Heus etiam menfas confumimus inquit Iulius!

Such an Obfervation, which is beautiful in the mouth of a Boy, would have been ridiculous from any other of the Company. I am apt to think that the changing of the Trojan Fleet into Water-Nymphs, which is the most violent Machine of the whole Eneid, and has given Offence to several Critics, may be accounted for the fame way. Virgil himself, before he begins that Relation, premises that what he was going to tell appeared incredible, but that it was justified by Tradition. What further confirms me that this change of the Fleet was a celebrated Circumstance in the Hiftory of Eneas, is, that Ovid has given a place to the fame Metamorphofis in his account of the Heathen Mythology.

None of the Criticks, I have met with, having considered the Fable of the Æneid in this Light, and taken notice how the Tradition, on which it was founded, authorizes those Parts in it which appear the most Exceptionable; I hope the Length of this Reflection will not make it unacceptable to the curious Part of my Readers.

The Hiftory, which was the Basis of Milton's Poem, is ftill fhorter than either that of the Iliad or Æneid. The Poet has likewife taken care to infert every Circumstance of it in the Body of his Fable. The Ninth Book, which we are here to confider, is raised upon that brief Account in Scripture, wherein we are told that the Serpent was more fubtile than any Beast of the Field, that he tempted the Woman to eat of the Forbidden Fruit, that she was overcome by this Temptation, and that Adam followed her Example. From these few Particulars Milton has formed one of the most Entertaining Fables that Invention ever produced. He has difpofed of these several Circumstances among so many beautiful and natural Fictions of his own, that his whole Story looks only like a Comment upon facred Writ, or rather feems to be a full

and compleat Relation of what the other is only an Epitome. I have infifted the longer on this Confideration, as I look upon the Difpofition and Contrivance of the Fable to be the Principal Beauty of the Ninth Book, which has more Story in it, and is fuller of Incidents, than any other in the whole Poem. Satan's traverfing the Globe, and still keeping within the Shadow of the Night, as fearing to be discovered by the Angel of the Sun, who had before detected him, is one of those beautiful Imaginations [with] which [he] introduces this his fecond Series of Adventures. Having examined the Nature of every Creature, and found out one which was the most proper for his Purpose, he again returns to Paradife; and, to avoid Discovery, finks by Night with a River that ran under the Garden, and rifes up again through a Fountain that iffued from it by the Tree of Life. 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 Soliloquy of this Infernal Agent, who was thus restless in the Destruction of Man. He is then defcrib'd as gliding through the Garden under the resemblance of a Mist, in order to find out that Creature in which he design'd to tempt our firft Parents. This Defcription has something in it very Poetical and Surprizing.

Аромаићса

Suahe

So faying, through each thicket Dank or Dry
Like a black Mift, low creeping, he held on
His Midnight Search, where fooneft he might find
The Serpent: him faft fleeping foon he found
In Labyrinth of many a round felf-roll'd,

His head the midft, well flor'd with fubtle wiles.

The Author afterwards gives us a Description of the Morning, which is wonderfully fuitable to a Divine Poem, and peculiar to that first Season of Nature; he represents the Earth before it was curft, as a great Altar breathing out its Incense from all parts, and

fending up a pleasant Savour 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 universal Confort of Praise and Adoration. Now when as facred light began to dawn

In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed
Their morning incenfe, when all things that breath
From th' Earth's great Altar fend up filent praife
To the Creatour, and his noftrils fill

With grateful fmell, forth came the human pair
And joyn'd their vocal worship to the Choir
Of Creatures wanting voice-

The Dispute which follows between our two first Parents is represented with great Art: It arifes [proceeds] from a difference of Judgment, not of Paffion, and is managed with Reason, not with Heat; it is fuch. a Difpute as we may suppose 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 Difcourfe, and which the most ordinary Reader cannot but take notice of. That force of Love which the Father of Mankind so finely describes in the Eighth Book, and which I inserted in my last Saturday's Paper, fhews it self here in many beautiful Instances: As in those fond Regards he casts towards Eve at her parting from him.

Her long with ardent look his eye purfued
Delighted but defiring more her flay.
Oft he to her his charge of quick return
Repeated, he to him as oft engaged

To be return'd by noon amid the Bowre.

In his impatience and amusement during her Absence.

-Adam the while

Waiting defirous her return, had wove
Of choiceft flowers a Garland to adorn
Her Treffes, and her rural labours crown,

As Reapers oft are wont their Harvest Queen.
Great Joy he promised to his thoughts, and new
Solace in her return, fo long delay'd;

But particularly in that paffionate Speech, where seeing her irrecoverably loft, he refolves to perish with her, rather than to live without her.

Some curfed fraud

Or enemy hath beguil'd thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruin'd; for with thee
Certain my refolution is to die;

How can I live without thee, how forego
Thy fweet converfe and love fo dearly join'a,
To live again in thefe 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 fhall be parted Blifs or Woe.

The beginning of this Speech, and the Preparation to it, are animated with the same Spirit as the Con clufion, which I have here quoted.

The several Wiles which are put in Practice by the Tempter, when he found Eve feparated from her Husband, the many pleasing Images of Nature, which are intermixt in this part of the Story, with its gradual and regular Progress to the fatal Catastrophe, are so very remarkable, that it would be fuperfluous to point out their several [refpective] Beauties.

I have avoided mentioning any particular Similitudes in my Remarks on this great Work, because I have given a general account of them in my Paper on the First Book. There is one, however, in this part of the Poem which I shall here quote, as it is not only very beautiful, but the closest of any in the whole Poem; I mean that where the Serpent is describ'd as rolling forward in all his Pride, animated by the evil

Spirit, and conducting Eve to her Destruction, while Adam was at too great a distance from her, to give her his Affiftance. These several Particulars are all of them wrought into the following Similitude.

-Hope elevates, and Joy

Brighten's his Creft, as when a wand'ring fire
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night
Condenfes, and the cold invirons round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame,
(Which oft, they fay, fome evil fpirit attends)
Hovering and blazing with delufive light,
Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way
To boggs 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 tranfient flushings of Guilt and Joy which the Poet represents in our first Parents upon their eating the forbidden Fruit, to thofe flaggings of Spirit, damps of Sorrow and mutual Accufations which fucceed it, are conceiv'd with a wonderful Imagination, and described in very natural Sentiments.

When Dido in the Fourth Eneid yielded to that fatal Temptation which ruin'd her, Virgil tells us, the Earth trembled, the Heavens were filled with flashes of Lightning, and the Nymphs howl'd upon the Mountain Tops. Milton, in the fame Poetical Spirit, has defcrib'd all Nature as difturbed upon Eve's eating pathetic

the forbidden Fruit.

So faying, her rash hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the Fruit, fhe plucked, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and nature from her Seat
Sighing through all her works gave figns of Woe
That all was loft-

Upon Adam's falling into the fame Guilt, the whole
Creation appears a second time in Convulfions.

-He fcrupl'd not to eat

Against his better knowledge; not deceiv'd.

Fallacy

Ruskin