, who was an Injudicious Poet, lets drop his Story very frequently for the sake of his unnecessary Digressions, or his Diverticula, as Scaliger calls them.
If he gives us an Account of the Prodigies which preceded the Civil War, he declaims upon the Occasion, and shews how much happier it would be for Man, if he did not feel his Evil Fortune before it comes to pass; and suffer not only by its real Weight, but by the Apprehension of it.
Complaint
for
his Blindness, his Panegyrick on Marriage, his Reflections on Adam and Eve's going naked, of the Angels eating, and several other Passages in his Poem, are liable to the same Exception, tho' I must confess there is so great a Beauty in these very Digressions, that I would not wish them out of his Poem.
I have, in a former Paper, spoken of the Characters of Milton's
Paradise Lost