The poet, who, as we have before taken notice, speaks as little as poffible in his own person, and, after the example of Homer, fills every part of his work with manners and characters, introduces a foliloquy of this infernal agent, who was thus restless in the deftruction of Man. He is then described as gliding through the garden, under the resemblance of a mist, in order to find out that creature in which he defigned to tempt our first parents. This description has fomething in it very poetical and surprising.

The author afterwards gives us a defcription of the morning, which is wonderfully suitable to a divine poem, and peculiar to that first season of nature: He represents the Earth, before it was curfed, as a great altar, breathing out its incenfe from all parts, and fending up a pleasant favour to the noftrils of its Creator; to which he adds a noble idea of Adam and Eve, as offering their morning worship, and filling up the univerfal confort of praise and adoration.

The difpute, which follows between our two first parents, is represented with great art: It proceeds from a difference of judgement, not of paffion; and is managed with reafon, not with heat: It is fuch a difpute as we may fuppofe might have happened in Paradife, had Man continued happy and innocent. There is a great delicacy in the moralities which are interspersed

in Adam's discourse, and which the most ordinary reader cannot but take notice of. That force of love, which the father of mankind fo finely describes in the eighth book, fhows itself here in many fine instances: As in those fond regards he cafts towards Eve at her parting from him; in his impatience and amusement during her abfence; but particularly in that paffionate fpeech, where, seeing her irrecoverably loft, he resolves to perish with her rather than to live without her :

"Some curfed fraud

"Of enemy hath beguil'd thee, yet unknown,
"And me with thee hath ruin'd; for with thee
"Certain my resolution is to die:

"How can I live without thee! how forego.
"Thy fweet converfe, and love fo dearly join'd,
"To live again in these wild woods forlorn!
"Should God create another Eve, and I
"Another rib afford, yet lofs of thee
"Would never from my heart; no, no! I feel
"The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,
"Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
"Mine never shall be parted, blifs or woe !"

The beginning of this fpeech, and the preparation to it, are animated with the fame spirit as the conclufion, which I have here quoted.

The feveral wiles which are put in practice by the Tempter, when he found Eve separated from her husband; the many pleafing images of nature which are intermixed in this part of the story, with its gradual and regular progress to the fatal

catastrophe; are fo very remarkable, that it would be fuperfluous to point out their respective beauties.

my

I have avoided mentioning any particular fimilitudes in my remarks on this great work, because I have given a general account of them in obfervations on the first book. There is one, however, in this part of the Poem, which I fhall here quote, as it is not only very beautiful, but the closest of any in the whole Poem; I mean that, where the ferpent is defcribed as rolling forward in all his pride, animated by the evil Spirit, and conducting Eve to her deftruction, while Adam was at too great a distance from her to give her his affistance. These several particulars are all of them wrought into the following fimilitude.

"Hope elevates, and joy

Brightens his creft; as when a wandering fire, "Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night "Condenfes, and the cold environs round,

"Kindled through agitation to a flame,

"Which oft, they fay, fome evil Spirit attends,

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Hovering and blazing with delusive light,

"Mifleads the amaz'd night-wanderer from his way "To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool; "There fwallow'd up and loft, from fuccour far."

That fecret intoxication of pleasure, with all those transient flushings of guilt and joy, which the poet represents in our first parents upon their eating the forbidden fruit, to thofe flaggings of

fpirit, damps of forrow, and mutual accufations which fucceed it, are conceived with a wonderful imagination, and defcribed in very natural fentiments.

When Dido, in the fourth Eneid, yielded to that fatal temptation which ruined her, Virgil tells us the Earth trembled, the Heavens were filled with flashes of lightning, and the Nymphs howled upon the mountain tops. Milton, in the fame poetical spirit, has described all Nature as disturbed upon Eve's eating the forbidden fruit.

Upon Adam's falling into the fame guilt, the whole Creation appears a fecond time in convulfions.

As all Nature fuffered by the guilt of our first parents, these symptoms of trouble and consternation are wonderfully imagined, not only as prodigies, but as marks of her sympathizing in the Fall of Man.

Adam's converfe with Eve, after having eaten the forbidden fruit, is an exact copy of that between Jupiter and Juno in the fourteenth Iliad. Juno there approaches Jupiter with the girdle which she had received from Venus; upon which he tells her, that the appeared more charming and defirable than fhe had ever done before, even when their loves were at the higheft. The poet afterwards describes them as reposing on a fummit of mount Ida, which produced under them

a bed of flowers, the lotos, the crocus, and the hyacinth; and concludes his description with their falling asleep.

Let the reader compare this with the following paffage in Milton, which begins with Adam's fpeech to Eve:

"For never did thy beauty, fince the day
"I faw thee firft and wedded thee, adorn'd
"With all perfections, so inflame my sense
"With ardour to enjoy thee, fairer now
"Than ever, bounty of this virtuous tree!

"So faid he, and forbore not glance or toy
"Of amorous intent; well understood
"Of Eve, whofe eye darted contagious fire.
"Her hand he feis'd; and to a fhady bank,
"Thick over-head with verdant roof imbower'd,
"He led her nothing loth; flowers were the couch,

"Panfies, and violets, and afphodel,

"And hyacinth; Earth's freshest softest lap.
"There they their fill of love and love's difport
"Took largely, of their mutual guilt the feal,
"The folace of their fin; till dewy fleep

Opprefs'd them—”

As no poet feems ever to have studied Homer more, or to have resembled him in the greatness of genius, than Milton; I think I should have given but a very imperfect account of his beauties, if I had not observed the most remarkable paffages which look like parallels in these two great authors. I might, I might, in the course of this criticism, have taken notice of many particular lines and expreffions which are tranflated from