surprise to the reader, and are devised with great art, to connect that series of adventures, in which the poet has engaged this artificer of fraud. The thought of Satan's transformation into a cormorant, and placing himself on the tree of life, seems raised upon that passage in the Iliad, where two deities are described as perching on the top of an oak in the shape of vultures. His planting himself at the ear of Eve under the form of a toad, in order to produce vain dreams and imaginations, is a circumstance of the same nature; as his starting up in his own form is wonderfully fine, both in the literal description, and in the moral which is concealed under it. His answer, upon his being discovered, and demanded to give an account of himself, is conformable to the pride and intrepidity of his character. Know ye not then, said Satan, fill'd with scorn, The lowest of your throng! Zephon's rebuke, with the influence it had on Satan, is exquisitely graceful and moral. Satan is afterwards led away to Gabriel, the chief of the guardian angels, who kept watch in Paradise. His disdainful behaviour on this occasion is so remarkable a beauty, that the most ordinary reader can not but take notice of it. Gabriel's discovermg his approach at a distance, is drawn with great strength and liveliness of imagination. O friends! I hear the tread of nimble feet a Ithuriel and Zephon through the shade, Stand firm, for in his look defiance low'rs. The conference between Gabriel and Satan abounds with sentiments proper for the occasion, and suitable to the persons of the two speakers.. Satan's clothing himself with terror when he prepares for the combat is truly sublime, and at least equal to Homer's description of Discord celebrated by Longinus, or to that of Fame in Virgil, who are both represented with their feet standing upon the earth, and their heads reaching above the clouds. While thus he spake, th'angelic squadron bright On th’ other side, Satan, alarm’d, Sat horror plum’d.- I must, however, observe in this place, that the breaking off the combat between Gabriel and Satan, by the hanging out of the golden scales in heaven, is a refinement upon Homer's thought, who tells us, that before the battle between Hector and Achilles, Jupiter weighed the event of it in a pair of scales. The reader may see the whole passage in the twenty-second Iliad. (See No. 463.). Virgil,' before the last decisive combat, describes Jupiter in the same manner, as weighing the fates of Turnus and Æneas. Milton, though he fetched this beautiful circumstance from the Iliad and Æneid, does not only insert it as a poetical embellishment, like the authors above mentioned, but makes an artful use of it for the proper carrying on of his fable, and for the breaking off the combat between the two warriors, who were upon the point of engaging. To this we may further add, that Milton justified in this passage, as we find the same noble allegory in holy writ, where a wicked prince, some few hours before he was assaulted and slain, is said to have been weighed in the scales, and to have been found wanting. I must here take notice under the head of the machines, that Uriel's gliding down to the earth upon a sunbeam, with the poet's device to make him descend, as well in his return to the sun as in his coming from it, is a prettiness that might have been admired in a little fanciful poet, but seems below the genius of Milton. The description of the host of armed angels walking their nightly round in Paradise, is of another spirit; So saying, on he led his radiant files, the more a As that account of the hymns which our first parents used to hear them sing in these their midnight walks, is altogether divine, and inexpressibly amusing to the imagination. We are, in the last place, to consider the parts ' , which Adam and Eve act in the fourth book. The description of them as they first appeared to Satan is exquisitely drawn, and sufficient to make the fallen angel gaze upon them with all that astonishment, and those emotions of envy, in which he is represented. Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, There is a fine spirit of poetry in the lines which follow, wherein they are described as sitting on a bed of flowers by the side of a fountain, amidst a mixed assembly of animals. The speeches of these two first lovers flow equally from passion and sincerity. The professions they make to one another are full of warmth, but at the same time founded on truth: in a word, they are the gallantries of Paradise. -When Adam, first of men- Like consort to thyself canst no where find,' &c. The remaining part of Eve's speech, in which she gives an account of herself upon her first creation, and the manner in which she was brought to Adam, is, I think, as beautiful a passage as any in Milton, or perhaps in any other poet whatsoever. These passages all worked off with so much art, that they are capable of pleasing the most delicate reader, without offending the most severe. That day I oft remember, when from sleep, &c. A poet of less judgment and invention than this great author, would have found it very difficult to have filled these tender parts of the poem with sentiments proper for a state of innocence; are |