as is shown by the famous recipe in Martinus Scriblerus. Still it was accepted as the highest form of poetry; and when Wilkie in 1757 published the Epigoniad, he was hailed by the patriotic Hume as a 'Scottish Homer.' That poetry was quite independent of the vitality of the conceptions which it embodied, was taken to be too obvious for demonstration. Paradise Lost was accepted on these terms simply as the noblest English specimen of the class; and if Johnson shows a certain sense that Milton had been too daring in venturing into the highest regions, the audacity was pardonable in the absence of any irreverent intention. Ordinary readers could shut their eyes to incongruities and refuse to see profanity where so clearly none was intended. The critic could take Paradise Lost simply as an epic; and the ordinary reader accepted it as a kind of gorgeous paraphrase of the book of Genesis.
In more modern times the difficulties presented by the combination have obviously increased. Are we to admit with Pattison that our interest in the poetry will inevitably be sapped; or can we throw ourselves back into his intellectual position sufficiently to revive the classic for the time? We may, it is suggested, arrive at 'that willing suspension
