Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps, 360 Not spirits, yet to heav'nly spirits bright : Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue With wonder, and could love, so lively shines In them divine resemblance, and such grace The hand that form'd them on their shape hath pour'd. Ah gentle pair, ye little think how nigh 366 Your change approaches, when all these delights Will vanish and deliver ye to woe, More woe, the more your taste is now of joy; 370 Long to continue, and this high seat your heaven As now is enter'd; yet no purpos'd foe 375. 380 And send forth all her kings; there will be room, Not like these narrow limits, to receive Your numerous offspring; if no better place, 385 Thank him who puts me loath to this revenge On you who wrong me not for him who wrong'd. 362. Little inferior; For this there is the authority of Scripture. Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, Psal. viii. 5. Heb. ii. 7. And should I at your harmless innocence Honour and empire with revenge enlarg'd, $90 So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, 399. -yet public reason just, &c.] Public reason compels me, and that public reason is honour and empire enlarged with revenge, by conquering this new world. And thus Satan is made to plead public reason just, and necessity to excuse his devilish deeds; the tyrant's plea, as the poet calls it, probably with a view to his own times, and particularly to the plea for shipmoney. 395. Then from his lofty stand on that high tree &c.] The tree of life, higher than the rest, where he had been perching all this while from ver. 196. And then for the transformations which follow, what changes in Ovid's Metamorphoses are so natural, and yet so surprising as these? He is well likened to the 395 400 fiercest beasts, the lion and the tiger, and Adam and Eve in their native innocence to two gentle fawns. 400. To mark what of their state he more might learn By word or action mark'd:] Though the poet uses mark and marked too, yet such repetitions of the same word are common with him; so common that we may suppose he did not do it for want of attention, and that it was not merely the effect of his blindness. See instances of it in my note on iii. 147. and we have another following here, ver. 405. Straight couches close, then rising Pearce. Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied Sole partner, and sole part, of all these joys, As liberal and free as infinite; That rais'd us from the dust and plac'd us here In all this happiness, who at his hand Have nothing merited, nor can perform Ought whereof he hath need, he who requires 410. Turn'd him all ear &c.] A pretty expression borrowed from the Latin, Totum te cupias, Fabulle, nasum. So in the Mask, I was all ear. Richardson. 411. Sole partner, &c.] 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 upon truth. In a word they are the gallantries of Paradise. Addison. Sole partner, and sole part, of all these joys, 405 410 415 so the passage ought to be read (I think) with a comma after part; and of here signifies among. The sense is, among all these joys thou alone art my partner, and (what is more) Thou alone art part of me, as in ver. 487. Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim My other half. Of in Milton frequently signifies among. The want of observing this made Dr. Bentley read best part for sole part, thinking that sole part is a contradiction, and so it is as he understands of here, to be the mark of the genitive case governed of part. Pearce. From us no other service than to keep 420 In Paradise that bear delicious fruit Of knowledge, planted by the tree of life; So near grows death to life, whate'er death is, 425 Some dreadful thing no doubt; for well thou know'st God hath pronounc'd it death to taste that tree, The only sign of our obedience left Among so many signs of pow'r and rule Conferr'd upon us, and dominion given 430 Over all other creatures that possess Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard One easy prohibition, who enjoy Free leave so large to all things else, and choice Unlimited of manifold delights: 435 But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful task To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers, Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet. 421. This one, this easy charge, &c.] It was very natural for Adam to discourse of this, and this was what Satan wanted more particularly to learn; and it is expressed from God's command, Gen. ii. 16, 17. Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And in like manner when Adam says afterwards, -dominion given Over all other creatures that possess it is taken from the divine commission, Gen. i. 28. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. These things are so evident, that it is almost superfluous to mention them. If we take notice of them, it is that every reader may be sensible how much of Scripture our author hath wrought into this divine poem. To whom thus Eve replied. O thou for whom 440 And from whom I was form'd flesh of thy flesh, 445 Preeminent by so much odds, while thou 449. That day I oft remember, &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 are all worked off with so much art, that they are capable of pleasing the most delicate reader without offending the most severe. 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; to have described the warmth of love and the professions of it without artifice or hyperbole; to have made the man speak the more endearing things without descending from his natural dignity; and the woman receiving them without departing from the modesty of her character; in a word, to adjust the prerogatives of wisdom and 450 beauty, and make each appear to the other in its proper force and loveliness. This mutual subordination of the two sexes is wonderfully kept up in the whole poem, as particularly in this speech of Eve, and the lines following it. The poet adds, that the devil turned away at the sight of so much happiness. Addison. That day I oft remember. From this as well as several other passages in the poem it appears, that the poet supposes Adam and Eve to have been created, and to have lived many days in Paradise before the fall. See iv. 639, 680, 712. v. 31. &c. 450. I first awak'd.] As death is often compared to sleep, so our coming into life may well be likened to waking: and Adam speaks in the same figure, viii. 253. As new wak'd from soundest sleep, &c. If we compare his account of himself upon his creation with |