THIS eminent dramatic poet was born in London, on the 10th of February, 1791, and was the youngest son of Sir Francis Milman, a physician of high reputation. He was first sent to school at Greenwich, where he had for his early instructor the talented Dr. Burney, under whose excellent tuition he made great proficiency in the elements of literature; after which he was removed to Eton, where he remained nine years. In 1810, he became a student of Brazen Nose College, Oxford, where his previous acquirements and continued diligence gained him the highest literary reputation, and there he obtained the greatest number of prizes that had ever fallen to the lot of any single scholar within these halls. One of them was for English, and another for Latin verse; and the third and fourth for English and Latin essays.

After a career of such distinction, the path of life was open to the successful scholar, and, in 1815, he obtained a Fellowship in that College where his literary honours had been won. In 1817, he entered into holy orders, and was presented to the vicarage of St. Mary, in the town of Reading. Here he employed himself in the duties of his sacred calling until he was elected to an office which he was so well qualified to adorn; this was, the Professorship of Poetry in the University of Oxford, to which he was appointed in 1821.

The life of the learned and reverend professor, as an author, notwithstanding this brief abstract, has been sufficiently distinguished by active exertion. Before he entered into orders, he wrote the Tragedy of Fazio, a work constructed upon the old English dramatic model; and the attempt was so successful, that the play was performed at Drury Lane to crowded houses, and still continues to be a favourite on the stage. The work itself exhibits a rich vein of poetry, and abounds in striking situations; so that it also pleases in the closet, notwithstanding the awkwardness of the plot, and occasional inconsistency of the characters. His next production, which appeared in 1820, was The Fall of Jerusalem. This magnificent topic had been brooded over by Coleridge for years, as the subject of an epic poem, in which the importance of the event, the thrilling nature of its incidents, and the grandeur of its antecedents and consequences, would have furnished materials only of secondary importance to those of Paradise Lost; but it was the misfortune of Coleridge to dream of great literary enterprises which he wanted industry to achieve. The subject remained unoccupied until it fell into the hands of Milman, who converted it into a sacred drama, in which, attentive to dramatic unities, he has confined the time of action to thirty-six hours; but within that brief space he has collected such an amount of description and incident, as leaves us little to regret for the non-appearance of the promised epic. His other productions were Anne Boleyn, a dramatic poem, in which the characters of Henry VIII., and the Jesuit, Angelo Caraffa, are delineated with great power of description-The Martyr of Antioch, where we have the lovely picture of a young female only a little lower than the angelsand Belshazzar, in which he has contrasted, with the strongest light and shade, the last night of pomp and revelry in Babylon, and the tremendous ruin in which it was closed.

Besides these productions, Milman wrote an epic poem in twelve books, entitled, Samor, Lord of the Bright City; but this work, although exhibiting many passages of great power and richness, is defective in clearness and interest as a narrative, and has never become a favourite with the public. Although the drama has been his chosen department, Milman is defective in that quality which is the most essential element in dramatic writing the sweeping vehemence and passion which are so necessary to convert poetical abstractions into living realities. But if he is somewhat cold and artificial as a mere dramatist, he atones for this defect by his high qualities as a poet-grandeur of imagery, depth of thought, and rich melody of language, by which the lyrical passages of his plays are among the noblest specimens of our modern poetry. We may add, that he is a bright refutation of Dr. Johnson's idea, that Religion is unfitted for poetical purposes. A single page of any of Milman's sacred dramas is a conclusive argument upon this head. It is enough, for instance, to allude to the hymn of Miriam, in The Fall of Jerusalem.

There have been tears from holier eyes than mine

Pour'd o'er thee, Zion! yea, the Son of Man

This thy devoted hour foresaw and wept.
And I can I refrain from weeping? Yes,
My country, in thy darker destiny
Will I awhile forget mine own distress.

I feel it now, the sad, the coming hour;
The signs are full, and never shall the sun
Shine on the cedar roofs of Salem more;

Her tale of splendour now is told and done:
Her wine-cup of festivity is spilt,
And all is o'er, her grandeur and her guilt.

Oh! fair and favour'd city, where of old
The balmy airs were rich with melody,
That led her pomp beneath the cloudless sky
In vestments flaming with the orient gold;
Her gold is dim, and mute her music's voice;
The Heathen o'er her perish'd pomp rejoice.

How stately then was every palm-deck'd street,
Down which the maidens danced with tinkling feet!
How proud the elders in the lofty gate!
How crowded all her nation's solemn feasts
With white-robed Levites and high-mitred Priests!
How gorgeous all her Temple's sacred state!
Her streets are razed, her maidens sold for slaves,
Her gates thrown down, her elders in their graves;
Her feasts are holden 'mid the Gentile's scorn,
By stealth her priesthood's holy garments worn;
And where her Temple crown'd the glittering rock,
The wandering shepherd folds his evening flock.

When shall the work, the work of death begin?
When come the avengers of proud Judah's sin?
Aceldama! accursed and guilty ground,
Gird all the city in thy dismal bound;

Her price is paid, and she is sold like thou;
Let every ancient monument and tomb
Enlarge the border of its vaulted gloom,
Their spacious chambers all are wanted now.

But never more shall yon lost city need
Those secret places for her future dead;
Of all her children, when this night is pass'd,
Devoted Salem's darkest, and her last,
Of all her children none is left to her,
Save those whose house is in the sepulchre.

Yet, guilty city, who shall mourn for thee?
Shall Christian voices wail thy devastation?
Look down! look down, avenged Calvary,

Upon thy late yet dreadful expiation.

Oh! long foretold, though slow accomplish'd fate,
"Her house is left unto her desolate;"
Proud Cæsar's ploughshare o'er her ruins driven,
Fulfils at length the tardy doom of heaven;
The wrathful vial's drops at length are pour'd
On the rebellious race that crucified their Lord!
From The Fall of Jerusalem.

HYMN.

For thou wert born of woman! thou didst come,
Oh Holiest! to this world of sin and gloom,
Not in thy dread omnipotent array;

And not by thunders strew'd
Was thy tempestuous road;

Nor indignation burnt before thee on thy way.
But thee, a soft and naked child,
Thy mother undefiled,

In the rude manger laid to rest
From off her virgin breast.

The heavens were not commanded to prepare
A gorgeous canopy of golden air;

Nor stoop'd their lamps th' enthroned fires on high:
A single silent star

Came wandering from afar,

Gliding uncheck'd and calm along the liquid sky;
The Eastern Sages leading on

As at a kingly throne,

To lay their gold and odours sweet
Before thy infant feet.

The earth and ocean were not hush'd to hear
Bright harmony from every starry sphere;
Nor at thy presence brake the voice of song
From all the cherub choirs,

And seraphs' burning lyres

Pour'd through the host of heaven the charmed clouds

along.

One angel troop the strain began,

Of all the race of man

By simple shepherds heard alone,

That soft Hosanna's tone.

And when thou didst depart, no car of flame
To bear thee hence in lambent radiance came;
Nor visible angels mourn'd with drooping plumes:
Nor didst thou mount on high

From fatal Calvary

With all thine own redeem'd outbursting from their tombs. For thou didst bear away from earth

But one of human birth,

The dying felon by thy side, to be
In Paradise with thee.

Nor o'er thy cross the clouds of vengeance brake;
A little while the conscious earth did shake
At that foul deed by her fierce children done;
A few dim hours of day

The world in darkness lay;

Then bask'd in bright repose beneath the cloudless sun: While thou didst sleep beneath the tomb,

Consenting to thy doom;

Ere yet the white-robed Angel shone
Upon the sealed stone.

And when thou didst arise, thou didst not stand
With devastation in thy red right hand,
Plaguing the guilty city's murtherous crew;
But thou didst haste to meet

Thy mother's coming feet,

And bear the words of peace unto the faithful few.
Then calmly, slowly didst thou rise
Into thy native skies,

Thy human form dissolved on high
In its own radiancy.

O yes, yes

That yellow wretch, that looks as he were stain'd
With watching his own gold; every one knows him,
Enough to loathe him. Not a friend hath he,
Nor kindred, nor familiar; not a slave,
Not a lean serving wench: nothing e'er enter'd
But his spare self within his jealous doors,
Except a wand'ring rat; and that, they say,
Was famine-struck, and died there.-

FAZIO.

-What of him?

Yet he, Bianca, he is of our rich ones.
There's not a galliot on the sea, but bears
A venture of Bartolo's; not an acre,
Nay, not a villa of our proudest princes,