ral. The sinner may invent never so many arguments in favour of the annihilation and utter extinction of the soul; but but after all his subterfuges and evasions, the fear of a future state and the dread of everlasting punishment will still pursue him: he may put it off for a time, but it will return with dreadful revolution; and let him affect what, serenity and gaiety he pleases, will notwithstanding, in the midst of it all, come thundering back on bis defenceless bead.

816. and incorporate both,] Lodged both together in one mortal body, as St. Paul says, Rom. vii. 20. Ob wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

817. Nor I in my part single, in me all

Posterity stands curs'd:] And this curse was the patrimony which he was to leave his sons.

835.

-beavier than the earth to bear,

Than all the world much beavier,] We quote this only that the reader may observe the beautiful turn of the words, beavier the first in one line and the last in the other: and that much is well thrown in, and raises the sense greatly; the burden is not ●nly beavier than the earth to bear, it is heavier than all the sworld, nay it is much heavier.

840. Beyond all past example and future,] As Adam is here speaking in great agonies of mind, he aggravates his own misery, and concludes it to be greater and worse than that of the fallen Angels or all future men, as having in himself alone the source of misery for all his posterity, whereas both Angels and Men had only their own to bear. Satan was only like him, as being the ring-leader, and this added very much to his remorse, as we read in i. 605. The accent upon the word future is indeed very uncommon, but it is the Latin accent, and there is a like instance in Fairfax's Tasso.

846. Through the still night,] We can hardly suppose this to be the night immediately after the fall; for that night Satan overheard Adam and Eve discoursing together, ver, 341. -return'd

By night, and list'ning where the hapless pair
Sat in their sad discourse, and various plaint,
Thence gather'd his own doom;,

and the next morning, while the sun in Aries rose, ver. 329, he

met Sin and Death in their way to earth; they discourse together, and it was after Sin and Death were arrived in Paradise, that the Almighty made that speech from ver. 616 to ver. 641, and after that the Angels are ordered to make the changes in nature: so that this, we conceive, must be some other night than that immediately after the fall.

863. Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve beheld, &c.] The part of Eve in this book is no less passionate and apt to sway the reader in her favour. She is represented with great tenderness as approaching Adam, but is spurned from him with a spirit of upbraiding and indignation, conformable to the nature of Man, whose passions had now gained the dominion over him. The following passage, wherein she is described as renewing her addresses to him, with the whole speech that follows it, have something in them exquisitely moving and pathetic :

He added not, and from her turn'd; but Eve &c. Adam's reconcilement to her is worked up in the same spirit of tenderness. Eve afterwards proposes to her husband, in the blindness of her despair, that to prevent their guilt from descending upon posterity they should resolve to live childless; or if that could not be done, they should seek their own deaths by violent methods. As those sentiments naturally engage the reader to regard the mother of mankind with more than ordina ry commiseration, they likewise contain a very fine moral. The resolution of dying to end our miseries, does not show such a degree of magnanimity as a resolution to bear them, and submit to the dispensations of Providence. Our author has, therefore, with great delicacy represented Eve as entertaining this thought, and Adam as disapproving it. Addison,

888. To my just number found.] The just number of ribs in a man is twenty-four, twelve on each side, though sometimes there have been found those who have had thirteen as Galen says, and very rarely some that have had but eleven, as Tho. Bartholinus, a famous physician, observed, in a lusty strong man whom he dissected in the year 1657, who had but eleven on one side, and a small appearance of a twelfth on the other, Hist. Anatom. & Medic. Centur. 5. c. 1. But some writers have been of opinion that Adam had thirteen ribs on the left side, and that out of the thirteenth rib God formed Eve: and it is to this opinion that Milton here alludes, and makes Adam

say, It was well if this rib was thrown out as supernumerary to pis just number.

888.- -O why did God, &c.] This thought was originally of Euripides, who makes Hippolytus in like manner expostulate with Jupiter for not creating man without woman. See Hippol. 616. And Jason is made to talk in the same strain in Medea, 573. And such sentiments as these, we suppose, procured Euripides the name of the Woman-hater. Nor are similar examples wanting among our English authors. Sir Thomas Brown, in the second part of his Religio Medici. sect. 9, has something very curious to this purpose, which no doubt Milton had read, that work having been first published in the year 1642, about twenty-five years before Paradise Lost. Shakespear makes Posthumus cry out in resentment of Imogen's behaviour, Cymbeline, act ii. which we are sure that our author had read,

Is there no way for men to be, but women
Must be half-workers?

He never shall find out fit mate, &c.] I have often thought it was great pity that Adam's speech had not ended where these lines begin. The sense is quite complete without them; and they seem much fitter for a digressional observation of the author, such as his panegyric on marriage, &c. than to be put into the mouth of Adam, who could not very naturally be supposed at that time to foresee so very circumstantially the inconveniences attending our strait conjunction with this sex, as he expresses it. Thyer.

940.- -soon bis beart relented] This seems to have been drawn from a domestic scene. Milton's wife soon after marriage went to visit her friends in Oxfordshire, and refused to return at the time appointed: he often solicited her, but in vain: she declared her resolution not to cohabit with him any more. Upon this he wrote his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and to show that he was in earnest was actually treating about a second marriage, when the wife contrived to meet him at a friend's whom he often visited, and there fell prostrate before him, imploring forgiveness and reconciliation. It is not to be doubted (says Mr. Fenton) but an interview of that na ture, so little expected, must wonderfully affect him; and per

haps the impressions it made on his imagination contributed much to the painting of that pathetic scene in Paradise Lost, in which Eve addresseth herself to Adam for pardon and peace. At the intercession of his friends who were present, after a short reluctance, he generously sacrificed all his resentment to her tears:

soon his heart relented

Tow'ards her, his life so late and sole delight,

Now at his feet submissive in distress.

978. As in our evils,] That is considering the excess of evil to which we are reduced; an elegant Latin use of the word as. Cie. Epist. Fam. iv. 9. "Nam adhuc, et factum tuum probatur. et, ut in tali re, etiam fortuna lauditur, xii. 2. Non nihil, ut in tantis malis, est profectum," that is, considering our ill situation.

989. Childless thou art, childless remain :] It is a strange mistake in some editions, and especially in Milton's own, where this imperfect verse is printed as a whole verse, and the words so Death wanting to complete the line are added to the next line, which is thereby made as much too long as this is too short. So Death shall be deceiv'd bis glut, and with us trye, 1007. She ended here

-so much of death her thoughts

Had entertain'd as dy'd her cheeks with pale.] Virg. Æn, iv. 499.

Hæc effata silet: pallor simul occupat ora

-maculisque trementes

Interfusa genas, et pallida morte futurâ.

Æn. iv. 644.

1011.-bis more attentive mind] Attending more to what had passed, calling to mind with peed their sentence, as in ver, 1030.

1024. To be forestall'd;] This word appears too low for heroic poetry: it might not be so trite and vulgar formerly; for Fairfax likewise uses it in his Jerusalem, Cant. 15. St. 47. But forth there crept (from whence I cannot say) An ugly serpent, which forestall'd their way,

1071.-with matter sere foment,] Sere dry: according to Virgil's exact description, Æn. i. 175.

Suscepitque ignem foliis, atque arida circum

Nutrimenta dedit, rapuitque in fomite flammam,
1072. Or by collision of two bodies grind

VOL. III.

The air attrite to fire, as late the clouds &c.] Our poet had Lucretius here in mind, and plainly alludes to his account of the origin of fire, v. 1091.

Now for the rise of fire: Swift thunder thrown

From broken sulphurous clouds first brought it down;
For many things take fire: when lightning flies,

And sulphurous vapours fill the lower skies, &c. Creech. 1075. Tine the slant lightning,] To tine is derived from the Saxon tynan to light, to kindle; from whence also we have the word tinder.