Paradise Lost
. In
Tatlers
and
Spectators
Steele and Addison had been equal contributors to the diffusion of a sense of Milton's genius. In Addison it had been strong, even when, at Oxford, in April, 1694, a young man trained in the taste of the day, he omitted Shakespeare from a rhymed 'Account of the chief English Poets,' but of Milton said:
'Whate'er his pen describes I more than see,
Whilst ev'ry verse, array'd in majesty,
Bold and sublime, my whole attention draws,
And seems above the critics' nicer laws.'
Eighteen years older than he was when he wrote that, Addison now prepares by a series of Saturday Essays,—the Saturday Paper which reached many subscribers only in time for Sunday reading, being always set apart in the
Spectator
for moral or religious topics, to show that, judged also by Aristotle and the "critics' nicer laws," Milton was even technically a greater epic poet than either Homer or Virgil. This nobody had conceded. Dryden, the best critic of the outgoing generation, had said in the Dedication of the Translations of