is apt to excuse a fault which he himself might have fallen into. It was the excess of love for Eve that ruined Adam and his posterity. I need not add, that the author is justified in this particular by many of the fathers and the most orthodox writers. Milton has by this means filled a great part of his poem with that kind of writing which the French critics call the tender, and which is in a particular manner engaging to all sorts of readers.

Adam and Eve, in the book we are now considering,. are likewise drawn with such sentiments as do not only interest the reader in their afflictions, but raise in him the most melting passions of humanity and commiseration. When Adam sees the several changes of nature produced about him, he appears in a disorder of mind suitable to one who had forfeited both his innoeence and his happiness; he is filled with horror, remorse, despair; in the anguish of his heart he expostulates with his Creator for having given him an unasked existence:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote nie? or here place
In this delicious garden? As my will

Concurr'd not to my being, 'twere but right

And equal to reduce me to my dust,

Desirous to resign, and render hack

All I receiv'd’

ITe immediately after recovers from his presumption,

owns his doom to be just, and begs that the death which is threatened him niay be inflicted on him:

-Why delays

Ilis hand to execute what his decree

Fix'd on this day? Why do I overlive?

Why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out
To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet
Mortality, my sentence, and be earth
Insensible! How glad would lay me down,
As in my mother's lap! there should I rest
And sleep secure: his dreadful voice no more
Would thunder in my ears; no fear of worse
To me and to my offspring would torment me
With cruel expectation-

This whole speech is full of the like emotion, and varied with all those sentiments which we may suppose natural to a mind so broken and disturbed. I must not omit that generous concern which our first father shows in it for his posterity, and which is so proper to affect the reader:

-Hide me from the face

Of God, whom to behold was then my height
Of happiness! yet well, if here would end
The misery: I deserv'd it, and would bear
My own deservings; but this will not serve;
All that I eat, or drink, or shall beget,
Is propagated curse. O voice once heard
Delightfully, Increase and multiply;
Now death to hear!-

In me all

Posterity stands curst! Fair patrimony
That I must leave ye, sons! O were I able
To waste it all myself and leave you none !

So disinherited, how would you bless

Me, now your curse! Ah, why should all mankind,
For one man's fault, thus guiltless be condemn'd,
If guiltless? But from me what can proceed
But all corrupt?

Whe

Who can afterwards behold the father of mankind extended upon the earth, uttering his midnight complaints, bewailing his existence, and wishing for death, without sympathizing with him in his distress:

Thus Adam to himself lamented loud

Through the still night; not now (as ere man fell)
Wholesome, and cool, and mild, but with black air
Accompanied with damps and dreadful gloom;
Which to his evil conscience represented

All things with double terror. On the ground
Outstretch'd he lay; on the cold ground! and oft
Curs'd his creation; Death as oft accus'd

Of tardy execution'

The part of Eve in this book is no less passionate, and apt to sway the reader in her favour. She is represented with great tenderness as approaching Adam, but is spurned from him with a spirit of upbraiding and indignation conformable to the nature of man, whose passions had now gained the dominion over him. The following passage, wherein she is described as renowing her addresses to him, with the whole speech that follows it, have something in them exquisitely moving and pathetic:

He added not, and from her turn'd: but Eve
Not so repuls'd, with tears that ceas'd not flowing,
And tresses all disorder'd, at his feet

Fell humble; and embracing them besought
His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint:

Forsake me not thus, Adam! Witness Heav'n
What love sincere, and rev'rence in my breast,
I bear thee, and unweeting have offended,
Unhappily deceiv'd! Thy suppliant

I beg, and clasp thy knees; Lereave me not

(Whereon

(Whereon I live!) thy gentle looks, thy aid,
Thy counsel in this uttermost distress,

My only strength, and stay! Forlorn of thee,

Whither shall I betake me? where subsist?
While yet we live (scarce one short hour perhaps),
Between us two let there be peace,' &c.

Adam's reconcilement to her is worked up in the same spirit of tenderness. Eve afterwards proposes to her husband, in the blindness of her despair, that, to prevent their guilt from descending upon posterity, they should endeavour to live childless; or, if that could not be done, they should seek their own deaths by violent methods. As those sentiments naturally engage the reader to regard the mother of mankind with more than ordinary commiseration, they likewise contain a very fine moral. The resolution of dying to end our miseries does not show such a degree of magnanimity as a resolution to bear them, and submit to the dispensations of Providence. Our author has therefore, with great delicacy, represented Eve as entertaining this thought, and Adam as disapproving

it.

We are, in the last place, to consider the imaginary persons, or Death and Sin, who act a large part in this book. Such beautiful extended allegories are certainly some of the finest compositions of genius; but, as I have before observed, are not agreeable to the nature of a heroic poem. This of Sin and Death is very exquisite in its kind, if not considered as a part of such a work. The truths contained in it are so clear and open, that I shall not lose time in explaining them; but shall only observe, that a reader, who knows the strength of the English tongue, will be amazed to think how the poet could find such apt words and

phrases

phrases to describe the actions of those two imaginary persons, and particularly in that part where Death is exhibited as forming a bridge over the chaos; a work suitable to the genius of Milton.

Since the subject I am upon gives me an opportunity of speaking more at large of such shadowy and imaginary persons as may be introduced into heroic poems, I shall beg leave to explain myself in a matter which is curious in its kind, and which none of the critics have treated of. It is certain Homer and Virgil are full of imaginary persons, who are very beautiful in poetry when they are just shown, without being engaged in any series of action. Homer indeed represents Sleep as a person, and describes a short part to him in his Iliad; but we must consider, that though we now regard such a person as cutirely shadowy and unsubstantial, the heathens made statues of him, placed him in their temples, and looked upon him as a real deity. When Homer makes use of other such allegorical persons, it is only in short expressions, which convey an ordinary thought to the mind in the most pleasing manner, and may rather be looked upon as poetical phrases than allegorical descriptions. Instead of telling us that men naturally fly when they are terrified, he introduces the persons of Flight and Fear, who, he tells us, are inseparable companions. Instead of saying that the time was come when Apollo ought to have received his recompense, he tells us, that the Hours brought him his reward. Instead of describing the effects which Minerva's aegis produced in battle, he tells us that the brims of it were encompassed by Terror, Rout, Discord, Fury, Pursuit, Massacre, and Death. In the same figure of speaking, he represents Victory as Following Diomedes; Discord as the mother of funerals