The 'Paradise Lost' had then been
published barely forty years, which was nothing in an age without reviews;
the editions were still scanty; and though no Addison could eventually
promote, for the instant he quickened, the circulation. If I recollect,
Tonson's accurate revision of the text followed immediately upon Addison's
papers. And it is certain that Addison [6] must have diffused the
knowledge of Milton upon the continent, from signs that soon followed. But
does not this prove that I myself have been in the wrong as well as
Schlosser? No: that's impossible. Schlosser's always in the wrong; but
it's the next thing to an impossibility that I should be detected in an
error: philosophically speaking, it is supposed to involve a
contradiction. 'But surely I said the very same thing as Schlosser by
assenting to what he said.' Maybe I did: but then I have time to make a
distinction, because my article is not yet finished; we are only at page
six or seven; whereas Schlosser can't make any distinction now, because
his book's printed; and his list of _errata_ (which is shocking though he
does not confess to the thousandth part), is actually published. My
distinction is--that, though Addison generally hated the impassioned,
and shrank from it as from a fearful thing, yet this was when it combined
with forms of life and fleshy realities (as in dramatic works), but not
when it combined with elder forms of eternal abstractions.
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