It is noticeable, however, that in his Account of the Greatest English Poets, young Addison gave a fifth part of the piece to expression of the admiration he felt even then for Milton. That his appreciation became critical, and, although limited, based on a sense of poetry which brought him near to Milton, Addison proved in the
Spectator
by his eighteen Saturday papers upon
Paradise Lost
. But it was from the religious side that he first entered into the perception of its grandeur. His sympathy with its high purpose caused him to praise, in the same pages that commended
Paradise Lost
to his countrymen, another 'epic,' Blackmore's
Creation
, a dull metrical treatise against atheism, as a work which deserved to be looked upon as
'one of the most useful and noble productions of our English verse. The reader,' he added, of a piece which shared certainly with Salisbury Plain the charms of flatness and extent of space, 'the reader cannot but be pleased to find the depths of philosophy enlivened with all the charms of poetry, and to see so great a strength of reason amidst so beautiful a redundancy of the imagination.'