beauty of fentiments and characters. Accordingly the reader may obferve, that the expreffions are more florid and elaborate in these defcriptions, than in most other parts of the Poem. I muft further add, that, though the drawings of gardens, rivers, rainbows, and the like dead pieces of nature, are justly cenfured in an heroick poem, when they run out into an unnecessary length; the defcription of Paradife would have been faulty, had not the poet been very particular in it; not only as it is the fcene of the principal action, but as it is requifite to give us an idea of that happiness from which our first parents fell. The plan of it is wonderfully beautiful, and formed upon the short sketch which we have of it in Holy Writ. Milton's exuberance of imagination has poured forth such a redundancy of ornaments on this feat of happiness and innocence, that it would be endless to point out each particular.

I must not quit this head, without further observing, that there is scarce a speech of Adam or Eve in the whole Poem, wherein the fentiments and allufions are not taken from this their delightful habitation. The reader, during their whole course of action, always finds himself in the walks of Paradife. In fhort, as the criticks have remarked, that, in those poems wherein fhepherds are actors, the thoughts ought always

to take a tincture from the woods, fields, and rivers; fo we may obferve, that our first parents feldom lofe fight of their happy station in any thing they speak or do; and, if the reader will give me leave to use the expreffion, that their thoughts are always Paradifiacal.

We are in the next place to confider the machines of the fourth book. Satan, being now within profpect of Eden, and looking round upon the glories of the creation, is filled with fentiments different from thofe which he dif covered whilft he was in Hell. The place infpires him with thoughts more adapted to it. He reflects upon the happy condition from whence he fell, and breaks forth into a speech. that is foftened with feveral tranfient touches of remorfe and felf-accufation: but at length he confirms himself in impenitence, and in his defign of drawing Man into his own state of guilt and mifery. This conflict of paffions is raised with a great deal of art, as the opening of his fpeech to the fun is very bold and noble.

This fpeech is, I think, the finest that is afcribed to Satan in the whole Poem. The evil Spirit afterwards proceeds to make his difcoveries concerning our first parents, and to learn after what manner they may be beft attacked. His bounding over the walls of Paradife; his fitting in the fhape of a cormorant upon the tree

of life, which ftood in the center of it, and overtopped all the other trees of the garden; his alighting among the herd of animals, which are fo beautifully represented as playing about Adam and Eve, together with his transforming himself into different fhapes, in order to hear their converfation; are circumstances that give an agreeable furprise to the reader; and are devifed with great art, to connect that feries of adventures in which the poet has engaged this great artificer of fraud.

The thought of Satan's transformation into a cormorant, and placing himself on the tree of life, feems raifed upon that paffage in the Iliad, where two deities are defcribed, 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 circumftance of the fame nature; as his starting up in his own form is wonderfully fine, both in the literal defcription, 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.

▾ of Satan's transformation into a cormorant,] Pope fays, that the circumftance of Sleep's fitting in likeness of a bird on the fir-tree upon mount Ida, in the fourteenth Iliad, is the paffage to which Milton here alludes.

Zephon's rebuke, with the influence it had on Satan, is exquifitely graceful and moral. Satan is afterwards led away to Gabriel, the Chief of the guardian Angels, who kept watch in Paradise. His difdainful behaviour on this occafion is fo remarkable a beauty, that the most ordinary reader cannot but take notice of it. Gabriel's discovering his approach at a distance, is drawn with great strength and liveliness of imagination.

The conference between Gabriel and Satan abounds with sentiments proper for the occafion, and suitable to the perfons of the two fpeakers. Satan clothing himself with terrour when he prepares for the combat is truly fublime, and at least equal to Homer's description of Difcord celebrated by Longinus, or to that of Fame in Virgil; who are both reprefented with their feet standing upon the earth, and their heads reaching above the clouds.

I must here take notice, that Milton is every where full of hints, and fometimes literal tranflations, taken from the greatest of the Greek and Latin poets. But this I may reserve for a dif courfe by itself, because I would not break the thread of these fpeculations, that are defigned for English readers, with fuch reflections as would be of no ufe but to the learned.

I must however obferve 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 paffage in the 22d Iliad.

Virgil, before the laft decifive combat, describes Jupiter in the fame manner, as weighing the fates of Turnus and Æneas. Milton, though he fetched this beautiful circumftance from the Iliad and neid, does not only infert it as a po etical embellishment, like the authors abovementioned; but makes an artful ufe of it for the proper carrying on of his fable, and for the breaking off the combat between the two warriours, who were upon the point of engaging, To this we may further add, that Milton is the more justified in this paffage, as we find the fame noble allegory in Holy Writ, where a wicked prince, fome few hours before he was affaulted and flain, is faid to have been " weighed in the fcales, and to have been found wanting."

I muft here take notice, under the head of the machines, that Uriel's gliding down to the earth upon a fun-beam, with the poet's device to make him defcend, as well in his return to the fun as in his coming from it, is a prettiness that might have been admired in a little fanciful poet, but feems below the genius of Milton. The defcrip