson Agonistes, published in 1550. Another writer, who followed in the same path, was Du Bartas, who wrote about 1580, along poem in French, entitled the ‘‘ Weeks of the Creation” — being a sort of poetic commentary on the earlier chapters of Genesis. This work was published with extensive annotations, and be- came exceedingly popular on the continent. It was translated into English by that most fantastical of all versifiers, Sylvester. The notes were likewise translated by another hand. A little after, in 1593, our English poet, Hunis, or Hunnis, the trans- lator of the Psalms, published a tragedy, entitled “« Adam’s Banishment;” which we have not met with. Such were the compositions extant in the boyhood of Hugo Grotius, who was born at Delft, 1588—educated under the famous Francis Junius, at Leyden, in the profound study of the Scriptures, according to the Biblical commentators of his time—skilled in all the critical and varied scholarship of classical literature, and familiarized with the best com- positions of the modern writers; he availed himself of his treasured resources to an extent never before equalled. The mind of Grotius was naturally of a deeply devotional kind, and peculiarly inclined to meditate on those primary _and transcendent mys- GORMGOOO@ @ <S (c@