Humbly their faults, and pardon begged, with tears
Watering the ground-

There is a beauty of the same kind in a tragedy of Sopho cles, where Oedipus, after having put out his own eyes, instead of breaking his neck from the palace battlements, (which furnishes so elegant an entertainment for our English audience,) desires that he may be conducted to Mount Citha ron, in order to end his life in that very place where he was exposed in his infancy, and where he should then have died, had the will of his parents been executed.

As the author never fails to give a poetical turn to his sentiments, he describes in the beginning of this book the acceptance which these their prayers met with, in a short allegory formed upon that beautiful passage in holy writ; "And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne: and the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God."

-To heaven their prayers

Flew up, nor missed the way by envious winds
Blown vagabond or frustrate: in they passed
Dimensionless through heavenly doors, then clad
With incense, where the golden altar, fumed
By their great Intercessor, came in sight
Before the Father's throne-

We have the same thought expressed a second time in the intercession of the Messiah, which is conceived in very emphatic sentiments and expressions.

Among the poetical parts of Scripture which Milton has so finely wrought into this part of his narration, I must not omit that wherein Ezekiel, speaking of the angels who appeared to him in a vision, adds, that " every one had four faces, and that their whole bodies, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, were full of eyes round about."

-The cohort bright

Of watchful cherubim; four faces each

Had, like a double Janus, all their shape
Spangled with eyes-

The assembling of all the angels of heaven to hear the solemn decree passed upon man, is represented in very lively

ideas. The Almighty is here described as remembering mercy in the midst of judgment, and commanding Michael to deliver his message in the mildest terms, lest the spirit of man, which was already broken with the sense of his guilt and misery, should fail before him.

-Yet lest they faint

At the sad sentence rigorously urged,

(For I behold them softened, and with tears
Bewailing their excess,) all terror hide.

The conference of Adam and Eve is full of moving sentiments. Upon their going abroad after the melancholy night which they had passed together, they discover the lion and the eagle pursuing each of them their prey towards the eastern gates of Paradise. There is a double beauty in this incident, not only as it presents great and just omens, which are always agreeable in poetry, but as it expresses that enmity which was now produced in the animal creation. The poet, to show the like changes in nature, as well as to grace his fable with a noble prodigy, represents the sun in an eclipse. This particular incident has likewise a fine effect upon the imagination of the reader, in regard to what follows; for at the same time that the sun is under an eclipse, a bright cloud descends in the western quarter of the heavens, filled with a host of angels, and more luminous than the sun itself. The whole theatre of nature is darkened, that this glorious machine may appear in all its lustre and magnificence.

-Why in the east

Darkness ere day's mid course, and morning light
More orient in that western cloud that draws

O'er the blue firmament a radiant white,

And slow descends, with something heavenly fraught?
He erred not, for by this the heavenly bands

Down from a sky of jasper lighted now

In Paradise, and on a hill made halt;

A glorious apparition

I need not observe how properly this author, who always suits his parts to the actors he introduces, has employed Michael in the expulsion of our first parents out of Paradise. The archangel on this occasion neither appears in his proper shape, nor in that familiar manner with which Raphael the sociable spirit entertained the father of mankind before the fall. His person, his port, and behaviour, are suitable to a

spirit of the highest rank, and exquisitely described in the following passage.

-The archangel soon drew nigh,

Not in his shape celestial, but as man
Clad to meet man; over his lucid arms
A military vest of purple flowed
Livelier than Melibæan, or the grain
Of Sarra, worn by kings and heroes old
In time of truce; Iris had dipt the woof.
His starry helm, unbuckled, showed him prime
In manhood where youth ended; by his side
As in a glistering zodiac hung the sword,
Satan's dire dread, and in his hand the spear.
Adam bowed low: he kingly from his state
Inclined not, but his coming thus declared.

Eve's complaint upon hearing that she was to be removed from the garden of Paradise is wonderfully beautiful: the sentiments are not only proper to the subject, but have something in them particularly soft and womanish.

Must I then leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of gods? where I had hope to spend
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day

That must be mortal to us both.

O flowers

That never will in other climate grow,

My early visitation and my last

At ev❜n, which I bred up with tender hand

From the first opening bud, and gave you names;
Who now shall rear you to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Thee, lastly, nuptial bower, by me adorned
With what to sight or smell was sweet: from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure

And wild? how shall we breathe in other air

Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?

Adam's speech abounds with thoughts which are equally moving, and of a more masculine and elevated turn. Nothing can be conceived more sublime and poetical than the following passage in it.

This most afflicts me, that departing hence
As from his face I shall be hid, deprived

His blessed countenance. Here I could frequent,
With worship, place by place where he vouchsafed
Presence Divine, and to my sons relate,
On this mount he appeared, under this tree
Stood visible, among these pines his voice

I heard, here with him at this fountain talked..
So many grateful altars I would rear

Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory
Or monument to ages, and thereon

Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flowers.
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances, or footsteps trace?
For though I fled him angry, yet recalled
To life prolonged and promised race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory, and far off his steps adore.

The angel afterwards leads Adam to the highest mount of Paradise, and lays before him a whole hemisphere, as a proper stage for those visions which were to be represented on it. I have before observed how the plan of Milton's poem is in many particulars greater than that of the Iliad or Æneid. Virgil's hero, in the last of these poems, is entertained with a sight of all those who are to descend from him; but though that episode is justly admired as one of the noblest designs in the whole Æneid, every one must allow that this of Milton is of a much higher nature. Adam's vision is not confined to any particular tribe of mankind, but extends to the whole species.

In this great review which Adam takes of all his sons and daughters, the first objects he is presented with exhibit to him the story of Cain and Abel, which is drawn together with much closeness and propriety of expression. That curiosity and natural horror which arises in Adam at the sight of the first dying man, is touched with great beauty.

But have I now seen death? Is this the way
I must return to native dust? Oh sight
Of terror foul and ugly to behold,

Horrid to think, how horrible to feel!

The second vision sets before him the image of death in a great variety of appearances. The angel, to give him a general idea of those effects which his guilt had brought upon his posterity, places before him a large hospital, or lazarhouse, filled with persons lying under all kinds of mortal diseases. How finely has the poet told us that the sick persons languished under lingering and incurable distempers, by an apt and judicious use of such imaginary beings as those I mentioned in my last paper.

Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; Despair
Tended the sick, busy from couch to couch;
And over them triumphant Death his dart

Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked
With vows as their chief good and final hope.

The passion which likewise arises in Adam on this occasion is very natural.

Sight so deform what heart of rock could long
Dry-eyed behold? Adam could not, but wept,
Though not of woman born; compassion quelled
His best of man, and gave him up in tears.

The discourse between the angel and Adam which follows, abounds with noble morals.

As there is nothing more delightful in poetry than a contrast and opposition of incidents, the author, after his melancholy prospect of death and sickness, raises up a scene of mirth, love, and jollity. The secret pleasure that steals into Adam's heart as he is intent upon this vision, is imagined with great delicacy. I must not omit the description of the loose female troop, who seduced the sons of God, as they are called in Scripture.

For that fair female troop thou sawest that seemed

Of goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay,

Yet empty of all good wherein consists
Woman's domestic honour and chief praise;
Bred only and completed to the taste
Of lustful appetence, to sing, to dance,

To dress and troul the tongue, and roll the eye.
To these that sober race of men, whose lives
Religious titled them the sons of God,

Shall yield up all their virtue, all their fame,
Ignobly, to the trains and to the smiles

Of those fair atheists

The next vision is of a quite contrary nature, and filled with the horrors of war. Adam at the sight of it melts into tears, and breaks out in that passionate speech.

-Oh what are these!

Death's ministers, not men; who thus deal death

Inhumanly to men, and multiply

Ten thousandfold the sin of him who slew

His brother: for of whom such massacre

Make they but of their brethren, men of men?

Milton, to keep up an agreeable variety in his visions, after having raised in the mind of his reader the several ideas of terror which are conformable to the description of war, passes