The Adamus exul of Grotius; or The Prototype of Paradise Lost — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

PROLEGOMENA. 7 shall, if encouraged by the public, hereafter publish the whole tragedy in the original Latin.’ This promise Lauder afterwards fulfilled, and in 1752, published his ‘“ Delectus Auctorum Sacrorum Miltono Facem Prelucentium ;” contain- ing tlie “ Adamus Exul” of Grotius, and Ramsay’s “ Poemata Sacra.” Having procured Dr. Parr’s copy of this work, now become very scarce,-—being personally assured by the late Mr. Heber that it was a faithful copy of the original editions, which, he said, he had in his own library—and having carefully examined the internal evidences, the translator has no doubt respecting the authenticity of this tragedy. Nor has its genuineness, thus confirmed by various authorities, ever been disproved by Bishop Douglas, or other writers, who detected so many forgeries in other publications of Lauder. . In translating it, we have endeavoured to retain as much of the spirit and sense of the original as is consistent with poetical sentiment and ex- pression. On the whole, it will be found no unjust representation of the original, though we have here and there taken the liberty to insert a few explanatory lines, and sometimes to contract that redundancy of detailed descriptions, now considered superfluous. | By thus bringing this most celebrated Tragedy to light, after its long eclipse, we hope to supply that necessary link in the series of Milton's authorities, which has hitherto been held a desideratum. If we have been at all successful in transfusing the genius and style of the original into the translation, the reader can hardly fail to perceive that religious sublimity, that moral thoughtfulness, that intellectual urgency, and manly simplicity, so strikingly characteristic of Grotius and Milton, and so miserably deficient in the poetry of the present day. This peculiarity is well described by Professor Wilson :—“ In Milton, (says he) the power of poetry seemed to expire; not merely because no voice like his was heard when his own voice had ceased, but because the very purposes of poetry seemed to be changed, and the demesnes of verse to be subjected to other faculties, and the sceptre past into unlineal hands, Milton, like his great predecessors, drew his poetry from the depths of his own spirit—brooding over nature and life—standing between the worlds of nature and man—and chaunting to men the voice of his visions —a strain that, like a bright reflection of lovely imagery, discloses to the minds of others the glories and perfections that fell beautiful and numberless on his own. The great difference between the poetry of Milton and that of our own day, is the severe obedience to an intellectual law which governed his mind in composition. The study of his poetry would be as much a work of exact intellectual analysis as that of the logical writings of Aristotle. Itis evident that he was not satisfied with great conception—it was not enough that language yielded her powerful words to invest those conceptions with a living form. But he knew that when he wrote he practised an intellectual art—that both the workings of imagination, and the vivid impression of speech, must be reduced to an order satisfying to the intelligence. And hence, in his boldest poetry, in the midst of wonder and astonishment, we never feel for a moment that reason is shaken from her sovereignty over the actions of the mind. We are made to feel, on the contrary, that her prevailing overruling power rises in strength and majesty as all the powers that are subject to COL @ DOO <S (c@