Him lord pronounc'd, and, O indignity! 155 160 O foul descent! that I who erst contended With Gods to sit the high'est, am now constrain'd Into a beast, and mix'd with bestial slime, 165 This essence to incarnate and imbrute, As high he soar'd, obnoxious first or last To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Let it; I reck not, so it light well aim'd, 170 175 180 offspring of hatred and envy, created to increase his punishment, by seeing this man of clay substituted into that glorious station of him forlorn, outcast of heaven. Hume. I have often wondered that this speech of Satan's escaped the particular observation of the ingenious Mr. Addison. There is not in my opinion any one in the whole book that is worked up with greater judgment, or better suited to the character of the speaker. There is all the horror and malignity of a fiendlike spirit expressed, and yet this is so artfully tempered with Satan's sudden starts of recollection upon the meanness and folly of what he was going to undertake, as plainly shew the remains of the archangel, and the ruins of a superior nature. Thyer. 178. -spite then with spite is best repaid.] Eschylus Prometh. 944. Ούτως ὑβρίζειν της υβρίζοντας χρέων. His midnight search, where soonest he might find His head the midst, well stor'd with subtle wiles: Disturb'd not, waiting close th' approach of morn. 186. Nor nocent yet,] Thus it is in the second and in the subsequent editions; in the first edition it is Not nocent yet. 186. -the grassy herb] So we have in Virgil, Ecl. v. 26. graminis herbam. 192. Now when as sacred light &c.] The author gives us a description of the morning, which is wonderfully suitable to a divine poem, and peculiar to that first season of nature: he represents the earth, before it was cursed, as a great altar, breathing out its incense from all parts, and sending up a pleasant savour to the nostrils of its Creator; to which he adds a noble idea of Adam and Eve, as offering their morning worship, and filling up the universal consort of praise and adoration. Addison. This is the morning of the ninth day, as far as we can reckon the time in this poem, a 185 190 great part of the action lying out of the sphere of day. The first day we reckon that wherein Satan came to the earth; the space of seven days after that he was coasting round the earth; he comes into Paradise again by night, and this is the beginning of the ninth day, and the last of man's innocence and happiness. And the morning often is called sacred by the poets, because that time is usually allotted to sacrifice and devotion, as Eustathius says in his remarks upon Ho mer. 193. In Eden on the humid all things that breathe,] Here Milton gives to the English word breathe, which is generally used in a more confined sense, the extensive signification of the Latin spirare, imitating perhaps Spenser, Faery Queen, b. i. cant. iv. st. 38. Their morning incense, when all things that breathe, With grateful smell, forth came the human pair, With pleasance of the breathing fields yfed. Thyer. 197. With grateful smell,] This is in the style of the eastern poetry. So it is said, Gen. viii. 21. The Lord smelled a sweet savour. Our 199. -that done,] author always supposes Adam and Eve to employ their first and their last hours in devotion. And they are only would-bewits, who do not believe and worship a God. The greatest geniuses in all ages, from Homer to Milton, appear plainly by their writings to have been men of piety and religion. 200. The season, prime for sweetest sents and airs:] Sents, so Milton spells it, doubtless from the Latin sentiendo. And so Skinner spells it, and this is the true way of spelling it. I presume, it was first spelt with a c scent, to distinguish it from the participle sent missus; but the sense will sufficiently dis 195 200 205 210 Adam, well may we labour still to dress With myrtle, find what to redress till noon: 220 225 213. Or bear what to my mind] So the second edition has it; in the first it is Or hear. Either will do, and we find sometimes the one and sometimes the other in the following editions. 226. To whom mild answer Adam thus return'd.] The dispute which follows between our two first parents is represented with great art it proceeds from a difference of judgment, not of passion, and is managed with reason, not with heat: it is such a dispute as we may suppose might have happened in Paradise, had man continued happy and innocent. There is a great delicacy in the moralities which are interspersed in Adam's discourse, and which the most ordinary reader cannot but take notice of. That force of love, which the father of mankind so |